On November 16th, along with many of my Macaulay peers, I attended the independently organized TED event named TEDx CUNY. This event was run by Macaulay and held in the Macaulay building. Many speakers were present but one that really stood out to me was Aakaash Varma, a junior at Brooklyn College. Mr. Varma, being a history major, was going to talk about just that, history. At first I thought this wouldn’t be interesting but I was soon proved wrong.
The name of Mr. Varma’s presentation was “Putting the ‘Story’ Back in History” and it was about a phenomenon called historical empathy. To Mr. Varma historical empathy is the connection of emotions to historical events. Mr. Varma discussed how in today’s educational environment history is looked at as a boring topic, one that must be studied to get through school, but rarely enjoyed. This is because of the lack of historical empathy. Using the attacks on 9/11 as his first example, Mr. Varma showed us that as New Yorkers this part of history sticks out more to us, not because it happened recently, but because of historical empathy. Being that most of us there were New Yorkers, we have a deeper connection to 9/11; it’s an event in history that is more than just facts to us. We might have known someone who either died or was affected by the attacks, bringing the whole event closer to home. Mr. Varma also talked about the India Pakistan split. As a man of Indian descent, Mr. Varma explained to us how this split was more that just the facts he learned in his 10th grade history class, his ancestors went through this rough time, and thus he feels an emotional connection to the events that transpired.
The whole point of Mr. Varma’s talk was not to just explain to us what historical empathy is and some events that are related to us. Mr. Varma wanted to show us the effects of this historical empathy and how it can make history more interesting to all. Our history is who we are and Mr. Varma wants us all to know where we come from, not just as a list of facts, but as stories passed down through generations. Bringing historical empathy to the history we learn in school and otherwise allows us as a species to be more connected to where we come from, it allows us in essence to be more human.
As a whole the talk was extremely engaging and entertaining. There were some points in which Mr. Varma’s presentation skills were a bit lacking but all in all he did a great job. He really put into perspective how important these events are that I have learned and are learning. Although they might not be connected to me, they are connected to someone and every historical event has an impact on someone’s life.
