Knowledge Society

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced teachers and students around the world to make an abrupt transition from classrooms to remote learning as schools, universities, and religious education centres were closed. Teachers redesigned lessons and adapted to the new reality of keeping students engaged virtually. Meanwhile, students adjusted to learning online without the ease of classroom interactions. Ismaili teachers and students around the world have risen to this challenge and are finding ways to embrace remote learning and tap into the opportunities it offers.

In his address at TEDxOudMetha, held at the Ismaili Centre Dubai weeks before widespread social distancing was implemented, Dr Salmaan Keshavjee, Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard University and Director of the Harvard Medical School’s Centre for Global Health Delivery, discussed how many other diseases, beyond Covid-19, continue to affect peoples’ quality of life and cause untimely death, including diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and even curable infectious diseases such as tuberculosis (TB).

Promoting inclusivity and accessibility, Ismaili Centres and Jamatkhanas around the world are opening their doors to dialogue and conversation – a cornerstone to pluralism and a long-standing tradition of our faith.

The World Economic Forum predicts that millions of jobs will be lost in the coming years as artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology, and other socio-economic factors replace the need for human workers. How can we begin to prepare for a future that will no doubt be more mobile, autonomous, and machine-driven than today?

“Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination,” said Mae Jemison, an American engineer, physician, and the first African American woman to travel into space. She orbited the earth in 1992, making history as the first female person of color to journey into space about 30 years after the first man, Yuri Gagarin.