Last Tuesday, 6th May, we attended a lecture by Professor Richard Harvey, of University of New Mexico.
The topic of "Intercultural Competence" was broached, alluding directly to those people who do not intend to travel or meet new people. When communicating, people must make a great effort to understand "the other" showing, in this way, not only empathy, but also tolerance and non-judgmentalism. As a matter of fact, the key of two people with different backgrounds to come across each other's messages surpasses the mere boundaries of language proficiency, merging into cross-cultural competence and religious expertise. He stated that interaction was an instance of the Iceberg model, in that it doesn't usually show values, beliefs or preferences of the people who take part in it.
Professor Harvey raised the importance of history as an ultimate conditioning for the individuals' conscience of the population of a country. He also exposed the D.I.E. exercise (Describe-Evaluate-Inform) and exemplified it superbly.
In conclusion, we had the opportunity to know about an interesting topic in a relaxed fashion, as Professor Harvey arranged the lecture as an exchange of impressions and made everyone present spend a nice evening.
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