How Soccer Is Changing the

Lives of Child Refugees

Arrivals from war-torn countries find refuge at a
Georgia academy founded by an immigrant

Soccer is the one thing thats very familiar to them," says Luma Mufleh, founder of Fugees Family. It
reminds them of home. (Courtesy of Luma Mufleh, Fugees Family, Inc.)

By Katie Nodjimbadem
smithsonian.com
July 6, 2017

The day after the 2016 presidential election was a stressful one in a school in Clarkston,
Georgia. The students, all refugees from war-torn regions of the world, arrived in tears.
Some of them asked, Why do they hate us? Hoping to reassure the students, soccer
coach Luma Mufleh and the teachers held a special meeting to discuss the American
political system. They explained that the American government, unlike those of the
countries they came from, operated under a system of checks and balances that would
review the president-elect's policies.

Though most middle and high school students would be familiar with this fundamentally
American value, these students are recent immigrants, a status that puts them at the
center of a political firestorm.

The students attend the Fugees Academy, a private school funded by the Fugees
Family, a non-profit organization that Mufleh founded to support refugee children and
their families in the Atlanta suburb.

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Months have passed since that first post-election conversation and the topic of refugees
continues to make headlines. Less than 24 hours after parts of President Trumps travel
ban went into effect, barring some refugees from entering the country, Mufleh and nine
of her students traveled to Washington, D.C. to participate in the 2017 Smithsonian
Folklife Festival, a theme of which focuses on youth, culture and migration.
They presented soccer drills and spoke about their refugee experience in a story circle.

They also saw on display, for the first time, items from their soccer team, including a
jersey, a soccer ball and a pair of cleats in the new exhibition "Many Voices, One
Nation" now on view at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

The objects are located in the recently revamped and reopened second floor of the
museum's west wing. The show's title evokes the sentiment of the Latin phrase e
pluribus unum, which is found on the United States seal and roughly translates to out of
many, one. Telling the centuries-long story of migration to the United States, the
exhibition begins with the arrival of the Europeans in 1492 and follows the waves of
migration through the early 2000s.

Some objects tell stories of cultural exchange, while others such as a Border Patrol
uniform, reveal the legacy of measures to control migration. The imagery of the Statue
of Liberty is prominent in the exhibition; most notably in the form of a paper mch
rendition used in a march demanding improved working conditions and higher wages for
migrant workers.

The Fugees objects tell a slice of the particular migration story of refugee resettlement,
and hint at the years Mufleh has dedicated to the refugees in her community. Mufleh
arrived in the U.S. from her native country of Jordan in the mid-1990s to attend Smith
College in Massachusetts.

After graduation, Mufleh moved to the suburbs of Atlanta where she opened a caf that
served ice cream, sandwiches and coffee. Though she lived and worked in the town of
Decatur, she frequented a Middle Eastern store in nearby Clarkston, where she could
find the authentic hummus and pita bread that reminded her of her home country.

But one afternoon in 2004, she took a wrong turn in Clarkston and found herself in the
parking lot of an apartment complex where a group of young boys was playing soccer.

They reminded me of home, she says. Playing without referees or coaches and with a
beat up ball, the scene was reminiscent of the streets where Mufleh played with her
brothers and cousins. So compelled by these children, she hopped out of her car with a
nicer ball and convinced the boys to let her in on the game. She soon learned they were
refugees from Afghanistan and Sudan, and she bonded with them over their shared
identity as Muslim immigrants.

Throughout the next few months, she continued to play soccer with themsome of them
barefoot and using rocks as goal markers. Later that year, she founded an official
competitive soccer team made up of refugees. They called themselves the Fugees, as
in refugees.

But she soon realized that soccer alone could not address the many issues refugee
children face. Upon arriving in the United States, these children are frequently enrolled

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in age-appropriate classrooms without consideration of their education level. Some of
them, such as those from Syria and Iraq, have not attended school in several years due
to conflict in their home countries. Others, such as those born in refugee camps in
Ethiopia or Myanmar, the country also known as Burma, have never been to school and
are illiterate even in their native languages.

Theyre expected to do algebra when theyve never set foot in school and they dont
know how to add or multiply, she remarks.

She began the Fugees Academy to educate students, no matter how far behind they
are. Offering classes for sixth through twelfth grade, the academy has become so
popular among the refugee community that Mufleh receives nearly three times as many
requests for enrollment as she has space and resources.

But though the Fugees Familys reach has expanded far beyond the soccer field, theyve
never neglected their roots in the sport. She and her staff coach several teams, some of
which compete in a recreational league while the others compete in an independent
school league.

Soccer is the one thing thats very familiar to them and the one thing that is normal, she
says. It reminds them of home.

In conversation in the days leading up to their demonstration at the Folklife Festival,

Mufleh said she hoped the students would share their unique stories while reminding
those who attend that they are not just refugees. They are children and adolescents, first.

Theyre just like most kids, she notes. Yes, theyve had experiences that children
typically dont have. But they have so much to contribute to this country to make it great
and to teach us all about how grateful we are to be here.

"Many Voices, One Nation" is now on view at the National Museum of American History
in Washington, D.C. The Smithsonian's 2017 Folklife Festival continues on the National
Mall July 6 through July 9, 2017.

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How Human Noise Ruins Parks
for Animals and People
Even in Americas most pristine wildernesses,
unwanted sound is changing landscapes

A red fox listening for prey under the snow in Yellowstone National Park. Noise can affect foxes and
other animals that rely on their hearing when they hunt. (Neal Herbert/NPS)

By Rachel Buxton, The Conversation

smithsonian.com
July 19, 2017

As transportation networks expand and urban areas grow, noise from sources such as
vehicle engines is spreading into remote places. Human-caused noise has
consequences for wildlife, entire ecosystems and people. It reduces the ability to hear
natural sounds, which can mean the difference between life and death for many animals,
and degrade the calming effect that we feel when we spend time in wild places.

Protected areas in the United States, such as national parks and wildlife refuges, provide
places for respite and recreation, and are essential for natural resource conservation. To
understand how noise may be affecting these places, we need to measure all sounds
and determine what fraction come from human activities.

In a recent study, our team used millions of hours of acoustic recordings and
sophisticated models to measure human-caused noise in protected areas. We found that
noise pollution doubled sound energy in many U.S. protected areas, and that noise was
encroaching into the furthest reaches of remote areas.

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Pine siskin song as a car passes by, Rocky Mountain National Park. Recorded by Jacob
Job, research associate with Colorado State University and the National Park
Service, Author provided

Our approach can help protected area managers enhance recreation opportunities for
visitors to enjoy natural sounds and protect sensitive species. These acoustic resources
are important for our physical and emotional well-being, and are beautiful. Like
outstanding scenery, pristine soundscapes where people can escape the clamor of
everyday life deserve protection.

Noise is an unwanted or inappropriate sound. We focused on human sources of noise

in natural environments, such as sounds from aircraft, highways or industrial sources.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, noise pollution is noise that
interferes with normal activities, such as sleeping and conversation, and disrupts or
diminishes our quality of life.

Human-caused noise in protected areas interferes with visitors experience and alters
ecological communities. For example, noise may scare away carnivores, resulting in
inflated numbers of prey species such as deer. To understand noise sources in parks
and inform management, the National Park Service has been monitoring sounds at
hundreds of sites for the past two decades.

Noise is hard to quantify at large-landscape scales because it cant be measured by

satellite or other visual observations. Instead researchers have to collect acoustic
recordings over a wide area. NPS scientists on our team used acoustic measurements
taken from 492 sites around the continental United States to build a sound model that
quantified the acoustic environment.

National Park Service staff set up an acoustic recording station as a car passes on Going-to- the-
Sun Road in Glacier National Park, Montana. (National Park Service)

They used algorithms to determine the relationship between sound measurements and
dozens of geospatial features that can affect measured average sound levels. Examples
include climate data, such as precipitation and wind speed; natural features, such as

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topography and vegetation cover; and human features, such as air traffic and proximity
to roads.

Using these relationships, we predicted how much human-caused noise is added to

natural sound levels across the continental United States.

To get an idea of the potential spatial extent of noise pollution effects, we summarized
the amount of protected land experiencing human-produced noise three or 10 decibels
above natural. These increments represent a doubling and a 10-fold increase,
respectively, in sound energy, and a 50 to 90 percent reduction in the distance at which
natural sounds can be heard. Based on a literature review, we found that these
thresholds are known to impact human experience in parks and have a range of
repercussions for wildlife.

The good news is that in many cases, protected areas are quieter than surrounding
lands. However, we found that human-caused noise doubled environmental sound in 63
percent of U.S. protected areas, and produced a tenfold or greater increase in 21 percent
of protected areas.

Map of projected ambient sound levels for a typical summer day across the contiguous United
States, where lighter yellow indicates louder conditions and darker blue indicates quieter
conditions. (Rachel Buxton, Author provided)

Noise depends on how a protected area is managed, where a site is located and what
kinds of activities take place nearby. For example, we found that protected areas
managed by local government had the most noise pollution, mainly because they were
in or near large urban centers. The main noise sources were roads, aircraft, land-use
conversion and resource extraction activities such as oil and gas production, mining and
logging.

We were encouraged to find that wilderness areas places that are preserved in their
natural state, without roads or other development were the quietest protected areas,
with near-natural sound levels. However, we also found that 12 percent of wilderness
areas experienced noise that doubled sound energy. Wilderness areas are managed to
minimize human influence, so most noise sources come from outside their borders.

Finally, we found that many endangered species, particularly plants and invertebrates,
experience high levels of noise pollution in their critical habitat geographic areas that
are essential for their survival. Examples include the Palos Verdes Blue butterfly, which

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is found only in Los Angeles County, California, and the Franciscan manzanita, a shrub
that once was thought extinct, and is found only in the San Francisco Bay area.

Of course plants cant hear, but many species with which they interact are affected by
noise. For example, noise changes the distribution of birds, which are important
pollinators and seed dispersers. This means that noise can reduce the recruitment of
seedlings.

Noise pollution is pervasive in many protected areas, but there are ways to reduce it. We
have identified noisy areas that will quickly benefit from noise mitigation efforts,
especially in habitats that support endangered species.

Strategies to reduce noise include establishing quiet zones where visitors are
encouraged to quietly enjoy protected area surroundings, and confining noise
corridors by aligning airplane flight patterns over roads. Our work provides insights for
restoring natural acoustic environments, so that visitors can still enjoy the sounds of
birdsong and wind through the trees.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Rachel Buxton, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Colorado State University

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The Timelessness of Millennial-
Bashing
Even in the 14th century, writers blamed younger
generations for ruining everything

Criseyde and Her Maidens Listening to a Reading, by Warwick Goble, from The Complete Poetical
Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 1912. (Alamy)

By Eric Weiskott, The Conversation

smithsonian.com
July 11, 2017

As a millennial and a teacher of millennials, Im growing weary of think pieces blaming

my generation for messing everything up.

The list of ideas, things and industries that millennials have ruined or are presently
ruining is very long: cereal, department stores, the dinner date, gambling, gender
equality, golf, lunch, marriage, movies, napkins, soap, the suit and weddings. In true
millennial fashion, compiling lists like this has already become a meme.

A common thread in these hit pieces is the idea that millennials are lazy, shallow and
disruptive. When I think of my friends, many of whom were born in the 1980s, and my
undergraduate students, most of whom were born in the 1990s, I see something
different. The millennials I know are driven and politically engaged. We came of age after

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the Iraq War, the Great Recession and the bank bailout three bipartisan political
disasters. These events were formative, to an extent that those who remember the
Vietnam War might not realize.

The idea that young people are ruining society is nothing new. I teach medieval English
literature, which gives ample opportunity to observe how far back the urge to blame
younger generations goes.

The most famous medieval English author, Geoffrey Chaucer, lived and worked in
London in the 1380s. His poetry could be deeply critical of the changing times. In the
dream vision poem The House of Fame, he depicts a massive failure to communicate,
a kind of 14th-century Twitter in which truths and falsehoods circulate indiscriminately in
a whirling wicker house. The house is among other things a representation
of medieval London, which was growing in size and political complexity at a then-
astounding rate.

(Geoffrey Chaucer (Wikimedia Commons)

In a different poem, Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer worries that future generations will
miscopy and mismeter his poetry because of language change. Millennials might be
bankrupting the napkin industry, but Chaucer was concerned that younger readers would
ruin language itself.

Winner and Waster, an English alliterative poem probably composed in the 1350s,
expresses similar anxieties. The poet complains that beardless young minstrels who
never put three words together get praised. No one appreciates old-fashioned
storytelling any more. Gone are the days when there were lords in the land who in their
hearts loved / To hear poets of mirth who could invent stories.

William Langland, the elusive author of Piers Plowman, also believed that younger
poets werent up to snuff. Piers Plowman is a psychedelic religious and political poem
of the 1370s. At one point, Langland has a personification named Free Will describe the
sorry state of contemporary education. Nowadays, says Free Will, the study of grammar
confuses children, and there is no one left who can make fine metered poetry or readily

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interpret what poets made. Masters of divinity who should know the seven liberal arts
inside and out fail in philosophy, and Free Will worries that hasty priests will overleap
the text of the mass.

On a larger scale, people in 14th-century England began worrying that a new

bureaucratic class was destroying the idea of truth itself. In his book A Crisis of Truth,
literary scholar Richard Firth Green argues that the centralization of the English
government changed truth from a person-to-person transaction to an objective reality
located in documents.

Today we might see this shift as a natural evolution. But literary and legal records from
the time reveal the loss of social cohesion felt by everyday people. They could no longer
rely on verbal promises. These had to be checked against authoritative written
documents. (Chaucer himself was part of the new bureaucracy in his roles as clerk of
the kings works and forester of North Petherton.)

In medieval England, young people were also ruining sex. Late in the 15th century,
Thomas Malory compiled the Morte d'Arthur, an amalgam of stories about King Arthur
and the Round Table. In one tale, Malory complains that young lovers are too quick to
jump into bed.

But the old love was not so, he writes wistfully.

If these late medieval anxieties seem ridiculous now, its only because so much human
accomplishment (we flatter ourselves) lies between us and them. Can you imagine the
author of Winner and Waster wagging a finger at Chaucer, who was born into the next
generation? The Middle Ages are misremembered as a dark age of torture and religious
fanaticism. But for Chaucer, Langland and their contemporaries, it was the modern future
that represented catastrophe.

These 14th- and 15th-century texts hold a lesson for the 21st century. Anxieties about
kids these days are misguided, not because nothing changes, but because historical
change cannot be predicted. Chaucer envisioned a linear decay of language and poetry
stretching into the future, and Malory yearned to restore a (make-believe) past of courtly
love.

But thats not how history works. The status quo, for better or worse, is a moving target.
Whats unthinkable to one era becomes so ubiquitous its invisible in the next.

Millennial bashers are responding to real tectonic shifts in culture. But their response is
just a symptom of the changes they claim to diagnose. As millennials achieve more
representation in the workforce, in politics and in media, the world will change in ways
we cant anticipate.

By then, there will be new problems and a new generation to take the blame for them.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Eric Weiskott, Assistant Professor of English, Boston College

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Ai Weiwei Depicts the Brutality
of Authoritarianism in an
Unusual MediumLegos
The renowned Chinese Artist finally gets to see his
work about political prisoners at the Hirshhorn

Ai Weiwei worked with Amnesty International and other groups to collect the stories of people
imprisoned in 33 countries. (Ai Weiwei Studio)

By Roger Catlin
smithsonian.com
July 12, 2017

It was the artist Ai Weiweis own experience as a prisoner of consciencedetained and

jailed by the Chinese government for 81 days in 2011that led him to share the images
and stories of 176 other activists and advocates of free speech.

Trace was first created as part of a 2014 retrospective at the famous island jail turned
contemporary art space, Alcatraz. It came at a time when Ai was detained; when Trace
opened in California, he was forbidden to leave China; his passport had been revoked.

It wasnt until the exhibition opened this summer at the Smithsonians Hirshhorn Museum
and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. that the celebrated artist, provocateur and
architectthe famous Birds Nest design of the Beijing National Stadium at the 2008

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Olympics was hisgot to see it. (The Hirshhorn was host to his first American
retrospective in 2012. But he didnt get to see that either.)

Once his passport was restored to him in July 2015, Ai Weiwei moved abroad, to live
and work in Berlin.

Called Trace at Hirshhorn, the installation is sprawled on six large panels across the
expanse of the museums entire second floor. The surprisingly soft-spoken artist told a
packed audience at his June 27 James T. Demetrian Lecture, on the eve of the shows
opening, that it was beautifully displayed.

"Trace" first appeared in 2014 in San Francisco at Alcatraz Island. (Ai Weiwei Studio)

Because of his own detention, Ai said he wanted to do something in relation to prison

life or prisoners who lost their freedom because of their beliefs. He worked with Amnesty
International and other groups to collect the stories of people from 33 countries. Some
were well known, but many were not.

Some had short sentences, some had lifetime sentences, Ai said. I got to know these
stories. They are real people. Every image has a long story behind them. Accordingly,
banks of touch screen computers accompany each large panel to give the prisoners
backstory and status (as of spring 2017).

The seriousness of the issues, though, contrasts with the surprisingly whimsical material
employed to craft their imagescolorful Lego blocks1.2 million of them in all.

My son plays all the time with Lego, Ai said. He was reminded how its blocks could
easily translate pixilated pictures and make clear some of the blurry photos that in some
cases were the only available images of the prisoners he wanted to depict.

It also can reflect culture through geometric backgrounds, he said.

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Some of the portraits are rendered in stark black and white, others in a blast of color; all are on a
white backing. (Cathy Carver, Hirshhorn)

So his staff of 100 or so went to work assembling plastic mosaics of the prisoners. Lego
initially refused to cooperate because it didnt want its bricks used for political purposes,
a position that had changed by July 2016.

Hirshhorn Director Melissa Chiu said Ai was particularly happy to see the piece in a
museum. Seeing it in a museum gives it new life, and gives it a different perspective
because we can talk about its place in art history, she says.

Im very happy that the Legos can be shown again in Washington D.C. Its an important
place to show these, Ai says in a video accompanying the exhibition.

But in a political city like Washington, the display comes with unusual fine print from a
museum, which receives at least part of its funding from the federal government: Note
that the choices of whom to depict and assessments of their situations are solely Ai
Weiweis. The artists choices do not necessarily reflect the position, if any, of the
Hirshhorn or the Smithsonian. The exhibition presents the artists expressive point of
view about a key, often contentious topic of our times. The D.C. show also omitted a
postcard project that was offered at the original Alcatraz showing to remind prisoners
that they were not forgotten.

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 The rococo design wallpaper, which extends around the buildings famously circular walls,
contains a surprising arrangement of handcuffs, chains and surveillance cameras. (Cathy
Carver, Hirshhorn)

Among the half dozen Americans depicted in Trace, one is the civil rights icon Martin
Luther King, Jr, whose monumental statue gazes across the Tidal Basin down the road
from the museum. But the work also includes controversial figures like Edward
Snowden, who is charged with theft of government property and two counts of violating
the U.S. Espionage Act for revealing classified documents showing widespread domestic
and global surveillance; and Chelsea Manning, who released a wealth of sensitive and
classified documents about war details to WikiLeaks and whose 35-year sentence in
2013 was commuted by President Obama in January.

Following this trend of imprisoned leakers of classified material, one might expect one of
the blank squares in Trace to be reserved for the recently arrested Reality Winner (but
it turns out that those blank spots are merely the spaces where columns went when the
work was originally installed at Alcatraz).

Other Americans depicted might not be household names, but include: John Kiriakou, a
former CIA analyst, who first disclosed the use of waterboarding for interrogation and
was sentenced to 30 months in prison in 2013 before being released in 2015; Shakir
Hamoodi, who was sentenced to three years prison in 2012 for sending money to Iraqi
relatives during a time of sanctions against that country; and Shaker Aamer, a Saudi
citizen and British legal resident, cleared of terrorism ties in 2007 and 2009, who
languished at Guantanamo until his 2015 release to Great Britain.

Among world renown names like Nelson Mandela are scores of lesser known ones. One
is Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, detained in China since 2009, who was only
released days before the Hirshhorn opening to obtain cancer treatment. [Editor's Note:
Following publication of this story, Liu Xiaobo died in Chinese captivity on July 13, 2017.]

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As one might expect, there are far more prisoners depicted from China than any other
country, with 38; the country dominates one entire panel and most of another. But there
are also more than what would be expected from Vietnam (16) and Bahrain (15). There
are nine from Russia and three from North Korea.

Some are rendered in stark black and white Lego arrangements, others in a blast of
color; all are on white backing that came shipped in 12- by 12-foot panels. Assembling
them was easy, the museum says; the initial cleaning after its Alcatraz showing was
difficult, requiring toothpicks between each of the little circular studs.

Accompanying the expanse of portraits on the floor is a new piecewallpaper that

extends nearly 700 feet, 360 degrees across the buildings famously circular walls.

And even that work can be deceptive. What looks like a fancy rococo wallpaper design
in black and white and in gold is actually an arrangement of handcuffs, chains,
surveillance cameras, Twitter birds and stylized alpacasan animal which in China has
become a meme against censorship.

Of the installation, Chiu says, The hardest thing was actually the wallpaper. Specialists
had never installed such a long wallpaper design.

As if to suggest things arent what they seem, the piece is titled The Plain Version of the
Animal That Looks like a Llama but is Really an Alpaca. Thats very Chinese, Chiu
says. Thats the way Chinese people articulate complex ideas.

My own interpretation, Chiu says, is that the internet, which once seemed as such an
arena of freedom, is not as free as we assumed and its almost a cautionary tale. Its
like, lets be cautious about this space, its not what it looks like.

Ai Weiwei: Trace at Hirshhorn continues through Jan. 1, 2018 at the Hirshhorn Museum
and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.

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