ICPTR

Adriaan joined the research group with an interest in youth ethnic minorities and integration in the Dutch society. Born in Leeuwarden, Fryslân / Netherlands, (1956) Adriaan Kolen developed an interest in intercultural exchange at a young age. As a 17 year old youth he joined the AFS intercultural exchange program, which enables people to act as responsible global citizens working for peace and understanding in a diverse world. Living in California he started a never ending quest for bridging cultural gaps. Next to an intercultural marriage, this led to many activities, privately and professionally. For many years he presided over the local AFS chapter in his home state, thus enabling many others to engage in intercultural experiences all over the world. Becoming an experienced traveller over the years, Adriaan constantly looks for ways to combine his passion and daily routine. A deep rooted interest in languages helped him to achieve teaching degrees in Dutch, German and DSL (Dutch as a second language). The latter enabled him to engage professionally in contacts with adult students from many different cultural backgrounds.

As a policy advisor for his local municipality, he started an integrated policy program for ethnic minority groups.

Engaging in interreligious dialogue was another activity he devoted himself to. This led through the years to many interesting encounters with representatives of worldreligions. In many fields he was able to combine his professional activities with his interest in working with people from different cultural backgrounds. Next to the field of education, Adriaan worked for an agency offering unemployed adults new perspectives on the labourmarket. For the national job-centre he held a staffposition advising on diversity issues. This in turn led to an invitation to work ( as the only male employee) at a government supported foundation for womens emancipation. Here he took up projects to further diversity management , combining his knowledge and contacts in the fields of education, business and non-profit organisations. In one of the dutch refugee-camps Adriaan managed a staff of 14 teachers in a school for adult students.

As a coach and teacher he is currently working at a college to assist teenagers finding their way in vocational studies and connecting to future careers.

In an overcommunicated society, a borderless communication world, where physical borders have become obsolete in parts of Europe, but where perceptual borders have hardened, the quest for ways to soften cross-cultural unrest has become important and timely. Stereoptypes perpetuate misunderstanding and misconceptions, causing behavioral deseases that feed on prejudice, racism, and xenophobia. Terrorism, growing immigration, and home grown terror -and the why and how of all these and the rest-  have changed people’s behavior towards the others. If stereotypes represent only a minority of negative events and behaviors, what can make the majority “others” get rid of those unrelated yet prevalent steroptypes that are associated to them? Investigating prevalent sterotypes may lead to a sterotype diet. In this case a diet is the process of getting rid of what is useless or harmful, while keeping, augmenting, and even adopting what is useful and representative.

Please check back with us. If you have suggestions or recommendations to help us with understanding issues related to immigration and stereotypes, you may use the “community” thread to communicate with us.

Role of tour guides in promoting peace between Israelis and Palestinians is a research project supported by Stenden University. Its goal is to investigate the existing differences and similarities in the interpretive discourse of Israeli and Palestinian tour guides, with the hope of bridging historical, cultural, and geopolitical gaps, hoping to advance pragmatic and progressive recommendations that may contribute to a peaceful coexistance between the two peoples. It is hypothesised that tour guides have different interpretive discourses, thereby distorting the peace ideal of coexistence through their myopic interpretations of cultural and historical tourism sites in the region.

Please check back with us for the results. You may also communicate with us via the “community thread”. Comments and suggestions that can help us understand the complexity of the phenomenon of tour guiding in the region are most welcome.

Thank you note

First, I would like to start by saying thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you all for being here. Your presence honors our guests who have come from far to share with us. Your presence supports an idea, and an ideal. Your presence supports a member of the family, a friend, a colleague, or just somebody who, like millions of others, is trying to make a difference to make a better world for his family, for his friends, for his colleagues, and for people out there.

I call this happening Hope. No matter how smart, hard working and qualified you may be, when you come from a background like mine, to a background where those whom you just happened to look like, or have similar cultural backgrounds, are facing challenges related to lower education, are less qualified and do underpaid jobs, or engage in delinquency –Call this description perception or reality. It is a reality in my life, direct or indirect, which hopefully won’t remain a reality in the lives of my children: it is very difficult to be heard or to be given a chance to climb up the ladder of social mobility. In some similar cases intellectual capital does hardly count, but it counts even less for allochtonen or foreigners. God knows how much I dislike this word, especially when I think about my children!

That being said, I would like to thank from the bottom of my heart the persons who have made this happening a reality: Mr. Klaas-Wybo van der Hoek, our Vice President, and Mr. Robert Veenstra our President. Without the vision of Klaas-Wybo, I won’t be here talking to you, today. So, Klaas-Wybo, thank you for bringing back to me what I had once lost: Trust and Hope.

I would also like to thank the tourism management team, Ron Hekman for his friendship, our Dean Dr. Falco de Klerk Wolters for his understanding, and our secretariat for their support.

It is really difficult for me to write a speech about something that does not exist –tourism for peace lectoraat- and about which topic I know but little. I could say a lot about casino gaming management, and corresponding publications in academic gaming journals. Actually, my PhD. Dissertation is entitled “Changes in selected economic and social indicators associated with the establishment of casinos in the City of Detroit”. The Tourism for Peace Lectoraat is a timely invention which, steadily, but surely will take shape at our University.

First I am going to talk about the concept of peace in general. Afterwards I will say something about my own philosophy of peace, which will be followed by the role of education for peace, and finally the tourism for peace lectoraat’s aims and objectives, as well as tasks and activities.

Of peace and peacelessness

Lectoraat Tourism for Peace
Dr. Omar Moufakkir

This communication features an introduction to the Tourism for Peace Lectoraat, general aims and objectives of the Lectoraat, general tasks and activities, lectoraat work plan concept, activities engaged in, including conferences and accompanying presentations, the peace through tourism seminar, and the publications that are directly related to peace through tourism research. Participation in upcoming conferences, works in progress, as well as communication in press are also included.