AT A GLANCE

Civility Project

• Website
  civilityproject.ucdavis.edu
• Exhibition — Paper Takes: The Power of Uncivil Words. through Nov. 30, Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center. Hours: 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, and 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday.
• Theatre — (Un)Civil (Dis)Obedience, documenting the feelings of various people in the Davis campus community, in response to the hate-based incidents of the 2009-10 academic year. Encore performance, 7 p.m. today (Oct. 28), Vanderhoef Studio Theatre, Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts. Admission is free; people planning to attend are asked to register in advance, but you are welcome to show up even without having signed up — and you will be admitted if space allows.

MediaWorks videotaped the production's Oct. 26 dress rehearsal, and it will be available for viewing on the UC Davis iTunes U and You Tube channels. Update Nov. 7, 2011: The video is available here, on You Tube.

Miracle in Rwanda

One-woman show about "the Anne Frank of our generation," a woman who survived the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Presented in the Vanderhoef Studio Theatre at the Mondavi Center.

• Thursday, Nov. 3 — 3 p.m., for students only. Free admission.
• Thursday-Friday, Nov. 3-4 — 7 p.m. Tickets required ($28 general admission, $14 for students)

Click here for online ticket sales. Box office hours: noon-6 p.m. Monday-Saturday, and one hour before ticketed events. Telephone: (530) 754-2787 or (866) 754-2787.

The Civility Project debuted Thursday (Oct. 27) as Part 1 of UC Davis' 2011-12 Building a More Inclusive Community campaign. Part 2 comes next week: three performances of Miracle in Rwanda, about a woman who survived the 1994 genocide in her country.

About 100 people attended the Civility Project's "launch event," which showcased the results of a year and a half of academic inquiry under the auspices of the UC Davis Humanities Institute.

"It's so inspiring to see students, faculty and community members come together to address some of the most controversial aspects of our history as a campus," said Beth Levy, an associate professor of musicology who is filling in this year for Carolyn de la Peña as director of the humanities institute.

De la Peña, an American studies professor, is on sabbatical — but she returned from Spain to participate in the Civility Project's launch. She helped get the project off the ground last year and continued as the project's co-director, even while going on sabbatical.

"By approaching recent acts of incivility on campus as research opportunities, our fantastic student investigators in the humanities and social sciences have produced a website, exhibition and performance that illuminate the causes and impacts of intolerance and invite us to consider what is required to create the dynamic, divergent and respectful community we crave," de la Pena said.

The website went live Thursday, just before the opening of the exhibition, Paper Takes: The Power of Uncivil Words, at the Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center. From there, people moved across the street to the Vanderhoef Studio Theatre for the premiere of (Un)Civil (Dis)Obedience, documenting the feelings of various people in the Davis campus community, in response to the hate-based incidents of the 2009-10 academic year.

A repeat performance of (Un)Civil (Dis)Obedience is scheduled for tonight. See box for details.

The production will live forever on video, while the exhibition of radical pamphlets will run only until Nov. 30 at the Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center. The artifacts will be returned to the Walter Goldwater Radical Pamphlets collection at Shields Library.

The website is permanent, too. It explores the history of incivility on UC campuses, where the environment is characterized by goals that are often in tension: free expression and the exchange of ideas, and facilitating inclusion and tolerance in an increasingly diverse population.

"The Civility Project really reminds us that UC Davis has always been a place of great diversity, and that even now we are part of a national conversation about how to speak our minds forcefully but responsibly, how to listen, how to be good citizens," Levy said.

Earlier coverage: “Civility Project bolsters campus's growth as a welcoming place,” Dateline UC Davis (Oct. 14, 2011)

Miracle in Rwanda

Immaculée Ilibagiza’s family had been murdered — among the victims in the genocide that, according to many sources, claimed an estimated 800,000 lives in Rwanda when one ethnic group, the Hutus, set out to eradicate another, the Tutsis.

Hundreds of machete-wielding killers searched relentlessly for Ilibigaza and seven other women who, for 91 days, crammed silently into a hidden extra bathroom in a Hutu pastor's home, according to the Miracle in Rwanda website.

Ultimately, the website continues, Ilibigaza moved beyond intense fear and rage, to find a deeper connection to God than she ever thought possible.

“Often called ‘our generation’s Anne Frank’ — yet one who thankfully survived — the true miracle of Immaculée’s story is her ability to forgive,” the website states. 

Leslie Lewis Sword performs the one-woman show, transforming herself into a host of characters, after having created Miracle in Rwanda with Edward Vilga, who directs. They based the work on Ilibigaza's best-selling Left to Tell: Discovering God
Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust.

Ilibigaza is a real-life messenger of hope, the website states. “The message is one of personal empowerment, of overcoming all obstacles through the power of faith, and ultimately finding peace of mind amidst unbelievable hardship."

Sword and Vilga are on a world tour with Miracle in Rwanda, and are bringing it to UC Davis under sponsorship of the Office of Campus Community Relations and the Kittelson Charitable Foundation, which contributes money, computer equipment and school supplies to underprivileged youth in Rwanda.

Rahim Reed, associate executive vice chancellor who leads the Office of Campus Community Relations, said Miracle in Rwanda speaks to the personal dignity inherent in all human beings. "Genocide takes the lack of respect to the ultimate level," he said.

"We must learn to resolve our differences in a civilized and humane manner."