Tolerance Should be Nirtured Accommodate Diversity in Universities: Officials

 Addis Ababa  October 26  /2019 Recognizing the dignity and rights of others is important to entertain diversity and peaceful co-existence in universities, officials of public university said.

The officials, who met in Addis Ababa to discuss on ways of creating peaceful environment at universities, told ENA that changing attitude and mind set of administrators, teachers and students would help to build peaceful environment.

The Africa Initiative, in collaboration with the Ministry of Science and Higher Education organized the daylong conference, which aimed to look for ways of ensuring peaceful co-existence in universities.

A joint press release issued by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and Africa Initiative reads that one third of public universities were engulfed with upheaval and chaos during the past academic year.

Unable to recognize and respect rights of others was identified as the major source of conflict in the universities, it said.

Director of Peace and Security Studies Institute at Addis Ababa University, Yonas Adaye accentuated the need to work on building positive attitude among university communities to ensure peace.

“First and foremost, I should treat you in positive manner through recognizing your dignity”, he said adding “I should liquidate hatred while approaching any person what so ever his or her background is”.

In light of this, Yonas underpinned the need to work on improving emotional intelligence (EQ) rather than cognitive intelligences (IQ) to nurture compassion, Yonas stressed.

President of Wollo University, Abate Getachew said nurturing the culture of tolerance and respecting differences is by far the most important factor that would help to ensure lasting peace.

Unable to positively influence attitude that denigrate the value of others will result the undermining of rights of others and put their safety in danger, he added.

Abate said that lack of mechanisms through which diversity would be entertained contributed to the violence that had been happened in some universities.  

He, therefore, suggested the need to develop a mechanism that would nurture the culture of respect and accommodate diversity not only in the universities, but also at the grassroots level.

President of Kotebe Metropolitan University, Berhanemeskel Tena agree on the need to nurture the culture of tolerance.

Since students come from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, universities should teach university communities to respect others to accommodate diversity.