Everyday, the news is likely to feature a story about the conflict with North Korea, the situation in Tibet or some issue relating to the Asian world. This week, the fifth annual Non-Western Culture Week held on campus took steps to help bridge the gap and help students understand the conflicts with the non-western world.

Dr. Maorong Jiang, director of the Asian World Center on campus, was one of the main coordinators of the event. Jiang said the lessons from reaching out to other cultures are skills that will benefit them in the future.

“Our goal is to get Creighton students exposed to a culture that is not mainly western,” Jiang said. “Lots of different cultures will be beneficial to our students’ broad education. My primary goal as director is to bridge Creighton in the middle of America with the people across the Pacific Ocean.”

The Asian World Center was formed two years ago as a result of Jiang’s efforts, and the response to the week’s events in past years has been positive.

The event focused on exposing Creighton students and the Omaha community to the Asian world and the differences in conflicts between western and non-western nations through a variety of forums, lectures and exhibits.

One main feature of the week was a book drive for children in North Korea. The Omaha Public Library donated several picture books for this cause, and there was an opportunity for individuals to give books.

There was also an exhibit of photographs of several Asian nations, including rare photos taken inside Tibet and North Korea.

Thursday’s keynote event was a public forum that featured Dr. Yong Deng, professor of political science at the United States Naval Academy, Professor Mark Turner, Lt. Colonel of the U.S. Army in military science and Arthur Pearlstein, director of the Werner Institute for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution at Creighton.

Pearlstein said Jiang’s contribution to the Non-Western Week and to the Asian World Center on campus was one of the reasons he decided to participate in the forum.

“What persuaded me is that he has done great work in taking a very limited number of resources and turning it into a big deal with the Asian World Center,” Pearlstein said.

Pearlstein said there are two things that can come from the forum.

“One is that there are different ways of looking at conflict, both in terms of whether conflict is really all together a bad thing or whether it is a positive thing and how that’s looked at through different cultural lenses,” Pearlstein said.

“The flip side of that is that it is not a good idea to make sweeping generalizations.

“While there may be some generaliz-ations that you can make, there is a serious danger of over-generalizing.”

The week’s events were put together by a collection of people, including many Creighton students. Arts & Sciences junior Malisa Militzer was in charge of organizing the art work and photographs featured.

“This time we have calligraphy and paintings that are from places like Korea,” Militzer said. “I think those stand out the most because they have authentic bordering around, and on the outside they are bordered as what looks like wallpaper textures.”

Militzer said that many people were involved but Jiang was in charge of most of the planning.

“He’s pretty much running this whole thing, and he’s got many departments that are working with him,” she said.

Pearlstein said this forum continues to remind him of other cultures and their views and has benefited his work with the Werner Institute.

“It has sort of reinforced my view that we shouldn’t make strong assumptions looking at the way people from different cultures view things,” Pearlstein said.

“We should not assume that they’re the same as us, but by the same token, people from another part of the world have many of the same kinds of goals and even approaches.”

Jiang applauded the help many individuals put forward to make this event possible, including the support from Creighton University President the Rev. John P. Schlegel, S.J.

“[Schlegel] really encourages and supports these kinds of things to invite students to be involved with what’s going on in the rest of the world,” he said.

“If you don’t try to do something because it may be difficult, how can you know it is difficult or not?” Jiang said.