USA TODAY International Edition
Kindness is trying to make a comeback
Alumnus’ $ 20 million gift to fund ‘ scientific effort’
Kindness seems to be in short supply of late.
But it is out there, showing up in ways both small and large in California’s City of Angels.
A Los Angeles police officer recently posted a video of a homeless woman singing a Puccini aria in a deserted subway station. The video went viral.
Soon the woman, Emily Zamourka, was overwhelmed by the kindness of strangers. Lawmakers offered to find her a home, and someone launched a GoFundMe campaign.
“I am so grateful, but I also wish that the kindness I am experiencing now I might have felt when no one knew of my singing,” she tells USA TODAY.
And in a global first, the University of California- Los Angeles is launching an institute aimed at researching ways in which showing kindness benefits people and society alike. Within the first full year, officials hope to be able to roll out tangible results in the form of programs that teach how to better integrate kindness into one’s daily life.
“Everyone deserves to be treated nicely. It’s a great feeling, and it will make a better world.”
Emily Zamourka
“If we can learn more about the conditions that are conducive to people being empathetic ... then maybe we can push for kinder policies from our politicians.”
Darnell Hunt, dean of social sciences at UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles has announced a global first: It will use a $ 20 million alumnus donation to start the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute, researching ways in which showing kindness benefits individuals and society alike.
If that sounds quintessentially California kooky, UCLA evolutionary anthropology professor Daniel Fessler would like to disabuse you of that idea.
“People hear the word kindness and think we’ll be sitting around in circles, holding hands and changing the world by smelling flowers,” says Fessler, who was selected to run the new institute. “We are the opposite of that. This is a scientific effort.”
Fessler says professors and even students at the university can apply for grants in a range of disciplines as long as their focus involves the influence of kindness, which he defines as a selfless action whose sole purpose is to improve the beneficiary’s welfare.
For example, he says, those studying depression and anxiety can deepen their knowledge of the effect of compassionate behavior on mental well- being.
Social scientists looking at the roots of genocide can explore the behavior of those who decline to participate in mass murder and instead help the victims.
And experts in the genetics field can look into how responding kindly to others can positively affect brain activity and receptivity to cancer treatment.
Within the first full year of the institute’s existence, UCLA officials hope to be able to roll out tangible results in the form of programs for students and the public alike that teach how to better integrate kindness into one’s daily life.
“If we can learn more about the conditions that are conducive to people being empathetic toward others, which is at the core of kindness, then maybe we can push for kinder policies from our politicians,” says Darnell Hunt, dean of social sciences at UCLA, which will host the Bedari Kindness Institute.
Hunt says he was encouraged that L. A. Mayor Eric Garcetti attended the unveiling of the institute Sept. 25.
“This is a time of increased violence and strife and polarization in society, where we’re pulled partly by social media into tribes of us versus them and it’s difficult to speak across the divide,” Hunt says. “It’s a timely confluence of developments that makes it a ripe moment for this institute.”
That was certainly the intention of its benefactors, Matthew and Jennifer Harris.
Matthew Harris, a 1984 political science graduate of UCLA, made his fortune as founder of Global Infrastructure Partners, a New York- based private equity firm.
“I’ve had my struggles with being kind to myself, and in my experience being kind to oneself is critical to being kind to others,” says Harris, whose Bedari Foundation works to promote community wellness. “I found that when we’re perfectionists and critical of ourselves, that leaks out into how we interact with others.”
Harris said the mushrooming of technology has made it easier to disconnect from fellow humans.
“Nothing is going to happen overnight,” he says. “But if this institute can develop ways to help people practice kindness in their everyday lives, it will be worth it.”