This is the seconding reading in our series on “Readings that Matter”. This series is adapted from a set of readings that Acumen’s Fellows and staff discuss on a regular basis as part of our leadership training and development.

“A person’s identity … is like a pattern drawn on a tightly stretched parchment. Touch just one part of it, just one allegiance, and the whole person will react, the whole drum will sound.”

It’s easy to understand why Amin Maalouf, the Lebanese-born French author of “In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong“, calls identity a “false friend.”  Throughout history, most large-scale acts of violence—whether the genocides, the Holocaust, or wars—have been committed in the name of identity: one tribe against another, one religion against another, one nation against another.

In this course, you’ll have a chance to join a global conversation about Maalouf’s writings and larger questions of identity in light of current events.  You’ll receive a discussion kit complete with a downloadable version of the text, a step-by-step facilitator’s guide and background materials that will equip you to host a small group of friends or colleagues in a 2-hour discussion of the first five chapters of Maalouf’s book. The course will also give you tools to reflect on your own identity and think about it in relation to the larger historical and cultural factors that Maalouf lays out.