Oomen, Barbara --- "Orchestrating encounters: teaching law at a liberal arts and sciences college in the Netherlands" [2016] ELECD 973; in van Klink, Bart; de Vries, Ubaldus (eds), "Academic Learning in Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016) 201

Book Title: Academic Learning in Law

Editor(s): van Klink, Bart; de Vries, Ubaldus

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781784714888

Section: Chapter 11

Section Title: Orchestrating encounters: teaching law at a liberal arts and sciences college in the Netherlands

Author(s): Oomen, Barbara

Number of pages: 22

Abstract/Description:

It was an October meeting in my ‘Transitional Justice’ class of 30 sessions, with the rain pouring outside of our Gothic town hall, and the 25 students playing out an exercise on Truth Commissions inside. I’d asked them to focus on one single testimony in the Truth Commission Reports of South Africa, Sierra Leone, Guatemala and Argentina. ‘Choose the life story of one person who is closest to you – possibly a student like yourself – and be prepared to describe what happened to you during the war. After that, we can discuss the tensions between truth and reconciliation from the perspective of your persona’. As the students gave their testimony one by one there was a focused atmosphere. One told the story of a young warrior from South Africa. The other was a girl from Guatemala, who saw her brother being killed. Tears welled from her eyes as she told how his head was smashed against a rock. The subsequent discussion on whether knowing the truth leads to healing, and whether reconciliation can replace accountability was of remarkable depth and seriousness. The exercise above is one of many attempts to achieve the objectives of a liberal arts undergraduate program within my law classes over the past years.