Malang – REALS 2021 began with a spectacular opening lecture delivered by Dr. Evi Eliyanah. The lecture, which was preceded by an opening ceremony, was held on September 24, 2021 at 1.30 p.m. GMT+7. Attending the opening ceremony were Vice Rector IV of Universitas Negeri Malang, Professor Ibrahim Bafadal; the president of ALMI (Akademi Ilmuwan Muda Indonesia), Dr. Sri Fatmawati; the secretary general of ALMI, Dr. Hawis Madduppa; the head of the English Department, Faculty of Letters, UM, Dr. Suharyadi; the director of OIA UM, Dr. Evi Eliyanah; as well as the staff and Research and Development Team of OIA UM.
“Multidisciplinary dialogue, discussion, and debates need to be continuously conducted in order to create a more inclusive and adaptive policy-making process,” said Dr. Evi Eliyanah, as she gave some reports regarding this year’s REALS.
It was then continued by opening remarks by Dr. Suharyadi and Dr. Sri Fatmawati, each of whom expressed their gratitude regarding the collaboration between UM and ALMI. Finally, Prof. Ibrahim Bafadal took a turn in delivering his message. He hoped that REALS 2021 will be a better event from the previous years. He also extended his thanks to all parties who made the event possible. After that, he officially opened the annual lecture series.
Stepping into the first lecture, the moderator took charge of the session. He welcomed Dr. Evi Eliyanah who would deliver her lecture, entitled “In the Same Storm, but on Different Boats.” Apparently, the title reflected the materials she was going to talk about, which was how the pandemic is a multifaceted crisis. The purpose of this material was to introduce the participants to all the topics they are going to learn for the next eight weeks.
In her lecture, Dr. Evi explained three issues: how the pandemic developed, pandemic and inequalities, and evidence-based policies. First of all, she explained about the two sides of the Covid-19 pandemic. On one side it is a disastrous event which poses a lot of challenges, but on the other side it is a field of opportunity in which people advance innovations in many sectors. Because of that, it takes various disciplines just to understand this global pandemic as a whole. But why, then, does this lecture focus on Asia and Europe?
To answer this question, Dr. Evi provided some facts related to how the governments handled the pandemic in both Asia and Europe. From that, we could understand that the inequalities between the two regions are real. For instance, how hate and discrimination grew towards Asian people as they are labelled as the source of covid and how Europe became the second most vaccinated region in the world. REALS 2021 functions as a means to answer these questions. Therefore, various topics will be discussed every week, ranging from social inequality, misinformation and disinformation, to innovations on medicines.
Once the lecture finished, the moderator opened the Q&A session. This time, three questions were asked. The first one came from Martha, who asked whether Indonesia is ready to live side-by-side with the coronavirus. In response to this, Dr. Evi shared her view that the hardest part of this pandemic is to make people realize that the pandemic will still go on for some time, hence people need to keep their masks on. Martha agreed to this, she also stated that it’s hard to make society become fully aware of the severity of the situation. After that, the second question, given by Novi, came up. She asked whether we should focus on finding the origin of the coronavirus or finding the right solution for the pandemic. On this topic, Dr. Evi believed that it is a waste of time to discuss conspiracy theories regarding the origin of the virus because people would only blame each other for it. She added that it’s more productive for us to focus on combating the virus using the ability we have.
Lastly, the final question came from Karmila. She asked about how to convince people who refused to get vaccinated. To answer this, Dr. Evi stated that she also found it difficult to convince her family to get vaccines. Karmila responded by sharing her situation. She said that information regarding vaccines is limited in her area and that vaccines are not equally distributed, thus it affects people’s perception of it.
“That’s exactly why during the policy-making process, people need to think critically about the issue. It’s also important to listen to experts and scientists from various disciplines,” added Dr. Evi at the end of the session.
The first meeting of REALS 2021 went smoothly with over 70 participants, and was closed with a video from OALS 2018 about food and Asian society.
Author: Indah Herliani
English (UK) 
Bahasa Indonesia