Cabrillo students, faculty, and staff learned about empathy in the War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World by Stanford Professor and neuropsychologist Jamil Zaki in this recent CabrilloReads! sponsored book.  

What is Empathy?

Empathy is an umbrella term – It means ways that we can connect with one another’s emotions and feelings. Our empathetic concern is the motivation to improve others' well-being.

Choosing empathy is an important:

• Empathy is a necessity in the workplace in addition to maintaining our general well-being.
• Also, empathy can be built!  Author, Jamil Zaki shares, "Through practice, we can grow our empathy and become kinder as a result." and "Empathy can give us more collective power together than we ever could apart."

The War for Kindness inspired these cross-departmental collaborations and deep-impact learning projects on empathy at Cabrillo. Students and faculty used photography, art, conversation, and writing in collaboration to grow empathy, and connect with each other. This project began during a time-period when our community and our students, faculty, and staff necessitated an opportunity to contemplate and reflect on the need for empathy in our deeply fractured world.  

Cabrillo Art Photography students, Stroke and Disability Learning Center students, English students, Art Studio students, and the Cabrillo Library and the Cabrillo Gallery worked together on the Empathy project. We listened and expressed what we needed more empathy for in our world and what we need more self-empathy for today. 

Art can flatten “our empathetic landscape, making distant others feel less distant and caring for them less difficult” (76).