Shownotes
What if science could accomplish what politics cannot? In this episode of the Leading Visionaries, host Anjel B. Hartwell sits down with Zafra Lerman, an internationally recognized chemist, educator, and humanitarian. Zafra shares how she has spent decades using science diplomacy to unite scientists across some of the world's most divided regions.
If you've ever wondered what it truly takes to lead with courage, influence others around a bold vision, and create lasting global impact, this conversation offers an inspiring masterclass in purpose-driven leadership.
What You Will Learn
How leadership often begins long before someone realizes they are a leader.
Why courage is built through values and purpose rather than fearlessness.
How Zafra risked her own safety to support imprisoned scientists and political dissidents.
The role science can play as a bridge between nations in conflict.
Why science diplomacy often succeeds where political diplomacy fails.
How creative teaching methods can make science accessible to everyone.
Why persuasion and relationship-building are essential leadership skills.
How childhood experiences shaped Zafra's lifelong commitment to service.
What it takes to bring together scientists from countries at war.
How one person's persistence can create opportunities for peace that seemed impossible.
FAQ:
What is science diplomacy?
Science diplomacy is the use of scientific collaboration to improve relationships between countries, solve global challenges, and build trust across political, cultural, or ideological divides. Dr. Zafra Lerman believes science diplomacy can succeed where traditional diplomacy often fails because scientists can work together around shared goals regardless of political differences.
What are the Malta Conferences?
The Malta Conferences are international scientific conferences that bring together researchers from across the Middle East, including nations with long-standing political conflicts. The conferences provide a neutral environment where scientists collaborate on issues such as water, health, sustainability, and environmental challenges while building lasting professional relationships.
How does science promote peace?
Science promotes peace by creating opportunities for people from different countries and backgrounds to collaborate on solving shared problems. Working together on scientific research builds trust, encourages open communication, and helps participants focus on common goals rather than political differences.
Connect with Zafra Lerman
Join the Leading Visionaries Community
Transcripts
LVP 140 Zafra
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Ad: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Leading Visionaries podcast, featuring stellar conversations with emerging and established leading visionaries. Thanks for joining us today as we celebrate and spotlight the leading visionaries who are thinking differently, seeing new possibilities, have the courage to dream big, take inspired action, and create conscious change all around the world.
Now, here's your host, Anjel B. Hartwell
Anjel: Welcome to another episode of the Leading Visionaries podcast, where we celebrate the ingenious, insightful, innovative, and inspired leading visionaries of our time and provide listeners with world-class examples of the kind of courage, clarity, and confidence it takes to bring visions into reality. This is your host, Anjel B.
Hartwell, and today we welcome our special guest, Zafra Lerman. [00:01:00] Zafra is a chemist, educator, and humanitarian who uses science as a bridge to peace. She is president of the Malta Conferences Foundation, which brings together scientists from across the Middle East, including Nobel laureates, to collaborate despite political conflict.
She has also advocated for human rights worldwide and helped free imprisoned scientists and dissidents. Lerman has received more than 40 international honors, including the Presidential Award for Excellence in STEM Mentoring from President Clinton, the AAAS Award for Science Diplomacy, the APS Andrei Sakharov Prize for Human Rights, and multiple nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize.
She has also written a book, Human Rights and Peace: A Personal Odyssey. And I am so excited to [00:02:00] have you here today. Welcome to the show, Zafra.
Zafra: Thank you.
Anjel: I wanna start our conversation talking to you about leadership today, because obviously you are an exemplary leader in the area of creating peace and peace initiatives.
And so I'd love to ask you, Zafra, if you could share with us about your own leadership journey. Were you the little girl who was taking the lead in elementary school, or did your leadership kind of evolve over time as a result of circumstances and, uh, life bringing you into that role?
Zafra: No, it started very, very early.
Not always a leadership in school that pleased the teachers, but yes, I took leadership from a very young age, and, uh, [00:03:00] eh, sometimes got into troubles for things that I managed to get the whole class to follow me to do things. And, uh, I served in the military. I was drafted.
Uh, I come from Israel, where boys and girls are drafted the same. And I de- develop a very, I'll say leadership tone, that if somebody asked a question, I always answered. And I remember that we had to go hiking for three days And we had to carry in the backpack the food for three days, the tents for three days, the blankets for three days, but in addition, carrying a very heavy [00:04:00] rifle.
And we were unit number five, and every unit stayed in the same barrack. So you slept 50 girls, one next to the other. And I remember just before we left, one girl said, "Do we have to carry our rifles?" And I said, "No," with a very authoritarian voice. So our unit went out. We boarded the trucks. We drove to the place where the hike was supposed to start, and we were unit number five, the last one.
And every unit started getting organized. T- and then the officer starts screaming from a distance through, uh, some loudspeaker, "Unit number five, where are your [00:05:00] rifles?" And all the girls answered, "Safra said that we don't have to carry it." And he screamed back, "Who is Safra? Is she your officer? Is she your commander?
Why are you taking her word for that?" And he was very, very angry, but three days The poor girls in unit one, two, three, four were c- climbing with this heavy things hanging on them, and unit number five had a very good time. When we came back, there was a big investigation, and then we were punished for a week to carry the rifle everywhere in the camp.
But for sure it was easier to carry it in the camp than carry it in addition to a backpack and everything for three days [00:06:00] hiking. But I remember they said, Shofi said, "We don't have to take it." So yes, I had the tendency to take leadership from a very young age. This is-
Anjel: Oh my goodness. What a great, what a great story.
All right. So I, I was wondering if the idea of not carrying rifles in the military might have something to do with over the years you have evolved into a leader who is promoting human rights and peace. Like, let's just- Yeah ... start right there in the middle. Okay, we're gonna go on the hike, but we're not taking the rifles.
So help us to understand how you did evolve into this leader who is, is really here to speak about humanitarian rights and peace, and leave the rifles behind.
Zafra: Uh, leave the rifles behind. I chaired for [00:07:00] 26 years for the American Chemical Society, the Subcommittee on Scientific Freedom and Human Rights.
And with this committee, I worked a lot on human rights. I took a crash course in Russian, went to the Soviet Union, always with a group of scientists as a good cover-up. During the day, we were scientists. We were visiting universities. We were delivering lecture. And at dinner, I would look at the group and see who somehow will not be frightened if I will say something.
Usually, it was a woman that I identified, and I would say, "Listen, if I'm not here tomorrow morning for breakfast, call the American Embassy and don't ask me questions." And I would [00:08:00] go after midnight in dark alleys in the Soviet Union to meet dissidents that we, it was arranged for me in advance before I came.
And when we collected enough, a few came by themself, to a dark attic in some apartment building, and there I would have, like, 50 dissidents Few families of people that were sent to hard labor in Siberia or were in prison for sure for no crime that they committed. And I would distribute scientific material to them, what is, was illegal in the Soviet Union.
They were all fired from their jobs because, or they wanted to immigrate, or they wanted to [00:09:00] stood for some human rights. And it was prohibited to share with them scientific material. So I would bring scientific material and distribute it. It was prohibited to give a seminar, and I would give a seminar.
And then I would collect the CVs
of the dissidents that were there, and of those in hard labor and in prison, and bring it back and start working on their behalf. And managed to bring to freedom many of them. There is a whole chapter in my book about that, and there are very funny stories- Mm ... about, uh, these people when they came to the US, but it would take too long to -
Anjel: Yeah.
Zafra: Well, I- ... to tell the stories. But, uh, it- I [00:10:00] was doing that also. It was risk to my life.
Anjel: Totally. Yeah. Big. So I wanna stop you right there because you know, we have a lot of listeners who, who have big ideas, and who have big desires, and who have big callings, and who have a big mission. Your mission is, like, life-threatening.
The mission that you engaged in, it was, was life-threatening. And so I just really want our listeners to hear the, like, courage in action. And, and this is one of the things that we like to celebrate here, is world-class examples of the kind of courage, clarity, and confidence it takes to bring visions into reality.
I'm curious what inspired you, though, to, to take up the humanitarian cause. What inspired you to say to yourself, "I'm gonna go do this. I'm going to be the one [00:11:00] that does this"? W- where did that inspiration come from and that courage come from?
Zafra: I think for my father. I'll give you an example. When I turned six- My father left in my shoe an envelope, so I will find when I get up in the morning.
I took out this envelope, and there was a letter from my father, and the letter said, "Today's your birthday. I hope you will grow up to be loyal to your nation, to your country, and to your family." Pay attention to the order he wrote it. Mm-hmm. And then he said, "For your sixth birthday, I'm giving you this amount of money, and you will divide it to three.[00:12:00]
One-third you will go and donate to the national fund to plant trees in the country. It's arid land. The other third you will go and donate to help all the orphanage that are left from the Holocaust that lost their families, and they are all alone and need help. And the other third you can do what you want."
And when you grow up like that from the age of six- Mm-hmm ... you know what your priorities and in what orders they come.
Anjel: Yeah.
Zafra: Beautiful. So I think it has to g- do a lot with the values that I grew up with.
Anjel: Yeah. Beautiful. Well, we're, we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, we're gonna let our listeners know where they can find out more about you and your initiatives.
[00:13:00] Now, uh, listeners, are you a leading visionary or in the role of leading other visionaries? If you're interested in finding out more about how you can receive support for getting your vision out of the air and onto the ground in a way that's both impact and income producing, the best support is found in collaboration with other leading visionaries, which is why we've created the Creative Age Leader Lab.
Discover more about this opportunity at leadingvisionariespodcast.com/creativeageleaderlab. Consider joining our community and sharing your feedback and takeaways from each episode. Be sure to share this show in your own spirals of influence with the people who you think might benefit from our content.
I wanna say a huge thank you to all of our listeners who are downloading, rating, and reviewing. We're welcoming thousands and thousands of downloads from all over the world. I wanna shout out this week to our listeners in... Well, we might as well shout out to our listeners in Israel, and our [00:14:00] listeners in the Netherlands, and our listeners in...
I think we have Russia on our li- yep, there's Russia. And we will be right back with Tzara Lerman.
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Anjel: And we are back with Zafra Lerman. You can find out more about her at zafralerman.com. We will have that for you in the show notes. On that site, I'm guessing also, Zafra, that they can buy the book, Human Rights and Peace: A Personal Odyssey. Can... Is that correct?
Zafra: Correct.
Anjel: Great. And- Can you tell us about the, the vision that you got for writing the book?
Like, where did that come from?
Zafra: [00:16:00] This came from as a result of almost a lifetime pressure to write. It was supposed to be three books. Uh, because I believe in human rights, I believe that science education is a human rights that bel- belongs to all, and I'm always worried that we are leaving behind- People that are not involved in science and technology don't take the classes because they feel that they cannot succeed in science.
So I got an... My name came up, and I got an offer to teach in an art and communications school in Chicago after I did research on isotope effect, and I'm not going to explain what is isotope effect. Nobody should get scared. After doing [00:17:00] research, I got, uh, the president of the school sent letters to people that were known in arms control, disarmament, human right, that he's looking for this magic scientist to start from scratch a science program.
But he wants it to include arms control and disarmament and human rights and peace and, and my name came up by a few, by different people that he wrote to. And there is a chapter in the book that is very funny how I came to this place the first time. But I want to make the story, uh, short because we have a short time.
I learned very fast that how I taught in French universities [00:18:00] is not the way to teach there, and I have to really find a completely different way of teaching. And I was a good student to my students because I could see they were very creative. They were artists. They were dancer. They were actor. They were singers.
Rap people that did animation. For sure, not any inclination to science, and usually they avoided science. And I developed a way to teach and assess the student through art, music, dance, drama, rap. Everybody could show their knowledge in any way they want They did not have to write a multiple choice test.
It became very famous this way, and my students were mainly minority, inner city. [00:19:00] And in all the, the, in the beginning, the scientists were shocked. I, uh ... They thought I am insulting science by doing it. And really, I got attacked when I gave lectures. So in order to prove that it really scientifically sound, I persuaded the members of my s- Committee on Scientific Freedom and Human Rights.
One of them was Professor Spiro, that was the Chair of Chemistry at Princeton University, and one was Professor Seinfeld, the Chair of Chemistry at Indiana University. One a very fancy Ivy League school, and one an excellent Big Ten school. And I persuaded them that we should develop together a class for non-science majors because i- those non-science majors stayed away from science.[00:20:00]
And in Princeton, i- i- psychology could satisfy your science requirement. So we developed together a class from ozone to oil spill, chemistry, the environment, and you, using my methods of teaching. The National Science Foundation gave us money to do that, and the National Science Foundation called it their flagship project And in order to prove that my students can be second to nine, to none, they flew every year for a joint symposium with the Princeton students.
And the media always came and covered it and called it a meeting of two cultures. It was two cultures. Mm-hmm. My students, for them, it was the first time to get on a plane. And then I took this method, I, I built a [00:21:00] very successful science institute that we had a visualization lab that was ahead of the time.
Nobody had it. And it became very, very famous, and I had a lot of money and grants to do so. It was very successful, and successful with prisoners, successful with homeless kids that we taught them at night in a dance studio through dance. There are pictures how we sit on the floor with the- with everybody, the periodic table on the floor, and they learned through dance.
Mm. CNN did a project of them and showed it all over the world five times, and it's became a very interesting, uh- Project that really brought a lot of young people that would never come [00:22:00] close to science to enjoy science.
Anjel: Beautiful. Well, so Zafra, I'm, I'm just excited about the level of leadership that you have.
And I, I want, again, our listeners to hear one of the things that you did in this process was you took your ideas and you took your connections, and you leveraged your connections, but you also persuaded. And persuasion is something that, you know, enrolling people in your vision is something that's absolutely required if you're going to be a leading visionary, if you're going to get your innovation or your ingenious or insightful or inspired ideas to come into life.
And so in the last five minutes that we have today, Zafra, I am curious about what your big vision is right now and what you're persuading people to do right now. [00:23:00]
Zafra: What I'm persuading people is that there is a hope in the Middle East. What I am doing since September 11 until now, it's the only platform that brings together scientists from all the countries in the Middle East, with no exception, countries that are now at war with each other, that are at war with each other for many, many years, for five days under the same roof.
And all of them are together with several Nobel laureates, where we give them a platform that they can see what unite them and not what separates them, a forum that allows them to stop demonizing the unknown other And a platform that allows them to develop collaboration, cross-border [00:24:00] collaboration that they could not do anywhere else.
And my dream, uh, my memoir, uh, d- devotes several chapters to that. It, there is, uh, only one whole chapter that is titled From Mission Impossible to Mission Possible- Mm ... that describes what it just to get a visa for this group to enter a country. Like for example, the US, eight or nine of my countries has a ban.
They could not even apply for a visa. Other countries, European, oh, they don't want this country, they don't want l- like this country. So getting the visa is you have to work like a James Bond, what you said, connection and persuasion. Mm-hmm. And for getting the visa, these two are the [00:25:00] most important thing.
Until now, everybody could come to every conference, but it's true, it took so much connection that I had to find even, and somehow, sometimes like doing work like James Bond to find the right connection in the country in order to persuade them To change the, the, not to change the law, but to give the visa upon landing in their country.
Mm. And i- i- it's just sleepless nights till really you get, uh, this visa. And you asked about writing the book. The book should have been ... I
was asked
Zafra: and I signed even contract. One was supposed to be on education long ago. I did not have time to do it because it takes time, and I had to- Mm-hmm ... do other thing.
One was [00:26:00] on the human rights, because after the Soviet Union came Tiananmen Square. I worked a lot in China. So this was the second book, and this third book is using science diplomacy for peace in the Middle East. Mm. 'Cause I believe that science diplomacy can succeed wherever other diplomacy fail. And this book is combining all the three books together, and therefore this is the title.
Education is not in the title, but there is a big chapter on that, too. Mm. And all the proceeds of the book go to the Malta conference, because as you know, there is a lot of money to build weapon of mass destruction. But for peace, I somehow feel myself as a beggar going like that and collecting money for the conference.
We don't have any paid [00:27:00] employee. Every penny- Mm ... donated goes to the project And all the proceeds of the book go for peace in the Middle East. So anybody- Hmm ... that buys the book helps with the project of using science as a bridge to peace in the Middle East. Beautiful.
Anjel: What a gorgeous vision, Zafra. And, you know, the thing I wanna reflect about you is you've been James Bonding for a long time.
Behind the curtain, behind the Iron Curtain, i- in a dark attic- ... bringing science to- Oh, you read the- ... dissidents ... you read the
Zafra: book on the
Anjel: visa All the way to, all the way to persuading people to be able to free up visas and make exceptions to visas for, for your vision. And so I just really wanna applaud you and say thank you for being a living embodiment of the kind of tenacity, along with the courage, clarity, and confidence that it takes to bring [00:28:00] visions into reality.
Thank you so much for being with me today. And listeners, we do love feedback. Please let us know what you thought of today's episode by joining our community, sharing your takeaways, asking questions, or submitting guest suggestions. You can weave your visionary thread into our fabric by opting in on our website at leadingvisionariespodcast.com or by interacting with us on social.
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