The notion that every well educated person would have a mastery of at least the basic elements of the humanities, sciences, and social sciences is a far cry from the specialized education that most students today receive, particularly in the research universities.
—Joseph Stiglitz
Category: Globalization
Interdisciplinary & Interdepartmental
An excerpt from this Economist article on a global education:
“All the interesting problems cross boundaries,” says David Ellwood, the dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Some straddle borders. Some straddle disciplines. Some require co-operation between business, government, academia and non-profit groups. “So you have to train people to cross boundaries,” Mr Ellwood concludes.
Tolerance ~ Indifference
In the last lecture of my Industrial Location/Regional Development course, my professor concluded with the fact that globalization/urbanization has created a cognitive-cultural class that is extremely tolerant, but simultaneously highly indifferent. Tolerance is a passive action; to merely tolerate is to let things go as they are/have been. It’s a sad realization because it’s largely true, but perhaps tolerance is a necessary step toward acceptance.
On the move
This is a little old, from June 25, but I wanted to share it anyway: “Global Migration: A World Ever More on the Move.” As a student in a highly interdisciplinary field, it’s difficult to apply such a theoretical and conceptual subject such as Global Studies to the real world, but this article and the issue of global (im)migration helps ground globalization and geography with concrete terms.
From the article: “Politically, socially, economically, culturally — migration bubbles up everywhere,” James F. Hollifield, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University, said. “We often don’t recognize it.” … Theorists sometimes call the movement of people the third wave of globalization, after the movement of goods (trade) and the movement of money (finance) that began in the previous century. But trade and finance follow global norms and are governed by global institutions: the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund. There is no parallel group with “migration” in its name. The most personal and perilous form of movement is the most unregulated. States make (and often ignore) their own rules, deciding who can come, how long they stay, and what rights they enjoy.