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Home > News & Events > CLA Today Archive > Fall/Winter 2003-04 : CLA Pushes the Boundaries of Global Education

CLA pushes the boundaries of global education

When I look at CLA's lineup of faculty, visiting scholars, and artists, I am struck by something they all seem to have in common—global perspectives. I am reminded that isolationism—whether in Washington or in the academy—is not only impractical, imprudent, and impolitic, but also impossible.

When I arrived as dean in 1996, I said that one of my priorities would be to internationalize the faculty, research, curriculum, student experience, and reach of CLA programs to address emerging global issues. I am pleased to say we have succeeded on all fronts.

Embracing the global community

That we live in a global community is self-evident. The world has shrunk while our experience of it has expanded exponentially through global political, cultural, economic, and communication networks. We live, work, play, and transact business in a global marketplace, on a global stage.

The world has entered our kitchens and living rooms, our back yards, our neighborhoods, our city councils and state legislatures, our courtrooms, and our workplaces.

“Globalization" means that what happens in Bangkok, Belfast, Baghdad, or Bombay affects all of us. We may not hear a tree falling in the rainforest, witness a suicide bombing, sew garments in a Thai sweatshop, drill for oil in Iran or Venezuela, harvest poppies in Afghanistan, or scrounge for food in drought-stricken sub-Saharan Africa; but all of these things happen nonetheless — and pretending that they don't, or that they have nothing to do with us, is not an option.

In both subtle and profound ways, we feel the impact in our daily lives of what happens even thousands of miles away. Responding to global markets, we pay more or less for gas, a TV set, a gallon of milk, or a pair of shoes; and we watch our net worth rise and fall as the stock market and the value of a dollar fluctuate. Responding to world trade agreements and labor practices, farmers receive either more or less for their crops or plant corn instead of soybeans; the price of computer chips, oranges, and steel fluctuates; and the local job market shrinks and expands along with wages.

Our changed world

Responding to immigration and shifting cultural landscapes, our businesses have changed the way they produce, market, and deliver goods and services. Languages from around the world are now spoken routinely on our street corners and in our schools, and emblazoned on local billboards and storefronts. New Asian, African, and Latino businesses appear almost daily in our commercial districts. And our arts communities have been transformed by an infusion of cultural traditions and languages from around the world.

Faced with all of these daily challenges to whatever illusions of stasis we might once have harbored, we all must be constantly on our intellectual toes. As tensions mount around global political, environmental, and economic issues, and as our own communities become more and more diverse, we must educate young people more than ever to think pluralistically and globally. We must teach them to think critically and creatively about the world both far away and close to home, and to develop thoughtful, nuanced, humane, and innovative solutions to problems both local and global.

CLA rises to the challenge

In recent years, we have launched several new interdisciplinary research centers with an international focus: the Institute for Global Studies; the Center for German and European Studies; the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies; and the European Consortium. The initiatives that have emerged from these centers have received major support from the U.S. Department of Education, the German Academic Exchange Service, and private donors.

But global perspectives are not limited to a few CLA institutes or departments. Indeed, throughout the college, the curriculum has taken on a decidedly international cast.

Hardly a member of our faculty has not brought to his or her scholarship and teaching a global perspective, whether it's a sociologist studying international law and cultural change; a historian studying immigration or global democracies; a humanist studying Latin American music or South Asian literatures; a psychologist studying cultural socialization; a geographer studying the impact of world socioeconomic and environmental change on human health; a political scientist studying global environmental politics, transnational advocacy networks, or national identity in the European Union; or an economist analyzing world financial markets.

And what about our students? Global studies has become one of our most popular majors. The number of students studying abroad has doubled in the last decade, and the number doing research on international issues has soared. More than ever, our students are developing proficiency in world languages. They're working with Minnesota's immigrant communities through internships and service learning. And they are more diverse than ever in their cultural, geographic, and ethnic backgrounds.

They are looking through new eyes at their own lives, their communities, their state and national governments, and the whole world's cultures, economies, and political systems. And they are better prepared than ever to help ensure Minnesota's vitality in the global economy at home and abroad.

The world “out there" is no longer “out there." It must be reckoned with. It is a potent and immediate presence in our everyday lives. And as this nation's citizens and leaders face seemingly intractable problems both internationally and at home, we have never been so sorely in need of creative solutions.

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan has said, “The most significant challenge facing our universities is to ensure that teaching and research continue to unleash the creative intellectual energy that drives our system forward.”

The faculty featured in this issue of CLA Today, and their colleagues throughout the college, are unleashing that energy in their students. And our students and alumni — never more talented, never more tuned in to the world, never more diverse — are already putting that creativity to work in local and world communities.

Steven J. Rosenstone
CLA Dean and McKnight Presidential Leadership Chair