Macalester/Center for Global Citizenship Initial Joint Proposal
from the Macalester Public Knowledge Base
pasletoch Drafted by Andrew Latham
4 October 2004
Contents |
[edit] Proposal
We propose merging the existing International Center, Internship Program, Community Service Office and possibly the International Studies Department into a new Center for Global Studies and Citizenship. Our vision is to create a single, well-supported institutional unit with the following mission:
To encourage, promote and support learning that prepares students for lives as effective and ethical "global citizen-leaders"; scholarship that enriches the public and academic discourse on important questions of global significance; and service that enhances learning and/or scholarship while enriching the community.
Ideally, we would like to name this new institutional unit after Kofi Annan ('61) to honor his achievements in the areas of internationalism and civic leadership.
[edit] Rationale
[edit] Introduction
Ralph Waldo Emerson once stated that "? the hours ought to be instructed by the ages, and the ages explained by the hours." We hold that this is especially true of a liberal arts education. In this hour of global turbulence and institutional challenge, we strongly believe that the College ought to ensure that it conserves those elements of the liberal arts tradition that have endured through the ages. We also believe, however, that these traditions need to be renewed in light of the pressing challenges facing humanity today. In the following section, we outline how we think this balance can best be realized. We begin by identifying the enduring elements of both the liberal arts tradition writ large and Macalester's distinctive variation on this tradition. We then discuss two challenges that we suggest must be addressed by the College at this hour in its history. We conclude this section by calling for the creation of a Center for Global Studies and Citizenship that will promote, encourage and support programs focused on "educating global citizen-leaders".
[edit] The Ages: Conserving the Tradition of the Liberal Arts
The kind of liberal arts education offered by Macalester today is the product of an academic tradition that can trace its genealogy back to Classical Antiquity and the ancient tradition of studia liberalia. As advocated by Socrates, Cicero, Seneca and others, this tradition has two defining currents or moments. The first emphasizes an education that promotes the "examined life" ? that is, an education that encourages students to take charge of their own thought and liberate themselves from ignorance and unexamined convention. This is the moment of the vita contemplativa ? the life of philosophical reflection and meaning-making. The second moment emphasizes an education that prepares students for participation and leadership in the public life of the community (as Seneca reminds us, not just the local community, but a multi-civilizational global community as well). This is the moment of the vita activa ? the life of active participation in the public life of both the local polis and the universal moral community of humanity. This academic tradition, of course, is not peculiar to Western or European history. Similar philosophies and practices can be found in cultures/civilizations as diverse as the India of Das Guptas, Confucian China, the classical Islamic world, and the West African cities of Jene' and Timbuktu. But for a College which is in a very real sense a product of the Western tradition of liberal learning, it is helpful to locate the roots of our core educational mission in the soil of ancient Greek and Roman thought.
This tradition of liberal learning was transplanted to the US in the early colonial period and flourished in this new social context. From the very beginning, the new and distinctively American liberal arts colleges sought to provide an educational experience that prepared students for the condition of freedom. To be certain, many of these colleges were originally founded to train privileged white males to assume leadership roles in an essentially theocratic society. For those who attended, however, the education they received was intended not only to impart knowledge and develop the intellect (vita contemplativa), but also to cultivate the character and Ciceronian sense of civic duty necessary to lead lives of active citizenship and effective leadership (vita activa). In this respect, the liberal arts college has always been the institutional expression of a distinctively American version of the ancient tradition of studia liberalia.
Macalester's liberal arts vision/mission clearly embodies the uniquely American version of the classical liberal arts tradition, but with its own distinctive emphases. As both Edward Neill and James Wallace ? the most significant of the College's founders and builders ? taught and lived, ours has been an education with a dual intention: on the one hand, to encourage students to cultivate their humanity through disciplined academic study and critical self-reflection (vita contemplativa); on the other, to offer an education intended to prepare students for the condition of freedom and the vocation of leadership (vita activa). Under the leadership of both Wallace and Charles Turck, the College distinguished its educational program by purposefully focusing on preparation for public life and leadership, not only within American society, but within the global community as well. This is clearly reflected in the College's mission statement, which reads as follows:
Macalester is committed to being a preeminent liberal arts college with an educational program known for its high standards for scholarship and its special emphasis on internationalism, multiculturalism and service to society.
The Macalester of today, then, is known for a particular type of education ? one that embodies our own distinctive synthesis of critical self-reflection and preparation for active involvement in the civic life of a multi-civilizational global community.
As Macalester looks to the future, there are many reasons to conserve both the distinctive liberal arts tradition that has long distinguished the College and the deeper traditions of liberal learning out of which our particular mission emerged. Three are particularly compelling. First, these academic traditions have always served our students well. Macalester students continue to benefit from an education that combines Socrates' focus on the "examined life," Cicero's notion of "civic duty" and Seneca's recognition of the importance of what we would call "internationalism" and "multiculturalism." Second, these traditions embody values that the Macalester community is deeply passionate about. The values articulated in the College's Mission Statement and Statement of Purpose and Belief resonate powerfully with students, alumni, staff and faculty alike. Finally, elements of Macalester's distinctive version of the liberal arts tradition distinguish the College in important ways. Our commitment to internationalism and community service, in particular, are so deeply rooted that they continue to set Macalester apart from other pre-eminent liberal arts colleges.
[edit] The Hours: Adapting to Change
A tradition, however, no matter how rich and enduring, cannot afford to stand still, for the ceaseless irruption of new historical conditions and challenges will always threaten to render those traditions obsolete, irrelevant or worse. The task before us, then, is to specify the challenges facing the College today and to renew our distinctive version of the studia liberalia so that it remains relevant to the Macalester community of the early 21st century.
Challenge #1: The Changing Context of Liberal Learning Perhaps the most fundamental challenge facing Macalester today is to ensure that the liberal education we offer is relevant to our students as they enter and engage the world of the early 21st century. In this respect, there is broad agreement that ours is no ordinary epoch. Demographers and sociologists foreground the changing ratios of different categories within the American society (e.g. age and race), massive global movements of people (particularly to the North/OECD) and the sheer growth of overall numbers; students of communications and geography point out new technologies that dramatically compress time and reconfigure space; ecologists emphasize pressures on the biosphere and specific ecosystems; feminists stress gendered identities and the egregious status of women in the structure of habit and power; economists tell about the onset of the ninth market, propelled by the microchip, biotechnology, genetic engineering and miniaturization that bring hitherto unknown opportunities as well as acute risks; scientists wrestle with how to conjoin objectivity, so suited to technical knowledge, and the civic and ethical dimensions of our life-worlds; students of politics single out consequences for governance as the state is sandwiched between decentralizing local demands and relentless, highly competitive global forces; anthropologists and psychologists underline intense cultural encounters and colliding subjectivities; scholars of language and literatures accent the necessity of multilingualism in the expansion of cultural knowledge, while those in the fine arts alert us to the potential richness of the human experience through visual creativity from all neighborhoods and corners of the planet; those in religious and philosophical studies speak about a peculiar mix of post/modernity, metaphysical disorientation, and revivals of sectarian passions in world desperate for positive pluralism; and historians make a case for a total /world history that simultaneously, holds together diverse trajectories and numerous affinities. And almost all would concede that these developments are combining now to create world very different from that encountered by the Macalester graduate of even a generation ago.
Challenge #2: The Changing Context of Higher Education A second challenge facing the College has to do with maintaining the relative quality and distinctiveness of a Macalester liberal arts education in the face an increasingly crowded field of pre-eminent liberal arts colleges. Put bluntly, as other liberal arts colleges continue to work to strengthen their international and service/civic engagement programs (often by adopting best-practices pioneered at Macalester), the unique character of our educational program will inevitably be eroded. Taken to its logical conclusion, this trend would result in Macalester becoming merely one of many pre-eminent colleges, all offering marginally different versions of the same educational program. We believe that the potential negative consequences to the College of such a development are obvious and need not be discussed at length here.
[edit] The Way Forward: Education for Global Citizenship and Leadership
What, then, is to be done? We believe that the best way forward is to re-focus the College's educational program around the theme(s) that emerge at the intersection of the following three circles:
What is the indispensable/enduring core of the liberal arts tradition?
What do our students need in order to flourish in the new/evolving global environment? What can Macalester do better than any other pre-eminent liberal arts college?
Drawing on the various processes of strategic planning and institutional self-reflection that the College has undertaken over the past five years, we argue that the focal concept that emerges at the intersection of these circles is one that emphasizes "educating global citizen-leaders". While this concept will need to be elaborated and refined, broadly speaking it entails the following two elements:
Global Citizenship ? This is a form of identity based not on affiliation with a national or other particularistic group, but on membership in the moral community that encompasses all of humanity. Rooted in an ethic of principled cosmopolitanism, global citizenship involves a respect for human dignity, a willingness to regard all human beings as fellow citizens, a recognition of the obligations that flow from membership in such a global moral community, and a commitment to active participation in the public life of this community. Global citizenship, of course, does not entail abandoning more particularistic identities. These local and particular identities are often a powerful and valuable source of meaning and social solidarity. Rather, it involves placing those identities ? and the associated privileges, rights and responsibilities ? in the context of a broader and deeper (ie. global) set of moral affiliations and obligations. In other words, it involves adopting a conception of citizenship that encompasses and integrates the local, national and transnational dimensions political life and agency ? and that does so in a way that guards against the twin dangers of chauvinism and indifference to the fate of those outside one's particularistic community.
Leadership ? This is the ability (a) to envision a desirable future state or condition that reflects widely shared values and aspirations, and (b) to catalyze collective action to realize that state or condition. Effective and ethical leadership is necessarily rooted in an ethos of service and an ethic of care.
Conceptually, then, a "global citizen-leader" is a person who has the knowledge, attitudes, intellectual skills, moral faculties and practical competencies to be an effective and ethical agent of change within their local, national and transnational communities.
We believe that integrating a number of currently disparate educational activities and initiatives related to internationalism, experiential learning and civic engagement around the theme of "educating global citizen-leaders" could help the College address the dual challenge articulated above in two ways. First, it would renew our tradition of preparing students for lives of civic participation by updating it in light of contemporary conditions. Given all the challenges described above, it is clear that an ethic of civic duty, engagement and leadership that is focused exclusively on the local or even national levels is no longer appropriate or adequate. What is needed now is an approach to "citizenship" that is global in scope ? that is, that embraces and integrates the local, national and transnational dimensions of civic life and leadership. Second, adopting such a focal concept has the potential to reinforce our existing hard-won reputation for innovation and leadership in the fields of both internationalism and community service/civic engagement. It could also strengthen our overall reputation for providing a liberal education that is both academically excellent and distinctive.
Finally, we believe that the best way to operationalize this focal concept is to create a new Center for Global Studies and Citizenship that would act as a catalyst for curricular and co-curricular programs designed to enhance our ability to "educate global citizen-leaders". The section that follows articulates some of the potential payoffs that might result from the creation of such a center.
[edit] Institutional Benefits
In conclusion, we believe that the benefits of creating a single organizational unit with responsibility for promoting curricular and co-curricular programs related to global citizen-leadership include the following:
- greater integration of a number of currently disparate educational activities and initiatives related to internationalism, experiential learning and civic engagement around a clear focus and common theme (educating global citizen-leaders);
- greater visibility for the College's activities in this regard (for prospective students, donors/prospective donors, community groups, alumni, etc);
- enhanced national reputation for academic excellence and distinctiveness;
- enhanced interest and participation in our international and civic engagement programs;
- improved program development and delivery;
- ease of access for our students;
- ease of access for our local, national and international community partners;
- more efficient use of financial and personnel resources (achieved by reducing needless duplication and overlap); and, most importantly,
- the realization of positive synergies between three key aspects of the college mission (academic excellence, internationalism and civic engagement).
In sum, we believe that creating such a center will greatly enhance our ability to develop and implement effective and innovative programs designed to educate top-quality, engaged scholars and global citizen-leaders.
