University students and faculty members gathered Wednesday evening to discuss the University’s approach to integrating students into a global society in a talk entitled “What We Don’t Talk about When We Talk about the Global U.Va.”
Prof. Richard Handler, director of the University’s Global Development Studies program, led the discussion.
When students entering the University are told they will live and work within a globalized society, the social history of the term “global” is rarely discussed, Handler said. “The term ‘global’ came into term with the collapse of the [Berlin Wall] and the collapse of communism,” he said.
Unpacking these terms also requires rethinking our relative position in the world from a cultural standpoint, Handler said.
“We must replace ideas about cultural sensitivity with cultural critique,” Handler said. “Students must be taught to see that they do not engage the global at a neutral place.”
Arts & Sciences Graduate student Laura Goldblatt said she thinks many universities currently lack effective plans for integrating their curriculums into a global society. “I have a stake in the University and more broadly I find some of the directions I see American universities going in disturbing and misguided,” she said.
Handler answered questions from those in attendance about students’ position in a more localized geographical community.
“It angers me that students are going to do service and study abroad when nobody will get involved in the living wage program here,” Handler said.
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