Issue 7
"All nations should help support the development of a global university designed to engage
students in the process of solving the world’s most persistent social problems."
I agree that it would serve the interests of all nations to establish a global university for the
purpose of solving the world’s most persistent social problems. Nevertheless, such a university
poses certain risks which all participating nations must be careful to minimize--or risk defeating
the university’s purpose.
One compelling argument in favor of a global university has to do with the fact that its faculty
and students would bring diverse cultural and educational perspectives to the problems they
seek to solve. It seems to me that nations can only benefit from a global university where
students learn ways in which other nations address certain soda] problems-successfully or not.
It might be tempting to think that an overly diversified academic community would impede
communication among students and faculty. However, in my view any such concerns are
unwarranted, especially considering the growing awareness of other peoples and cultures
which the mass media, and especially the Internet, have created. Moreover, many basic
principles used to solve enduring social problems know no national boundaries; thus a useful
insight or discovery can come from a researcher or student from any nation.
Another compelling argument for a global university involves the increasingly global nature
of certain problems. Consider, for instance, the depletion of atmospheric ozone, which has
wanned the Earth to the point that it threatens the very survival of the human species. Also, we
are now learning that dear-cutting the world’s rainforests can set into motion a chain of animal
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extinction that threatens the delicate balance upon which all animals--including
humans--depend. Also consider that a financial crisis---or a political crisis or natural disaster
in one country can spell trouble for foreign companies, many of which are now multinational in
that they rely on the labor forces, equipment, and raw materials of other nations.
Environmental, economic, and political problems such as these all carry grave social
consequences--increased crime, unemployment, insurrection, hunger, and so forth. Solving
these problems requires global cooperation--which a global university can facilitate.
Notwithstanding the foregoing reasons why a global university would help solve many of our
most pressing social problems, the establishment of such a university poses certain problems
of its own which must be addressed in order that the university can achieve its objectives. First,
participant nations would need to overcome a myriad of administrative and political
impediments. All nations would need to agree on which problems demand the university’sattention and resources, which areas of academic research are worthwhile, as well as
agreeing on policies and procedures for making, enforcing, and amending these decisions.
Query whether a functional global university is politically feasible, given that sovereign nations
naturally wish to advance their own agendas.
A second problem inherent in establishing a global university involves the risk that certain
intellectual and research avenues would become officially sanctioned while others of equal or
greater potential value would be discouraged, or perhaps even proscribed. A telling example of
the inherent danger of setting and enforcing official research priorities involves the Soviet
government’s attempts during the 1920s to not only control the direction and the goals of its
scientists’ research but also to distort the outcome of that research---ostensibly for the greatest
good of the greatest number of people. Not surprisingly, during this time period no significant
scientific advances occurred under the auspices of the Soviet government. The Soviet lesson
provides an important caveat to administrators of a global university: Significant progress in
solving pressing social problems requires an open mind to all sound ideas, approaches, and
theories---krespective of the ideologies of their proponents.
A final problem with a global university is that the world’s preeminent intellectual talent might
be drawn to the sorts of problems to which the university is charged with solving, while
parochial social problem go unsolved. While this is not reason enough not to establish a global
university, it nevertheless is a concern that university administrators and participant nations
must be aware of in allocating resources and intellectual talent.
To sum up, given the increasingly global nature or the world’s social problems, and the
escalating costs of addressing these problems, a global university makes good sense. And,
since all nations would have a common interest in seeing this endeavor succeed, my intuition
is that participating nations would be able to overcome whatever procedural and political
obstacles that might stand in the way of success. As long as each nation is careful not toneglect its own unique social problems, and as long as the university’s administrators are
careful to remain open-minded about the legitimacy and potential value of various avenues of
intellectual inquiry and research, a global university might go along way toward solving many
of the world’s pressing social problems.
Issue 8
"Many of the world’s lesser-known languages are being lost as fewer and fewer people speak
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them. The governments of countries in which these languages are spoken should act to
prevent such languages from becoming extinct."
The speaker asserts that governments of countries where lesser-known languages are
spoken should intervene to prevent these languages from becoming extinct. I agree inso far as
a country’s indigenous and distinct languages should not be abandoned and forgot ten
altogether. At some point, however, I think cultural identity should yield to the more practical
considerations of day-to-day life in a global society.
On the one hand, the indigenous language of any geographical region is part-and-parcel of
the cultural heritage of the region’s natives. In my observation we humans have a basic
psychological need for individual identity, which we define by way of our membership in distinct
cultural groups. A culture defines itself in various ways--by its unique traditions, rituals, mores,
attitudes and beliefs, but especially language. Therefore, when a people’s language becomes
extinct the result is a diminished sense of pride, dignity, and self- worth.
One need look no further than continental Europe to observe how people cling tenaciously
to their distinct languages, despite the fact that there is no practical need for them anymore.
And on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the French Canadians stubbornly insist on French
as their official language, for the sole purpose of preserving their distinct cultural heritage.
Even where no distinct language exists, people will invent one to gain a sense of cultural
identity, as the emergence of the distinct Ebonic cant among today’s African Americans aptly
illustrates. In short, people resist language assimilation because of a basic human need to be