A year-and-a-half ago, the International and Domestic Programs Committee (IDPC) assembled with one goal: to find a way to interweave awareness of various global issues across all the departments at Gustavus. Soon the Gustavus Global Insight program was conceived. This program encourages students, faculty, staff and community members to increase their focus on global issues.
The Global Insight program is currently administered under a four-year pilot program. Each academic year, a new country, region or international issue will be chosen. This year’s theme is China. Next year the theme will be Mexico, followed by Food and Nutrition the year after, and then Circumpolar Year, incorporating topics relevant to Scandinavia, Northern Canada, Greenland and Russia.
Global Insight in a nutshell
“The program has the aims of expanding the Gustavus curriculum to look at things beyond [the college],” said Thomas Huber, chair of the IDPC and professor of physics. “Aside from the non-Western culture requirement, we wanted to find a way of establishing some of these issues into … the classroom.”
Political Science Professor Richard Leitch is looking forward to seeing the results. “The goal of this new initiative is based around the ideals of the liberal-arts degree. It allows for students to gain a broad understanding of the many issues that our global community faces,” Leitch said. “If a student can walk away after four years with the knowledge and awareness of the pressing global issues of today, then we’ve done our job.”
The IDPC has worked in cooperation with many members of the college to bring a campus focus on China. Throughout the year, the IDPC hopes Gustavus students will have more class discussion about issues relevant to Chin. In addition, there are a variety of lectures, films, concerts, and other events planned for students to take advantage of.
Another aim of the Global Insight program is to give faculty the ability to incorporate the annual theme into their curriculum. The IDPC hopes this will allow students to apply concepts and theories learned in the classroom to a real-world context.
Although many students study abroad at Gustavus, Phil Voight, chair of the Global Insight Steering Committee and professor of communication studies, said this is not a reason for the school to be complacent about introducing a more international perspective to the campus.
“[The committee] thinks that [Gustavus] does really well in international programming, and has a strong study abroad program. But we also felt that many people were graduating without … a strong global awareness.”
The steering committee was pleased to develop a program that would achieve its goals without requiring significant resources or changes. “One of the ideal things about this program is that it doesn’t require a huge financial commitment, and it is really just adding the elements of the Gustavus Insight program into things that the community is already doing,” Voight said.
The program utilizes things the college already offers. Specifically, this fall the Global Insight program was able to work in conjunction with the college’s Reading in Common program, the New Student Orientation program and the Campus Activities Board with the chosen book Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China, by author and journalist John Pomfret.
“Instead of having this program be an add-on, we would like the faculty to view it as something that has relevance to the course that they are [teaching],” said Huber, “and that there are global issues that come up in a lot of different contexts.”
A crash course in China and its global influence
The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, provided a relevant springboard for this year’s Global Insight theme. This was not the only reason for choosing China for the 2008-2009 school year, however. The committee felt that China’s emerging presence on the world stage and the growing importance of its economic, political, cultural and human rights issues was something the school should not ignore. In addition, many international students currently attend Gustavus from the United International College in China.
“China is modernizing and developing at such a rapid pace that no Gustavus student can really say, ‘Honestly, I don’t need to worry about China.’ Inevitably, we will be dealing with China in the global marketplace [in] one way or another,” said Voight.
“The Insight program really connects the students with the real world. It gets them thinking that if they are to go out into the workplace, they will be expected to have some level of cultural knowledge or some awareness of the role of China,” Voight said.
China’s growing influence on the global market has not gone unnoticed in the international community. Since the country’s economic reform in 1978, their economic growth has averaged 10 percent in the past three decades, making China’s economy the fastest growing in the world.
The factors that push China’s economic growth are the opening of the economy to trade, inward direct investment and the investment in urbanization and infrastructure.
Leitch pointed out that the Global Insight program enables students to look at these important issues from different perspectives. “China’s economic influence, not just within the country, but on the United States and the global economy, needs to be examined carefully. China’s economic power affects the quality of life of the people in China and in the United States. Students need to be informed on these topics,” Leitch said.
China’s economic gains come with many benefits. However, there are major obstacles to sustaining this economic growth. Professor of History David Tobaru Obermiller said that, “China has been experiencing these very high percentages in their economic gains, but at the cost of degradation to the surrounding environment.”
Kerry Brown, Director of Strategic China Ltd., points out that the State Environmental Protection Agency in China recorded that the country’s corporations achieved double-digit economic growth at the expense of harming the environment.
Brown argues that the companies cut costs by leaving out critical environment protection measures, and ultimately the price of cleaning up this environmental mess will reverse economic gains that have been made in the last 30 years.
“Now, as the years continue, China is beginning to see limits to their economic growth. They are seeing their air become more and more polluted, degradation of the land, increases in the amount of unusable water and a deterioration of the status of health among its citizens,” said Obermiller.
“The Chinese government has forced [itself] into a type of no-end situation where they potentially may need to decide between the well-being of their businesses or the well-being of their citizens.”
Social justice concerns
The United States and several humanitarian organizations openly criticize the Chinese government for its human rights violations. The government limits the religious freedom of groups that may generate political loyalties beyond the Chinese Communist Party, which continues to confine religious leaders and subject them to torture, imprisonment and other forms of ill-treatment on the basis of their religious beliefs.
The government limits the right of its citizens to express dissent, an issue that is especially prominent in Tibet.
Leitch explained that each year Amnesty International releases a study providing the statistics on human rights violations across the world. The study shows that each year, China executes more people in its prison systems than any other country in Asia.
“Many times the United States government … will make cases against China and their human rights violations,” said Leitch, “But, every time China responds … ‘Look at your country, where more than 40 million people lack basic health care needs, and almost 40 million people live below the poverty line. And why is it that the majority of people that are detained in your prison systems and those on death row are those of underrepresented populations?'”
China contends that the United States needs to, as Obermiller states, “practice what they preach.”
Obermiller contrasted the relationship between the United States and the countries of China and Cuba. “China in many ways [violates more] basic human rights. Yet, the United States has full relations with China. In the case of Cuba, we continue to demonize them … and I find that to be just outright moral hypocrisy. It’s about capital. China offers something to us, and we’re willing to overlook their human rights abuses.”
These are only a few of the topics that have and will be covered in the eighth months of the Global Insight’s year on China. According to Voight, the real measure of success rests within each individual classroom. Here students can form connections with topics from different years.
“Gradually … we hope that students can work together to draw connections with these issues,” Voight said. Obermiller believes that the amount of time and effort dedicated to the program “speaks volumes” about the goals and values of the college.
“I find that [Gustavus] wants students and the broader community to be educated about these global issues that countries around the world face today,” Obermiller said.
The Gustavus Global Insight program provides students with the opportunity to look at the role that the United States plays in the international community with a critical, outside perspective. In essence, the Global Insight program enables the campus community to approach global topics with a two-way mirror, offering an opportunity to view China from diverse perspectives and view ourselves and the United States from new outside perspectives.