An International Tradition

Message from the Assistant Provost

This page (begun March 2005) features a quarterly letter from the Assistant Provost addressing news in OIS, special topics, and updates on progress in"internationalizing" the campus. Past messages can be seen by clicking here.

September 28, 2006

Walking across campus on this brisk and sunny autumn morning, I was filled with a sense of hope.  Hope that in our work here at the university and in all our sites abroad, we might inspire actions of authentic intellectual engagement. 

To be engaged, engagé, defines our humanity.  We are put on this earth to act [l'homme est né pour agir], wrote Montaigne in 1572, and today this aphorism still rings true.  We all need to take the time to listen, to observe, and to absorb new ideas, but at a certain point--in each semester as in each life--the time arrives to jump in and join the fray.  This engagement may reveal jarring differences of opinion and upset our complacency, even hurt our feelings for a time.  So much the better.  Spirited debate is what we need to break through the apathy and impotence cloaking the populace today, and to shake us back into living with resolve. 

The students who I've had the good fortune to meet in the past few months sustain this hope.  Consider the case of Fremantle students Jordan Runge and Nicholas Duda, who followed up on a chance conversation we had back in May to write (and rewrite!) what emerged as award-winning UROP proposals for independent research.  Their hard work allowed them to extend their stay on-site to tackle ambitious projects on the relations between aboriginal land rights and social problems vis-à-vis Australian governmental policies.  I applaud them for taking a risk, and showing how one might develop new research based on curriculum studied in Fremantle, Australia. 

Or consider the work of Peter Hamann, whose travels (thanks to funding from the College of Arts and Letters and a Summer Language Grant) took him from South Bend to Kalamazoo, MI, Vancouver, BC, and Punjab, India, to study Sikh religious communities. "At every moment I was making connections between things that I had only noticed in North America," Peter writes of his time in Punjab, "I never imagined the degree of subtle yet important similarities between North American Sikhs and their homeland." 

Or consider the East Africa group: the 20+ students who studied or did research in East Africa (or who are from Africa themselves), and joined us for breakfast on September 15 to honor Dr. Miriam Laker Opwonya.  Dr. Opwonya, an AIDS researcher at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, was on campus as a distinguished guest of the Notre Dame Forum on Global Health.  The tough questions and lively discussion with Dr. Opwonya at our breakfast gave visible proof of our students' awareness of issues related to AIDS and education in Uganda, Lesotho and Liberia.  The undergraduates' passion for African studies was clear, and whether they pursue advanced study in policy and conflict resolution, or a more immediate engagement in NGO-related activism, we have reason to expect a long-term involvement from these young people.

All of these students should give us hope, and nurture our efforts to make tolerance and understanding overcome the ethnocentrism that mars global relations today. 

With that thought in mind, I wish you a good and productive semester.

Sincerely,
Julia Douthwaite
Assistant Provost for International Studies