What are we really about with GS? Seems to me our responsibility is to:Globalization is the BIG issue, if there is one --in that practically everything else connects via that nexus.(and doubtless others could be added).
- broaden students' purview
- counter American parochialisms
- make complexities central to discourse
- develop intellectual frameworks, evidential context, and analytical tools to take on real-world problems
- encourage a taste for 'critical thinking' that begins with the Emperor's Clothes but goes beyond cynicism and the obvious
We HAVE to deal effectively with the blinders of "left/right" issues and "free market" ideologies --indeed, with ideologies generally. We have to address the enormous gulf between American and other views, and it's like getting out of a gravity well.
The articles that provoked these observations:
AFTER THE WINNING OF THE WAR ? United States: wider still and wider By Eric Hobsbawm (Le Monde diplomatique June 2003)
A new world order Part 1: The South strikes back and Part 2: Europe's 3D vision (Asia Times) By Pepe Escobar
The free trade charade (Asia Times) By Marco Garrido
Another responsibility: to expose students to such irascible old buggers as E.P. Thompson and Oliver Rackham, whom they'd otherwise not be likely to encounter. There's quite a long list of them...