NEW YORK—America has, for better or worse, led the way in opening the world to globalization. “They just forgot, along the way, to globalize themselves,” said Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN foreign affairs show Fareed Zakaria GPS.
Zakaria was part of a panel that broached the broad topic of “Educating Students to Lead in a Global Context” at the Cooper Union on Monday. They discussed how American and New York colleges can better equip students to keep pace with a rapidly shifting climate.
“We don’t have that feeling that we have to learn about the world,” said Zakaria.
The Oct. 17 event was held to celebrate the newly named twelfth president of The Cooper Union, Jamshed Bharucha, and was moderated by Vikas Kapoor, a member of the Cooper Union Board of Trustees.
An Indian native, Zakaria described Indian kids in the 1960s and ’70s as knowledge seekers. “That was your ticket out of poverty,” he said. “People don’t feel that way in America because we’re at the top of it.”
He added that “The only way we’ll sustain this position, the only way we’ll have a radical reinvention, is to recognize that we have to get globalized.”
Panelists said as the world becomes more connected by technology, people could become less interested in culture and ideas outside their own.
Vali Nasr, a professor of International Politics at Tufts University, believes this is already happening. He said that with increased security after 9/11, “fewer foreign students were allowed to come to the United States.” Many of those who were denied entry simply went elsewhere—including New Zealand and Australia.
This has contributed to American universities expanding internationally, such as New York University (NYU) that has an Abu Dhabi campus, 10 international study centers, and more than 40 percent of its undergraduates studying abroad. Atina Grossman, professor of History at The Cooper Union, suggested finding ways to make studying abroad an option for all students—whether rich or poor.
“We as Americans have to be more open-minded toward the world,” said Wilmer Montosbaca, a Cooper Union graduate and engineering student at NYU. “A word they didn’t mention is that we are ego-centrical in a way, and maybe thinking we are the world, when we’re really not.”
