Hello ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in-between! Last Friday I had a joint lecture with three of my professors discussing what a global citizen is. We got to see the similarities and contrast between sociological, political, and literary points of view on the topic.
This joint lecture was followed by a great deal of discussion that spanned from the authority/responsibilities of a global citizen to debating the possibility of a global citizen even existing.
During the discussion I posed the following questions: if as global citizens we are trying to represent/give voice to everybody, do when still promote the opinions of those who discriminate? And if we exclude the many discriminatory voices of the world, are we still global citizens? And how do we productively address discriminatory views? Do we have the authority to decide which voices should be heard and which should be silenced? These question that are very difficult to answer and I doubt we will ever have perfect answers. We all see global citizens in different ways and I’m finding it very interesting to challenge my own ideas with these kinds of questions.
Another topic that I discussed with classmates after this lecture was, how does one’s personal biases impact their ability to be a global citizen? And is a global citizen ideally unbiased? Over the last couple of weeks I have started to move away from my own ideas around avoiding biases and instead trying to acknowledge and work with my own biases.
This is closely related to a discussion that we had in class about bias being unavoidable and that we can use more positive terms we can use to address it such as position or point of view.
During my first couple of weeks in the CAP Global Citizen program I have had an amazing time learning and discussing literature, sociology, and political science. I have been amazed at how much I am learning through my lectures, readings, and discussions. It is also spectacular to see the content of my different courses interact with and add to each other.