issue11

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ISSUE11 - "All nations should help support the development of a global university designed to engage students in the process of solving the world's most persistent social problems."

I strongly agree with the speaker's assertion that for the purpose of solving the world's most persistent social problems, all nations should help support the development of a global university. With such a global university, people around the world could be better known from each other and thus global corporation might be easily made to solve the world’s social problems. However, there might be some tricky issues within such a global university, which if left unsolved might seriously deter the university to achieve its objectives.

To begin with, a global university will equip students with a global vision. In definition a global university refers to a university where students and faculties are from different countries of the world, including not only those developed countries but also the third world countries. It appears somewhat amazing that students, regardless of their gender, nationality, background, native language, homeland, etc. could sit together to learn from each other. And there is no doubt that students in a global university would gradually become a global person due to mutual communications and exchanges ideas among people from every individual country. Consequently, their perception might become more objective and thus they would agree on common strategies as to solve some of the world's urgent problem.

Secondly, there is no denying that such a global university could help solve the world's most persistent social problems. As the rapid development of social science and technology, many serious problems have emerged, such as global warming, deforestation, scarcity of natural resources, terrorism, etc., all of these global problems are posing an extremely bad effects to the standard of our life all over the world. These problems are mainly caused by people's improper behaviors around the world rather than in a single country, and thus global efforts or corporation are needed to be devoted to successfully addressing these problems. Whereas a global university will greatly facilitate corporation between every individual countries and therefore would effectively handle these problems.

Finally, due to the diverse cultural backgrounds of its faculties and students admittedly there might be some complicated problems with such a global university, to which more attentions and efforts need to be paid, and otherwise the university might not achieve its goals. For instance, in determining which problems deserve their attention and resources, people from different countries might have different ideas, and they might more favor those that are conflicting their motherland. Thus great efforts should be made to educate these faculties and students there to be a global person and devote their resources to the most urgent issues.

In a word, without a global university, people around the world might misunderstand each other and mutual corporations between each other might be hinged, which might in a pose a barrier as to the conquering most of the world’s persistent problems. To ensure the achievement of these objectives, all members there should try to think in a global way.

(2007-7-7 22:37:52)