Prior to joining the University of Oregon I worked on two campuses located in the heart of international affairs.  My office in Washington, D.C. was just blocks from the White House and the State Department, and, before that, my office in Jerusalem overlooked the Old City and the Temple Mount.  These days my office isn’t quite so close to power and politics, yet I feel surrounded by people who are dedicated to making the world a better place through commitment to action near and far.  One of the many pleasant surprises for me in moving to Oregon some years back was the excitement of the students and their eagerness to engage in the critical issues facing our world.  I am looking forward with great anticipation to the launch of the Carnegie Global Oregon Learning Community (CGO), which will pair the imagination and creativity of students, staff and faculty with the capabilities of modern technology to expand and enhance our ability to learn together.  The CGO will become a hub of activity that will take us out of the traditional educational mode, and allow us to learn from people who will share their worlds with us as we share our questions, ideas, and concerns with them.

We are already moving toward this model through a number of events that have taken place recently.  The “Revolution in the Arab World” panel showcased our technological innovation as UO faculty members were joined by colleagues in Iraq and the Sudan to share views with our audience and respond to questions from students and community members.  I was very impressed at the ease with which UO staffers were able to make this work, and it was very rewarding to have people in Eugene in conversation with our faculty and people in the Middle East at the same time.  Most of us were in the Living Learning Center on campus, while our guests joined us on big screens as they spoke to us from their homes thousands of miles away as we worked together to try to increase our understanding of the historic events reshaping a critical part of the world.  Next, we brought Catholic and Protestant peace workers to campus to participate in our “Lessons From the Streets of Northern Ireland” series.  Our guests gave a public presentation, participated in classes around campus, and joined an Inside-Out class that blends campus-based students with men incarcerated in the Oregon State Penitentiary for a course on Post-conflict Transformation.  Finally, our “Ethics and Global Health” workshop highlighted the way that students can initiate focused intellectual inquiry on our campus and join faculty and visitors in designing programs that speak to the most pressing issues of the day.  With this event, we go “live” on the internet (and i-phones too apparently), so that people can participate in real time from anywhere in the world with internet access.  Our classroom is suddenly global!   All of this has happened within a span of five weeks, and serves as a preview of what we hope to do with the CGO in the years to come.

The CGO is part of the broader Oregon Carnegie Initiative with the New York-based Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and our work comes under the umbrella of Global Oregon programming here at the University.  And, while I celebrate the technology that allows us to learn in these exciting ways and appreciate our opportunity to engage in these academic pursuits, I am mindful that this is a life of privilege and that our aim is to make the world a more just, peaceful, and healthy place.  I expect that when we start working together in the Fall of 2011 we will be challenged, inspired, and motivated to make the CGO a special learning experience, and that each of us will grow in ways that we cannot even anticipate.  The world is a complex place, full of wonders and problems, joy and sorrow; I look forward to exploring it through the CGO in a way that will bring greater understanding and lead us to productive and ethical partnerships on campus and to the farthest reaches of our imagination.  See you there!

Shaul Cohen
Academic Director