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‘Globalization’ and a Call for
University Student Leaders to Promote
Human Dignity and Solidarity
By Michael Pakaluk
Professor of Philosophy, Clark University
“In today's complex situation, not least because of the growth of a globalized
economy, the Church's social doctrine has become a set of fundamental guidelines
offering approaches that are valid even beyond the confines of the Church: in
the face of ongoing development these guidelines need to be addressed in the
context of dialogue with all those seriously concerned for humanity and for the
world in which we live (Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 27).”
What is Globalization?
People speak about ‘globalization’ as if it was a single thing, but the term
actually denotes at least four large-scale changes: one is economic; another
political; the third involves communication, and the fourth is cultural.
Economic globalization is the process—now about 400 years old—by which the world
has increasingly become a single economic market, while boundaries that divide
nations have become less and less important, from an economic point of view.
Economic globalization has its roots in the age of discovery, when explorers
from Europe traveled to Asia, India, and the New World, paving the way for trade
and colonization. The Industrial Revolution in the 19th century contributed to
the interdependence of the economies of different nations, with colonies
providing raw materials for the industries of more developed countries. In the
early 20th century, especially because of the invention of means of rapid
transportation (good road systems, air travel), and global communication
(telephone and radio), business activity at a distance was made possible and was
accelerated.
In the late 20th century, economic globalization pressed on at an even faster
pace: the end of the Cold War led to an opening up of new markets and an
exchange between free-market and formerly communist countries; moreover,
multinational corporations arose which were now capable of viewing the entire
world as their labor and consumer markets. And, finally, throughout the 20th
century industrial nations ratified a series of trade agreements such as GATT
(General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and NAFTA (North American Free Trade
Agreement), which served as catalysts for worldwide economic interdependence.
Political globalization is the process by which an essentially Anglo-American
model of democratic, constitutional government, as based on a declaration of
human rights, has similarly spread throughout the world and effectively gained
the support of the entire world. This process is also about 400 years old. It
has its start in English parliamentary constitutionalism and political theory in
the 17th century. It finds perhaps its best expression in the framing of the
American Constitution.
This system of government is seen to ‘work’ in the remarkable success of the
American experiment: economic development and political freedom, it seems, go
hand-in-hand. British Imperialism in the 19th century propagated it throughout
the world, at least in idea. And then it acquired tremendous prestige because of
the leading role of the United States and Britain in the great wars of the 20th
century. Indeed, at the end of those wars, the United Nations affirmed
constitutional democracy through its Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
With the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1989 constitutional democracy on the
American model, a ‘free society’, seems to be the only serious alternative—so
much so that it, to some observers (most notably, Francis Fukiyama), it has
appeared that, at least as regards political development, the human race has
reached “the end of history”. Any society which refuses to ‘join the game’ along
with other free societies condemns itself to stagnation and even irrelevance.
Globalization in communications is a considerably younger phenomenon. We might
take it to with the invention of the electromagnet by William Sturgeon in 1825.
Less than twenty years later, in 1844, Samuel B. Morse sends the first message
by the newly invented telegraph (which relies on the electromagnet). In 1850, a
telegraph cable is laid across the English Channel, bridging Britain and the
Continent. In 1866, the first such cable is laid across the Atlantic Ocean.
Thus, in less than forty years after Sturgeon’s fundamental invention,
businessmen in New York could communicate almost simultaneously with businessmen
in London.
Progress in communication continues at no less rapid a pace in the years that
follow. What we call the ‘Internet’ is simply the latest, although perhaps most
dramatic, development in the same series. About 1 billion people (one-seventh of
the world’s population) now make use of this network of very fast computers
linked by fiber-optic cables and can therefore, in principle, communicate with
one another continuously and effortlessly. Because so much business is now
accomplished through computers and on computers, and because national boundaries
are meaningless for the Internet, this implies that about one billion people
are, in theory, in a position to do business with one another immediately.
Globalization in culture looks to be a consequence of the other types of
globalization. Ease of global communication means that some forms of culture
will be spread quickly, and more widely, and prove more popular than other
forms. As the Anglo-American model of a free society spreads throughout the
world, so do corresponding cultural forms: because of the importance of freedom
in that model of society, many of these cultural forms, which are superficially
more ‘free’, appeal to pedestrian or even lower instincts and thrive unless
hindered somehow through law. Again, businesses that function well in a global
environment, such as the multinationals, will naturally succeed in promoting,
through their products, their vision of a good life; and because business aims
at efficiency, it will impose uniformity.
Thus, globalization in culture has been a process largely of homogenization and
also ‘Americanization’: things become more uniform, as they become more like
American popular culture. In part, this is helped by natural inclinations:
people like to be like one another; people like what looks promising and new.
But, as a result, a homogeneous and recent culture therefore displaces local and
traditional culture. The spread throughout the world of MacDonalds and Starbucks
is an icon of this homogenization. Moreover, high culture gets crowded out by
low culture: after all, the leading uses of the Internet are not reading library
books or listening to symphonies but rather pornography, gaming, and gossip.
Is Globalization Really All That New? And Is It Important?
If some of the trends referred to as ‘globalization’ stretch back 400 years,
then is there really anything new about it? Is globalization simply a product of
media hype? Perhaps here as elsewhere there really is ‘nothing new under the
sun.’
Although the continuity of the process is an historical fact, still,
globalization seems to have increased recently to such an extent that a
difference in degree has amounted to a difference in kind. We mentioned the fall
of the Iron Curtain, and the recent entry of China and India into world markets
(about two billion persons), made possible by the Internet. One might also add
the continuing, even if precarious, domination of world political dynamics by a
single superpower (a real, but flawed, pax Americana). These are genuine changes
of a world-historical scale, which have unified the world to an extent not
previously seen.
It is a general rule that an association gets constituted when people think that
they form an association, because an association is a social reality. For
instance, the ‘Silent Majority’ became something real when people thought of
themselves as part of a silent majority, and identified with others as being
part of the same group. In the same way, the Internet allows people to think of
themselves as part of a single world community, and then, by that fact itself,
such a community is constituted—a ‘global village’ or ‘flat world’ (to use the
term of New York Times essayist and author Thomas Friedman).
“Today, the human race is involved in a new stage of history,” the Council
Fathers at Vatican II wrote, in their prescient Pastoral Constitution on the
Church in the Modern World Gaudium et spes (1965), “Profound and rapid changes
are spreading by degrees around the whole world. Triggered by the intelligence
and creative energies of man, these changes recoil upon him, upon his decisions
and desires, both individual and collective, and upon his manner of thinking and
acting with respect to things and to people. Hence we can already speak of a
true cultural and social transformation, one which has repercussions on man's
religious life as well” (n. 4). “The circumstances of the life of modern man
have been so profoundly changed in their social and cultural aspects,” the
document later states, “that we can speak of a new age of human history” (n.
54).
Globalization is important because of its prospects for good and ill on a large
scale. It is especially important for a Catholic who is an American, because of
the central role of the United States in globalization. The United States is the
leading force of globalization in all its aspects: business; politics;
communications; and culture. Indeed, given their tendencies to parochialism,
Americans need to pay particular attention to globalization: “Let everyone
consider it his sacred obligation to esteem and observe social necessities as
belonging to the primary duties of modern man,” the Council Fathers wrote, “For
the more unified the world becomes, the more plainly do the offices of men
extend beyond particular groups and spread by degrees to the whole world” (Gaudium
et spes, 30).
Globalization brings to our attention in a particular way the poor of the world.
When our attention is trained simply on the business, politics, and culture
within the borders of the United States, then the poor in other countries can
easily appear to be the ‘needy’ that required ‘relief efforts’. But after
globalization, when so much of the world participates in and benefits from a
world economy, it becomes unavoidable to ask: “Why aren’t these people part of
the game? Why does it seem that their condition is persistent? What steps should
we take to help them?”
The ‘Catholic’ outlook of a believer implies a concern for the world as a whole.
After all, ‘Catholic’ means ‘universal’: “The Church recognizes that worthy
elements are found in today's social movements, especially an evolution toward
unity, a process of wholesome socialization and of association in civic and
economic realms.” Why? Because: “The promotion of unity belongs to the innermost
nature of the Church, for she is, thanks to her relationship with Christ, a
sacramental sign and an instrument of intimate union with God, and of the unity
of the whole human race” (Gaudium et spes, 42).
So an American Catholic has a twofold reason to be concerned about
globalization: as an American, because of the leading role of the United States;
and, as a Catholic, because the outlook of a Catholic tends naturally to take
within its scope the entire world.
Is Globalization Basically Good or Bad?
Yet should a Catholic be in favor of globalization or opposed? Globalization
is, after all, controversial. Critics of globalization—those who are
‘anti-globalization’—argue that globalization:
* represents a revival of cut-throat, laissez faire
capitalism;
* is an expression of political and cultural imperialism
(especially on the part of the United States);
* widens the gap worldwide between rich and poor;
* harms workers in developed nations, because jobs get exported
overseas; and,
* destroys the environment.
Someone might reply that anti-globalization is pointless, on the grounds that
globalization is inevitable. Compare: it would not have made much sense to have
been opposed to the Industrial Revolution; that was going to happen, whether
people opposed it or favored it.
Globalization may indeed be inevitable. But even then one might wonder whether
it was a process that someone should basically affirm, but wish to guide or
correct in some respects (how precisely it develops), or a process that someone
ought to protest against and withdraw himself from—as, for instance, the Amish
have done as regards industrialization.
One may distinguish between globalization as a means or instrument (a
‘technology’), and globalization as the use of those means. Globalization as a
means allows trade among persons, easy communication, and free political
association, all of which are good. It represents just one more instance of the
growth of human technology, which a Catholic should affirm, without hesitation,
as itself good, because it is a participation in the creative activity of God:
“Throughout the course of the centuries, men have labored to better the
circumstances of their lives through a monumental amount of individual and
collective effort” (Gaudium et spes, 34).
To believers, this point is settled: considered in itself, this human activity
accords with God's will. “For man, created to God's image, received a mandate to
subject to himself the earth and all it contains, and to govern the world with
justice and holiness; a mandate to relate himself and the totality of things to
Him Who was to be acknowledged as the Lord and Creator of all” (Gaudium et spes,
34). Even cultural unity throughout the world, the Council Fathers teach
(although not a homogeneity!) ought to be welcomed, as making possible a greater
community among persons, and shared cultural wealth: “The increase of commerce
between the various nations and human groups opens more widely to all the
treasures of different civilizations and thus little by little, there develops a
more universal form of human culture, which better promotes and expresses the
unity of the human race to the degree that it preserves the particular aspects
of the different civilizations” (n. 54).
Nonetheless, largely because of the effects of original sin, every technology
risks becoming subtly altered, from being something through which we exercise
stewardship and ‘govern the earth’, into something, rather, that dominates us.
So the use to which globalization is put presents us with a moral challenge.
But, as in other cases, the possibility of abuse does not negate the reality of
the goods that can be acquired and shared through globalization considered as a
means: Abuse does not take away use.
Two Common Miss-Conceptions about Globalization
The phenomenon of ‘outsourcing’ captures a common complaint about, and
misunderstanding of, globalization. Outsourcing is when relatively inexpensive
workers in a foreign country perform rote operation, which is part of some
service or the production of some good delivered in a domestic market, other
than that in which the good is primarily provided. For instance, physicians in
the United States provide medical care for patients in the United States. But
part of providing medical care involves keeping accurate medical records. To do
this, many physicians simply dictate, into a tape recorder, on a daily basis,
any necessary additions to the medical records of their patients. Skilled
transcriber-typists then later transcribe these dictated notes. Since this task
is relatively rote, it can be exported. And, indeed, now there are large medical
transcription centers established in cities such as Bangalore, India, where
transcribers receive, over the Internet, the dictated notes of physicians and
work all ‘night’ (which is ‘day’ for them) to have the transcribed notes entered
into the medical files for the next day.
This is an attractive arrangement for American physicians and insurers, because
transcribers in India work for only a fraction of the wages of transcribers in
the United States. So then: is it good that the work is outsourced in this way,
because it keeps down medical costs for American patients and helps Indian
workers gain affluence, or bad, because American transcribers lose their jobs to
Indian workers who are paid much worse wages than American workers would have
been paid?
Economists regard that sort of outsourcing as a good example of what the English
political philosopher, David Ricardo, referred to as ‘comparative advantage’.
Comparative advantage may be understood in terms of a riddle: “A man gets a
smaller slice of pie, yet he gets more pie—how does he do it?” He can do so if
the pie grows in size: a thin slice of a very large pie may contain more dessert
than a big slice of a very small pie. Suppose that there is a successful economy
and a struggling economy, but these two economies do not interact. The
successful economy is so successful that it does everything better than the
struggling economy. Even so, if the two economies joined together, to form a
single market, and the successful economy allowed the struggling economy to do
worse some of the jobs which previously it had done better, at the end of the
day the successful economy would be even better off than before. Both economies
together are stronger than either one separate; their common market constitutes
a much larger ‘pie’; and the successful economy, although now it has a smaller
‘slice’ (some percentage of work it had previously done is done somewhere else),
is wealthier, because it takes its slice from this larger pie. That is
‘comparative advantage’.
Globalization allows comparative advantage, and thus it is a mistake to presume
that, because some American jobs are exported, the American economy will become
weaker as a result. And obviously it is a mistake, anyway, to suppose that all
jobs always last in all sectors of the economy: most New Yorkers are not farmers
any longer; shoes are hardly made in Massachusetts anymore; and whaling ships
are no longer built on the shores of Long Island. It is necessary that jobs get
shifted or disappear as an economy develops.
A second misconception involves the relationship between globalization and
changes in culture. The homogenization of culture, and the dominance of low or
crass forms of culture, is not inevitable, given other phenomena of
globalization. Economies could become integrated, and communication improved,
among persons throughout the world, without its being the case that (say)
Jennifer Aniston become an icon everywhere of feminine beauty and demeanor. It
is no more necessary that Jennifer Aniston be popular in a place that has
recently become integrated into the world economy, such as Bangalore, India,
than that she be popular in Boise, Idaho, which has long been integrated into
the world economy. The propagation of a culture requires people who want that
culture. And the sort of culture someone wants depends on her moral outlook and
habits: an R-rated movie (for instance) simply won’t sell to a population which,
for moral reasons, avoids R movies altogether.
As we saw earlier, the Council Fathers of Vatican II admonished us: “Let
everyone consider it his sacred obligation to esteem and observe social
necessities as belonging to the primary duties of modern man. For the more
unified the world becomes, the more plainly do the offices of men extend beyond
particular groups and spread by degrees to the whole world.” Yet then they
continued: “But this development cannot occur unless individual men and their
associations cultivate in themselves the moral and social virtues, and promote
them in society; thus, with the needed help of divine grace men who are truly
new and artisans of a new humanity can be forthcoming” (Gaudium et spes, 30). It
is necessary to ‘cultivate the moral and social virtues’, so that the good that
can be accomplished through the means of globalization is not overmatched by the
bad that results from how it is received and used.
Two Real Threats in Globalization
But corresponding to each of the misunderstandings we have just identified
are two real threats: the abuse of workers through un-moderated market forces,
and the impoverishment of human culture. Both of these require primarily ‘moral’
and ‘spiritual’ solutions.
Recent globalization presents us with an economy that is not directly under any
government. As we saw, globalization as an economic phenomenon is characterized
especially by the diminishing importance of national boundaries and the lifting
of government intervention in trade. A market, however, is a social unity, and
every social unity has a common good and should somehow be guided to a common
good. Since there is no true global government (the United Nations does not have
the status of a world government), then no authority has responsibility for this
common good, and thus participants in the world economy are exposed to harm
without remedy, especially the poor and weak.
It is true, as followers of Adam Smith argue, that a market, which is a natural
reality, is generally governed by an ‘invisible hand’, which tends to distribute
goods and services efficiently and for the long-term benefit of all.
Nonetheless, all markets require some guidance and oversight with respect to
abuses. Everyone acknowledges this even with regard to the best functioning
markets, such as the American equity market, which requires the cautious
oversight of regulating agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission,
and the adjustments of the Federal Reserve Bank. The same is true of the global
market.
It is not clear whether a global government would be the best solution.
Sometimes—perhaps in most cases—governmental intervention in a market is worse
than the cure. In any case, we will not soon see a global government, so the
question is moot. In the absence of such a government, then it is all the more
important that leading actors in the process of globalization ‘cultivate the
moral and social virtues’.
Aristotle distinguished ‘intellectual virtues’ from ‘virtues of character’.
Intellectual virtues are principles and insights that we grasp and are resolved
to live by. Virtues of character are habits, dispositions, and inclinations,
which constitute what we value and how we are prepared to act and to choose.
What would it mean to ‘cultivate the moral and social virtues’, then, in a way
that was relevant to globalization? This would involve, first, study, with a
view to understanding and affirming the basic principles of classical
philosophy, natural law and ‘Catholic social teaching’. Such study would include
within its scope such things as understanding what is meant by ‘subsidiarity’,
‘solidarity’, ‘service’ and ‘common good’, and being resolved to live by the
principles which promote these ideals.
The relevant virtues of character would be acquired by someone’s coming to live
in a certain way, especially in community with others (because no one succeeds
in being virtuous on his own): for instance, by acquiring shared habits of life
which implied, for instance, a correct valuing of money; by adopting a
relatively simple lifestyle which showed an awareness of the poverty in which
most human beings actually live; by cultivating dispositions to learn about and
become familiar with the mores and language of other cultures; and by the
practice of genuine friendship, which is the only sound basis for effective
solidarity and goodwill.
Someone who had these ‘moral and social virtues’ would do business in the world
economy in such a way as to show, in deeds, a genuine respect for the equal
dignity of the human persons with whom she associated, even if these others were
in a position of weakness and could in principle be exploited by her.
A Society in Which Young Men Know Folk Songs
The second real threat presented by globalization may perhaps best be
explained by an anecdote. Several years ago a group of American college students
traveled to Mexico for the summer, to learn about Mexican culture and to do
modest building projects for the poor. Mexican and American student volunteers
lived together in a residence hall in Mexico City, sharing meals and
recreational events scheduled for the free time.
One evening everyone gathered in a common room, and the Mexican students sang
various folk songs that they all knew. The Americans did not quite know what to
make of this: it was clear that they had never spent an evening simply sitting
together with friends and singing songs. The Mexicans at one point took a break
and asked the Americans to sing for them some American folk songs. The Americans
were perplexed. They huddled together: “Does anyone know any folk songs?” “What
can we sing?” “What do we all know?” Eventually it was decided that the only
songs that everyone knew were Christmas songs, and so, even though it had been a
sweltering day in July, the Americans treated the Mexican students to all the
verses of “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” (sung rather disheartedly).
Recall that the Fathers of Vatican II envisioned a suitable world culture as one
in which each local area has its own culture, which it then shares reciprocally
with others: “The increase of commerce between the various nations and human
groups opens more widely to all the treasures of different civilizations and
thus little by little, there develops a more universal form of human culture,
which better promotes and expresses the unity of the human race to the degree
that it preserves the particular aspects of the different civilizations” (Gaudium
et spes, 54).
Clearly, this sort of ‘universal human culture’ requires that each group
preserve its own culture, and to preserve a culture presupposes actually
possessing one in the first place. It is universal precisely through being a
widespread sharing of what is particular to each. The threat of the
homogenization of culture, then, and the wiping out of rich local cultures by
superficial and transient culture, is properly answered by a vigorous promotion
of local culture. Each person can battle the MacDonaldization of world culture
by being more devoted to his home culture.
But how do we do this? What inspires a person to love his own culture in the
first place? What ways of life are such that they are friendly to the
preservation of historic and indigenous and local cultures? How must a person
live for culture to be important to him at all? Culture derives from cultus and
has its roots in religious worship as centered around family life.
Josef Pieper in “Leisure: The Basis of Culture” (1948) points out that a
contemplative, religious outlook is the seedbed and nourishment of culture, and
the family is the society in which we best live that sort of leisure. One might
think, then, that religious devotion and strong families are the best safeguards
of culture: and indeed experience seems to confirm this. And, similarly, genuine
culture is a safeguard of religion: “…the Church recalls to the mind of all that
culture is to be subordinated to the integral perfection of the human person, to
the good of the community and of the whole society. Therefore it is necessary to
develop the human faculties in such a way that there results a growth of the
faculty of admiration, of intuition, of contemplation, of making personal
judgment, of developing a religious, moral and social sense” (Gaudium et spes,
59).
We said earlier that the spread of superficial and homogeneous culture is only
accidentally connected with globalization. Now we can say: a superficial and
homogeneous culture is what results when globalization affects a society insofar
as its religious commitment is vapid, or its constituent families are breaking
down. To the extent that Western societies become post-Christian, and to the
extent that people in Western societies no longer center their lives in the
shared activities of leisure in the family, to that extent they will become
vulnerable to forms of culture that do not adequately magnify or express human
dignity. A culture of “MacDonalds” will dominate—when it does—not because of
globalization, but because of a prior moral decline, which is distinct from
globalization. And the correct response is not to attack globalization, but
rather to build up a society consisting of households in which, so to speak,
people want to sing folk songs together.
G. K. Chesterton finishes “What’s Wrong with the World” (1910) by tracing a just
society back to one in which the dignity of the human person, as represented by
a mother’s joy in her daughter’s beautiful hair, is the fixed point to which
everything else adapts, even a bureaucratic love of efficiency:
“Now the whole parable and purpose of these last pages, and indeed of all
these pages, is this: to assert that we must instantly begin all over again,
and begin at the other end. I begin with a little girl's hair. That I know
is a good thing at any rate. Whatever else is evil, the pride of a good
mother in the beauty of her daughter is good. It is one of those adamantine
tendernesses that are the touchstones of every age and race. If other things
are against it, other things must go down. If landlords and laws and
sciences are against it, landlords and laws and sciences must go down.
“With the red hair of one she-urchin in the gutter I will set fire to all
modern civilization. Because a girl should have long hair, she should have
clean hair; because she should have clean hair, she should not have an
unclean home: because she should not have an unclean home, she should have a
free and leisured mother; because she should have a free mother, she should
not have an usurious landlord; because there should not be an usurious
landlord, there should be a redistribution of property; because there should
be a redistribution of property, there shall be a revolution.
“That little urchin with the gold-red hair, whom I have just watched
toddling past my house, she shall not be lopped and lamed and altered; her
hair shall not be cut short like a convict's; no, all the kingdoms of the
earth shall be hacked about and mutilated to suit her. She is the human and
sacred image; all around her the social fabric shall sway and split and
fall; the pillars of society shall be shaken, and the roofs of ages come
rushing down, and not one hair of her head shall be harmed”.
Similarly, we shall ‘set fire to all harmful globalization’ not by actual
lootings and burnings, but if we look for, and put into practice, those
conditions of life which make it easy for a family to gather together after a
home-made dinner, shut off the television, turn off the Internet, put aside
business worries, and enjoy sharing simple stories and songs about God,
neighbor, and country.
What Should I Do About Globalization?
Globalization is not the sort of thing that someone is assured of dealing
with appropriately by simply letting things happen as he will. Although
globalization is a natural development of human technology, we have no natural
affections that go along with globalization. When parents have a child, they
naturally feel a strong affection for their offspring. Siblings and even
cousins, if they spend time together, will develop spontaneously a natural
affection for one another. But there is nothing about seeing someone's screen
name on a computer monitor that will lead us to have friendly affection for him.
(In fact, the importance of the appearance of anonymity in cyberspace is well
known. That is why people do and say things on their computer, which they would
never say or do if they took themselves to be in the company of others.)
Consequently, it is necessary that we develop the habit of dealing with others
globally as persons who are equal to us in dignity and who should be treated
fairly, with a view to friendship. This ‘habit’ is also known as the virtue of
solidarity. Like any virtue, it needs to be acquired by actions that are typical
of the virtue. The best way of acquiring the virtue of solidarity, is to
practice it. Book learning is important for solidarity--we need to understand
what justice and the common good are, for instance--but also practice and
‘training’ in living a life marked by solidarity and friendship with citizens of
other cultures and nations.
This is why the North American Educational Initiatives Foundation (www.naeif.org)
was formed: in order to provide university students with opportunities to
acquire the virtue of solidarity, by living it. Especially through its annual
North American Leadership Institute in Mexico, the foundation brings together
student leaders from Canada, Mexico and the United States to study the
principles of citizenship, human dignity, justice, and solidarity, and to put
these ideals into practice on campus and, later on, in their everyday lives and
careers.
"The more unified the world becomes, the more plainly do the offices of men
extend beyond particular groups and spread by degrees to the whole world" (Gaudium
et spes, 30). If you are an ambitious and idealistic North American university
leader, we invite you to consider enrolling in the North American Leadership
Institute so as to grow in your sense of leadership and responsibility that
‘extends beyond particular groups’. The Institute provides an invaluable
opportunity for you to acquire the virtue of solidarity, so necessary for
recognizing and safeguarding the dignity of all persons in this era of, at
times, de-humanizing globalization.
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