The New Multiculturalism
Bill Long 8/6/08
A Message for the Future
In the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001, and the economic (re)surgence of China and other East Asian countries, you would have to be blind/deaf to deny that we live in an unprecedented and confusingly new time in the international arena. Old doctrines and prejudices, fueled by the Cold War realities of post-WWII, have to be laid aside while we don new glasses to understand the bewildering realities facing us.
In contemplating this reality, I found myself asking the question, "Who and what kind of person will be leading us into this brave new world of international and multicultural living? What type of commitments are we looking for? Experience? Ideology? Skills?"
While contemplating this problem I ran into two people, either on TV or in articles, who seem to embody what I would call the "new international spirit" of the future. One of them was born in the 1950s and one in the 1970s; unfortunatley the one born in the 1970s, Michael Bhatia, was just killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan in May, but he so embodies the values of the future that his spirit will live on in the countless others who will come forth to take up his mantle. Let me introduce you to each of them, and then list three features which will, I think, characterize this "new globalism."
Dr. Renu Khator
Dr. Khator, born in 1955, has a Ph. D. in political science from Purdue, as well an adminstrative doctorate, and is the first woman to be both the President and Chancellor of the University of Houston system, with more than 45,000 students. She assumed her position last November, after spending 22 years in various teaching and administrative positions at U of South Florida. A native of the remote Indian village of Farrukhabad, Uttar Pradesh, she wears her bi-cultural heritage lightly, writing in scholarly journals in English and in Indian popular journals in Hindi. In a television interview today, she described not simply her vision for the U of Houston but for American higher education in general. U of Houston is a "majority minority" school, with 15% African American; 20% Hispanic; 21% Asian and the rest Caucasian and International students. She, the president, is not a Christian and is a woman--in Houston, the place of Joel Osteen and megachurches and the macho oil tycoons. She is utterly committed to the notion that education is the primary means for students not simply to prepare for careers but to develop a sense of the global age into which we are entering.
Michael Bhatia, a 1999 Brown Univ. graduate, had almost finished his Ph. D. from Oxford when he became a victim in Afghanistan to that deadly conflict. Even while a student at Brown he purused an international course, serving in the Western Sahara and then, after graduation, working in East Timor during that country's rocky bid for independence from Indonesia. He returned to teach at Brown in 2006-07, but his desire to be in the most problematic trouble spots of the world saw him enroll in the controversial "Human Terrain" program of the US Military. This program takes leading social scientists and international affairs specialists and connects them or "embeds" them with the troops in Afghanistan in order to try to "hear" the social and cultural realities of the people of the country. Though panned by ideologues on both the right and left, Bhatia felt that the program had all the markings of a positive contribution in a difficult situation. So, he enrolled in Fall 2007, and served with the 82nd Airborne Division until his death early in May 2008. Upon his death the "blogosphere" was filled with commentary and regret, as the hundreds of people who had been touched by Michael expressed their collective grief at the passing of this gentle scholar whose calling was to work for international peace--in the hardest arenas.
What Khator and Bhatia Teach Us about the Future
Though there are many lessons from their lives for us today, I think they teach us at least three things about the multi-culturalism of the future. First, it will be led by those not Caucasian but who are deeply rooted in the intellectual tradition of the West. It is not as if we Caucasians have squandered our opportunity to be heard and respected throughout the world, though some of that has happened over the years. It is just that those who will shape the world's "global agenda" in the future will increasingly be those who embody in their own experience the globalism they promote. Dr. Khator has both Western degrees and is the product of an Indian arranged marriage. And, Michael Bhatia, as one of his former Brown professors wrote about him (Prof. Jarat Chopra) could be described as follows:
"Out of a mix of cultures, with intercontinental families and transnational identities, Bhatia was hard-wired philsophically, psychologically and ideologically to be an internationalist," Brown Alumni Magazine, July/August 2008, p. 34.
But though the experience of another part/s of the world runs deeply in their veins, their categories of thought and ways of expressing themselves are derived from the system of university education and democratic "give-and-take" in the West. Thus, they will be "naturally multi-cultural." They will "look" like they are at home in Timor or Calcutta or Buenos Aires or Bangkok. And, guess what? They will look this way because they are at home there.
Second, the new multiculturalism or globalism will be led by those who desire to break through ideological stalemates. They are aware of debates that polarize right and left, both in this country and around the world, but refuse to let their lives or their futures be defined by ideology. Why? Because they believe that people are more than their ideologies, and that opportunity, respect for people, creative ways to come at long-standing problems and working across traditional religious or philosophical divides will most likely yield progress for more people than simply affirming old dogmas. If there is any message that emerges from Bhatia's short life, and Khator's vibrant presence in Houston, it is that a positive future is possible through education and building of humane understanding among people. This may be denominated "soft" foreign policy (as opposed to the "hard" policy of war or military alliance), but it is one that the world is longing for now. We really are quite tired of prevarications or justifications that turn out to have been ideologically and not factually driven.
Both Khator and Bhatia demonstrate/d this capacity and continuing commitment. Just think of it, Khator is a Hindu woman in Baptist Texas, heading one of the largest public institutions in that state. She faces and shatters stereotypes in her person. Bhatia volunteered for the "Human Terrain" experience, panned by professional anthropologists in the US, on the one hand, as the occasion to "coopt" legitimate academicians and dismissed by the right as a sop to those who favor "soft" routes of conflict resolution. Both Khator and Bhantia exhibited courage, one to his death, to live out the truth of their convictions to a non-ideological or, better said, to an ideology of human empowerment through education or cultural affirmation. This is the kind of leader that will have enormous influence on our world in the next generation.
Finally, the global leader of the future will see the world, primarily, through a cosmopolitan and not a nationalistic lens. We all know that nationalism and patriotism are important forces in our world, and will perhaps be so while any of us have breath. Certainly the leaders of this and the next generation will honor the country of their citizenship. But they will instinctively see beyond this commitment, and see themselves as world citizens. They will properly then be the heirs of Alexander the Great, who first articulated that cosmopolitan ideal more than 2300 years ago.
Conclusion
Will there be roles for "Anglos" in the global future? You better believe it. Lots of roles, big roles indeed. Know-how, scholarship and financial skills will be in the hands of the Western cultures for some time to come. But this new wave of people who bear in their souls the global reality towards which our world is moving will be sought-after at every level. They, to use the language of the Scriptures, will inherit the earth.
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