Yale Bulletin and Calendar

December 15, 2006|Volume 35, Number 13|Four-Week Issue

Global Citizenship Initiative awarded
Hewlett Foundation grant

The Global Citizenship Initiative (GCI), the third phase of the Crossing Borders Initiative at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale, has been awarded $390,000 by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Gustav Ranis, the Frank Altschul Professor Emeritus of International Economics, and Jay Winter, the Charles J. Stille Professor of History, will serve as primary investigators for the initiative, under the auspices of Ian Shapiro, Sterling Professor of Political Science and the Henry R. Luce Director of the MacMillan Center. The center has also committed funds to the initiative.

From its inception in November 1997, the Crossing Borders Initiative has challenged students and faculty from different parts of the Yale community to revitalize traditional models of international research and education, and to develop paradigms better suited to an increasingly globalized environment. During its second phase of Ford Foundation-supported activity, for example, three working groups organized a set of workshops, conferences and seminars on "Rethinking Environment and Development from Below," "Migration and the Nation State" and "Language and Culture."

The GCI, scheduled to begin operations on July 1, is a pilot project that will span two years. Its goal is to bring the study of emerging forms of global citizenship into the ongoing discussion of the future of joint research activities between scholars in the northern and southern hemispheres. The focus is on two kinds of citizenship -- economic and political -- which are being transformed by the pressures of globalization.

"The Global Citizenship Initiative will focus on how the university, here and abroad, can cope with its new, more diverse, and shifting educational, economic and social roles in order to adapt its knowledge base and practices to become a truly globalized institution," says Ranis. "Changes are already happening informally throughout the university world. The challenge for the future is to shape new associations to discuss these questions as to what kind of programs and links a global university will need in the most constructive and systematic ways, leaving reliable footprints in the sand."

In addition to building partnerships with scholars in other parts of the world, the initiative will support joint research by Yale scholars and individuals in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The GCI will initially concentrate on four subjects, listed below with the scholars who are involved in the research:

* Technology, intellectual property and economic development: Robert Evenson, professor of economics and of environmental studies at Yale, and Ernest Aryeetey, professor of economics and director of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research at the University of Ghana, Legon;

* Migration and demography: Ranis and Winter at Yale; Michael Teitelbaum at the Sloan Foundation; and Rafael Fernandez de Castro at the Mexican Autonomous Institute of Technology, Mexico City;

* The WTO, regional trade and state sovereignty: T.N. Srinivasan, the Samuel C. Park Jr. Professor of Economics at Yale, and Rajiv Kumar, director of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations; and

* Global health: Jennifer Ruger, assistant professor of epidemiology and public health at Yale, and Nicoli Nattrass, professor of economics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Winter notes: "One of the fundamental features of this initiative is the way it brings together scholars working in adjacent fields and, through collective work and international exchanges, the way it enables their research to reflect viewpoints and developments in both North and South."

There will be four workshop/seminars at Yale and four workshop/seminars at partner institutions. A set of policy papers will be produced at the end of the initiative and presented at an international conference at Yale on the four themes.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, one of the nation's largest, with assets of more than $7.3 billion, makes grants to address the most serious social and environmental problems facing society. The foundation concentrates its resources on activities in education, environment, global development, performing arts and population.

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