Friday, September 19, 2008--"Elective Cosmopolitanism"

There’s no surer sign that we are well into the semester than the dismay one feels when there’s more than one event happening on one night—or several in a single week—that are just too important to miss. This was one such week at Stonehill, and I attended two exceptional presentations. While the topics were very different indeed—one on “Globalization and the Cosmopolitanism of the Poor” and the other on Pope Benedict’s papacy and whether it presents a challenge to Catholic-Jewish dialogue—there was ultimately a confluence of ideas about diversity and its benefits that should speak powerfully to all of us.

The first event was the Monday night kickoff of the Martin Institute’s two-year theme of “Globalization.” Peter Ubertaccio, Director of the Martin Institute, hosted Professor Arjun Appadurai, Senior Advisor for Global Initiatives and John Dewey Professor of Social Sciences at The New School in New York. Appadurai, whose scholarship is regularly taught in a number of Stonehill courses, offered a compelling vision of cosmopolitanism that any undergraduate could see as relevant to her or his aspirations.

His address—beautifully introduced by Assistant Professor of English Scott Cohen—was called "Globalization and the Cosmopolitanism of the Poor." It would be hard to summarize the whole talk, but the part students might compare to their experience would go something like this: As an American student studying abroad, you engage in an "elective" cosmopolitan experience—an experience that stretches the boundaries of who you are and what you know. If you let yourself really encounter what you see in another part of the world, you might consider how the experiences of the poor are like and unlike yours. The poor achieve a kind of "compulsory" cosmopolitanism: they also have to stretch the boundaries of who they are and what they know just to meet their basic needs. In a place like Mumbai (where Appadurai conducts some of his research), this means that even the illiterate and unlettered have to be multi-lingual, multicultural, and politically savvy.

Appadurai researches pavement dwellers, ex-prostitutes, and displaced persons who have to know how to talk to different linguistic groups, different religious groups, the police, or the other groups or individuals who want their piece of pavement. He described three activist groups in India who are creating change in the area of housing—and they are sharing what they've learned with similar groups in different parts of the globe, like South Africa and Nepal. There's a real politics of hope, in Appadurai's estimation, in places that are also filled with despair.

Perhaps I was particularly tuned into Appadurai’s message because my oldest daughter is spending this semester in Senegal. Her blog entries and emails are filled with both the joys of experiencing a completely different culture and the challenges of encountering Dakar’s staggering poverty and suffering on a daily basis. She is fluent in French, but finds that there are many she can communicate with only as she improves her Wolof. And she’s discovering how much more difficult it is to feel “culturally competent” when there are very few experiences (such as good meals, environmental beauty, or other English speakers) to offset the sheer effort and “daily-ness” of her growing “cosmopolitanism.” Yet it’s clear that she wouldn’t trade her experience for a semester in Paris, though that, too, would be a cosmopolitan experience.

As more and more Stonehill students head to the developing world or to countries less-travelled by American students abroad (and this semester alone, I note we have students in South Africa, China, Brazil, Czech Republic, Russia, and other countries beyond Western Europe and Australia), we need to prepare them well for these experiences and also offer opportunities for reflection and integration of what they have learned after they return. This kind of curriculum integration may be the most important work we can do to ensure that our students are prepared to have their cosmopolitanism intersect with the cosmopolitanism of those they encounter in their travels—whether that’s study abroad, a H.O.P.E. trip, or a local volunteer opportunity—and to know how to put those encounters into a broader context.

The second event I attended this week was the annual James J. Kenneally lecture. Sponsored by the Catholic-Jewish Dialogue Committee and hosted by Kevin Spicer, C.S.C., Associate Professor of History, the lecture this year featured two scholars: Professor Ruth Langer of Boston College and Professor Philip Cunningham of St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. The topic was certainly not intended to connect to Prof. Appadurai’s view of cosmopolitanism, but there was a link nonetheless.

Professors Langer and Cunningham took up the question of why—after the tremendous (though occasionally bumpy) progress made by Pope John Paul II in Catholic-Jewish relations—Pope Benedict issued a motu proprio (a personal papal executive order) allowing the wider use of the "Latin Mass," in the form of the 1962 Latin Missal. The chief concern about this missal is that it contains prayers—in the Good Friday rite—that are offensive to those of some other faiths.

While the 1962 missal does not include the most objectionable language calling Jews “perfidious” (this was eliminated in 1959), it does use language that seems out of keeping with Nostra Aetate (1965), the Catholic Church’s official statement on the Church’s relations with non-Christians: “Almighty and everlasting God, You do not refuse Your mercy even to the Jews; hear the prayers which we offer for the blindness of that people so that they may acknowledge the light of Your truth, which is Christ, and be delivered from their darkness” (emphasis mine). Moreover, the Missal also contains a prayer “For the conversion of pagans [Infidelium]” which cannot help advance the Church’s relations with Islam.

For Stonehill students—indeed for the whole community, regardless of their religious affiliations—this was another call to cosmopolitanism. It was a reminder that while Pope Benedict's action creates some confusion related to the Catholic Church's relations with other faiths, official Catholic teaching in Nostra Aetate stresses the religious bond and spiritual legacy shared by Judaism and Christianity and affirms that God and Jews abide in covenant. Nostra Aetate also makes explicit statements about commonalities between Islam and Christianity and honors philosophical answers provided by other world religions. And, of course, Judaism, Islam, and other traditions all have their own perspectives on these interfaith relations. Both Stonehill's overall curriculum and an interfaith dialogue such as the one we sponsor should promote understanding and respect across all these traditions.

So, we needn’t leave campus to expand the boundaries of who we are and what we know. Indeed, these two events provided a wonderful reminder of what exposure—at home and abroad—to a diversity of persons and ideas can do to widen our perspectives and to enhance our cosmopolitan frameworks for living. Thank you for your work to encourage our students to take advantage of all these opportunities.

Best regards,

Katie