In a congratulatory note written to the graduating cohort, Tom Fingar, the Shorenstein Fellow at the Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), similarly encouraged the students to lean into the unique perspective they’ve gained from their experiences during this year.

“This year was extraordinary in many ways, but the disruptions and coping mechanisms of the COVID pandemic may be more indicative of the world you will inherit than the one we are leaving behind. Discovering new ways to do normal things has prepared you for whatever comes next as well as or better than any other experiences and accomplishments might have. Go forth with confidence that you are ready for whatever lies ahead.”

For most of the MIP graduates, what lies ahead are careers in government, the military, technology, clean energy, law, diplomacy, and research which will take them afield to Washington D.C., New York, Los Angeles, Texas, Florida, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Belgium, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates in the coming months. For some, there are a few more years of school as they work to complete joint degrees in additional areas of policy and governance.

For all, the shared experiences of the last fifteen months have created a unique bond. Corie Wieland, a graduating second-year student and the president of the International Policy Student Association, affirmed to her fellow graduates that, “Whether in one month, one year, or ten years, all of us will always be merely a Zoom call or group chat away. No matter the time zone or the country, our friendships have already proven true.”

That commitment and gratitude to the MIP community is shared throughout the Class of ‘21. Anna Nguyen Yip, a specialist in cyber policy and security, says that despite the upheaval of the past year, she feels prepared to move out of the classroom and into the world. 

“As I am graduating from Stanford, I am more confident than ever to embark on the next chapter of my career,” said Nguyen Yip. "This has been the perfect opportunity to combine my passions in education, frontier technologies, and public policy. I will be eternally grateful for the amazing experience I had at MIP.”

Carson is mindful of the unique arc of his academic and personal life. "I grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico where we were one of only three Black families. What I knew about Black America was mainly what I read in the newspapers. I read about these heroic figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Bob Moses, Diane Nash, and John Lewis, and I wanted to be like them. I went to the March on Washington as a nineteen-year-old and watched and listened to what these leaders were working to accomplish. One of the remarkable things about my life is that I've been able to meet and get to know so many of the people who spoke or performed at the march or were on the speaker's platform at the Lincoln Memorial."

Dr. Carson is currently completing his final year as the director of the King Institute, afterwhich he will continue his research and teaching at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

As Carson looks towards the future, he's appreciative of the opportunities ahead. "I’m still excited about the idea of exploring little known aspects of African-American history, so that should be good preparation for studying largely forgotten 'cold cases,'" he says.

This interview by Melissa De Witte originally appeared in Stanford News.

The upcoming summit between President Joe Biden and President Vladimir Putin is not rewarding the Russian leader for his bad behavior: It’s opening negotiations and delivering a warning to him instead, says Stanford scholar Kathryn Stoner.

Here, Stoner is joined by Stanford political scientist and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, Payne Distinguished Lecturer at CISAC and former Deputy Secretary General of NATO Rose Gottemoeller and Russia historian Norman Naimark to discuss what to expect at the summit in Geneva on Wednesday.

The meeting, the scholars say, could reset U.S.-Russia relations, signal deterrence on certain issues – including cybersecurity in light of attacks like the SolarWinds breach that the U.S. has blamed on the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service – and launch strategic stability talks related to nuclear weapons.

Interviews have been edited for length and clarity. For more information on what to expect about the Biden-Putin summit from FSI scholars, visit the FSI website.

Where does diplomacy now stand between the U.S. and Russia?

Naimark: Russian-American relations are at their lowest point since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, perhaps even since the last years of Gorbachev’s rule. When relations are fraying between the world’s two most powerful nuclear powers, the coming of the summit on June 16 between President Biden and President Putin should be welcomed. It’s worth recalling the heightened military tensions just three months ago between Moscow and Washington, when Moscow moved tens of thousands of troops to the Ukrainian border and mobilized its air and sea power in the region. Both leaders have emphasized that they seek stability, reliability and predictability in their bilateral relations; at the same time, their respective administrations have warned that expectations should be kept at the minimum for any kind of serious breakthrough at the summit.

Stoner: We’ve lost a lot of leverage because of the withdrawal from global politics that started under the latter part of the Obama administration and continued with Trump with his America First platform, which meant America alone. There is some leverage, it’s just how much. We don’t necessarily want to destabilize Russia because it’s a big, complicated country with nuclear weapons, but all signs point to Putin staying in office until 2036. He’s not going away. I think we have to try to signal deterrence on certain issues, like trying to move into another former Soviet republic as he is doing with Ukraine, Georgia and potentially Belarus, but then cooperate in other areas where it is productive to do so.

What do you think about some of the criticisms toward Biden meeting with Putin? For example, that Biden meeting with Putin is only rewarding him for his bad behavior.

Stoner: There is a reasonable question about why Biden and Putin are meeting and if it is somehow rewarding Putin for bad behavior by having a summit with the President of the United States. Rather than rewarding Putin, however, I think this meeting could be Biden’s warning to him that if hacking and other cyberattacks continue, we have a menu of things we could do as well.

Naimark: There is no reason that the American president cannot talk about difficult subjects like cybersecurity, ransomware attacks, human rights, the release of Alexei Navalny, the protection of Ukrainian sovereignty and other important items on the American agenda while focusing on issues of mutual interest: the future of arms control, global warming and the regulation of the Arctic, and outer space. One can always hope that, like the last summit on Lake Geneva between Russian and American leaders [Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan] in November 1985, this one can lay the groundwork for serious improvements in relations in the near future.

Is this meeting a reset of diplomatic relations between the two nations?

Stoner: I know in Washington it is popular to say that Biden is not having a reset of relations with Russia when past presidents all have tried that. I think that’s wrong. I do think it is a reset in the relationship in that there should be more clarity and stability, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be friendly and universally cooperative, given that we still see many differences in perspectives and some antagonism too. Still, Russia and the U.S. need to talk because there are a lot of issues in common where it would be helpful to coordinate with Russia. After all, even in the depths of the Cold War, the leaders of both countries still talked. Russia has reestablished itself as the most formidable power in Europe and it looks like Biden is acknowledging that and the fact that the U.S. can no longer afford to ignore Russia.

Is there anything the two leaders will be able to agree upon?

McFaul: I used to organize these kinds of meetings when I worked in the government and back when President Medvedev was there. We would have these meetings as a way to force our governments to produce what is called in State Department-speak “deliverables.” We didn’t have meetings to have them, we wanted to get things done. In the first Obama-Medvedev meeting we had a long list of deliverables when they met in July of 2009.

But there is no way that will happen with Putin today because he doesn’t really want to cooperate, he doesn’t really want deliverables. That’s challenging for President Biden, I think, because he has said that he wants a stable, predictable relationship with Putin. I think that’s fine to aspire to, but I don’t think Putin is that interested in that kind of relationship, so that creates a challenge of substance for summits like this.

Gottemoeller: With such different threat perceptions, the two presidents are not going to agree in Geneva about what should go into the next nuclear treaty. They can agree, though, to put their experts together to hammer it out. They can also agree to put the two sides together to tackle the different threat perceptions and the question of what stability means. Finally, they can agree to a deadline, so the talks don’t stall. It won’t be a headline-grabbing outcome, but at least Moscow and Washington will get moving again on the nuclear agenda.

Where can Biden make progress?

McFaul: I think the most likely place to make progress is to launch strategic stability talks, which is an abstract phrase for beginning the process of negotiations about nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles that would be a follow-on to the New START treaty. Biden and Putin rightfully extended the New START treaty early in his term for five years, and I think that was very smart. I personally worked on that treaty, so I think it’s a good treaty and deserves to be extended. But it’s going to run out really fast because the next set of negotiations are going to be much more complicated. I hope they would start some process to begin those negotiations now.

Gottemoeller: Maybe the only place where President Biden can make progress with Vladimir Putin in Geneva is the nuclear agenda with Russia. Since the two men agreed, in February, to extend the New START treaty by five years, they have put out a clear public message that they intend to pursue a deal to replace New START and to launch strategic stability talks. They are not going to have identical ideas, however, about what those two goals mean.

Biden wants a new arms control deal that will control all nuclear warheads, whether launched on intercontinental strategic-range missiles or on shorter-range systems. He also wants to get a handle on some of the new types of nuclear weapons that the Russians have been developing. One new system, for example, uses nuclear propulsion to ensure that it can fly for many hours at great speed over long distances, earning it the moniker “weapon of vengeance.” These exotic weapons did not exist when New START was negotiated; now, they need to be controlled.

Putin, by contrast, focuses on U.S. long-range conventional missiles that he worries are capable of the accuracy and destructive power of nuclear weapons. The United States, in his view, could use these conventional weapons to destroy hard targets such as the Moscow nuclear command center. He also worries that the United States is producing ever more capable ways to intercept his nuclear missiles and destroy them before they reach their targets. In his worst nightmare, the United States undermines his nuclear deterrent forces without ever resorting to nuclear weapons.

What advice do you have for Biden?

McFaul: One, do not have a one-on-one meeting – just have a normal meeting. Two, I would recommend not having a joint press conference that just gives Putin a podium for the world to say his “whataboutism” stuff; it’s better to have separate press conferences because most of the world will be more interested in what Biden says compared to what Putin says.

Third, I think it’s important to cooperate when you can but also be clear about your differences and don’t pull punches on that. In particular, I want Biden to talk about Alexei Navalny, the Americans who are wrongly detained in Russia today, Crimea still being occupied, Russian proxies in eastern Ukraine, and parts of Georgia that are under occupation. They have been attacking us relentlessly with these cyberattacks, these Russian criminals who in my view have to have some association with the Russian government.

That’s a tough list, but I think it’s really important for President Biden to say those things directly to Putin. I have confidence that he can. I was at their last meeting. I traveled with the vice president in 2011 when he met with then Prime Minister Putin. Biden is capable of delivering tough messages and I hope he uses this occasion to do so again.

What would be a sign that their meeting was productive?

Stoner: One sign the meeting was productive would be if Biden and Putin could agree to establish a joint committee or council on some rules surrounding cybersecurity. Another would be if they make plans to talk again about either replacing or reviving the Minsk-2 agreement [that sought to bring an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine]. And three, a positive sign would be if they plan to do some negotiation on further reducing tactical nuclear weapons or strategic nuclear weapons. An agreement to disagree on some issues, but to continue talking on others would be indicative of at least some small progress.

In collaboration with Global:SF and the State of California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, the China Program at Shorenstein APARC presented session five of the New Economy Conference, "Navigating Chinese Investment, Trade, and Technology," on May 19. The program featured distinguished speakers Ambassador Craig Allen, President of the US-China Business Council; David K. Cheng, Chair and Managing Partner of China & Asia Pacific Practice at Nixon Peabody LLP; James Green, Senior Research Fellow at the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University; and Anja Manuel, Co-Founder and Principal of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC. The session was opened by Darlene Chiu Bryant, Executive Director of GlobalSF, and moderated by Professor Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics and director of the APARC China Program.

U.S.-China economic relations have grown increasingly fraught and competitive. Even amidst intensifying tensions, however, our two major economies remain intertwined. While keeping alert to national security concerns, the economic strength of the United States will depend on brokering a productive competition with China, the world’s fastest growing economy. Precipitous decoupling of trade, investment, and human talent flows between the two nations will inflict unnecessary harm to U.S. economic interests--and those of California.  

Chinese trade and investments into California have grown exponentially over the last decade. But they have come under increasing pressure following geopolitical and economic tensions between the two nations, particularly in the science and technology sectors. Ambassador Craig Allen, David Cheng, James Green, and Anja Manuel explored the role of Chinese economic activity in California in the context of the greater US-Chinese relationship. Watch now: 

The New START Treaty

The New START Treaty, which was formalized in 2010, and builds on prior agreements put in place through the 1970s and 80s to actively reduce and limit the number of strategic nuclear weapons. The first START treaty in 1994 reduced the number of deployed nuclear warheads in the United States and Russia from 12,000 to 6,000 each. In 2002, that number was reduced further to around 2,200 weapons each through agreements in the Moscow Treaty. The New START Treaty Gottemoeller negotiated dropped that number again to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads.

This 30 percent overall reduction in nuclear armaments has brought deployed Russian and U.S. warheads to their smallest numbers since the nuclear age began.

“It’s really a challenge to actually do things in government,” emphasizes McFaul. “It’s easy to be something or someone, but to do anything, you have to be able to engage with another partner somewhere in the world. In Rose’s case, she had to engage with one of the toughest partners in the world: the Russian Federation.”

Doing vs. Being

How was Gottemoeller able to accomplish what she and her team did? Coming as an outsider to the Obama campaign and government, the initial months of contacting relevant people in the Department of State and working through the confirmation process were grueling, particularly with the added pressure of the looming deadline for the end of the first START treaty.

“That early pressure was absolutely vital for the ultimate success of the New START treaty,” says Gottemoeller. “These kinds of treaties usually take years to negotiate, but we only had from April to December of that year.”

With such a tight schedule, focus and drive were vital for moving the negotiations forward on time. Based on a clear directive from Presidents Obama and Medvedev, Gottemoeller knew the negotiations were to focus only on reducing strategic offensive armaments. The drive came from the perseverance and professionalism between her team and their Russian counterparts.

“When any negotiation starts, there’s a dance that goes on as the chief negotiators and the heads of the working groups establish their rhythm and get to know each others’ style. There were definitely rough patches, but overall we were able to establish good working relationships with everyone we needed to.”

In establishing this rapport, Gottemoeller’s prior affiliations with the Russian head negotiator, Anatoly Antonov, and her ability to speak directly with him in the Russian language were invaluable, particularly given Gottemoeller’s unique position as the first woman ever to negotiate a nuclear arms deal with the Russian Federation.    

“By the time [Antonov] and I got to the endgame negotiations, we’d developed this motto of ‘мы исправим это,’ or, ‘We’ll fix it.’ By having that mindset, we were able to figure it out, even with our personal differences,” Gottemoeller explains.

Ultimately, she and her team delivered a crucial piece of diplomacy in record time despite the setbacks. “I handed over the final papers on my birthday,” she remembers. “So, it was a personal day of celebration as well as a professional one.”

Advice for Future Negotiators

For upcoming graduates and young people looking to Gottemoeller and her incredible diplomatic career as an inspiration, she gives this encouragement:

“Negotiating about nuclear weapons is not rocket science. You become a good negotiator through your everyday living. It’s part of our natural life and natural living. Don’t let it overwhelm you just because you happen to be dealing with nuclear weapons. It’s still just about meeting interests and crafting compromises in order to achieve your goals.”

It’s a sentiment Director Michael McFaul quickly echoed as he reaffirmed the invaluable work Rose Gottemoeller has contributed both diplomatically and to the future of foreign policy.

“In academia, the literature is thin on the actual practice of diplomacy,” admits McFaul. “But Rose has done a great service to educating future diplomats and future negotiators. We need to be able to learn from case studies like this from the past so we can continue to achieve these kinds of things in the future.”

The California Department of Education adopted the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum last March. Chapter 3 of the Model Curriculum includes a section on “Native American Studies.”

On June 18, 2021, SPICE will host a panel of three Native and Indigenous scholars to reflect on California’s new model curriculum and the state of ethnic studies in their respective regions. The panel will include Navajo, Native Hawaiian, and Ainu educators who will provide a range of educational perspectives on Native and Indigenous studies in the United States and Japan.

• Dr. Harold Begay, Superintendent of Schools, Navajo Nation
• Dr. Sachi Edwards, Faculty Member at Soka University in Tokyo, Japan
• Dr. Ronda Māpuana Shizuko Hayashi-Simpliciano, Vice Principal, Ke Kula Kaiapuni ʻo Ānuenue, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi

The webinar, titled “Indigenous Voices: Educational Perspectives from Navajo, Native Hawaiian, and Ainu Scholars in the Diaspora,” will address several additional topics, such as the various academic field names of the study of Native and Indigenous people, the complexity and diversity of Native and Indigenous people’s experiences, and recommended resources for K–12 educators.

These topics are not only relevant to teachers in California but to educators in other states as well. K–12 educators and administrators are encouraged to attend. Register in advance at https://bit.ly/3z4kxtc.

This webinar is a joint collaboration with the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA) and the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University.

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This interview by Bruce Goldman was originally published by the Stanford School of Medicine.

On May 13, the journal Science published a letter, signed by 18 scientists, stating that it was still unclear whether the virus that causes COVID-19 emerged naturally or was the result of a laboratory accident, but that neither cause could be ruled out. David Relman, MD, the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor and professor of microbiology and immunology, spearheaded the effort.

Relman is no stranger to complicated microbial threat scenarios and illness of unclear origin. He has advised the U.S. government on emerging infectious diseases and potential biological threats. He served as vice chair of a National Academy of Sciences committee reviewing the FBI investigation of letters containing anthrax that were sent in 2001. Recently, he chaired another academy committee that assessed a cluster of poorly explained illnesses in U.S. embassy employees. He is a past president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Stanford Medicine science writer Bruce Goldman asked Relman to explain what remains unknown about the coronavirus’s emergence, what we may learn and what’s at stake.

1. How might SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, have first infected humans?

Relman: We know very little about its origins. The virus’s closest known relatives were discovered in bats in Yunnan Province, China, yet the first known cases of COVID-19 were detected in Wuhan, about 1,000 miles away.

There are two general scenarios by which this virus could have made the jump to humans. First, the jump, or “spillover,” might have happened directly from an animal to a human, by means of an encounter that took place within, say, a bat-inhabited cave or mine, or closer to human dwellings — say, at an animal market. Or it could have happened indirectly, through a human encounter with some other animal to which the primary host, presumably a bat, had transmitted the virus.

Bats and other potential SARS-CoV-2 hosts are known to be shipped across China, including to Wuhan. But if there were any infected animals near or in Wuhan, they haven’t been publicly identified.

Maybe someone became infected after contact with an infected animal in or near Yunnan, and moved on to Wuhan. But then, because of the high transmissibility of this virus, you’d have expected to see other infected people at or near the site of this initial encounter, whether through similar animal exposure or because of transmission from this person.

2. What’s the other scenario?

Relman: SARS-CoV-2 could have spent some time in a laboratory before encountering humans. We know that some of the largest collections of bat coronaviruses in the world — and a vigorous research program involving the creation of “chimeric” bat coronaviruses by integrating unfamiliar coronavirus genomic sequences into other, known coronaviruses — are located in downtown Wuhan. And we know that laboratory accidents happen everywhere there are laboratories.

All scientists need to acknowledge a simple fact: Humans are fallible, and laboratory accidents happen — far more often than we care to admit. Several years ago, an investigative reporter uncovered evidence of hundreds of lab accidents across the United States involving dangerous, disease-causing microbes in academic institutions and government centers of excellence alike — including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.

SARS-CoV-2 might have been lurking in a sample collected from a bat or other infected animal, brought to a laboratory, perhaps stored in a freezer, then propagated in the laboratory as part of an effort to resurrect and study bat-associated viruses. The materials might have been discarded as a failed experiment. Or SARS-CoV-2 could have been created through commonly used laboratory techniques to study novel viruses, starting with closely related coronaviruses that have not yet been revealed to the public. Either way, SARS-CoV-2 could have easily infected an unsuspecting lab worker and then caused a mild or asymptomatic infection that was carried out of the laboratory.

3. Why is it important to understand SARS-CoV-2’s origins?

Relman: Some argue that we would be best served by focusing on countering the dire impacts of the pandemic and not diverting resources to ascertaining its origins. I agree that addressing the pandemic’s calamitous effects deserves high priority. But it’s possible and important for us to pursue both. Greater clarity about the origins will help guide efforts to prevent a next pandemic. Such prevention efforts would look very different depending on which of these scenarios proves to be the most likely.

Evidence favoring a natural spillover should prompt a wide variety of measures to minimize human contact with high-risk animal hosts. Evidence favoring a laboratory spillover should prompt intensified review and oversight of high-risk laboratory work and should strengthen efforts to improve laboratory safety. Both kinds of risk-mitigation efforts will be resource intensive, so it’s worth knowing which scenario is most likely.

4. What attempts at investigating SARS-CoV-2’s origin have been made so far, with what outcomes?

Relman: There’s a glaring paucity of data. The SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence, and those of a handful of not-so-closely-related bat coronaviruses, have been analyzed ad nauseam. But the near ancestors of SARS-CoV-2 remain missing in action. Absent that knowledge, it’s impossible to discern the origins of this virus from its genome sequence alone. SARS-CoV-2 hasn’t been reliably detected anywhere prior to the first reported cases of disease in humans in Wuhan at the end of 2019. The whole enterprise has been made even more difficult by the Chinese national authorities’ efforts to control and limit the release of public health records and data pertaining to laboratory research on coronaviruses.

In mid-2020, the World Health Organization organized an investigation into the origins of COVID-19, resulting in a fact-finding trip to Wuhan in January 2021. But the terms of reference laying out the purposes and structure of the visit made no mention of a possible laboratory-based scenario. Each investigating team member had to be individually approved by the Chinese government. And much of the data the investigators got to see was selected prior to the visit and aggregated and presented to the team by their hosts.

The recently released final report from the WHO concluded — despite the absence of dispositive evidence for either scenario — that a natural origin was “likely to very likely” and a laboratory accident “extremely unlikely.” The report dedicated only 4 of its 313 pages to the possibility of a laboratory scenario, much of it under a header entitled “conspiracy theories.” Multiple statements by one of the investigators lambasted any discussion of a laboratory origin as the work of dark conspiracy theorists. (Notably, that investigator — the only American selected to be on the team — has a pronounced conflict of interest.)

Given all this, it’s tough to give this WHO report much credibility. Its lack of objectivity and its failure to follow basic principles of scientific investigation are troubling. Fortunately, WHO’s director-general recognizes some of the shortcomings of the WHO effort and has called for a more robust investigation, as have the governments of the United States, 13 other countries and the European Union.

5. What’s key to an effective investigation of the virus’s origins?

Relman: A credible investigation should address all plausible scenarios in a deliberate manner, involve a wide variety of expertise and disciplines and follow the evidence. In order to critically evaluate other scientists’ conclusions, we must demand their original primary data and the exact methods they used — regardless of how we feel about the topic or about those whose conclusions we seek to assess. Prior assumptions or beliefs, in the absence of supporting evidence, must be set aside.

Investigators should not have any significant conflicts of interest in the outcome of the investigation, such as standing to gain or lose anything of value should the evidence point to any particular scenario.

There are myriad possible sources of valuable data and information, some of them still preserved and protected, that could make greater clarity about the origins feasible. For all of these forms of data and information, one needs proof of place and time of origin, and proof of provenance.

To understand the place and time of the first human cases, we need original records from clinical care facilities and public health institutions as well as archived clinical laboratory data and leftover clinical samples on which new analyses can be performed. One might expect to find samples of wildlife, records of animal die-offs and supply-chain documents.

Efforts to explore possible laboratory origins will require that all laboratories known to be working on coronaviruses, or collecting relevant animal or clinical samples, provide original records of experimental work, internal communications, all forms of data — especially all genetic-sequence data — and all viruses, both natural and recombinant. One might expect to find archived sequence databases and laboratory records.

Needless to say, the politicized nature of the origins issue will make a proper investigation very difficult to pull off. But this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try our best. Scientists are inquisitive, capable, clever, determined when motivated, and inclined to share their insights and findings. This should not be a finger-pointing exercise, nor an indictment of one country or an abdication of the important mission to discover biological threats in nature before they cause harm. Scientists are also committed to the pursuit of truth and knowledge. If we have the will, we can and will learn much more about where and how this pandemic arose.  

On Saturday, May 22, 2021, Stanford Global Studies (SGS) hosted the 2021 Education Partnership for Internationalizing Curriculum (EPIC) Symposium which featured presentations by the 12 2020–21 EPIC Fellows. SPICE along with the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis are SGS’s EPIC partners. Jonas Edman worked with six of the EPIC Fellows during the academic year as they sought to increase the international, intercultural, and global dimensions in their curriculum.

During the EPIC Symposium, Edman moderated two panels that featured the following six instructors. The “pitches” for their talks can be found here.

Panel One

• Sravani Banerjee, Evergreen Valley College, San Jose, California; “Incorporating Social Justice and Global Issues in Freshman Composition”
• Maiya Evans, Skyline College, San Bruno, California; “Reimagining Public Health: Expanding the Borders of Public Health Curriculum”
• Joanna Sobala, Mission College, Santa Clara, California; “Women and Feminism in the World”
   

Panel Two

• Julia diLiberti, College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, Illinois; “The Need for Globalizing Curriculum Post Pandemic”
• Melissa King, San Bernadino Valley College, San Bernadino, California; “Defining Moments in Global Studies Education”
• Rebecca Nieman, San Diego Mesa College, San Diego, California; “Internationalizing Business Law Curriculum in Community Colleges Through Experiential Learning Activities”

The EPIC Fellows not only conceptualized and developed ways to globalize their curriculum through the incorporation of new subject matter knowledge but also carefully considered the importance of pedagogical content knowledge, which was popularized by Stanford scholar Lee Shulman. Shulman argued that subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge—teachers’ interpretations and transformations of subject-matter knowledge in the context of facilitating student learning—should not be treated as mutually exclusive. Edman commented, “While moderating the two panels, I was struck by how each embraced this notion.”

In panel one, Banerjee introduced her project, which focused on incorporating social justice and global issues in freshman composition, and spoke about how her thematic units on topics like human rights not only introduced students to subject matter knowledge such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also engaged them in an inquiry-based learning pedagogical approach. Similarly, Sobala described how she internationalized her social justice course by including the critical viewing of documentaries that focus on women from around the world among her pedagogical approaches. Evans introduced her Reimaging Public Health Roundtable Series, which invites students to reshape and rethink approaches to health and health care in the United States by borrowing from public health methodologies from other countries. She not only introduced students to topics like international perspectives on mental health (including stigma) but also spoke about how she engaged students in creating podcasts as a pedagogical approach.

In panel two, King described her project, which crystalized around the question, “How can San Bernadino Valley College students learn about the world from a different perspective?” Her project engaged students with a podcast that she created called “Within a Grain of Sand” and focused on topics such as migration and refugees as she sought to encourage her students to seek connections between the local and global. Nieman and diLiberti focused their projects on faculty professional development. For Nieman, she challenged faculty to think about how to teach an unfamiliar topic, which happens to be a learning objective of the course, to students. She recommended the engagement of students in experiential learning activities as she internationalized her law courses in areas such as tort law, dispute resolution, and corporate governance. diLiberti developed an eight-week professional development course that has the goal of having the participants gain a more concrete understanding of globalization in tangible ways. As an example, she recommended the use of narrative maps, which she learned from EPIC guest speaker Professor Kären Wigen, as a pedagogical tool.

During the question-and-answer period, 2018–19 EPIC Fellow Dave Dillon, Grossmont College, El Cajon, California, asked how the projects of the 2020–21 EPIC Fellows evolved especially given the pandemic. Evans and Sobala noted that they felt the need to keep strict parameters around the scope of their EPIC projects, and throughout the 2020–21 EPIC Program, the EPIC Fellows expressed the challenges they faced as they transitioned to teaching online. After the Symposium, Edman commented, “despite the enormous challenges that the pandemic posed to the EPIC Fellows, they produced very engaging and meaningful globally focused projects that had direct outcomes on faculty and students, and will continue to have an impact in the years to come.” Edman was especially struck by a comment from one of King’s students who commented on a lesson on refugees: “… I was very unaware of the global refugee situation, and still feel like I do not understand the entire scope of it… when doing more research for the assignment, I found a refugee resettlement tracker that actually showed me how many refugees had resettled in my area historically… That was something I had not previously considered, and the questions asking what my community is doing to help refugees and immigrants really made me think about this issue and how much more there is that we can do at a community level.”

After hearing this student reflection, Edman commented that “perhaps a silver lining to the pandemic is that students began to vividly see the connection between the local and global not only in terms of health but also in other areas that the EPIC Fellows touched upon… for example, refugees, climate, hunger, feminism, immigration, and law as well.”

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