Comments by Des Gasper
International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague
1
Thoughts on challenges
faced in using insights
from Martha
Nussbaum’s
‘Cultivating
Humanity’, to make
universities more a
part of the solution
rather than a part of
the problem of
environmental
unsustainability
 Remarks at a panel
session / public
discussion at ISS, The
Hague, on:
 Education in the global
context: an exercise in
building empathy and
sympathy,
understanding and
concern
 led by Martha Nussbaum
 June 27, 2013
Why the university is a crucial institution
2
1. Preparing agents of social change:- young
professionals, intellectuals & future leaders
2. Providing a space for creative thinking that is
not closely controlled by powers-that-be
3. Adding rigorous critical thinking that builds on
historical traditions of understanding.
4. Offering a cosmopolitan space, a space for
‘universal learning’ and universal exchange,
that (potentially) broadens minds and hearts
Questions about How  Study of experiments
1.
How to convert such ideals
(of broad sympathies, etc.)
into viable courses,
programs & universities?
(Ideas in Cultivating Humanity)
2.
How to counterbalance the
idea of universities as only
businesses / the HRD units
of a national BV/PLC/
corporation? (Ideas in ‘Not
for Profit’)
3.
How to counter narrow &
inward university
disciplinarity?
3
One metaphor for academic disciplinarity
4
University disciplinarity in relation to
environmental sustainability
5
 Disciplinarity in universities has strengths, but also
basic weaknesses in understanding wider
interconnections
 Three key aspects for sustainability
strengthening of holistic perspective: inter- and transdisciplinarity. This is important also for #2 and #3.
2. strengthening of global/world perspective
3. strengthening of long-term perspective.
1.
 Disciplinarity’s weaknesses for promoting awareness
of environmental (un)sustainability and for
contributing to effective, just & equitable responses

A symptom of the limited contribution of the
university in relation to human sustainability
The index of the 730
page Oxford Handbook
of Climate Change and
Society (2011) contains
zero entries for
‘university’.
Are universities perfect,
or perfectly useless ?
6
Two more metaphors for mono-disciplinarity
R. Land & J. Meyer, 2010, Threshold Concepts & Interdisciplinarity (ppt presentation for 3rd
International Threshold Concepts Symposium; Sydney)
Only one viewing-method
Angry one-eyed giants
But a warning from George Bernard Shaw
8
‘If you teach a man anything
he will never learn it’
 A pedagogy based on the principles of
the Cyclops- or cactus-university may
not be useful for the ideals of: broad
sympathies, creative thinking, respect
for interconnections, … So: how?
  Need to innovate and share ideas
The importance of story-telling (and -listening):
thinking with and about stories
 Story-telling helps to promote what Nussbaum has
called ‘the narrative imagination’ = the ability to
think what it might be like to be another person,
different from oneself
 Stories show local specifics understanding local dynamics
 Stories show important interactions, not only ones we can




model ; including pregnant combinations ‘Black Swans’
(Nassim Taleb): low-probability high-impact conjunctures
Stories show emotions as well as calculations
Stories engage and educate our emotions; listening to
other people’s stories  recognition as respect-worthy
Scenarios thinking provides one relevant channel
Human security analysis is another
9
We need more study & sharing of options and
experiments in university education
10
One recent example:
Human Development
and Capabilities:
Re-imagining the
University of the TwentyFirst Century
 Eds. Alejandra Boni &
Melanie Walker
 Routledge, 2013
 Covers ‘South’ and ‘North’
 Both young & old authors
 Theory, policy, & 7 case studies
on reorienting pedagogy
Some references
11
 Nussbaum, Martha C., 1997. Cultivating Humanity – A
classical defence of reform in liberal education. Cambridge
MA: Harvard University Press.
 Frodeman, R.; Klein, J.T.; Mitcham, C., eds. 2010. The
Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity. New York: Oxford
University Press.
 Dryzek, J.; Norgaard, R.; Schlosberg, D., eds. 2011. The
Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society. New
York: Oxford University Press.
 Gasper, D. 2013. Climate Change and the Language of
Human Security. Ethics, Policy and Environment. 16(1),
pp. 56-78.