Archive for March/2011

Por Rafael Puyol, Professor of IE School of Arts & Humanities

Vivimos una etapa de intensa globalización en la que todo se interpreta en clave internacional. La formación, particularmente la terciaria, no escapa a esta consideración, pero ¿Qué significa internacionalizar la Educación Superior? El término se refiere a una serie de procesos que permiten a las Universidades superar los estrechos límites de las regiones o países donde se instalan e incorporarse a un mundo global de relaciones e intercambios. En particular, eso incluye favorecer la movilidad de todos los recursos humanos del sistema educativo principalmente de alumnos y profesores; compartir la formación de personas de diferentes estados; crear redes de investigación conjuntas; propiciar titulaciones comparables con estructuras de estudios semejantes; facilitar el reconocimiento de títulos entre países; o admitir los sistemas de acceso a la Universidad de unos países en otros.

En este sentido el Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior establecido en la famosa Declaración de Bolonia en 1999 es un claro ejemplo de internacionalización de la Educación Superior porque nace precisamente para promover la convergencia entre los sistemas universitarios nacionales a fin de que las titulaciones tengan un reconocimiento académico y sirvan para desempeñar la actividad profesional en cualquiera de los países que han firmado el acuerdo (actualmente 46).

Uno de los aspectos básicos de la internacionalización es la movilidad de los estudiantes, aunque a veces las que se mueven son las propias universidades, creando campus en otros países o rompiendo las barreras geográficas a través de la enseñanza “on line”.

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A few months ago, Steven Pinker of Harvard asked a smart question: What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?

The good folks at Edge.org organized a symposium, and 164 thinkers contributed suggestions. John McWhorter, a linguist at Columbia University, wrote that people should be more aware of path dependence. This refers to the notion that often “something that seems normal or inevitable today began with a choice that made sense at a particular time in the past, but survived despite the eclipse of the justification for that choice.”

For instance, typewriters used to jam if people typed too fast, so the manufacturers designed a keyboard that would slow typists. We no longer have typewriters, but we are stuck with the letter arrangements of the qwerty keyboard.

Path dependence explains many linguistic patterns and mental categories, McWhorter continues. Many people worry about the way e-mail seems to degrade writing skills. But there is nothing about e-mail that forbids people from using the literary style of 19th-century letter writers. In the 1960s, language became less formal, and now anybody who uses the old manner is regarded as an eccentric.

Evgeny Morozov, the author of “The Net Delusion,” nominated the Einstellung Effect, the idea that we often try to solve problems by using solutions that worked in the past instead of looking at each situation on its own terms. This effect is especially powerful in foreign affairs, where each new conflict is viewed through the prism of Vietnam or Munich or the cold war or Iraq.

Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University writes about the Focusing Illusion, which holds that “nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.” He continues: “Education is an important determinant of income — one of the most important — but it is less important than most people think. If everyone had the same education, the inequality of income would be reduced by less than 10 percent. When you focus on education you neglect the myriad of other factors that determine income. The differences of income among people who have the same education are huge.”

Continue reading in The New York Times

The IE-Brown International Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship on the Humanities is an annual opportunity open by IE School of Arts and Humanities to the Brown University post-graduate community in the field of humanities.  The fellowship offers the opportunity for young academics to further their development through designing and implementing their own curricular ideas in the international classroom setting of IE’s cross-disciplinary approach to humanities.

One fellowship will be awarded each year; s/he will receive research support from IE and spend one year in Spain at both of the School’s campuses in Segovia and Madrid.  The fellow will teach classes and contribute to the development of IE’s innovative humanities curriculum for the University and the Business School.

In addition, the fellow will have full academic support from Brown University and the opportunity to spend a month as a resident fellow at the Cogut Center for the Humanities on the Brown University campus.  The Center aims to encourage an interdisciplinary approach to scholarship, foster innovation in research, and promote intellectual conversation among individuals from the humanities and related academic disciplines.

Existing graduates expected to complete their PhD before the fellowship begins, and those who have received their post doctorate within the past three years, can apply directly with IE by December 2011.  The first fellowship will be awarded in the 2012-2013 academic year.

About Brown University

Brown University is located in the historic city of Providence, Rhode Island. It was founded in 1764, becoming the seventh-oldest college in the United States. Brown is an independent, coeducational Ivy League institution.  Today, it is a leading research university that offers about 140 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines.

Philip Roth has devoted his life to creating novels, but he’s pessimistic about their future.

“The book can’t compete with the screen,” Roth tells Tina Brown in this video, and even the Kindle won’t change that.

“It couldn’t compete beginning with the movie screen,” Roth says. “It couldn’t compete with the television screen, and it can’t compete with the computer screen.”

Photographer John Moore is no stranger to combat. As a member of an Associated Press team in 2005, he shared a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography for coverage of the war in Iraq and he’s done extended stints in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, South Africa, Mexico and Nicaragua and elsewhere in the last 20 years.

Yet despite his relative comfort with being on the frontlines, Moore told the NewsHour from his hotel room in Cairo that his latest assignment -a six-week trip that took him to the uprisings in Egypt, Bahrain and Libya – might have been his most dangerous. Moore recorded the interview for us after sneaking out of Benghazi, Libya en route back to his home in Denver.