I write this over the Atlantic, returning to Canada after a brief visit to Queen카지노 게임 컬렉션s Bader International Study Centre at Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex, England. The purpose of this trip was to extend my conversation about the future of Queen카지노 게임 컬렉션s to include our community there. While the centre may be geographically remote from Queen카지노 게임 컬렉션s main campus in Kingston, its mission is of central importance to our university. We can make no claim to greatness as an institution without deliberately and strategically orienting ourselves to global challenges, both in our research and in the way in which we prepare students to take their place in the world. Thanks to Alfred and Isabel Bader카지노 게임 컬렉션s vision 25 years ago, we are fortunate to have a toehold across the Atlantic, and it is critical that we use that advantage boldly to advance Queen카지노 게임 컬렉션s as a Canadian university with global impact. This imperative would not have been so apparent a decade ago, but today 카지노 게임 컬렉션 when, despite growing currents of nationalism, state and cultural boundaries are becoming irreversibly porous 카지노 게임 컬렉션 the local mission of higher education must be continuous with the global.
Whether we understand ourselves to be serving the world or addressing the needs of our immediate communities, universities are fundamentally optimistic places. We seek answers through research for the same reason we educate students: we aspire to make this a better world, socially, culturally, and environmentally, for all who inhabit it today and those who will inhabit it in the future. In that respect, the first weeks of 2020 have been trying indeed. In today카지노 게임 컬렉션s UK Times I notice that 카지노 게임 컬렉션The Last Word카지노 게임 컬렉션 has been given to the philosopher Bertrand Russell, who wrote in 1922 that 카지노 게임 컬렉션What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is its exact opposite.카지노 게임 컬렉션 In today카지노 게임 컬렉션s 카지노 게임 컬렉션post-truth카지노 게임 컬렉션 climate, that observation could not be more apposite. 카지노 게임 컬렉션The wish to find out카지노 게임 컬렉션 is the raison d카지노 게임 컬렉션être for institutions like ours, and around the world it is under threat as belief or mere opinion consorts increasingly with power.
The Tehran air tragedy was in many ways the product of an unthinking will to believe, on the part of soldiers on the ground as much as of national leaders. That so many of its victims were students or academics is a cruel irony, representing as they did not only the spirit of dispassionate inquiry but our hope for the future. The pain of that attack on the people and values of institutions like ours across Canada generally is incalculable, but in recent days Queen카지노 게임 컬렉션s has paused to take stock of the immediate loss to our community of Amir Moradi. Amir카지노 게임 컬렉션s death reminds us that the university is not isolated from geopolitical currents and that its optimistic, humane mission is not uncontested in the world at large. That is reason not to give up, but rather to strengthen our resolve to imagine and realize a future for Queen카지노 게임 컬렉션s with far-reaching impact on the well-being of people both close to home and around the world.