From the Director
Dr. Teresa Longo, Associate Provost for International Affairs and Executive Director of the Reves Center for International Studies
World Minded Summer 2023 features writers, artists, journalists and scholars. It underscores their ties
to the university and points to the university's ties to the public. As staff at William & Mary's Reves Center added the final edits to this edition of the magazine, we came across an article in the New York Times about a university 5000 miles from ours in a country very much in the public eye. The piece, written by Valerie Hopkins '09, records the "bittersweet moment" when graduates of the class of 2023 at Mariupol State University in Kyiv received their diplomas; it speaks to the ways their university offered the graduates a sense of "moving toward something beyond the war." As a foreign correspondent working in Ukraine, Hopkins figures among the W&M alumni whose work in the world is notably influential. This edition of our magazine includes an in-depth Q&A with her.
In Fall 2022 the Reves Center partnered with the Law School's Human Security Law Center for a symposium on Freedom of the Press. The symposium brought together legal scholars, working journalists and media experts of international renown: Tikhon Dzyadko of TV Rain, Russia; American Documentary filmmaker, Rachel Grady; Martin Plaut, former South-African journalist and current senior research fellow at the University of London; Joel Simon, columnist for the Columbia Journalism Review; Haitian-born Carl-Philippe Juste, photojournalist for the Miami Herald; Natalie Southwick, Latin America and Caribbean program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists; and Christopher Tyree, senior director of the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism. They spoke about journalism as an institution and as a cornerstone in the constructive, even hopeful uplifting of democracy.
A complementary discussion, this time about the university as an uplifting institution, took place at the Reves Center when Amanda Barth, Assistant Dean for MBA Admissions, and Fabricio Prado, Associate Professor of History, joined me to share their ideas about their work. Barth noted that W&M's MBA cohort is 40% global and represents approximately 20 different countries. This means that students learn from each other, that they approach their work from multiple international perspectives every day. Prado's own perspective is that of a Brazilian student who pursued advanced studies in History, first in Argentina and then at Emory University. He now teaches the history of the Atlantic World to W&M students, and he travels with them to Brazil on study abroad. I asked them both to describe the work of the university, including their understanding of the term, global university. For Barth, it's a great equalizer; for Prado, a hot spot of cultural experiences.
As William & Mary becomes increasingly global, so do the ideas presented by faculty and staff like Fabricio Prado and Amanda Barth, by visiting international journalists and scholars, and by alumni working abroad. Is William & Mary a great equalizer, a hot spot of cultural exchange, a cornerstone of democracy? In this edition of World Minded, you may well find answers to these questions—in the account of our partnership with NATO on the 2023 NextGen Freedom and Security Summit; in the article on art, democracy and study abroad in Argentina; and in the memories of a Holocaust survivor whose history is but one degree of separation from Reves' founding story and the ideals we pursue today.
