In the classroom, I give students the tools to situate themselves within an interconnected world by cultivating empathy for distant others while also developing a new perspective on their own everyday lives.

I regard universities as refugia of the mind: they are meant to hold seed-banks of diverse ideas, preserved against unpredictable and unanticipated future needs. Accordingly, I see our duty as educators as not to drill students on a narrow vision of what they will need to flourish, but to equip them with a broad intellectual toolkit to face problems we haven’t yet discovered.

Thinking broadly without falling into a misleading “view from nowhere” is a habit of mind relevant to every student. Studying the world’s rich variety of regions and cultures builds a solid empirical base for thinking through the thorny questions that crowd the headlines. Students understand theory when theory helps answer the questions they already have.

Difficult dialogues about power and oppression are elemental to a university education, and I consider it my responsibility to manage those conversations in ways that are beneficial and avoid harm for all those involved. It is critical to handel these conversations in ways that lead not just towards understanding, but empathy. We must remain aware that what is a novel thought experiment for some students is a painful lived reality for others.

I believe that engagement with the world’s rich variety of cultures and environments instills a bone-deep awareness of the endless possibilities of human existence, developing an intellectual toolkit that students can apply to whatever problems their futures might bring. In any class I teach, I strive to engage students in a learning process that will continue far beyond the end of the term.