Summer 2017 CARNEGIE REPORTER
Volume 9 / Number 1 Spring | Summer 2017 CARNEGIE REPORTER CARNEGIE REPORTER 1 WELCOME TO THE CARNEGIE REPORTER Fostering a Culture of Knowledge At the end of the Cold War, the promises of globalization seemed to offer a rosy picture of the near future. The actual lifting of borders (in Europe) and the virtual lifting of borders (via the Internet) would usher in a new period of free trade, open-source technology, unrestricted movement of peoples, economic prosperity, and the spread of democratic ideals worldwide. A quarter century later, though, some hard realities have emerged to challenge many aspects of this bold scenario. Today economic growth primarily benefits a small minority of the uber-wealthy, technology has facilitated the rise of hyper-individualism and extremism, and our politics are increasingly populist in nature. We live now in the era of Brexit, border walls, and, according to the founder of Twitter, an Internet that is “broken.” As Michael Ignatieff observes in these pages, what’s unfolding today is a “ferocious national and local and regional defense of particularity—language, culture, religion, faith—against the forces of globalization.” Can this reactionary impulse be reversed? Carnegie Corporation of New York is known largely for its support of research around education, democracy, and international peace and security, but a culture of knowledge cannot be built on facts alone. This core belief—that the advancement of understanding comes from deliberate scientific and critically humanistic endeavors—has historically been a linchpin of work supported by the Corporation. Perhaps a willingness to explore the world we live in more carefully (not to mention our own perceptions of that world) could provide an antidote to our age of anxiety and alienation? And so we dedicate this issue of the Carnegie Reporter to the goal of fostering a culture of knowledge in the Carnegie tradition.
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