D.C. conference to explore a global, humanist education

The Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) will highlight its commitment to international education with a conference honoring International Education Week in Washington, D.C., March 8-13. “Ubuntu! Imagining a Humanist Education Globally” is co-sponsored by Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences, the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

“The conference will offer the space for deliberation of cutting-edge research addressing theoretical, empirical and practical questions in imagining a transformative Ubuntu-inspired education that is empowering for all humanity,” says conference director N'Dri Thérèse Assié-Lumumba, CIES president-elect and Cornell professor of African/Diaspora education at the Africana Studies and Research Center. Assié-Lumumba will assume the CIES presidency at the conference. Joan Oviawe, visiting scholar in the Africana Center, is conference planning chair.

“Ubuntu” is a Nguni Bantu term for “the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity.” The conference imagines a future where education is a moral enterprise that defines the world as a complex whole, interconnected and interdependent.

Cornell speakers include Gretchen Ritter, the Harold Tanner Dean of Arts and Sciences, and Risa L. Lieberwitz, professor of labor and employment law.

The CIES annual conference is devoted to the intellectual exchange of cutting-edge research that reflects the breadth, depth and quality of work in of education. Participants include educators, researchers, policymakers, practitioners, representatives of international organizations, local and global nongovernmental organizations.

CIES is the professional society on education in its comparative and international dimensions, bringing together noted scholars from North America and around the world. It was founded in 1956 to foster cross-cultural understanding, scholarship, academic achievement and societal development through the international study of educational ideas, systems and practices. Its membership includes more than 2,500 academics, practitioners and students, and approximately 1,000 institutional members. CIES sponsors the Comparative Education Review.

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Joe Schwartz