Annual Report 2010 | 2011 - Columbia Global Centers

The Way Forward
The Columbia Global Centers | Middle East has sought to create opportunities for Columbia schools, faculty and
students to explore their academic pursuits in different settings and reach for new and unimaginable knowledge by
interacting with—and being transformed by—the multiplicity of human perspectives.
Likewise, the Center has focused on extending its strong foundation of programs and activities, and has further
developed core competencies in the fields of architecture, education, social work, and the arts. Its offerings in these
core areas—from training workshops to short courses—have helped cement the Center’s reputation for academic
innovation and its commitment to delivering programs that are customized and responsive to local needs and
opportunities. These offerings have made a marked impact on local and regional communities, from training more
than 2,500 school teachers and administrators to reaching out to hundreds of children at care homes and juvenile
detention centers.
In the years ahead, the Center will further explore additional areas of interest that would expand its pool of
undergraduate offerings, as well as intensify its research initiatives and programs in public health and economic
development. The Center will also continue its regional expansion efforts, particularly in other areas of the Levant,
and in the Gulf.
The Global Centers will help transform Columbia into a global borderless university for the 21 st century, a university
in which faculty will base their research and students their learning wherever their intellectual interests take them,
finding fellow scholars and students across the growing world of tertiary education. In the next phase, the Center
will look closely into possible pilot initiatives and programs that could be offered jointly with other Global Centers
in Paris, Mumbai, Beijing, Istanbul, Nairobi and Santiago, which could help build on the vision for what the Global
Centers can accomplish by working collaboratively. The Center will also help to advance large-scale cross-cutting
mega research projects, such as global press freedom and a study of global financial systems.
The series of events that have swept through the Middle East since the beginning of 2011 have presented a range of
challenges and opportunities. The Center will strive to find ways to leverage the potential of scholarly engagement
and instigate meaningful conversations that would yield positive contributions to these transitions and developments.
Many of the Center’s programs are distinctively interdisciplinary and bring together partners from academia and
practice in new combinations. The exact shape these combinations will take—and the types of output they will
produce—remain to be seen, but in pioneering a new model of international education, the Global Centers represent
a promising innovation.
63