April 19, 2022
The images from Ukraine are chilling. Haunting. Urgent. Taken together, the scenes of destruction, of families torn apart, of tanks rolling into cities send a message about democracy in the world: In an instant, all can change.
We might feel similar fears at home after the attempted insurrection of January 6 made us aware of the fragility of democracy. While we deal with our crisis, Russia invades Ukraine, a young democracy, unleashing a chain of global instability and a humanitarian crisis.
In these tumultuous times our responsibility and obligation as institutions of higher education is to connect local communities with global events. Our democracy, and the world’s democracies, need us. Just as we prepare students for their careers, we also must prepare them as citizens equipped to stand for and with democracy.
A seminal report in 2012 by the National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement spoke to this: “To fulfill America’s promise in our global society, our education system at all levels, from early learning through higher education, must serve our nation both as its economic engine and its wellspring for democracy.” A decade later, our times have renewed the urgency of that summons.
Northern Kentucky University has a longstanding commitment to being a steward of place, an effort that takes many forms. Service learning classes at NKU have produced public art in Newport and designed learning spaces for children living in public housing. There are scores of other examples.
Regions, their universities and the students they graduate, must evolve to operate successfully in a world in which local economies and concerns are intertwined with international ones. We can ill-afford to graduate students unfamiliar with the international landscape.
Try to imagine the wicked problems of 2022 in isolation from the world. You cannot. Gas prices represent a ready example and COVID-19 another. Add climate change to the list, along with terrorism, immigration, health care, food and clean water, the tech revolution, energy. No issue is ours alone nor are the solutions.
NKU is intentional in efforts to internationalize the educational experience for its students. Students can study abroad for a week, a semester or a year. They also can sit in class in Highland Heights beside fellow students from one of the 58 different countries represented here.
Global awareness finds its way into our classrooms in other ways, too. Guest artists and lecturers from around the world teach courses, a dance professor from Zimbabwe doing so this semester. Several of our experiential philanthropy classes, in which students raise and invest money in nonprofits, are investing in refugee relief efforts. More recently, NKU provided transition housing to Afghan evacuees as campuses can become a refuge for people in crisis via natural disasters or global displacement.
Partnerships with international universities connect our classrooms to theirs. College of Informatics students have put digital tools to use for joint projects with students at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan. A new partnership is in the works with Georgia, a country that – like Ukraine – spent much of the 20th century under Soviet rule. Students there will be able to earn an NKU graduate degree in cybersecurity, a subject ever more urgent with Putin unleashed.
We want international affairs to have a palatable presence on campus, so we are home to the World Affairs Council’s Cincinnati/NKY offices, which host guests from other nations for cultural exchanges and public policy discussions. And teamed with DailyChatter.com, NKU delivers a summary of global new to students’ in-boxes each morning.
We must build bonds to the world. At this moment, those bonds need to be strengthened with Ukraine. We see our best selves in Ukraine’s people, in their resilience, their determination to be free, and their David against Goliath courage.
On April 22, NKU will host two magnificent musicians, Anna and Dmitri Shelest. Now married, they met as music students in their native Ukraine, then came to NKU, graduating in 2005 before establishing themselves as solo artists. In performances together playing four hands piano, they have drawn added attention, including for their 2018 album, “Ukrainian Rhapsody” featuring composers from their native country.
To hear them play this music is to hear the grace of their fingers moving through the lightest of movements and melody, and then into fiery, fast flurries. Taken in the context of current events, the music evokes images of war and peace, degradation and hope.
Their performance here will raise funds to support Ukrainian refugees transitioning to our region. We hope, as a university, to contribute to the immediate needs of a nation torn by war. But we also want to send a message that we stand with democracy and the obligation to protect it against tyranny.
In 1963 when President John F. Kennedy went to the Berlin Wall in solidarity with Germans against Soviet repression, he said this: “Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was ‘civis Romanus sum.’ Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’”
Perhaps today the proudest boast is, “Я українець” or, in the letters of our alphabet, “Ya Ukrayinets – I am Ukrainian.”
Ashish Vaidya is the president of Northern Kentucky University, Francois Le Roy is the executive director, NKU’s Center for Global Engagement & International Affairs, and Mark Neikirk is executive director of NKU’s Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement. See more about the Anna and Dmitri Shelest concert at https://nku.edu/ukraine-benefit-concert.html.
