Dear friends,

While each year is of course unlike any other, it still seems fitting to describe this past year as something all its own. The pandemic set the backdrop for a drama of political upheaval, economic disruption, and social fragmentation and alienation that is still playing out. We witnessed and experienced tragedy and courage, joy and heartbreak on an almost daily basis. No one could have predicted a year like this one.

And yet, as I reflect on the past year, I’m struck by the way that global thinking helps us to anticipate and make sense of the unpredictability. By global thinking I just mean thinking about the connections that globalization makes – as well as about related disruptions, divisions, and inequalities that it produces.

For instance: we couldn’t know that in late 2019, a novel coronavirus would jump from a bat to a human (through a third species?), causing the pandemic we’re still enduring. But we could know that climate change and globalized systems of industrial agricultural, both fueled by cheap carbon-based energy, are creating conditions globally in which such zoonotic disease transmission is more probable and likely to be more severe.

We couldn’t know that on 25 May 2020, Minneapolis police officers arresting George Floyd for allegedly passing a counterfeit twenty would murder him, or that his death would touch off months of protest and counter-protest across the country and around the world. But we could know the global past and present of racialized police violence and the ongoing legacies of colonialism and enslavement that propelled those protests and shape the divisions they exposed.

We couldn’t know that on 27 August 2020, Hurricane Laura would make landfall near Cameron, Louisiana, killing at least 27 people, but we could know that the planet’s climate is changing in ways that increase the frequency and intensity of tropical storms. We couldn’t know that on 23 March 2021, a giant container ship would get wedged in the Suez Canal, but we could know that the global supply chains that enable contemporary just-in-time production are fragile and highly sensitive to even minor disruptions, which can have significant economic implications.

We couldn’t know that on 6 May 2021, protests against the feared eviction of several families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem would trigger another spasm of violence in Israel/Palestine, but we could understand the long global history of migrations, displacements, colonialism, dispossession, and conflict that keep tensions simmering in the region.

I won’t go on. The point is, while we couldn’t anticipate these or other specific events, we could and did understand the connections that engendered them. At the Global Studies Center, we are committed to the idea that promoting this kind of understanding helps us to prepare for the anticipated but unpredictable developments that shape our lives and thus to respond with intelligence, sensitivity, and integrity to the challenges we face. We’re grateful for your support in this work, and as ever, we welcome your ideas, suggestions, and constructive criticism as we promote global thinking and learning within and beyond the University.