“The World After Coronavirus” Featured in Chatham House Article
Adil Najam, Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, and “The World After Coronavirus,” a video series produced by the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, were featured in a recent Chatham House article on multidimensional approaches.
In the article, titled “Take off the blinkers,” author Waqās Ahmed – Founder of The DaVinci Network and Visiting Fellow, The Open University – argues that professional specialization is hindering attempts to tackle complex problems such as migration, climate change, and political violence. Specialization hinders ones ability to approach issues from multiple perspectives, and Ahmed states that “multidimensional problems require multidimensional minds to design multidimensional solutions.”
In discussing “The World After Coronavirus,” Ahmed points to Najam’s own realization in hosting the series that there is a necessity to break down disciplinary boundaries and provide future leaders with knowledge to tackle interdisciplinary solutions.
An excerpt:
Adil Najam’s The World after Coronavirus series started off as his ‘season of learning’ during lockdown. He didn’t realize just how much it would transform his perspective about the international system. Ultimately, it was a lesson in humility. ‘Not knowing that you don’t know is actually a very comfortable place to be,’ he admits. He has always intuited the need for interdisciplinary investigation but accepts that most people simply pay lip service to it. ‘Even those like myself who assume that we are interdisciplinary need to constantly challenge the limits of our own interdisciplinarity.’
The full article can be read on Chatham House‘s website.
In The World After Coronavirus (#WorldAfterCorona) series, leading experts and practitioners from Boston University and across the world were featured as they explored the challenges and opportunities we will face in our post-coronavirus future. Hosted by Dean Adil Najam, the series over 150 episodes, which can all be viewed on the Pardee Center’s YouTube channel.