ACADEMIC IMPACT - THE WAY FORWARD

By Ramu Damodaran

In his address to delegates participating in the 1945 San Francisco Conference, which finalized the idea and Charter of the United Nations, President Truman remarked: "All progress begins with differences of opinion and moves onward as the differences are adjusted through reason and mutual understanding."

His was a perception valid as much for the political, developmental and Inter-state worlds as it was for the national and the academic. Today, it remains valid when all five of these worlds intersect at so many points and at so many levels, when "reason", the most essential attribute of scholarship, is sought to move from the wrong to the right, from promise to performance.

Sixty-five years after its San Francisco moment, the United Nations has realized many of the promises inherent in its creation even as the canvas of its expected performance has grown. Issues directly affecting the "dignity and worth" of the human being, in the phrase of the Charter, now command international responsibility rather than as being reserved entirely within the domestic domain of nations. And the exercise of this responsibility demands new minds, new patterns, new partners.

When Secretary-General Ban publicly announced the Academic Impact initiative a year ago, he spoke of the United Nations "continuing to open our doors to new partners. The academic community is surely at the top of that list."   He saw in the Impact the "hope to build stronger ties with institutions of higher learning...to benefit from your ideas and scholarship."

The Academic Impact seeks to build upon the robust base of study and research "on" the United Nations in areas such as international relations, history and political science and encourage the investment of scholarship in areas, which can have a durable, if not immediately self-evident, UN dimension, "for" the United Nations.

Science, not diplomacy or politics, is the principal source of clarity and conviction on climate change, for instance. And science too will be the principal source for its solutions, although the choice to affect them will necessarily be diplomatic and political. The "Academic Impact" seeks to effect change and raise the individual voice of scholarship to a collective position of inquiry, exploration and creative solutions. To borrow a phrase from a dear and cherished friend, Sue Zipp, "what would be one lonely step alone now becomes a collective giant leap forward in unity."

Details about the "Impact" are accessible at www.academicimpact.org. There is no cost associated with affiliation; the only expectation from participants is an activity each year that supports one or more of these principles. The Impact's framework allows institutions to work with the UN and with each other to aggregate a still greater impact in supporting universally accepted principles, including those in the areas of human rights, literacy, sustainability and conflict resolution.

Some thirty international networks of universities and other institutes of higher education and research have endorsed the Impact and encouraged their members to join. More than two hundred and fifty individual institutions have done so, representing a global diversity of regions and a thematic wealth of disciplines.  Many are institutions whose programs may not immediately suggest a United Nations link but whose work and experience has a direct relevance on what we, as an Organization and system, are trying to do. Schools of medicine, for instance, can have bearing on our work in health-care; those in architecture can yield innovative models for swift, economical housing in the wake of natural disasters. Research on conservation in a faculty of art can offer the means to preserve the creative work of indigenous communities. A campus that is able to efficiently and economically move to non-conventional energy sources for its power needs can offer a replicable model. An institution that grants credits for student involvement in specific developmental or inter-cultural activities offers similar example.

These are illustrative instances of how every subject and discipline can have a UN imprint.  What we are trying to do is to get relevant institutions to recognize this link and, often without additional effort or expense, undertake activities that can directly support United Nations mandates and objectives.

For our part, we would transmit details of such activities, including studies or projects undertaken, to the nodal department or office best placed to act upon them. Such action could include inputs into policy formulation or the sharing of the specific experience with other institutions and, indeed, with Member States.

The Impact can sustain what UN Under Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information Kiyo Akasaka calls "intellectual social responsibility", benefiting both society as a whole and the academic community itself.  And just as CSR readily identifies corporate social responsibility, "ISR" too may soon emerge as a familiar, and powerful, term, reflecting the realization by thinking minds not formally within the United Nations that the very specific areas of their intellectual and creative activity can have global relevance and resonance through the United Nations. This is a lesson United Nations Associations have long taught us, and it is a lesson we have learned.

For more information please visit http://www.AcademicImpact.org

Ramu Damodaran is the Deputy Director for Partnerships and Public Engagement in the Outreach Division of the Department of Public Information of the United Nations.