The Tufts Institute for Leadership and International Perspective (TILIP) will launch its annual international symposium entitled "Globalization and China: Challenging Cultural Boundaries" today. The two-day symposium is the culminating event of nearly a year's worth of planning by student participants. There will be eight different panel categories all related to the theme of challenging cultural boundaries, and will feature over 40 speakers.
This year's theme of globalization and culture is a reflection of TILIP's intent to promote international perspective in the Tufts community, particularly in terms of cross-cultural team building and business relationships between China and the West. The three-day symposium will explore aspects of China's place in the modern world, particularly from a cultural viewpoint.
"[This weekend] will be a festival of thought and culture which, and positions Tufts as a university with a global angle in an arena of the world, namely China and East Asia, where it's going to be critical to promote cross-cultural learning," said Sherman Teichman, Director of the Institute of Global Leadership, TILIP's umbrella organization.
Organizers highly anticipate this afternoon's panel on migration and globalization, as well as this evening's panel on mediating unique and universal aspects of global culture. The panelists, who include a variety of renowned scholars, authors, and historians from both national and international institutions, will explore numerous aspects of China's socioeconomic history, from the Silk Road to modern Beijing.
Teichman emphasized that the program will be beneficial on multiple levels, from the individual student to the global community at large. "[TILIP] reflects the deliberate initiative of the University to foster a global perspective and brings in remarkable scholars on the symposium level," he said.
TILIP is an intensive bicultural program designed as an exchange between students from Tufts, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Hong Kong, and Peking University. This year's program consists of 11 pairs of students from Tufts and from Beijing and Hong Kong.
The participants, who took part in a six-week internship in Hong Kong over the summer, reunited in the US two weeks ago and will cap their cross-cultural experience at this weekend's symposium.
Upon returning to Medford in the fall, the Tufts seniors began an intensive planning process for the symposium, which included a semester-long colloquium organized by the Institute for Global Leadership.
The student participants said that the fresh perspective gained through the exchange of ideas with their peers was the most rewarding aspect of the program.
"It was valuable to work with the Chinese students and see their perceptions of different issues, as well as learn from their work ethic," TILIP participant Daniel Elman said.
Several of the participants said they felt that the most interesting part of the program was the integration of different cultures into a work environment.
"We just had totally different working styles in the beginning...." Senior Sarada Peri said. "In America we kind of say what we think right away. And in Beijing, people do the opposite - they take a long time to say what they're thinking."
Senior Kelly Knee, who will be mediating Saturday's panel on global environmental issues, lauded the program for introducing a fresh perspective on commonplace issues.
"As an environmental studies major, I had always looked at environmental issues from a very technical point of view, but now I see the importance of how cultural attitudes affect our approach to these issues," she said.
