Balsillie School of International Affairs

Welcome from the Director

Like economics, more and more of politics too is becoming global. The challenges confronting us on a daily basis within countries are global in origin and require concerted multilateral solutions, from terrorism and nuclear weapons to climate change, HIV/AIDS, genocide and tumbling markets. Canada's security and prosperity alike will be determined first and foremost by what happens in the world beyond its borders, more so than by which party forms the government in Ottawa and who is the prime minister of Canada. It becomes increasingly more difficult to be an informed and engaged citizen without a sound grasp of the cross-currents of world affairs.

The battle over shaping the world we live in is more often a contest of ideas than a conflict over territory or struggle over resources. In Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, will secular democracies prevail over or succumb to radical Islamists? Will laissez faire market capitalism survive the current turmoil on Wall Street, or will we revert to some form of moderate state managed economies, at least on the regulatory side of the ledger?

Ideas impart vitality to a society. The enduring legacy of civilizations, countries and cultures is the dynamism and vibrancy of ideas and their ascendancy over competing visions of the good life. The marketplace of ideas is the university. Education and scholarship provide the terrain on which intellectually arid and stagnant societies encounter new worlds of ideas from foreign cultures.

A university, as a repository of scholarship, is dedicated to the acquisition, criticism and transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next and to being a centre of creative and innovative learning. In an information society and world, the comparative advantage of institutions like the Balsillie School lies in our identity as custodians and managers of knowledge-based networks that give us a global mandate and reach. We are blessed also in the innovative partnerships with two established hometown universities and the rapidly growing Centre for International Governance Innovation that will enable the new School to leverage their existing strengths to better prepare graduates for the complex challenges of a fast changing world.

There is nothing to suggest that in the next decade there will be a significant lessening of the pace and scale of change in the higher education sector. Such constant change is potentially frightening, but also exciting in the opportunity provided to be involved in establishing a new school of international affairs and guiding it through a challenging period of transition. The Balsillie School's graduates will help to shape the decisions and the framework that will mark Canada's and other countries' contributions to the development of the intellectual and knowledge capital of the world in a critical period of social transformation.

We would like to welcome you to join us in this exciting and important intellectual adventure.

Ramesh Thakur

Director, Balsillie School of International Affairs