Every term or two, a group of World Outlook staff and senior editors meets around a Haldeman Center conference room table. We’re usually equipped with a stack of folders and a Google Doc full of submissions we’ve received from the best and brightest at Dartmouth and at schools nationwide. The task before us requires careful consideration: we’ve read the documents that have flooded our email inbox, outlined their strengths and weaknesses, considered their logical fallacies and the clarity of their authors’ styles. Deciding which undergraduate work deserves publication seems to become more difficult with each journal we publish.
The truth is, “international affairs” doesn’t always lend itself to a process of peer review. Whether traveling abroad for leisure, debating comparative politics in the classroom, or heading to a fusion restaurant for dinner, we are compelled daily to take on a “world outlook” and to situate ourselves within a broader community.
The truth is, “international affairs” doesn’t always lend itself to a process of peer review. Whether traveling abroad for leisure, debating comparative politics in the classroom, or heading to a fusion restaurant for dinner, we are compelled daily to take on a “world outlook” and to situate ourselves within a broader community.
In its mission statement, our organization echoes the words of late Dartmouth President John Sloan Dickey:
“Today we use the term ‘the world’ with what amounts to brash familiarity. Too often in speaking of such things as the world food problem, the world health problem, world trade, world pace, and world government, we disregard the fact that ‘the world’ is a totality which in the domain of human problems constitutes the ultimate degree of magnitude and degree of complexity. That is a fact, yes; but another fact is that almost every large problem today is, in truth, a world problem.”
Both “the world” and “international affairs” are fluid concepts, composite organisms built of billions of individual stories. These stories — yours and mine — work synergistically. They produce discussion and change on local, national, and international levels. They fuel innovation and peace-building, but also conflict and anxiety. And they are always ultimately part of a whole that is becoming (perhaps) more whole over time, both cause and effect of a network that wants to teach us to be “global citizens.”
Yes, we like commentary on international affairs to be well-researched and well-articulated, in neat .docx form complete with Chicago-style footnotes. But “the ultimate degree of magnitude and degree of complexity” is hard to trap within these confines, which don’t provide space for the tangents, tensions, or fervent debates that seem inherent to international affairs. It is with this understanding that we’ve sought to create an online forum. The experiences and opinions expressed here belong to their respective authors and are not necessarily representative of World Outlook as an organization: they are stories, individual but connected. We call on you to engage with us, and we hope to offer a new lens on familiar (and not-so-familiar) things. Welcome to the blog.