18th Annual International Roundtable “Children of the World: The Dialectic of Promise and Vulnerability”

St. Paul, Minn. – Macalester College presents its 18th annual International Roundtable with the theme, “Children of the World: The Dialectic of Promise and Vulnerability,” Thu. – Sat., Oct. 13 – 15, 2011, in the John B. Davis Lecture Hall, Ruth Stricker Dayton Campus Center, 1600 Grand Ave., St. Paul, Minn.  The Roundtable is free and open to the public.

Around the world, children can be especially susceptible to poverty, disease, lack of education, physical violence, and family disintegration. To be sure, there is marked and continuous progress on a number of fronts, particularly in the reduction of mortality among the young. Still, in 2008, nearly nine million children under the age of five died.

Some of the ongoing challenges they face include chronic nutritional deficiency, lack of clean water, malaria and HIV infections, civil conflict, and child exploitation to name a few.  

Given these concerns, the International Rountable’s three main questions are:

• What are the main circumstances facing children worldwide?
• What are the primary sources/causes responsible for these contexts, and why?
• In what specific ways might these conditions be transformed? In other words, what types of individuals, organizations, ideas, and policies must come to the fore to tackle these conditions?

This year’s participants include:

Jacquelynne Eccles, the McKeachie-Pintrich Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Education at the University of Michigan and keynote speaker whose talk is titled “Supporting America’s Children,” 4:40 pm, Thu., Oct. 13. 

Tonderai Chikuhwa, 1996 Macalester graduate and Programme Officer at the United Nations in the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, will speak about “Protection of Children as a New Imperative of International Peace and Security,” 9:30 am, Fri., Oct. 14.     

Asha Bajpai, Professor and Chair of the Center for Socio-Legal Studies and Human Rights at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, India, will speak about “Children in India: Law, Policy, and Practice,” 1:30 pm, Fri., Oct. 14. 

The Roundtable will conclude with a discussion featuring Asha Bajpai, Tonderai Chikuhwa, and Jaquelynne Eccles, 10 a.m., Sat., Oct. 15.

The Roundtable begins at 4:40 pm, Thu., Oct. 13, with opening remarks by Macalester Pres. Brian Rosenberg and Linda Schulte-Sasse, DeWitt Wallace Professor and Chair, German and Russian Studies.  Additional speakers include several other Macalester faculty and students.

The Macalester International Roundtable is held every October on campus. A community-wide intellectual forum, the Roundtable explores crucial global issues with prominent international scholars who are also commissioned to write major papers that are presented at Macalester and published in the Macalester International Journal. Previous Roundtables have featured:

• 1994               The International Community and the Emerging World (Dis) Order
• 1995               Literature, the Creative Imagination, and Globalization
• 1996               The Divided Self: Ethnicity, Identity, and Globalization
• 1997               Nature, People, and Globalization
• 1998               Globalization and Economic Space
• 1999               Contending Gods: Religion and the Global Moment
• 2000               International Feminisms: Divergent Perspectives
• 2001               The Body: Meditations on Global Health
• 2002               Prometheus’s Bequest: Technology and Change
• 2003               Complex Contradictions: African, American, and Middle Eastern Perspectives    
• 2004               America and Global Power: Empire or . . . ?
• 2005               Quixotic Offspring: The Global Legacy of Don Quixote
• 2006               The United Nations Organization (UNO): What Future?
• 2007               The Musical Imagination in the Epoch of Globalization
• 2008               Whither Development? The Struggle for Livelihood in the Time of Globalization
• 2009               Global Environment: The Eleventh Hour?
• 2010               “My Sister’s and Brother’s Keeper? Human Rights in the Era of Globalization”

Macalester College, founded in 1874, is a national liberal arts college with a full-time enrollment of 1,985 students. Macalester is nationally recognized for its long-standing commitment to academic excellence, internationalism, multiculturalism and civic engagement.  Learn more at macalester.edu