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1989: Looking Back, Looking Forward
As the sun traveled around the globe, the world awoke to find the People’s Liberation Army clearing Tiananmen Square in central Beijing of the student-led pro-democracy demonstrations that had been taking place there since the spring. Newspapers and television broadcasts around the world carried scenes of Chinese soldiers firing on crowds around the square and the iconic moment of the day was a lone man trying to prevent a column of tanks from passing. Read More >>
Belief in Change
I believe universities have a responsibility to cultivate within their students a passion for creating a better world.
Unlocking the change-making capabilities of universities and the people who occupy them has been the goal of the Changemaker Campus Initiative, a new program being implemented by the global nonprofit organization Ashoka: Innovators for the Public. Read More >>
- Dean's Letter
As a college student some 40 years ago, I saw our country transformed by the civil rights movement and later divided by the war in Vietnam. Watching these transformations—from the acceptance of the status quo to a desire to change things and even to engage utopian ideas—made me interested in studying the many facets of political revolutions. In college, I devoted much of my course work to various aspects of the Russian Revolution, but in graduate school, I turned to the French Revolution of 1789, the subject I have researched and taught during my three decades at Mason. The interest in the French Revolution has led me to think a lot about not only human potential and the desire to increase the vistas of that potential, but also the importance of restraint. This issue of Cornerstone deals with the concept of potential: potential application of research, potential for a peaceful world, personal potential found best when working for the community, and potential in nature. Read More >>