During the break

Yesterday I held my first lecture of the fall, but the starting gun really goes off next week. After Monday I will be extraordinarily busy for the next three months. It’s going to be my tightest schedule since moving to Hungary. But I don’t think I’ll have much to complain about.

The students I met yesterday were eager and interested. And while I realize week-one of your typical freshman year will result in an exaggerated state of eagerness and interest, the discussion I took part in during the break was encouraging.

The break was 15 minutes long. Students got up, went into the hall, got a coffee, stretched their legs, and then came back to chat. Some of them wanted to chat with me.

I had been checking my email, but I suppose if I had wanted privacy I should have gone to my office. So I negotiated some small talk for a bit. Then one student asked about a book on my desk, “The Bottom Billion” by Paul Collier. It is a book about poor countries and the effort to help them.

A ton of copies were sent to our university. The academic director left a copy in my mailbox. Of course to my student from El Salvador - the one with an Italian parent, a Spanish parent, and an American education - to her it looks like I regularly book up on global poverty and similar issues. I had accidentally performed that Gatsbyesque act of pretension, displaying a book that leads people to certain favorable assumptions about the book’s owner.

Don’t get me wrong, I might read the book. I am interested in the subject, but it isn’t my usual fare.

Anyway, the student, I’ll call her Sara, commented on how the subject interested her. She wanted to hear some new ideas on how to approach the issue of global poverty. This got a response from a Serbian student who had been listening in. Let’s call her Laura.

No solution brought from the wealthy nations will help poor nations.

That is the gist of what Laura had to say. She spoke of US intervention in the Balkan Peninsula, corruption in poor nations, and the failure of the rule of law. Her rhetoric could use some improving, but her ideas were well-though-out and backed with both experience and education.

Sara and I played optimistic devil’s advocates. Then more of the Serbs joined in the conversation. Someone brought up Iraq and Afghanistan. Distinctions were made, but there was a general feeling in the room that Western interventionism has failed at every task it’s ever set out on. No one seemed optimistic about the future either.

I managed to get people to agree that such issues cannot be stated in absolutes, and that part of the reason we were at a university was to give such issues a hard look before passing judgment. That felt like the professorial thing to do, but I wanted to dance on the tabletop.

A group of 18-year-olds vigorously debating the merits of Western intervention in the Balkans and the Middle East? These are not the apathy laden youth I grew up with. At eighteen they are already looking for answers to the questions at the top of the “perfect world priority list.” Beyond the joy of hearing such a discussion, I experienced a tiny bit of enlightenment. The classroom had twenty-one people in it, representing fifteen different nations. These specific kids might not solve the problems we were discussing, but if they continue to egg each other on like this, having them study together for four years can’t hurt. My task, as a result, suddenly took on a bit more weight.

What I mean by that is: most of these kids aren’t going to become academics. They are in business school. So my job is to get them to understand the heft of these questions they’re asking, get them to see that even when they enter the private sector, these questions shouldn’t fall by the wayside. It looks to be exciting work.