Please join us for an afternoon of activities celebrating the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi and his teachings. Enjoy tea and conversations with Pittsburgh organizations at 2:00 pm, followed by cultural performances, inter-faith presentations, and a panel discussion with authors, scholars, and educators with the topic "Be the Change:" Gandhi and the Next Generation.

PETER SINGER & TERRY SMITH, Global Studies Faculty Fellow conversation: “Global Ethics in a Time of Total Change”

Reception to follow Friday’s conversation in Frick Fine Arts Cloister

Please join the Global Studies Center at the annual welcome reception! Meet current and new students, faculty, Global Studies fellows and staff. Learn about new Global Studies initiatives on campus. Refreshments will be served!

The most important issues we face today are global rather than national: climate change, economic globalization, extreme poverty, immigration and the responsibility to protect people from genocide and crimes against humanity, whatever country they may be in. We need to challenge both the prudence and the ethics of those who put forward narrow nationalistic perspectives. In the long run we cannot be secure and prosperous, or claim to be acting justly, if we fail to play our part in overcoming the world’s problems.

Max Rameu, organizer and author of Take Back the Land and Rob Robinson, International Alliance of Inhabitants & National Economic and Social Rights Initiative.

Keynote Speakers: Desiree Fields, urban geographer at the University of Sheffield (UK) and Ernesto López-Morales is Associate Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Chile in Santiago. Housing Summit Welcome Message, Ms. Leilani Farha, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing as a Human Right.

Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD, is a research psychiatrist at New York State Psychiatric Institute and a professor of clinical psychiatry and public health at Columbia University. Dr. Fullilove's research has focused on the health problems caused by inequity. She is the author of Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do About It, which profiles stories from Pittsburgh’s Hill District residents. She is currently leading a study of Main Streets in New Jersey. Many of the state’s more than 500 municipalities have a functioning Main Street.

Pittsburgh’s economic re-development has earned it the reputation as a “most livable city.” But growing numbers of residents ask, “livable for whom?” It is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the reality of a growing divide between two Pittsburghs—one affluent, professional, and largely white, and the other low-income people with long-term roots in the region, largely people of color.

As part of Pitt's International Week, the European Studies Center and Global Studies Center have partnered to offer students a chance to participate in a simulation of an important period in the history of international climate policy negotiations. The effects of un-checked industrial pollution in Europe were seen in the increase in acid rain and a stark die off of forested regions in northern and eastern Europe. In response, representatives from Europe's nations came together in a series of negotiations to determine what - if anything - could or even should be done.

Mike Giazzoni, College in High School, put Kathy in touch with Paul Cindric from the AIU. On March 18, 2016 Paul was holding a professional development workshop for social studies teachers and allowed Kathy and Veronica the opportunity to speak to the group for 15 minutes about other professional development opportunities and student programs offered through the University Center for International Studies at Pitt, in particular the European Studies Center and Global Studies Center.