Chapter 15: A Path to Globalizing Minds: Implications for Educational Approaches and Practices

I come to this discussion from a personal perspective. My journey took place against the backdrop of extraordinary events on the international scene, placing me in Vienna, London, and Nuremberg as both observer and participant, and later in Hawaii engaged in opening education opportunities for students and faculty from various nations. There is no doubt that the Nuremberg experience had a powerful and transformative impact on my life, on my worldview, and on my role as educator and communicator. Facing the former leaders of Nazi Germany, both during pretrial interrogations and in the courtroom, stripped of their positions and power, I saw them as ordinary individuals, characterizing what has been described by the philosopher Hannah Arendt (1963) as the “banality of evil.” In Nuremberg I learned through witnesses, testimony, and documents of man’s inhumanity to man on a massive scale and of the consequences of a brutal dictatorship. The Nuremberg experience, indeed the history of the Nazi era in the 1930s and 1940s, convinced me of the danger of unchecked power and of the need for a global rule of law. It can be argued that Nuremberg represents the strongest and most crucial 20th century case study in understanding the destructive and ruinous alternatives to lawful governance. The Nuremberg historic lesson, with its record of human failings and human criminality, carries strong implications for teaching and learning in the quest for ethical and harmonious behavior in society.