Global Challenges Events
Interdisciplinary Answers
About Honors’ Global Challenges Series
The Honors Program brings curious, nimble learners into community at UW. People who are excited to learn across many fields and to combine deep inquiry with the practice of examining ideas and information from multiple perspectives. People who ask great questions and value difference.
While earning a bachelor’s degree in one (or two) established fields, Honors students also think together carefully about issues like poverty, human rights abuses and climate change. As peer educators help them get oriented and activated at UW, students in our introductory course (HON 100) explore the question: “What keeps you up at night?” We bring them together with thought leaders and activists who are working on these issues, into deep interdisciplinary discussion about big, complicated issues.
Honors’ annual public “Global Challenges” events invite students into their own sense of purpose at a world-class public research institution devoted to the investigation and solving of profound human problems. Students have cited these conversations as “fundamental” to their choice of majors and commitment to public good. Other guests are just as affected, describing the event as “a model for civilization.”
Prior Global Challenges Events
Explore video and audio archives of our past Global Challenges talks and stay connected with UW Honors as a hub of interdisciplinary problem-solving for Washington and for the world.
Thinking together about the power of place and care, 2022
Hosted in a hybrid format, Martine Pierre-Louis, LaShawnDa Pittman, Megan Ybarra and Stephanie Smallwood explored the causal factors of displacement and how we can work together to address those challenges. For the first time ever, the conversation and Q&A were moderated by current Honors students, Brandon Wu and Shannon Hong.
Youth political engagements constructing our world, 2021
Ben Danielson, Alexis Harris and Dean Spade discussed recent events and opportunities in youth-led political activism in our “Post 2020 World.” The conversation was moderated by disability rights activist, Christine Lew, centering perspectives from public health, legal systems and mutual aid, poverty and criminal justice institutions.
Communicating about crises across a divided public, 2020
Hosted online in the interest of public safety, Jeanette Bushnell, Clarence Spigner and Michelle Koutnik brought perspectives from glaciology, indigenous philosophy, public health, and so much more to this community conversation about the concept of “crisis,” how activism and academia can work in tandem and also hold each other accountable.
Technology ethics and social change, 2019
Society is scrambling to understand (and govern) the impact of paradigm-changing technologies like big data and artificial intelligence on our identities, systems, health and rights. What is currently happening and what’s predicted to happen at the intersections of “ethical” social change and technology? Speakers: Anna Lauren Hoffmann (UW iSchool), Ece Kamar (Microsoft Research) and Shankar Narayan (ACLU: Technology and Liberty Project).
The Question of Rights, 2018
Tom Ikeda (Founder/Director of Densho), Megan Ming-Francis (Political Science) and Angélica Cházaro (Law) at the intersections between historical Japanese-American experiences and current systems and political decisions to disenfranchise/displace and dehumanize.
Nationalism, Fake News, and the Power of Culture, 2017
Kate Starbird (Human-Centered Engineering and Informatics), Randy Engstrom (Public Servant in Arts and Youth Advocacy) and Reşat Kasaba (International Studies)
Talking about Climate Change, 2016
Jean Dennison (Anthropology/Colonialism), David Battisti (Atmospheric Sciences) and Hanson Hossein (Communication Leadership)
“Our solution is storytelling…If you can come up with a really powerful narrative and tell stories in an effective way, you transcend some of the challenges we have right now. If you can find a narrative that both groups or identities can agree upon, then you can start agreeing upon what path you can take to make that change.”
-Hanson Hossein, 2015 Speaker
Health and Poverty, 2015
LaShawnDa Pittman (American Ethnic Studies), Chandan Reddy (Gender, Women & Sexuality) and Steve Gloyd (Global Health/Medicine)
The University of Washington is committed to engaging our community in deep interdisciplinary discussion about big, complicated issues. The Honors Program is proud to be a center of collaborative thinking at this Top 10 public research institution.