US and Mexico border
A small fence separates densely-populated Tijuana, Mexico, right, from the United States in the Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector.
Photo credit: Sgt. 1st Class Gordon Hyde (http://www.ngb.army.mil) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Global Issues Symposium 2018

Oberlin College is pleased to host the third annual Global Issues Symposium from February 15 to April 27, 2018. This year’s theme is “The Global City: Views from the Streets of the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and South Asia.”

About the Global Issues Symposium

Download the Poster

Global Issues Symposium 2018 Poster

Beginning in 2016, Oberlin College launched the Global Issues Symposium, designed to bring renowned scholars, policy practitioners and activists to campus to discuss crucial transnational issues with the college and community. Each year features a specific transnational issue, and brings a cohort of speakers from diverse backgrounds to offer equitable representation in dialogues needed to address the most pressing issues of our times.

The symposium series is organized by the International Studies Concentration, and funded through a generous donation from the Isenberg Family Charitable Foundation.

Global Issues Symposia will be held over four years, and constitute a significant starting initiative for a larger Global Scholars Program envisioned to expand student learning beyond the existing curriculum of the International Studies Concentration.

About the International Studies Concentration

The International Studies Concentration prepares students for careers and pursuits spanning national boundaries. It is grounded in the social sciences and focused on contemporary issues to help students develop an understanding of the current dominant modes of international interactions, and the global nature and consequences of those interactions.

Interested students may select International Studies as a concentration within their liberal arts education. The concentration complements many academic majors, building students’ capacities to apply disciplinary knowledge from their major to the challenges of the globalized world.

For the concentration, students choose from more than 100 courses across the Oberlin curriculum on the world’s cultures, regional interactions, and international dynamics, in addition to core politics and economics classes. We expect majors to attain at least a second year of non-English language proficiency.


Past Symposia