 Welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fiedel. It's the 10 o'clock block here in a given Monday morning. We're talking about the middle way with Chang Wang and Alexander Moran. And our title for the show today is Teaching Young People Globally, Part 1. This is not without its complexities. So I'm going to ask Chang to both introduce both the subject and our special guest Alexander Moran. Chang, good morning and thank you for doing that. Good morning Jay and good morning Dr. Morava. It's going to be a very interesting topic for us to discuss this morning. And we divided this topic into two parts. So today Professor Morava and I will share our observations and the reflections on teaching young people globally. Then two weeks later Russell Liu and Professor David Larson will share their observations and comments. So today's topic is teaching young people globally. Dr. Morava has been a law professor for decades. He spent more than 10 years in Lutheran, Switzerland and chairing the Anglo-American Law Department and leading the international efforts at the University of Lutheran Law School. And after he immigrated to the United States, he has been actively teaching at American University of Washington College of Law and also a law school in Sao Paulo, Brazil. And the most recently at the China University Political Science Law in Beijing. So in this regard, Professor Morava is not only an international law professor but also international law scholar and counsel but also a law professor by definition. For myself, I've been a law professor since 2006. I've been teaching at the University of Minnesota Law School and two other law schools in the United States, two law schools in China. I had the privilege to work with Professor Morava in Luther for many, many years and also had the opportunity to travel to University of Vienna and Australia and also Brazil as in Paulo, Brazil. So both of us spent many, many years teaching young people and most of our students are law students. So I think it would be beneficial for us to just take this opportunity to share our observations. So we can start with what we see from the young people in different countries. So we had the privilege to work with the young people in China, in Asia, in Korea, in Australia, many countries in Europe, particularly Switzerland, Austria, Italy and Brazil. So are they the same? Their age roughly the same, you know, upper undergraduate students to upper graduate students, law students. So somewhere between 22, 23, to 26, 27. But to think, but to now think about we have been teaching about two decades. So that means we've been teaching both generation millennials and also the zoomers. So generation Y and the generation Z. So that's the background of our discussion. Okay, let me ask you a very unfair question. Alexander. You know, if you if you hang around for a few years like both of you gentlemen have done. As Chang indicated, you have multiple generations. So you can you can see them pass through your classrooms and you can observe how one generation differs from the next. And it's hard to characterize and it's certainly hard to make generalizations with multinational multination of generation. But let me ask you an unfair question. Can you characterize for me, the generation now? What is it? What is the essence of this generation? How does it differ from earlier generations that have passed through your classroom? I don't think it's an unfair question. It's just a little difficult to answer with any meaningful substantive answer what I think there is a pro and account to the current generation. Pro is a very, very strong level of being inquisitive, being open minded, being just going everywhere basically for knowledge, not just listening and following to what is presented to students. I think they're willing to do much more than one would normally require. Also, they come with a larger backpack of experiences in a way than previous generations have. The card in my opinion is that many are a little bit more consumers and consumer oriented and actually active participants. And that certainly comes out of the internet and social media generation that we have right now. Everybody's a publisher, everybody's a singer, everybody's a little mini version of a pop star in a way on YouTube and TikTok. But everybody also consumes probably a little bit too uncritically and with too much willingness to treat things as authentic that actually are not. When you specifically talk about law school, that's crucial. I mean, the difference gets forward between an authentic decision of an international court of justice judgment and the opinion of some YouTuber who also has an opinion on what international sovereignty means. And that's maybe a brief characterization. Well, let me go one step further and say, you know, the test to me, that means subjective of the value of given generations, whether they are citizens. And I don't mean citizens in a nationalistic environment. I'd say rather citizens of the world, whether they understand the issues that go beyond their daily lives. But if you talk about that, how is this generation fitted to be good citizens? Yeah, the question is, what is good? Is it compliant or is it politically critical? Is it compliant? Let me refine that, politically good. Compliance, we don't need compliance. You know, necessarily referring to good citizen who follows the rules, right, which partly we teach in law school. I mean, this is part of what we educate people in how to follow the rules, but also how to apply the rules creatively and to make sure that the best for your client, but also in a way to best for society. So that's part of the teaching program for sure. Let me say something that actually goes back to your previous question because I didn't quite answer that fully. In the class I currently teach at American University. It's an LLM program. It has students who come from all backgrounds, nationalities, continents, right now we have students from pretty much every single continent. And some of them are recent grads. Some of them are retired judges and practicing lawyers. When you put all these generations in a way in one classroom together, you see how really creatively purposeful that is and how it crosses borders, which we would not be able to cross even if we had every single nation, but everybody off the same generation in one classroom. So I think that's another crossing boundaries that I believe is very crucial in education generally. Well, let me go to you, you know, and one thing I became aware of 20 years ago was that Chinese lawyers anyway, we're always out and about around the world, taking master's degrees, what have you in every, every kind of university in every country. And to hear Alexander speak about the, you know, the international quality of education, at least in the law schools now makes me think that the future. What we are to achieve a responsible generation is actually in cross training internationally, not to limit it to lawyers, but to have have kids, students go everywhere, and have them get take a little bite of this and that and the other thing all around the world, you know, and in an ideal world, we can do that. What do you think is worth it. Let me first respond to your question, then I will share something else. So, in terms of study abroad, American students are very, very limited experience in studying abroad. These very, not a lot of opportunities have been provided to American students, even have been provided to some elite university and colleges, not all the students take that advantage. But, in my opinion, we should make study abroad to study somewhere outside your comfort zone for six months or one month, one year mandatory, mandatory in order to train global citizens and during the young talent to be able to cope with the Internet globalization that and also open our minds. There's a increasingly American students are feeling behind, compared to the European students and Asian students. Now let's go to the Asian countries, I've been interacting with the Chinese students and the Korean students a lot. Every single one of them, you can call them globalist. And, but at the same time, nationalist, why they call it globalist because every single one of them, they're there's a eager for, for a knowledge, and particularly for the most advanced international knowledge, either in law, in STEM or in finance. But also, and at the same time, the vast majority of them, I would say all of them, but the vast majority of them are proudly nationalistic, and they have total confidence in their own system, political system or judicial system. They don't think they are coming, they need to go to America, go to Europe and to learn everything and come back to their own country to change their own country. No, they don't think so. They think they can, they need to broaden their horizon and seek potential opportunities, but they are not coming here to be a student. Then, there's something else I want to share with you, at almost each of my class, particularly the law class, I do a quick survey of the entire class, no matter how big, how small this class could be as small as 12, you know, 15 students for a seminar, could be as big as a 50 or 60 students for lecture. I do a survey, there are two questions on the survey. Question one is, do you agree or disagree with the following statement? The statement is, Western liberal democracy has failed. Western liberal democracy has failed. Then the question, the second question on the survey is, it is important to me to live in a democracy. Again, it is important to me to live in a democracy. So, for our generation, you know, I think that everybody have some, we probably reached a consensus, liberal democracy has a crisis, but it has not failed. We showed resilience, and there are some self-correcting ability, and we put our confidence in. And it is important to our generation to live in a democracy. And surprisingly, not all young people think that way. And my result from the different survey from the different country, different classes are too mixed to be generalized, generalization will be a crime. But what I can see a common trend is European students are unique. They are highly idealistic, highly globalized, and my European classes are at Lucerne, and in Vienna, they are students from all over Europe and from all over the world. And the vast majority of them still believe democracy is important. Well, Alexander, let me make you a student for a moment. Don't you think every teacher should see himself as a student? Do you believe that liberal democracy has succeeded, has failed, or is succeeding, is on the upswing, or is it failing over time? Or is it succeeding because of its failures? In many ways. In whatever words you want to use. You can only succeed if you're challenged, right? So a challenge is a good thing for liberal democracy. It's set up to be challenged, consistently challenged, also legally challenged. There are many democracies that constantly undergo constitutional changes, sometimes revolutionary, sometimes evolutionary. And we lawyers can live with that, right? It's fine to change your system if you change it in an orderly fashion. Storming the capital of a nation is not part of that. So that would be, if that goes on, it's a complete failure for sure. But can it go back to functioning quite well? I think it can, many times because of the challenges that we are facing here. So I would absolutely agree that we still live in a liberal democracy. I also absolutely second what Zheng was just saying here. Globalization has to be a part of the curriculum, not just law school before that. I noticed sometimes that the college level education is many times much more global minded than law school. Law school we tackle from exactly the wrong end. We bring them to class and teach them American contract law or Belgian contract law, or Israeli constitutional law. We don't teach them what is a contract. Once we start talking about that, we noticed that the Chinese people think a contract is by and large the same thing as an American and the Brazilian with them. 90% is the same thing. Negotiating, coming to an agreement and putting it in legal terms that everybody can understand and comply with, right? But we spend four years teaching people how to think nationally and then we throw in one course that international law would have dragged out of this mindset and then being kind of forced to do something that's uncomfortable, right? You have to have both. You have to have both. You want both both both the national and the international or can we say at this point it might be more valuable to have the global right up front. You should start with the global everything you should spend the first two years in law school studying global concepts of the law and you would identify so many similarities. Look at conflict resolution. Concepts of conflict resolution are have the same parameters anywhere in the world. There didn't have very many different manifestations. But if you learn only the way we do it in the United States, we even develop a US approach to what mediation is and we talk to somebody in Indonesia who does mediation quite effectively. Their concept is very different and we don't have the common language to actually get what they're talking about. So I would say go global first and then go back to this contradicts whatever the bar American Bar Association says, because we need to train professionals, right? That's also legitimate outcome of legal education. And now if you go global, you find that there's inherent racism in some countries. And I guess I speak mostly about the US or my my location where there's racism there. So there's a barrier to global understanding and you have got to sort of pull that racism out. You've got to dampen that racism. You've got to teach people not to entertain racism, you know, in their personal development. So in the course of teaching, teaching law or teaching anything, how do you do that because they they come from a home or community, which includes racism. How do you fix that fixing is not possible trying to get them to start thinking differently is I mean there's there's two different kinds of racism. There's probably smaller numbers. That's the outright obvious racism that you see in all kinds of symbolism all kinds of language all kinds of speech. And then there's the underlying link racism that people many times don't identify as racism themselves they just believe it's something that is cultural and their culture just is including those kind of preconceived understandings of the others right in the world that everybody uses in this respect. So I think that the blatant one is easy. I mean if you're a Nazi nowadays in Germany you will actually most likely be arrested and put in prison because it's not lawful to be that kind of racist. If you're underlying emphasis of priority of your own race is doesn't come to the surface in these outbursts that can be sanctioned by the society but is sort of an underlying determinant for all your actions. It's a lot more difficult to challenge in education I believe what you have to do is just bring out the racism when it comes out and talk about it right lawyers are supposed to justify the outcome of their decision making process. If you challenge a student who has racist tendencies to explain and legitimize and justify those tendencies. They get in trouble quite quickly. It's difficult to justify. That must be a challenge for some of them because they're going to be hard to turn. But I want to ask you a question. This is also a unfair question. Sorry. You know it seems to me just reacting to the title teaching young people is is this you know here on Think Tech we challenge the young people. We say look we have a problem we have this problem that problem that problem in our society today. We spent a lot of time talking about these problems. We don't necessarily come to any conclusion. And if we do come to a conclusion we have a lot of we have a lot of difficulty in implementing that conclusion turning into action so as to improve that problem. And then we say to them these young people we say it's up to you. You're the next generation. We look to you. We're too old. We're over the hill. You can't count on us to fixing it because we haven't fixed it yet. But we are counting on you that it's really unfair to tell a young person that as far as I'm concerned. But but query is that true now and we count on this generation that you gentlemen are talking about the generation now the generation. You know that you're teaching to fix things for us to make a better world to take it further than we ever took it. It is it is a very fair question but it's very difficult question to answer. Let me start a slightly different perspective. Everything we can are everything we teach in law school to the young kids are not directly related to their future career and law parties. So what do they really need to survive in law parties. They cannot directly obtain from in classroom. So what we can teach them is I basically look at two things what how we can nurture a continued. Intellectual curiosity and to have these young people to understand to be aware that learning is a lifelong process is continuing process. There is nothing you can use a formula you can obtain and be successful. Secondly, how we can ensure people continue to be a critical thinker beyond the college. So in college classroom we ask people to argue right to jump side to to challenge each other to challenge themselves to be a critical thinker. But people quickly forget about it after graduation. I remember one one of my college professor and when we graduate he said I have only one wish to all of you so when you graduate every single year after your graduation. Read one meaningful book are completely out of pure intellectual curiosity, but nothing else not related to your work, not financial advice, not how the stock market manipulation, but just one philosophical or scientific book completely out of intellectual curiosity. Can you do that all of a sudden of course we can. Then 20 years later when we college reunion very few of us did you know can say that after 20 years I read I have read 20 book good very very good books. So back to your question. It is we on the one hand we cannot count on young people and to save the system. On the other hand, that that's unfair to them, but I have tremendous confidence in the young people. I think the young I do hope that we will first of all I hope they are more female world leaders run the country. Second, I hope they are more young world leaders run run the run the United run the countries. There was the world will be much better shape you will have a more young people. I'm not referring to Justin Trudeau, or, you know, these world leader existing world leaders, but from what I see from the younger generation, they are much more open minded. And they are much more idealistic. They might change when you get to our age, but at least at least time that last year, a few months ago, the reason we have 20, 20 election, and because the young people showed their commitments. And so that is my not the director answer to your question, but I have to to show my optimism in this regard. I really have tremendous confidence and hope in the younger generation. Alexander, what would you what would you add to that I'm sure you have thoughts about that. Well, I think, I think for bringing in the gender dimension here because I think the diversity that we're looking at in the future will be racial and ethnic will be cultural will be linguistic but it will to a very large degree also be a gender equal approach where, you know, women will make up at some point the majority of the justices of the US Supreme Court there's no doubt about it it's just going to happen. But there I think things will change if you look at the makeup of the European Court of Human Rights, for instance, which is a quite influential tribunal in Europe. It is pretty much gender equal already at this point in time and many of the judges joining there are the younger generation of judges who bring in this enthusiasm I believe that that was pointing out. I believe all these lawyers of the future will, whether we actively promoted as professors or not, they will be growing up in a much more integrated global society simply because what they encounter will be global they cannot avoid it, even if they are somebody said nationalistic a little bit in their mindset. It still doesn't mean they can avoid realizing that it's an integrated society do commercial law nowadays and do it nationally only good luck. I don't know why this connects for me but last night on 60 minutes. One of the segments there they were all of the segments were very disturbing it was a very interesting show. One of them was a share of Assad, a share Assad in Syria, and how he has been doing atrocities on his own people for years. I mean, horrible atrocities even to young children torture and this evidence of this. And, you know, you would think this would go before the International Court of Criminal Criminal Justice in the Hague, which is not necessarily connected with the United Nations as I understand it. And so various organizations human rights organizations have asked that this be taken up by the International Court of Criminal Justice. But it has been vetoed by both China and Russia. And so Assad has been getting away with it for years and the torture and the chemical weapons continue. And it's extraordinary. And I really wonder, you know, if the world if the world was really conscious, right, conscience and conscious. If this generation we're talking about, we're really aware, you know, the morality involved and the facts on the ground, they would wouldn't be compliance. It would be activism. And they would say, wait a minute, this must be addressed. Will this generation coming up. Are they being trained to are they being sensitive about taking this sort of thing up and not letting it happen. Johnny want to take it up first. I think you should take it at first. Well, bear in mind we all and this is a lawyerly approach. I'll apologize for that we all live with a big gigantic dinosaur in our backyard which we sometimes think is a little puppy. It's a fairly unsystem of governance we still live in a concept of how the world is run that comes out of the 16th century, namely monotonous and integrated nation states of sorts. Right. So when we talk about Syria and other conflict areas we're facing a new to you political reality where we're kind of slowly moving back to a kind of cold war ish situation. I think the massive difference that it's not just two players anymore there are multiple additional players coming in if you look at China, of course, being one of the most prominent one go regional and you have in the vicinity of Syria of Turkey that flexes its muscle in many ways you know, with the Islamic Republic of Iran which is a massive regional player. Let's see I'm not just one big global war sort of red versus blue us versus us is our that's governed us for 40 years now we have multiple scenarios were different kind of cold wars are playing out and those freeze everything because of you mentioned the word veto, because we have these strong players being able to say no to it. When I teach my human rights course we always hit the edge of enforcement what what does it mean if we get a judgment from a court saying this wasn't right. If the state then doesn't comply and there is no international army to go in and enforce it. Right. And I say yes that's absolutely true we're lacking there but think about the United States for a moment if the United States Supreme Court issues a decision. This is I'm not going to enforce it where is the Supreme Court's army. Right. It's a system that's just different constitutional system is a little bit more integrated we understand that will burst it at the seams if we constantly non comply. The international system allows non compliance to exist. And that's frustrating for students many times they absolutely echo what you were pointing out in your question. You want to weigh in on that question. The reason I have confidence and being up in the young people and being optimistic about the future is even their different race different religion different even different generation. Alexander has been working with in the different countries. And there's something strikingly a common feature we can see from the younger generation if they have common sense. They have a common sense the common sense I mean the global change the global climate change is real. Green New Deal makes perfect sense. No banks must be regulated. And lobbying is a horrible idea. The government need to take care of the education and healthcare should not be for profit. No matter where the students are students from Europe from Asia from United States. They all they share extremely similar common sense. And what's really striking is the just you know whatever some questions you've been debated in the on CNN or in the government in Congress. There is no debate in the younger generation. The United States is a racist country. And we need to change that the state government in Texas is a car key stocracy. And we need to change that it's government by the least competent and the least ethical and the least qualified people to run and some at some point in the past four years. Some agencies in our federal government became that and glad to send God you know we are fortunate to be able to to not slip into a car key stocracy forever but young people no matter where they are in the United States. American college college classroom in Europe. The old share thing, you know, of course that it's very bad damage to American reputation. When the European students came look at what happened in the United States, but there is a common sense. There's a common sense generation. There's very little BS in the water the controversy, you know, you know, the gun control. That's why I have confidence in the younger generation. You know, Alexander, we had, we had a show a few years ago where one of the lawyers who had been practicing a long time. He said he had a problem with the legal, the legal educational system. He said, you know, they have law review notes and so forth. You know, educating you about what particular decision or series of decisions has been tracking on where the precedent is going. But they do not look at the precedent in terms of good public policy. Generally speaking, they respect the president precedent perhaps too much. They don't criticize it. They don't criticize. And I don't mean calling judges names or encouraging people to attack them. That was also in 60 minutes. But, you know, they should take issue with the decision that is bad in the contextual view of that decision is against our world today. And, you know, it opens the question of whether we do have critical thinking about what our institutions are doing. If a bill is a bad bill, let's let's hear from the law students and the law reviews and the lawyers, many of whom just put their green eye shades on as soon as they enter practice and never participate in public issues. Do you think we need to change in the way lawyers are trained so that they take the context and they speak out on things in law school and after? Yeah, absolutely. And if you come to one of my classes, you will see I will not let people slip by who are unwilling to second guess and analyze judicial decisions, statutes, international treaties based on questions of public policy. And if you will that the global effect of those, right, I mean, if a court in a powerful country issues a decision and has consequences abroad. So I think it's crucial that we as professors do that whatever we do it well or not as a different question that we emphasize and encourage that kind of criticism. But throughout, I mean, once you're in the professional world, once you're done with law school, you need to keep that up. It's a challenge not so much for university that it's a challenge for legal employers actually to make sure that people can continue to educate themselves and can have time in their busy schedule, not to just go from one probate case to the next or you know, file one patent after the other, but to actually become well rounded individuals who kind of second guess what what's going on in many ways. That that's true in every profession, but particularly very mind most societal conflicts at some point in the in the court of law or in a legislative body. Right, so and these are tend to be staffed by lawyers. So we are the ones who ultimately make decisions in areas like medicine and climate change where we quite frankly have not the slightest idea what we're talking about. But we still need to make decisions in those areas. So we need to open our minds to let others explain to us what the problem is and what the bigger impact is. Yeah, who is better qualified to speak about such things about government policy direction of countries and continents. So we're almost out of time here Alexander I'd like to offer you an opportunity to provide a takeaway to people what would you like to leave with them about this discussion. I would leave to leave to the audience every single word that the John has said actually because his optimism and encouragement is just unparalleled. And it comes from a tremendous experience in teaching it was one of my most beloved guests when he was in Switzerland to teach courses there. And he still is. Let's be optimistic. Can I say that let's be optimistic that within growing generations of young people and law students that will always be a majority of people who are willing able and excited about the option to think out of the box. There's 40% to just when I have a good paid job and they'll just fill out the forms and move on, but there's a majority of people who are actually willing to have an impact on society. We as law professors and as those who design curriculum, let's be honest this is not just an individual enterprise this is a school and institutional enterprise of sorts. We are encouraging this and not actively hampering it. As long as we're giving the opportunity, I think we're on the right track. But again, as I said before, we will fail miserably many times before we get on a course to actually read somewhere better but I think there is in, you know, ultimately there is a better goal. That's what I think. And you first allow professor you keep that in your mind and you enable people who are taking the right approach to it, you're having an effect on them. And Chang, you have the opportunity to disagree with Alexander we're talking about critical thinking. How much of what he said you agree with. I agree with everything Alexander said except he, you all of you should listen to me. No, I think we should let me quote President Obama, the future belong to the young people. And as Alexander correctly pointed that the best majority, not all of them but the best majority of the young people, they are idealistic. They are open minded, they're global. They are practical, and they are committed and just like the owner of the world, you look at the United States the vast majority of the country agree with gun control. The vast majority country agree with the Green New Deal the vast majority country agree with Obamacare. And the reason we have a fake debate in Washington is because the young people are not in charge. So what was the young people are in charge. I think things will change. You know, I can imagine one of the one of the best things about teaching law is that years later, you see one of your own students who is promising at the time and who you enabled. And he's in public office, and he's in Washington or wherever, and you write them a note, and you say good job. You're maintaining the standards that we talked about. That must be very gratifying to have that opportunity. Anyway, Chang Wang. Thank you very much, gentlemen for this discussion. I know we will continue it. Aloha. Thank you, James.