Challenge the Best
1 Apr
‘Challenge the Best’ isn’t just a pithy maxim. I saw it put into practice before mine own eyes in the sedate Swiss town of St Gallen, where the students of St Gallen University pulled off a remarkable inter-generational event, called Challenge the Best. The Best in this case being six eminent thought leaders – including two Nobel Laureates. And the Challenge coming from some five hundred students gathered before them. Usually it’s my role to be the challenging one, but in the main lecture hall of St Gallen university I witnessed a few new tricks…
The panel of elders – aka The Best - comprised Sir James Mirrlees, economist and Nobel Laureate, who also gave the keynote address on the value of diversity; Prof Heinrich Rohrer, physicist, Nobel Laureate and stirrer of controversies – “diversity makes no difference to scientific innovation”; Lale Akgun, Turkish – German politician who called for the breaking of taboos and gave as good as she got – “there are no new ideas here”; from Boston, Lewis Feldstein, former civil rights activist and social activist, who surprised the students with academic research on diversity’s downside – lower social inclusion – though it saddened him to do so; Daniel Thuerer, from the governing body of the International Red Cross, who discoursed on what can go wrong when diversity sets communities against each other; and business titan Eberhard von Koerber, former CEO of ABB, whose passionate plea, ‘Europe needs diversity for the sake of its own prosperity’ ended up being challenged by a young Czech participant, who posed: “Why should your growth happen at my country’s expense?”
Highlights for me: When an increasingly impatient young student, Sebastien, challenged Prof Rohrer’s unshakeable view that science did not need/nor benefit from diversity. If I were adjudicator I’d say Sebastien won that round. Another highlight: feisty international relations student Priya’s summaries of the weekend’s key ideas - a masterclass in getting to the nub of the argument. Also, an unexpected challenge from the floor to Prof Thuerer’s appeal that we should all view the world through African eyes – surely an unobjectionable ‘motherhoood and apple pie’ type statement? But no, it wasn’t allowed to just rest there as a soggy, emotional appeal, but was challenged – what about Rwanda, what about the persecution of gays? No soggy thinking allowed.
Were you at Challenge the Best 2011 – what were your top takeaways? And what about next year - any changes you’d like to see at Challenge the Best 2012?
Guess I’ve never seen a Nobel Laureate that entertaining. Rohrer definitely was one of the most exciting guests. It’s been the second round of Challenge the Best – ending with a great panel debate.
Top takeaway: the students’ drive, motivation and curiosity on the one hand; the Nobel Laureates’ interest in openly discussing with students and carefully listening to their opinions on the other hand.
Interdisciplinary, intergenerational dialogues is no piece of cake – rather is is a Challenge in its own right..
Challenge the best certainly was excitingly different from the usual European Youth Parliament, Model United Nations, UN Youth Delegates etc. sessions. Albeit the panel discussion would have been more effective had there been a deeper student – panelist relation (e.g. something like student’s elaborating the 35-word statement together with one of the panelists, which then would have to defend that statement), the idea of having experts with multiple views to relate to and to challenge was a good one. There should, however, be a 90 second limit for the panelists to make their statement
Having said that: thanks again, Nisha, for the excellent work on worming coherent statements out of the distinguished guests!
Outstanding fact: Sir Mirrlees taking the time to stop by in St. Gallen coming from Hong Kong (!).
P.S.: The student’s Name was not Sebastien
Best
I agree with Ulrich….I was amazed that Sir Mirrlees took the time out to come all the way from Hong Kong! Most of these conferences end up turning into watered down formats of a Model United Nations…this was a refreshing change. Having said that, maybe the next year the organisers could consider having each of the guests briefed by a student for 15 minutes on how exactly the context for the debate was set, so there is a better alignment between the questions that the students want answered and those that the guests think need to be.
Anyhow, great job moderating the event!
Great moderation, Nisha! You gave the “panel of elders” a refreshing touch.
And thx Priya for the input!
What amazed me the most was that these eminent personalities were really down to earth and open for discussions with the student participants.
When Mr. Feldstein insisted on being called Lew or Sir Mirrlees said that we were being way too formal I was more than surprised.
I hope you had a great experience. The students will remember the conference for a long time. The first time to meet a Nobel Laureate…
@Ulrich: Sorry about the name mix-up – so what is ‘Sebastien’s name then? Is it you, Ulrich?
Thank you for the great moderation Nisha. I just wanted to add something to the question about african eyes. You misunderstood me and so did the Panelist. I was asking about solving ethnicity problems by taking on the point of view of some minorities in that case it was african. And I wanted to know how far the panelist would be willing to go in taking their point of view to solve some of our problems. Is giving up human rights one of them? I was quiet disappointed, as were a lot of other students I talked to, about the fact that he didn’t really answer the question.
But in sum the event was amazing and I hope we will have another event like this soon
Kind regards
Julien
@Julien: apologies for getting the wrong end of the stick, Julien. Perhaps the good Prof misunderstood your question too rather than avoided it.
Don’t worry about the name mix-up! Being listed as one of your personal highlights honors me even without being credited correctly
Far more interesting is the question of how come we never came to ask you, Nisha, about your opinion on all this? Clearly your job is all about bringing people with different views, backgrounds and visions together and getting the most out of this diversity, is it not? So you ought to have some form of answer as to how the societies’ hidden potential can be extracted and benefited from.
awesome blog – and my grandma came from 15 min away from St Gallen – if you go back, its herisau!