From the Faculty
Everybody,
I hope this project serves as a useful investigation into the course material we dealt with this year and subject matter that is personally important to you. I think it’s important that we view our intellectual pursuits as having larger goals than grades and graduation, as meaningful as those things are. Knowledge is a form power, and I encourage you to experiment with that power to change society, and especially to exercise that power when you have the opportunity to broaden the sphere of justice in the world. As Karl Marx famously stated, “The philosophers have merely interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” Things have not always been the way they are and they won’t always be like they are now. But which future will be ours?
Jamie McCallum
Queens College, Spring 2007
This project, in which you offer to the public the insights you have gained through your study and research, is exactly the kind of results that our Department would hope for from students in our program. The objective of the Urban Studies program is not only to understand the world, but, as Prof. McCallum has told you, to change it — or, as the motto of Queens College would describe it, “We learn so that we may serve”.
We hope you have learned more about how the world works, and that you are prepared to use that knowledge, in cooperation with others, to make the world a better place. I, and others in our department, look forward to seeing your manifestos.