me to this day. My current
research examines global history

in the seventeenth century, and

Message trom
the Principal

it would be a very different pro-

ject—indeed, | probably wouldn't
have undertaken it at all—had |

Principal Tim Brook

| not gone out into the world in my
| So much has happened at St. John’s College since I arrived a year and a half ago, and so twenties and learned to deal
much is unfolding even as I write, that the idea of compressing everything into a few short with the uncertainties and revela-
paragraphs strikes me as an impossible task. Rather than report on all that is going on, tions that come with encounter-
let me step back from the details of College life and say something instead about the one ing and interacting with people
aspect that continues to impress me more strongly than any other, the aspect that sives from other cultures.

the College its unique quality, and that is its intercultural fabric.

Two-thirds of the junior fellows
who reside at the College have
come to Canada from as many as
forty countries around the world.
They are at UBC to pursue an
international education, but they
are at St. John’s for a slightly
different reason. They have cho-
sen to live not by themselves,
nor just among Canadians for
that matter, but with each other.
They have come to the College
because it gives them a place
where it is possible to meet and
learn from people they might
otherwise never encounter:
Lebanese talking with Israelis,
Chinese with Tibetans,
Guatemalans with Turks, and
Canadians, of course, with every-
one. The combinations among
the fellows are endless, and end-
lessly eye-opening. Not every
encounter is easy, but everyone
grasps the importance of cour-
tesy and the need to be sensitive
to the fact that, although we

do not all look at the world in
the same way, we all look at the

same world.

The intercultural life of
Johanneans reminds me of my
experience at the same stage in

my own academic life. Upon

graduating from the University of
Toronto, | went to Asia for two
years. | spent most of those two
years in China, taking courses in
the language, literature, and
history of that culture. More for-
mative of my intellectual and
cultural identity than the courses
| took, however, were the day-to-
day interactions | had with the
people around me. Chinese were
first among these, of course,
though Chinese at that time had
been trained in the fierce certain-
ty of autonomy over the uncon-
trollable effects of contact with
other cultures and were not
always as approachable as they
are now. Besides my Chinese
classmates, there were students
of many other nationalities in
Beijing and Shanghai who had no
such inhibitions. The contacts
flowed in all directions, as did the
surprises. | was the first
Canadian most Chinese had ever
met, but | was also the first
Canadian that most Albanians,
Cambodians, or Zambians had
ever met. And they were the first
for me as well. We were all
changed by our discoveries of
each other.

That exhilarating learning

experience has remained with

Interculturality is the term that

| use in my scholarly work to cap-
ture the subtle process that

leads from interaction to change

as people from different cultures

‘meet each other. This process

is nothing special — it is a fact of
everyday existence in ethnically
diverse Vancouver — but it Is
extremely important. It is the
condition that encourages

UBC to ask its students to
become global citizens, and its
scholars to contribute to global
as well as local knowledge.

It is also the circumstance that
shapes life in the College. It is
how we live, how we learn, and

why we enjoy what we do.

Those who get the chance to
navigate their way across the cul-
tural boundaries within which
they were born never return the
same. And this is as it should
be. In a world in which cultural
difference is often the ticket for
keeping scoundrels in power and
nations at war, learning to be
vulnerable to cultural dialogue
and change is a very good thing.
It keeps us aware of the rest of
the world. And it reminds us of
the insignificance of difference in

the face of all that we share.