Presented at a UN side event "The Role of Civil Society in Implementing the Post 2015 Development Agenda" July 21, 2015.

2. • Some Troubling News
• How can academics make a
difference?
• Where do we go from here?
• Some Future Directions
Agenda:

3. • Magnitude:
• How can we make something this
encompassing readily understood?
• Public Knowledge:
• Only 1 in 4 Americans can name the
current UNSG; 2 in 5 didn’t know
enough about him to evaluate his job
performance
• Partisanship:
• Fox News 7/21/14: “centerpiece of the
latest multi-trillion-dollar U.N. bid to
reshape the planet along largely
socialist or progressive lines”
Post-2015 Domestic
Challenges

4. It is customary in these
discussions for academics
to bemoan their lack of
“real world” impact.

6. Conventional debates
about the influence of
academics focus on
influence ex ante.

7. But this view overlooks a
role for academics as
interlocutors between the
UN and the public
And this role is vitally
important moving forward

8. • Communicating Complexity
• Mobilizing Collective Action
• Active learning strategies can place
Post-2015 at the heart of course
assignments
• Training Skills Too!
• Using students as a “force
multiplier”
Bridging the Gap

9. • Communicating Complexity
• If every professor who teaches on the
UN wrote one op-ed or blog post…
• Mobilizing Collective Action
• Engaging students through local UNA
chapters / community outreach
• Training Skills
• Op-ed writing
• Data visualization
Where can we go
from here?

10. • Address the information deficit
• “What’s the UN doing?”
• Sell engagement with Post-2015
• “Why should I care?”
• Strengthen accountability
• “How can we hold governments to
their words?”
What would this do?

11. • Going Younger:
• Tailoring the message to K-12
• Going Global:
• Scaling up to UN MOOCs
What else is there?

12. Are we ready to
embrace this challenge?

13. Email: martin.edwards@shu.edu
Twitter: @MartinSEdwards
For More Information

14. • Cartoon by Jack Ohman from
David Newsom “Foreign Policy
and Academia” Foreign Policy
101 (Winter 1995-1996)
Source for image