Conference on World Affairs

I’ve been spending a good bit of time this week at the Conference on World Affairs (or CWA) at CU-Boulder. I go as much as I can every year. If you live near Boulder, you really should check it out. What a great way to rev up your brain after the winter doldrums! Besides, I always think that spending time on a college campus is good for anyone. It reminds us that the conveyor belt of life is in working order. There are folks coming along behind us, eager to start their adult lives. But about CWA …


Since 1948, the CU-Boulder campus has hosted the annual Conference on World Affairs. It began as a conference on international affairs (which makes great sense: it was shortly after the end of WW II). But it has since expanded to include sessions on the arts, the media, science, technology, ethics, the environment, politics, business, human rights, etc., etc. To quote Roger Ebert, who participated in CWA for decades, it’s the “conference on everything conceivable.”  Conference planners bring in about 100 scholars, performers, academics, business and government people, and assorted folks with something to say. These folks come at their own expense and without getting paid. All day, every day, for a whole week they gather in auditoriums and rooms around campus to explore every conceivable topic in plenary sessions, panels, and performances—more than 200 sessions in all.


The really astonishing thing about this conference is that all of these events are free and open to the public. Imagine that! A week of free mind-expanding continuing education with some brilliant thinkers, artists, politicians, and wannabes, all without needing to register for anything or pay a cent! Not surprisingly, a huge proportion of the audience is made up of community folks, many with gray or white hair. This is another of the gifts of retirement: the freedom to hang out with ideas in the middle of the day for a whole week!

CWA folks are easy to spot. We're the ones clogging the walkways between sessions, wearing walking shoes for our day on campus. We're carrying a satchel with an umbrella and the conference program peeking out, or we're sitting on a bench and perusing the schedule while we down a snack or some water. We pretty much fill the cafeteria at lunch time. I keep thinking that the cafeteria staff must be warned in advance about this because they are so easy going about all these folks who don’t know quite know how the food court works or where to pay.

The other main group of folks attending CWA sessions is made up of college students. Of course, the location is handy for them, and they also are often encouraged (or required) to attend. The result is a great cross-generational learning opportunity. Think about it. In how many settings do we sit side by side with people 50 or 60 or 70 years our junior (or senior) and share a moment of intellectual challenge?  How often do we get to listen to the questions that college students ask about politics, morality, technological change … and how often do they get to hear ours? There’s just so much to be learned from this.

So that’s how the world looks to a 22 year-old majoring in political science!

Wow! There are actually college students who have never heard of McCarthyism.

Do they really think that the 1960s were “a long time ago”? (answer: yes.) 


Am I hearing this right? The social construction of race, a "fringe" idea in my day, is now taken for granted. Wow. 

Ah! She didn’t understand the point because “before the pill” doesn’t mean anything to her. She never knew a time when contraception wasn’t available.

I can only imagine what thoughts the students have as folks of my generation rise to speak. I hope they find it equally intriguing.

So, I’ve attended about half a dozen sessions so far this week. Of these, I found one (a plenary) pretty boring. But still, I came away with some murmuring thoughts despite not being too enthralled. Another session (also a plenary), I found entertaining, informative, and thought provoking. However, I can’t recall being moved to think about it much. Maybe that’s because I agreed with the speaker so much I just nodded at his points and laughed at this jokes. Both of these were basically on the current crisis of national political polarization. 

The rest of the sessions I’ve attended have been panels: ethics and the new genetics, disability pride, same-sex marriage, and parallels/differences between the Tea Party and the Occupy movements. Three of these four were great! I learned a lot and got stretched a bunch in each of them. But one (same-sex marriage) was extremely frustrating. Probably because I know a fair amount about this (my partner knows a ton, and I absorb a lot from her), and the self-described “experts” on the panel didn’t. But they thought they did.

This is one of the challenging (sometimes fun, sometimes frustrating) things about CWA. The panelists are given only a title for their session—no description, no guidance about what they should say. The titles are pretty vague, sometimes provocative, sometimes obscure. Some panelists take their role really seriously; they think about the topic a lot in advance, read up on the issues, prepare remarks. Others just wing it, sometimes saying something like, “I don’t really know anything about this, but here’s what I think.” It’s sort of pot luck, so I count my experience of three excellent panels out of four as a very tasty outcome. And I haven't had many chances recently to share a tasty potluck with college students.