Sassen Pushes to Globalize the Classroom

As Columbia pushes to become a “global university,” Saskia Sassen might be a harbinger of things to come.

Sassen—who teaches both at Columbia and as a visiting professor of political economy at the London School of Economics—has authored 12 books, three of which served as jumping-off points for large movements in scholarship. An adviser to many international bodies, she has also written for some of the world’s most prestigious publications—among them the New York Times, The Guardian and Newsweek International. With so much on her plate at one time, one wonders when she sleeps.

Sassen, Lynd Professor of Sociology and an international expert on globalization, has dedicated her life to altering conceptions of the normative. Her major body of work has been shattering conventions and unveiling the complex social, economic, and political systems created by globalization. Her ideas have often been heralded as groundbreaking.

Dutch by birth, Sassen grew up in Argentina and Italy and was a student of the world, attending top-tier institutions in France, Rome, and Buenos Aires. Her cosmopolitan life shaped and influenced her intellectual curiosities, in many ways serving as an example of global exchange.

“Because of my nomadic life, I imagine that I am always a foreigner, but always at home. ... I don’t even know what my ‘motherland’ would be!” Sassen said in a rare quiet moment in her office. It’s because of that experience that she is fluent in English, Dutch, Spanish, French, Italian, and German.

That background has also proved useful in her academic life. A member of the Committee on Global Thought, Sassen’s international experience makes her an essential component of Columbia’s push to become a “global university.” Sassen coined the term “global city,” in recognition that “we are witnessing a reconfiguration of the pre-existing geographies of power and centrality, with the rise of Asia and of European cities and the relative slowdown of American cities.”

Sassen also endeavors to create “global” academic dialogue in her classes—Global Urbanism and Globalization—and in her most recent book, liberating the category “territory” from the national and extending the concept of the denationalized global city.

“Globalization is like a bipolar variable,” Sassen said. “On the one hand it destroys cultures and economies, but on the other hand it replaces these with new economies and liberates many minority groups in nation-states, which now do not need state representation any longer—they are open to international human rights regimes and amnesty.”

In her analysis, she emphasizes the significance of the next several years, as global cultures continue to exchange power and distance between them becomes more condensed.

“The world is in such a bad state, and it troubles me that we are capable of generating so much wealth and yet people are so poor. I want to explore ways of using the knowledge that I have the privilege to have in order to decode the negatives of
globalization,” she said.

monica.varman@columbiaspectator.com