Global Expert Claims Ignorance
On January 30, 2008, J. Nathan Corbitt urged students to reach beyond what's comfortable, to travel, and to help close the gap between the world's rich and poor. Corbitt, a professor at Eastern University, Global Awareness Profile (GAP) author, and co-founder of BuildaBridge, opened his Burgin Center talk by photographing his audience.

“I have twenty-five or thirty-five thousand pictures. I’ve selected about 300 to share with you today,” he said, gesturing to images from his work around the world.

“The first thing I want to say is that I’m ignorant. I know that I am ignorant because I keep making mistakes.” Corbitt told how an Egyptian cab driver, expressing friendship, attempted to kiss him three times—a customary greeting among male friends. Corbitt’s faux pas? Offering a hug in return.

Corbitt, who grew up in the hills of North Carolina, said it had always been his dream to travel and that his dreams have come true. Now, he helps others through BuildaBridge, a non-profit that uses the transformative power of art to bring hope and healing to children worldwide.

But his cultural competence has been a journey, he explained. Just 10 years ago, as a professor of cross-cultural studies, he hosted a Bangladeshi and mistakenly referred to the visitor’s homeland as Pakistan. After dinner, and poring over an atlas, the guest spent hours explaining the geography of his region to Corbitt.

“I felt like an idiot,” he said. “If you make a mistake cross-culturally, people perceive you as being ignorant.”

Corbitt detailed what he sees as the four phases on the way to cultural competence: unconscious incompetence (you have no idea that you know little); conscious incompetence (you know how little you know); conscious competence (you know a lot but have to work to assemble the pieces in context); and unconscious competence (you can move fluidly and fluently in the world around you and add value).

Corbitt urged students to develop relationships with people who are different from themselves and to travel—not just to clean hotels in chic cities, but to the places where they might encounter the crisis of the world’s poor: millions of orphaned children in Cairo or the 2 million residents of the world’s largest slum in Nairobi.

“You and I are part of the world’s elite,” he said. “The issue of poverty is, in my view, crucial.” He said that when the prosperity gap gets too vast and people’s basic needs to survive can barely be met, ”people” become “crowds” and “often attack those with resources.

“We’re on this earth with fellow human beings. It is unjust to let other human beings live unjustly.

“My desire for you is that you can become unconsciously globally competent. [I want you to be] motivated to be a part of the world and make a difference.

“My motto is, ‘Cultivate the joy of being wrong in order to be right.’”

Faculty member Peter Kempe organized Corbitt’s visit. Kempe leads the school’s committee on global citizenship—one of four committees established to meet the goals of the 2007 Accreditation for Growth process.

"We have always been globally aware and internationally connected,” Kempe said, “and we have celebrated and appreciated the many cultures and countries our students represent. The ‘global awareness’ objective simply focuses on a more deliberate approach and commitment to global education."

Mercersburg students will take Corbitt’s GAP assessment in early February, giving the school baseline global fluency data to help improve future student performance and assess the effectiveness of travel and other programs.

—Communications Office, with reporting by Magdalena Kala '08