“The World Is Not Round…”

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One fall 2011 afternoon, while sitting/doodling/not sleeping in Prof. Roy’s “Global Poverty: Challenges and Hopes in the New Millennium” class, student Abby VanMuijen ditched her live-action note-taking for a moment and scribbled down a series of words instead. (Abby can spell, say wha?) The words were Abby’s response to Thomas Friedman’s “the world is flat” assertion. A year later, her words inspired the #GlobalPOV team, not to mention our logo:

And all this time, I thought the world was round.
The world is not round.
It has edges we can fall from and faces staring
in entirely different directions.
And I thought the world was huge, but it is not — it’s in our hands.
We can hold it, change it, turn it, shake it.
We can solve it, but not by sheer luck or chance.
We must be taught the way.”

— Abby VanMuijen, U.C. Berkeley ’12

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