Guest conference at Amsterdam University College

On May 10th I presented a guest lecture during the Global Leadership Course at the Amsterdam University College entitled: Social Entrepreneurship and Leadership. It was based on my research on social entrepreneurship which will be published later this year. The class was attended by international students. We discussed various types of leadership. A female student had shown leadership when she responded to the negative attitude of her grandparents against the arrival of many refugees to their town. She explained the situation and argued that  need help and understanding, after which her grandparents started to volunteer at the centre for refugees.

We then discussed that public opinion seems to be far less articulate now than it was in the 1970s and 1980s. At the time, public opinion and its subsequent actions and demonstrations had significant impact on, for instance, the ending of the dictatorships in Latin America and Apartheid in South Africa. The Netherlands was famous for its resistance against nuclear weapons. 

Some students explained why this was the case: students are too busy setting up their own lives. THe media make us numb with the continuous information about the war in Syria. However, in later reflection we decided that people around the world need to be alert about what is going on. Behind the television screens are people like ourselves who dramatically suffer from warfare. People need to raise their voice if they do not agree with the reasons for starting a war, etc.