Brief summary of the content of our political lectures:

The first lecture was meeting Jacob Bundsgaard at city hall, where the fellows made me deeply proud by participating more than anyone could have expected. Also, it is not hard to understand what the fellows thought so fascinating about Jacob Bundsgaard and the lesson he gave us on Danish democracy and relations - in a global perspective. His speech was most informative, charismatic and well structured. I believe this was the reason that his words stayed with us and was debated several times subsequently. There was in particular one point that he presented to us which reappeared in many of our later debates: “Think globally – act locally”. The phrase turned out to be versatile and also interesting if you flip it so it states the opposite.
Bits of what we learned from Jacob Bundsgaard’s lecture:
Three mayor challenges that Denmark is facing are:
- Integration
- The environmental task: both globally and locally.
- Globalisation: how Denmark and Aarhus will get competitive in global economy. Two main tools are education and innovation.

New terms: Red ocean strategy and Blue ocean strategy.

Jakob Erle spent an entire day with us chatting as well as mentoring. The general theme was Democracy and Globalisation.
Bits of what we learned from Jakob Erle:
The history of globalisation and democracy
Supranational organisations: WTO, ICC, WHO, Kyoto-protocol. “United in diversity”

Definition of Globalisation:
Global exchange of
- Goods
- Capitol
- Culture
- People
Definition of Multilayered democracy:
Local – State – Federal – Global
Local – National – Regional – Global


New terms:
LPG: Liberalisation, privatisation, globalisation.
GONGO: Governmental organised NGO

Kim Hundevadt gave us a lot of facts about the cartoon crisis that were new to most of us.
We agreed on the fact that that the cartoons had not been published without a reason. They were published within a context. The question was rather if there was enough reason for publishing them.

We learned about a struggle of values: Sharia law > < Secular law.
Questions were raised: Should there be a law against blasphemy? Is the cartoon crisis an example of a general lack of respect for the Muslim minority? Were the cartoons tools in a political game?

New terms:
OIC: organisation of Islamic conference
The Arab League

Debate
Sergei Hoxha and Darya Ermolina taught us how to debate with the subject Legalization of euthanasia as an example of British Parliamentary Debate.
In this process we learned about formal debating, asking penetrating questions and the importance of being precise (much thanks to Lendyll).

By Aila Lonka.