The Global Center for Advanced Studies (GCAS ) is an educational and research institution located in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
and
Dublin
Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...
. It is known for its seminars with the world's leading philosophers, journalists, artists, academics, and public figures. GCAS is governed by a board of directors.
[GCAS Organizing Body - Global Center for Advanced Studies](_blank)
/ref> Later in 2017, GCAS incorporated as a private limited company GCAS College Dublin, Limited in order to create a co-owned college among faculty, staff, financial supporters, and graduates making GCAS College the first co-owned, accredited college in history.
History
The Global Center for Advanced Studies was originally incorporated in the state of Colorado
Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...
on August 22, 2013, by Creston C Davis["Something Radical: The Global Center for Advanced Studies"](_blank)
by George Elerick, '' Huffington Post'', October 4, 2013. (currently Professor of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis and Chancellor at GCAS College Dublin), as an institute of higher learning based on critical theory, and on the concept of a "debt free education grounded in the principles of Democracy and the Commons
The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. These resources are held in common even when owned privately or publicly. Commons c ...
.” Creston Davis hired Jason M. Adams on September 23, 2013 as a co-director,Inside the Global Center for Advanced Studies, a Chat with Creston Davis
May 13, 2013. later Adams withdrew from GCAS.
The GCAS was subsequently relocated to
Grand Rapids,
Michigan
Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...
and incorporated in Michigan on November 27, 2013 as a
non-profit organization
A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
. The Colorado corporation was voluntarily dissolved on February 26, 2014. In 2017 Creston Davis and Tere Vaden, PhD incorporated GCAS in Dublin, Ireland as GCAS Research Institute Ireland, and in 2018 as GCAS College Dublin, Limited.
From 2014–15,
Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou (; ; born 17 January 1937) is a French philosopher, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École normale supérieure (ENS) and founder of the faculty of Philosophy of the Université de Paris VIII with Gilles Deleuze, Michel Fouca ...
assumed the role of Honorary President at GCAS.
[Alain Badiou - Global Center for Advanced Studies](_blank)
/ref> Azfar Hussain joined GCAS as its Honorary Vice-President in 2013 and is still working in that capacity. On July 16–19, 2015, a GCAS conference called "Democracy Rising World Conference 2015" took place in Athens
Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...
.[Democracy Rising World Conference 2015 - Transform-network.net](_blank)
/ref>[Introducing the Democracy Rising World Conference - European Alternatives](_blank)
/ref> In autumn 2015, GCAS partnered with two institutions of higher education in Europe, the Alma Mater Europaea-European Center Maribor (AMEU-ECM)[Partnership with The Global Center for Advanced Studies](_blank)
/ref> and th
Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis (ISH)
["GCAS Partners with a European University and Research Institute" - Global Center for Advanced Studies](_blank)
/ref> In 2017, Lewis Gordon, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy at UCONN-Storrs, assumed the role of Honorary President at GCAS.
In 2017, The Global Center for Advanced Studies formally ended its academic partnership with Alma Mater Europaea-European Center Maribor and ISH owing to ideological difference surrounding charging tuition and breaking with the GCAS model of debt-free education. The researchers, faculty, and staff of GCAS opted to found an independent research institute in Dublin
Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 c ...
, Ireland, formally re-naming the institute GCAS-Research Institute, Ireland (GCAS-RII).[GCAS Research Institute Ireland and Lewis Gordon](_blank)
/ref>
Academics
After ending its academic partnership with Alma Mater Europaea-European Center Maribor, the GCAS formally applied for accreditation with the Irish government. The institute's application for accreditation remains under review. The GCAS academic structure is divided into ten institutes: Critical
Critical or Critically may refer to:
*Critical, or critical but stable, medical states
**Critical, or intensive care medicine
*Critical juncture, a discontinuous change studied in the social sciences.
*Critical Software, a company specializing in ...
Philosophy, Critical Media
Media may refer to:
Communication
* Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data
** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising
** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass e ...
and Cultural Studies, Arts
The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both ...
, Humanities
Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...
and Social Sciences
Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of so ...
, Policy Studies
Policy studies is a subdisicipline of political science that includes the analysis of the process of policymaking (the policy process) and the contents of policy (policy analysis). Policy analysis includes substantive area research (such as health ...
, Critical Theology
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...
, Psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
, Global Studies
Global studies (GS) is the interdisciplinary study of global macro-processes. Predominant subjects are global politics, economics, and law, as well as ecology, geography, culture, anthropology and ethnography. It distinguishes itself from the rela ...
, Political Economy
Political economy is the study of how economic systems (e.g. markets and national economies) and political systems (e.g. law, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied phenomena within the discipline are systems such as labour ...
and Critical Pedagogy
Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of education and social movement that developed and applied concepts from critical theory and related traditions to the field of education and the study of culture.
It insists that issues of social justice and de ...
; and a Forms and Formalization Research Group (FFRG) on Formal Ontology
In philosophy, the term formal ontology is used to refer to an ontology defined by axioms in a formal language with the goal to provide an unbiased (domain- and application-independent) view on reality, which can help the modeler of domain- or a ...
. The institute provides both online and in-residence courses that can be audited or taken towards earning
Bachelor of Arts
Master of Arts (M.A.)
o
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
in Social and Political Thought. In 2017, the institute launched an open enrollmen
E-School
that hosts a variety of eLearning courses in subjects associated with the institutes within the GCAS framework. In 2018, GCAS began offering
Certificate
program in Philosophy & Psychoanalysis. All degrees and certificates are conferred independently by GCAS from its Dublin Research Institute and subject to validation from the European Qualifications Framework
The European Qualifications Framework (EQF) acts as a translation device to make national qualifications more readable across Europe, promoting workers' and learners' mobility between countries and facilitating their lifelong learning. The EQF a ...
in Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
.[GCAS Research Institute Ireland](_blank)
/ref>
The organization affiliates itself with some of the most prominent academic professors in the world including, among others, Joan Copjec, Simon Critchley
Simon Critchley (born 27 February 1960) is an English philosopher and the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York, USA.
Challenging the ancient tradition that philosophy begins in wonder, Critchle ...
, Enrique Dussel
Enrique Domingo Dussel (born 24 December 1934) is an Argentine academic, philosopher, historian and theologian. He served as the interim rector of the Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México from 2013 to 2014.
Life and career
Enrique Duss ...
, Arif Dirlik, Bracha L. Ettinger, Henry Giroux
Henry Armand Giroux (born 1943) is an American-Canadian scholar and cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, cultural studies, youth s ...
, Richard Kearney, Antonio Negri
Antonio "Toni" Negri (born 1 August 1933) is an Italian Spinozistic-Marxist sociologist and political philosopher, best known for his co-authorship of ''Empire'' and secondarily for his work on Spinoza.
Born in Padua, he became a political p ...
, Jean-Luc Nancy
Jean-Luc Nancy ( , ; 26 July 1940 – 23 August 2021) was a French philosopher. Nancy's first book, published in 1973, was ''Le titre de la lettre'' (''The Title of the Letter'', 1992), a reading of the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Laca ...
, Avital Ronell
Avital Ronell ( ; born 15 April 1952) is an American academic who writes about continental philosophy, literary studies, psychoanalysis, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the humanities and in the departments of Germanic l ...
, Gayatri Spivak
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (born 24 February 1942) is an Indian scholar, literary theorist, and feminist critic. She is a University Professor at Columbia University and a founding member of the establishment's Institute for Comparative Lite ...
, and Gianni Vattimo
Gianteresio Vattimo (born 4 January 1936) is an Italian philosopher and politician.
Biography
Gianteresio Vattimo was born in Turin, Piedmont. He studied philosophy under the existentialist Luigi Pareyson at the University of Turin, and graduat ...
,[GCAS Faculty List Aug, 2016 - Global Center for Advanced Studies](_blank)
/ref> while past faculty members include Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou (; ; born 17 January 1937) is a French philosopher, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École normale supérieure (ENS) and founder of the faculty of Philosophy of the Université de Paris VIII with Gilles Deleuze, Michel Fouca ...
and Slavoj Žižek who remain as Affiliate Faculty.[GCAS Faculty - Global Center for Advanced Studies](_blank)
/ref> In addition to a Core Faculty, the GCAS includes a roster of international Affiliate Professors that are considered top tier representatives of their fields and support the GCAS mission.[GCAS Core and Affiliate Faculty as of 2017](_blank)
/ref>
Since its inception, GCAS held over 400 different meetings, classes, workshops and conferences, in which GCAS taught and engaged with over 100,000 people world-wide from more than 80 different countries. Events' locations range from The Centre Pompidou in Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
to Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
, New York, Athens
Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...
, Grand Rapids, and Cincinnati
Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...
; engaging with live lectures from Oliver Stone, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou (; ; born 17 January 1937) is a French philosopher, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École normale supérieure (ENS) and founder of the faculty of Philosophy of the Université de Paris VIII with Gilles Deleuze, Michel Fouca ...
, Farhang Erfani, Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali (; born 21 October 1943) is a Pakistani-British political activist, writer, journalist, historian, filmmaker, and public intellectual. He is a member of the editorial committee of the ''New Left Review'' and ''Sin Permiso'', and con ...
, Antonio Negri
Antonio "Toni" Negri (born 1 August 1933) is an Italian Spinozistic-Marxist sociologist and political philosopher, best known for his co-authorship of ''Empire'' and secondarily for his work on Spinoza.
Born in Padua, he became a political p ...
, Zoe Konstantopoulou, Jean-Luc Nancy
Jean-Luc Nancy ( , ; 26 July 1940 – 23 August 2021) was a French philosopher. Nancy's first book, published in 1973, was ''Le titre de la lettre'' (''The Title of the Letter'', 1992), a reading of the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Laca ...
, Bracha L. Ettinger, Eric Toussaint, Documenta’s Adam Szymczyk
Adam Szymczyk (Polish pronunciation: ; born in 1970 in Piotrków Trybunalski), is a Polish art critic and curator, writer and editor. He lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland. Between 2003–2014, he was the director and chief curator at Kunsth ...
, Azfar Hussain, Sigrid Hackenberg, Adrian Parr, Brad Evans, Clayton Crockett, John D. Caputo, Paul Mason, Leo Panitch
Leo Victor Panitch (3 May 1945 – 19 December 2020) was a distinguished research professor of political science and a Canada Research Chair in comparative political economy at York University. From 1985 until the 2021 edition, he served as co-ed ...
, Jodi Dean
Jodi Dean (born April 9, 1962) is an American political theorist and professor in the Political Science department at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York state. She held the Donald R. Harter ’39 Professorship of the Humanities and So ...
, Bruno Bosteels, Francesca Coin, Giovanni Tusa, Lori Marso, Pete Rollins, Agata Bielik-Robson, William Desmond, Fragkiska Megaloudi, Jeffrey Robbins, Catherine Keller, Carl Reschke, George Katsiaficas
George Katsiaficas is a Greek-American historian and social theorist. He is known for his many writings on social movements, including ''The Imagination of the New Left: The Global Analysis of 1968'' and ''The Subversion of Politics: European Auto ...
, Shon Meckfessel, Graham Priest
Graham Priest (born 1948) is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center, as well as a regular visitor at the University of Melbourne, where he was Boyce Gibson Professor of Philosophy and also at the University of St Andr ...
, Michael Hardt
Michael Hardt (born 1960) is an American political philosopher and literary theorist. Hardt is best known for his book ''Empire'', which was co-written with Antonio Negri.
Hardt and Negri suggest that several forces which they see as domin ...
, Henry Giroux
Henry Armand Giroux (born 1943) is an American-Canadian scholar and cultural critic. One of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy in the United States, he is best known for his pioneering work in public pedagogy, cultural studies, youth s ...
, Debt-Strike’s Andrew Ross, Costas Lapavitsas, Astra Taylor, and via the Žižek Studies conference with forthcoming lectures by Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...
, Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges, Lisa Duggan
Lisa Duggan () is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. Duggan was president of the American Studies Association from 2014 to 2015, presiding over the annual conference on the theme of "The Fun and the Fury: New Diale ...
, and Richard D. Wolff, among others.[The Global Center for Advanced Studies](_blank)
/ref>
See also
* Chicago Theological Seminary
Founded in 1855, the Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS) is the oldest higher education institution in the City of Chicago and was established with two principal goals: first, to educate pastors who would minister to people living on the new west ...
* European Graduate School
The European Graduate School (EGS) is a private graduate school that operates in two locations: Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and Valletta, Malta.
History
It was founded in 1994 in Saas-Fee, Switzerland by the Swiss scientist, artist, and therapist, P ...
Notes and references
External links
GCAS website
old website
)
GCAS blog
old blog
"What is the Global Center for Advanced Studies?"
by Creston Davis
GCAS Facebook page
GCAS - About Us
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160401144410/https://globalcenterforadvancedstudies.org/about-us/ , date=2016-04-01
GCAS Research Institute Ireland website
Educational institutions established in 2013
Higher education
Education in Michigan
International educational organizations
2013 establishments in Colorado