Traveling with a "critical perspective"

I'm a student affairs "lifer" and can't let go of the calling I accepted to pursue a student affairs in higher education career in 1973 (50+ years ago!). That calling was to contribute to the learning and development of students and colleague faculty and staff and it was a commitment to a critical perspective that involved doing research, applying practice to theory and back to practice, and being reflective in everything I did by writing, presenting, or engaging with others.

My fifty-year career took me to several higher education settings in different states and concluded with work abroad, first in a visiting faculty role in Luxembourg, and second in Qatar where working for Qatar Foundation opened an entirely different world to me. The cumulative impact of career and life experiences calls me to stay current in philosophical and theoretical orientation, regardless of whether or not I'm full-time employed. One of the theoretical lenses I've grown to appreciate and has garnered considerable attention in contemporary writing is John Dugan's "critical perspective."

At this point in my life everything is fused so maybe that is why applying a critical perspective to not only work-related but also life-informing experiences has become paramount. What does that mean for travel? It means that I feel a responsibility to reflect on, and show appreciation for, the places I've been and continue to explore. This commitment has become more urgent for me recently as I view the travels that many are taking around the world. In very interesting ways, "The Case Against Travel" in the New Yorker raises questions similar to my own.

As I've observed the rush to travel after the pandemic, fueled by improving financial means of privileged Americans, I decided to respond to those who post about or share their travel experiences only when they demonstrate a commitment to appreciative and critical learning. This is challenging and has required constant monitoring of what motivates my decisions. I am sure I've missed travelers who are committed to inquiry and understanding and I'm sorry for having missed them. Three wonderful examples of critical perspectives in travel are Kathy Beardsley, Keith Edwards, and Patrick Love. In these examples, documentation and posts about travel are like a public journal, including reflection and appreciation for the places visited, taking the posts beyond "been there, done that" to what people and places reflect about history, art and architecture, and the broader view of human striving.

Particularly in the age of social media, and specifically during a time when Facebook has been abandoned by youth and adopted by "boomers" and older Millennials, I've grown very cautious about what I say or post, knowing that negative emotional consequences may be an unintended outcome for some of those who hear or view my updates. The negative impact of being left out or marginalized in youth has been documented but not much is being said about the impact for mid-life and older adults. Every celebration of travel, places I've been or things I've done, has increasingly included consideration for who has the passport, time, resources, and physical ability to engage in international travel. The spirit of why I share, and the inclusive intent of my sharing, has become central in my considerations.

What kinds of travel can be not only enjoyable but have the broader outcome of connecting across culture, understanding history, and examining my own privilege as a white, heterosexual, mainly fully abled, male American? To check my own authenticity, I looked back over my blog of the last eighteen years to see if my view of travel has changed and what types of experiences had the most profound impact. To be sure, a few of my blogposts have been just "been there, done that" but most have included a lot of reflection and appreciation for what I observed. What's interesting about the reflections that began in 2005, accelerated in 2007, and continue to the present is that they started not as tourism but as intentional learning. And the most powerful learning in travel was almost always the result of encounters with cultural informants in settings that were very different from my own life experiences. Realizing this has caused me to perceive a possible answer to a question that Aoi Yamanaka and I recently raised in a chapter on international context in leadership research. We asked what experiences can be most useful in stimulating deeper learning about international leadership? As I reviewed my blogposts, my travel started with seeking to learn and that has shaped all my subsequent experiences, which gradually included increasingly distant and diverse cultures. Perhaps this is an insight about how international travel might be introduced to anyone - before even receiving a passport, how important is it for there to be intentional consideration of "why am I doing this and what do I anticipate being the outcome for myself, my learning, and the way I live in the world?

Some examples of reflection and appreciation in travel using the elements of Dugan's critical perspective taking include: compositional diversity (Who's traveling and who is encountered in travel?); historical legacy of inclusion and exclusion (Whose stories are honored and whose are silenced?); organizational/structural aspects (What do the palatial residences of monarchs and edifices of religious institutions tell us about equity?); behavioral climate (Who is welcomed and given attention?); and, psychological climate (Whose identity and being is celebrated and what does it mean for travelers today?). If these were used in preparing for travel and as a framework for reflecting on what we encounter in travel, I suspect that outcomes of travel might be immeasurably enhanced.