St. Clare's hosts the IB Conference on Global Democracy

While the Democratic Party's nomination for Barak Obama spelt an exit for Hillary Clinton from the US presidential race, 220 students and staff from St Clare's, Oxford and four other International Baccalaureate Schools were debating who they wanted to be the next President of the United States. The visitors were from King Edward, St Helens, Woodside Park and St Dunstan's. Professor Peter Oppenheimer, a political scientist and pupil of Christchurch, gave the keynote speech.

Besides the main debate, students mixed across nationalities in smaller group sessions to share their ideas on numerous scenarios which included the Iraq War, Global Poverty, Women's Rights, the Middle East and a variety of other United Nations' concerns. The students came to the conference well prepared because since January they had been researching and analysing and debating discussion sheets, academic papers and UTube videos which had been set up on the college intranet by Dr Rory Kelly who teaches English and Global Perspectives at St Clare's.

The high point of the day was the lecture on Global Democracy given by guest speaker, Mr Peter Oppenheimer. A Student (Fellow) of Christ Church College Oxford since 1967, Mr Oppenheimer is an eminent economist and also the Director of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. According to Paula Holloway, ‘Peter really clearly defined democracy for the students but he also challenged them to think about different models of democracy in different parts of the world and to challenge what they meant by the democratic process'. The students were also impressed by the way Mr Oppenheimer fielded questions from a variety of countries.

Dr Kelly the organiser was delighted by the proceedings and outcome of the conference. He was struck by how well the visitors and St Clare's cooperated in groups to talk about issues of global importance but he was also impressed by the quality of the winning essay on global democracy won by Jennifer Glass from USA.