Agora Challenge
“For the way our lives turn out, “it makes no small difference to be habituated this way or that way straight from childhood, but an enormous difference, or rather all the difference.”
Agora Challenge is aimed at shaping habits through a set of learning experiences guided by principles of project-, challenge-, game-based learning. Agora Challenge is the primary way fellows are engaged to act on their learning. In other words, this is when they internalize knowledge, ideas and takeways from other curated activities at Agora. They form habits and learn from postmortem reflections throughout the course of a month to a year, depending on the project.
Monthly challenges may aim to form habits of physical health, critical thinking, information literacy, meditation and reflection.
A prominent example of a longer challenge was when Agora fellows organized to speak up for Chinese students studying in the US, involving collective activism addressing the Biden administration.
It all started in 2020 amid the global COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the US administration's visa restrictions on international students, 267,712 international students studied in the US during the 2019-2020 academic year, an 11% decrease from the 2015-2016 peak. Surveys showed that only 4% of Chinese students canceled their study abroad plans due to the pandemic, but the actual impact of visa restrictions are widely felt by many Chinese students, including those in the Agora community.
At the start of Biden administration, Agora Fellows and mentors, including Hon. Kevin Rudd, former Prime Minister of Australia and at the time president and CEO of the Asia Society, launched a series of actions aimed at addressing the issue with US president.
First, Agora organized a roundtable discussion on whether and why to study in the US during these uncertain times.
Second, Agora intiate a dialgoue between the new dean of UPenn's Wharton School and Hon. Kevin Rudd, where fellows raised questions, sparked discussions, on how national policy has affected their personal academic career.
Third, Agora fellows and mentors worked together and wrote letters addressed to the White House and major US universities (including Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc.).
Fourth, Agora fellows and mentors pushed for an signed op-ed by Hon. Kevin Rudd to be published in the South China Morning Post, urging Biden to prioritise reversing the blanket ban on Chinese and other foreign students.
See reporting by South China Morning Post: https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3119247/biden-should-prioritise-reversing-trumps-blanket-ban-chinese-and
