Global Dialogues

I first heard the word “solidarity” during a Model UN conference at Georgetown Qatar. At the time, I, a ninth grade student, wasn’t sure what it meant beyond resolution clauses. But after listening to student delegates from Palestine and Sudan share not statistics but their lived experiences, I understood that solidarity isn’t an abstract value. It’s moral authority lived out loud.

Our multipolar world may lack a universal frame, but that doesn’t mean there’s a moral vacuum. I’ve seen moral authority persist in unexpected places: in the quiet defiance of Filipino migrant workers organizing in Doha, in interfaith classrooms where Muslim and Catholic students navigate shared grief after war, in classrooms like my Prisons and Punishment course, where I engaged with people directly affected by incarceration and wrestled with how punishment is unevenly distributed across race, gender, and class. These weren’t headline moments, but they were real. They mattered.

As an international politics major concentrating in international law, I’ve often been taught to analyze norms, treaties, and institutions. But some of the most urgent lessons came outside the classroom. They came from students whose lack of citizenship limited their futures, women navigating devalued care work, and peers critiquing how humanitarian efforts can reinforce the hierarchies they aim to dismantle. These encounters revealed how global frameworks often silence the voices they claim to represent. They deepened my understanding of how gender, labor, and mobility shape lived experience and left me with a lingering question: How do you critique systems without dismissing the communities that still depend on them? I’m still working through that tension, but it’s stayed with me far longer than any policy framework ever did.

So where does moral authority reside today? I think it lives in the margins; in communities forced to navigate broken systems with creativity, resilience, and a kind of moral clarity that institutions often lack. These are people who can’t afford to theorize justice—they have to live it, improvise it, every day. It lives in dialogue, not doctrine, in the messy, sometimes uncomfortable conversations where people show up not with certainty, but with sincerity. And increasingly, it rests with youth. Not because we have all the answers, but because we’re willing to ask better questions. We’re less invested in defending the old rules and more curious about what could exist beyond them. That doesn’t mean we reject structure altogether, but we’re learning to recognize when existing frameworks fall short, and to imagine alternatives rooted in empathy, equity, and care.

This work won’t be easy, but the experiences I’ve had—those that have pushed me to question, reflect, and grow—have shaped the person I am today. Now, I’m ready to take the next step, not just in my own journey, but in solidarity with others who are seeking to challenge the status quo and build something better.

Jay Pacer (SFS'26) is a junior in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Qatar.