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Universities that promote a liberal education through creative, cross-cultural curriculum nurture the goals of democracy and assist students in becoming 'citizens of the world.' Democratic education for social justice and global consciousness are necessary tools in the peaceful transformation of today's violent conflicts, which now supersede national and cultural boundaries. This paper focuses on how a course in Conflict Resolution can assist a student's development of a democratic global consciousness. The author draws upon her experience as both a graduate student of peace and conflict studies and a professor of Conflict Resolution at a New York City university. Specifically, the article offers a framework for a transdisciplinary conflict resolution education that is cosmopolitan and promotes social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper represents some of the first findings from a cross-cultural analysis of student high-school cultures in two countries. The analysis presented here is part of PhD dissertation research being conducted for the University of Amsterdam. We take a close look at the differences and similarities between two schools in seemingly divergent contexts: a high school consisting of mostly African-American students in the Bronx, New York, and a so-called "zwarte" (black) school in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Despite contextual differences, we find that there are many similarities in the types of subcultures that are prevalent at both schools, and the consequences that these subcultures have for social variables such as identity formation, peer group influence, academic expectations, exclusion and acceptance variables, attitudes towards the school, etc. Both allow insight into emerging "Black Atlantic" youth cultural patterns, and the consequences these have for the educational institutions in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]