Founder of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers Community Jacksonville Hub discusses the value of healthy debate and tolerance in the United States
One of the strategic goals of Salzburg Global Seminar is to bridge divides. Pascal Rathle, a Fellow of this year’s American Studies Program, titled The President, The Press and The People, has made it his life’s work to advocate for compromise as a value, a policy, and a rule in society and to relieve the divisions within humanity.
The 2016 presidential election in the United States was a turning point in Rathle’s life, which he admitted sparked a disgust in leadership. He felt there was a tumultuous tornado occurring, a widening binary divide amid a seemingly endless political doom loop. At that time, he was engulfed in his identity as an aspiring soccer player with FC Augsburg in the German Bundesliga and as a NCAA Division I athlete in the US.
“I realized that my entire life needed to pivot into the direction of [seeking] compromise within a leadership frame,” the former footballer and teacher, now graduate student and “global shaper”.
“Indirectly or directly, I began placing myself into difficult or contentious conversations and environments, whether through volunteerism for AmeriCorps, academic study or my professional experiences internationally and domestically. I worked to be a weaver, stitcher and a threader of people and opposing forces… I began to move my needle into global and local advocacy for human rights.”
Before founding the World Economic Forum Global Shapers Community Jacksonville Hub in 2020, Rathle observed a cityscape that suffered from a sectarian divide, with red lines, blockbusting, and classism. He took it upon himself to explore as many neighborhoods as possible and managed to break his assumptions about the people’s stories. Through trial and error, he built what he refers to as “a volunteer civic organization, a cross-partisan action think tank for human flourishing.”
“The goal locally for us is impact projects,” he says. “More importantly, during a time of democracy upheaval in many parts of the world, but even in the United States, to embody an apparatus where the democratic practice of debate, disagreement, proactive listening, tolerance, civility, and humility is animated. Programmatically, the Global Shapers of Jacksonville engage in bi-weekly seminars to bridge the gap between established decision-makers and what is the next generation.”
With a bachelor’s degree in communications, a master of science in social policy, and as a current master in law student at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, Pascal believes the first tangible outcome to combat the spread of misinformation is to establish media literacy as a norm, but also for traditional and nontraditional media companies to demonstrate responsibility and accountability by ceasing a monetize-from-outrage lens. He believes his generation must not imitate the older generations who behave as toddlers while consuming media, and must instead challenge the ethics of how media companies undermine America’s civic and democratic beliefs.
He questions the legislative branch’s expertise to respond to this heightened misinformation scheme, adding that they must yield relative familiarity with technology, AI, and data to create purpose-built policies and regulations.
On a separate note, Rathle considers US culture from an analogous perspective of a conductor in a symphony, which is bound to have technical errors, something that is both in tune and out of tune.
“It’s a page to be written, but it’s a page filled with variables of justice and injustice,” he notes. “It’s an opportunity for people to engage in meaning rather than nothingness. I think American culture combats the frame of nihilism and hopefully lends love and hope to those participating.”
As someone who aspires for political office and who aims to work with and listen to others, Rathle says he feels honored and blessed to be a part of Salzburg Global Seminar’s carefully curated space that allows for debate, disagreement, and exchange to flourish. That is the real value, he says, of the buildup to the organization’s 75th anniversary in the summer of 2022.
“From a collaborative front,” he concluded, “I think the American Studies Program creates an identity for us to enter and have a conversation to create a solution or a recommendation together… You’re going to have a lot of individuals that have heard the expressions of each other on Zoom and eagerly look forward to dialoguing together in a room, and I think that’s where the change that Salzburg [Global] has historically been known for will come to fruition. I am very grateful for the diverse intellect and the curious honesty that has been exhibited thus far.”
