By Adam Le

Doomscrolling through mountains of misinformation? The answer is international education, according to Jaishankar Raman, California State University (CSU) Executive Director of International Affairs. Raman spoke on the Scholarship in the Age of Forgetting keynote panel on Feb. 11 as part of Cal Poly Humboldt’s International Education Week. One way to get that education is to experience the world through student travel.

“When you study abroad,” Raman said. “What you get is to conquer your fear with curiosity, receive more experience talking and interacting with different people and become more empathetic.”

Raman told the story of his semester in China, when he needed to buy milk for his one-year-old. He didn’t know Mandarin, so the struggle to communicate was real.

In California, two-thirds of respondents to a Global Affairs Survey state global affairs is an important issue to them and more than 80% of Californians say they think educational institutions should not be subjected to “political” pressures, according to Ian Klaus, founding director of Carnegie California. Klaus is a leading scholar on urbanization, geopolitics and global challenges. He told the panel that support for subnational governance has increased in the last 12 months and that California should develop and maintain its — largely unofficial — diplomatic power.

Kate Gordon, CEO of California Forward, talked to the panel about the need for a return to energy-based geopolitics. Gordon has held senior roles in California state government, including Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, and Senior Climate Policy Advisor to Governor Gavin Newsom. In that position, she helped launch major initiatives integrating climate and economic strategy statewide.

California Forward is a statewide organization that exists to push for an economy that works for all regions, not only growth but sustainability in the form of climate resilience. Gordon argued for a more diversified economy and what she called an honest set of conversations.

Raman noted that as of 2026, California is the fourth largest global economy with a GDP higher than Japan. 

“We have been the standard-bearers for environmental regulation,” Raman said.

California can be a leader in education, as well, and that makes the work done by the CSU of key importance.

“The CSU is a microcosm of California,” Raman said. “The CSU system educates the most students of all higher education institutions.”

Raman believes the institution’s scholarship should be in pursuit of truth and knowledge. He noted that students need to learn how to do that in the age of forgetting, characterized by doomscrolling through information of varied credibility. It’s critical to understand that many media sources do not curate information to be more democratic. Leading stories are often those that receive the most amount of engagement — and that can be rage-inducing content.