Global Thursday Talks How Critical Educators United Locally & Globally during Pandemic

Abstract

When the covid-19 lockdowns started in March 2020, that meant isolation from education, research, learning and social life for the members of higher education institutions. They needed to seek for alternative ways to learn together, to meet for discussions and to know about each other’s situation. As the pandemic became a global public health problem, this included not only physical health but mental, social and psychological health and balancing them together. University students, academics and educators soon looked for communities to get together for their food for thought. Global Thursday Talks initiative is the fruit of such a pursuit. The first efforts were to reach out the people of the prospective community i.e. educators, scholars and a large number of PhD students in education from Turkey and from the States. The aim was to keep educators and scholars together to discuss controversial issues in education in the times of uncertainty due to covid-19 pandemic. Then the first plan was to organize series of online talks on education with the contribution of worldwide known public intellectuals, critical pedagogues and academics. The first invited speaker was Peter McLaren who accepted to give a speech about the controversial issues of the time.