Carl Hobert Biography

Carl Hobert is a clinical instructor in the Boston University School of Education as well as the founder and executive director of the Axis of Hope Center for International Conflict Management and Prevention. This Boston-based nonprofit organization offers conflict-resolution simulation workshops for public and private school students, educators, parents and for non-profit and for-profit executives around the world.

Hobert draws on his over thirty years of teaching foreign language courses, developing global issues curricula and leading conflict-resolution workshops to offer classroom and boardroom-tested approaches to improve youth’s and adults’ Global IQ (GIQ). He focuses on five main areas in which GIQ can be integrated into academic curricula and corporate practices: learning foreign languages, including Mandarin, Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, Punjabi, Hindi and other “critical languages”, beginning in earlier grades and continuing – or starting - well-beyond college graduation; using technology more effectively, in the classroom and in corporate America, to cross borders fluidly and seamlessly; engaging students and adults in innovative “Intellectual Outward Bound” conflict-resolution simulation exercises in the classroom and in the boardroom, in English and in foreign languages; expanding international exchange programs; and weaving local, regional, national and international service learning programs into the fabric of schools and universities, and in the non-profit and for-profit sectors, as well.

Hobert holds a BA cum laude in French and Political Science from Middlebury College, an MA in Spanish from Middlebury College and a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Tufts Fletcher School. His most recent bestseller, Raising Global IQ: Preparing Our Students for a Shrinking Planet (Beacon Press) came out in February 2103.

Hobert is dedicated to helping youth and adults develop an understanding of alternative, non-violent approaches to resolving conflicts locally, nationally and internationally. Whether Hobert and his teams are working in Boston, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Paris, or Kigali, Rwanda, the approach is the same: role-play simulation and hands-on practice to help people learn to manage, resolve and prevent conflict more effectively.

Hobert's lifelong devotion to conflict management and prevention has its roots in major challenges he faced as a child growing up in Minneapolis, at the heyday of court-mandated busing in public schools. His best friends were people from diverse nationalities and religions who came together in a proverbial American melting pot. It was during these formative years of life that he began to study the ideas of civil disobedience offered by Henry David Thoreau, Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. All of this research, and the realization that life is so often not fair because of where, when and to whom a child is born, led Hobert to the profound belief in what he calls “educational civil disobedience.”

His life-long goal: To peacefully defy outdated, often provincial practices in our schools, as well as in our for-profit corporations and non-profit organizations. To do so, Hobert has created “P3”, or public-private partnerships, around the world, including public, private and parochial schools, and public and private organizations and corporations, working together to solve problems, to manage and prevent conflict more effectively, and to support life-long education in order to improve people’s Global IQ (GIQ).

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