“It is our responsibility as educators not only to impart knowledge but also to inspire and support our students to make a difference. For if we don’t do it, who will?” Bolander Laksov (2025)

Already a month ago, my colleague and current guest professor in our group, Klara Bolander Laksov, published the column “Democracy – An Educational Mission for Higher Education” in “universitetsläraren“, the magazine of my union, the Swedish Association of University Teachers and Researchers.

In this inspiring column, Klara calls for us teachers to step out of our comfort zone and create learning environments that give students the tools to become active citizens and contribute to a sustainable and democratic future. So it is not enough to teach about, with, in sustainability, but we also need to teach through sustainability, meaning practicing living together in a way that we will in a sustainable society (the process is the point!), and we need to teach for sustainability, inspiring action, because it is not enough to know how, students must want to do it.

Klara writes

“It is our responsibility as educators not only to impart knowledge but also to inspire and support our students to make a difference. For if we don’t do it, who will?“

And that is a sentiment that I have been thinking about a lot recently. I have so many conversations these days about “but I don’t know enough…” (the paradigm of “miles deep, inches wide” is really coming back to bite us!), “but is it really my role to take a lead on something if I am not the expert?” (oh hello, paradigm of knowledge should be delivered by expert),  “what if I say something wrong?” (yep, paradigm of knowledge evolves through criticism), “wouldn’t the university be more clear about it if they really wanted me to include sustainability in my teaching?” (here we go: paradigm of universities being institutions of rationality). And I can relate to all of them! But as Klara writes: if we don’t do it, who will?

The English translation sounds a bit weird to me, but this is the quote that I picked for my confirmation on another “May the Force”, many many years ago:

“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

I really also really like this quote by Marianne Williamson (although I haven’t read the book to know the context):

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us […] as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Or, as I am thinking about it these days, when I am accepting to give keynotes in the fall and next spring with abstracts that are really out of my comfort zone now, but by having put them out there, I have committed to being ready to give them when that time comes, because someone has to go first:

Suck it up and just do it.

I see how Klara’s column, by taking a clear stand on what her values are and how she sees the role of education and the responsibility of educators, is giving me confidence to do the same. And I hope that in taking a clear stand on my values, my understanding of the role of education and the responsibility of educators, that ripple will grow larger and larger circles, until we unleash a tsunami of empowerment :)

In other news: Dramatic pictures from cold dip from around the time the column was published. No filters here! But the sun came out the moment I was back out of the water…