Our first one-month 'New Questions' School was held in 1995. Over the years these sessions have built on and synthesized innovations in the IIRE curriculum going back to our first years. In many ways more seminars than lecture courses, they are meant for established progressive leaders who are re-examining past assumptions. Wrestling with a range of different themes, participants focus on the implications of a changing world economy and on challenges to old ways of organizing. 'Every member of my organization's leadership should attend a school like this', said one participant in the 1997 session.
A majority of the IIRE's students over the years have come from the global South. The year we were founded, 1982, was also the year the Third World debt crisis exploded. Issues of debt and IMF/World Bank autocracy have grown steadily more important for our activities. In 1998, to deal better with these issues, we began cementing a close working relationship with the Brussels-based Committee for Cancellation of the Third World Debt. The New Questions School that year was called a 'North-South School', as were comparable sessions in 1999 and 2000. Globalization, its realities, ideological distortions and challenges has been the fulcrum on which these sessions have been based. They have been hotbeds of debate as well as learning....
Our last Global Justice School was held in winter 2010.
The next such session is planned for November / December 2011.