International Studies

I am living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil also known as “A Cidade Maravilhosa”/The Marvelous city. And by all accounts it is a marvelous city, the ocean crashes against mountains, a gigantic statue of Christ sits atop a mountain watching the city, and palace like hotels are surrounded by some of the most infamous slums in the world known here as Favelas. Rio really has it all, you can find Favelas with 14 year-olds carrying guns. That is actually why I came, to see if I could help the people in the slums in any way. I quickly realized that the images you see on tv and the stories you hear are not as common as they make you believe. For the most part they are just people trying to get by, while surrounded by mostly high-income families and tourists that have a negative idea of them just because of where they live.
When I decided to come to Rio I had no idea how important the next few months will be for Brazil. Rio just won the bid for the summer Olympics in 2016 and in the next couple years there will be several new stadiums and buildings put up to get ready for this. Developing Rio is a great idea and I am sure it will be great for the city but the problem is how the government plans to get the land for the new buildings.
The government announced in the local paper their plan to remove several Favelas to make room for the new stadiums needed. For several of these communities (possibly all of them) the newspaper was the first time they heard that their communities were slated for removal. One of these communities is called Vila Autodromo and they are the first one scheduled to be removed. In fact to date, not one government official has talked to the community leaders of Vila Autodromo face-to-face. After a protest in front of city hall they finally got a meeting set for March 3rd but it is a closed meeting and seems very shady. Vila Autodromo is an excellent example of a peaceful productive community that the city should be showing off and encouraging and developing not ignoring and breaking up. There are still lots of details to workout and lots of meetings to organize but we will be working to make sure that the mayor is involving the the people in the process. If the government is paying so little attention to one of the most productive Favelas imagine how they would treat the ones that have more problems? I will keep you updated on what happens after the meetings and what is happening in Vila Autodromo and other communities in Rio.

I am living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil right now and working with an NGO down here. We are working with the favelas of Rio and trying to get more international attention on the favelas. The current issues of peaceful productive favelas being slated for removal with little to no input from the people living there are extremely hypocritical. There is a certain community here, called Vila Autodromo, that is the first on the chopping block so it is the community we are currently focusing are energy towards helping. This community is very productive nearly 100% employment and all the kids are in school, which is a great thing for any community and very rare for a favela. We will be spending a lot of time in this community as well as directly attending as many political meetings as we can that pertain to this neighborhood. I have more stats at the end of the e-mail and I would love to provide you with any information that I can get for you. I will be working down here for the next three months but the work we are doing will be going on long after the Olympics come and go.

I received the e-mail below from recent BGSU graduate, Martina Hanulova. If you would like to contact her or hear more about her work, please e-mail me at kfoell@bgsu.edu and I will put you in touch!

Dear Friends,

I hope this email will reach you well. I would like to share with you few updates from my work with UNDP country office in Sierra Leone.

My project, Open Government Initiative (OGI), aims to increase the accountability and transparency of the 3 branches of government by enhancing the visibility of these institutions, and by creating a platform for an open communication between the Government and the citizens. The project is an initiative of the President Ernest Bai Koroma who in his premier address to parliament in October 2007 stressed the importance of accountability, transparency and higher performance standards in public service.

OGI has conducted four successful interactive field trips since September 2008 with all focused entirely on the Presidency. Our recently concluded phase targeted the Legislature that I was lucky to be part of. Currently, OGI is embarking on its last phase, focusing entirely on the Judiciary. These town hall meetings will be organized to elicit community participation in finding workable solutions to the problems affecting the Justice sector.

In the last week of October, OGI organized its first judiciary town hall meeting. I must stress that this is the first time in the history of Sierra Leone that representatives from the Justice sector faced the public directly. The panelists who took part in our first judiciary town hall meetings were: High Court Judge, Master Registrar, Magistrate, representative from Bar Association and Law Reform Unit, representative from Ministry of Gender and Children’s Affairs, President of 50/50, Director of Prisons, Inspector General Office, Director of Anticorruption Commission, Representative from Ministry of Local Government and Internal Affairs, Human Rights Commission, and Solicitor General.

Before the end of the year, we plan to conduct 2 more town hall meetings with the Judiciary (in Bonthe and Kailahun Districts)

I am attaching an in-house report that I put together after our first Judiciary town hall meetings held in Kambia Town, Kambia District. I am also attaching a feedback survey report from our last parliamentary this town hall meeting held in Kabala Town, Koinandugu District.

I hope you are all well.

Kind Regards,

Martina Hanulova

Tags: Africa, Democracy

This just in from IS alumna Monica Schneiderman, who is at the Monterey Institute for International Studies–proof that our graduates can get into the best programs in the country!

“Hey Kristie! Yes I am here in Monterey, CA studying TESOL + Spanish. After teaching in Brazil + teaching ESL the past two summers I decided this was the perfect way to combine my two undergraduate degrees. I absolutely love it! I also joined the Peace Corps… I am currently awaiting medical clearance and then they will be working on my placement. My departure date is somewhere between mid July and end of August. I’ll keep you updated! Take care – Monica”

Send me your updates and I’ll be happy to post them–or make you a co-blogger if you like!

I recently joined the advisory board of Dosti, a Toledo-based organization promoting education in the Peshawar region of Pakistan. Dosti appeared in last week’s Toledo City Paper; you can read the article here:

http://www.toledocitypaper.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1849:hope-for-the-next-generation&catid=44:city-side&Itemid=453

Tags: Dosti, Pakistan

While at Notre Dame, I met the new Henry Luce Professor of Islamic Studies–the successor to the aborted appointment of Tariq Ramadan. The Ramadan case was instructive in itself; his work visa was summarily revoked because he had once (pre-9/11) made donations to an organization that is NOW (but was not then) on a list of groups that support terrorism (in this case, Hamas). Ramadan pointed out the contradiction that the State Department expected HE should have known about the connection when he made his donation–although the State Department itself didn’t know at that time!

My new acquaintance stated matter-of-factly that all his mail is opened before he receives it. Why, I wondered? Apparently just because of his Arab name. My jaw dropped; my own country is behaving the way East Germany behaved (remember, part of the Evil Empire?)! A scholar friend of mine who was researching in E. Germany in the 80s reported the same experience; usually they steamed open the envelopes, but once they glued several post-it notes back onto a clipping after “investigating.” We expected that from East Germany–but the United States of America? In E. Germany, terrorizing the observees was as important as any information that was gathered; opened mail was just a reminder that “we’re watching you, so be careful!” Is that how our government wants Arabs in this country to feel?

Last night at a local cafe, I ran into a Lebanese student I’ve known for a while. Every time I see this fellow, he makes some sort of light-hearted joke about being a terrorist. But is it really light-hearted; or is it evidence that he, too, has been terrorized? Right now he’s considering studying in Austria, and asked me whether he would be OK there. Maybe he could pretend to be an American, he thought, since his English is good. Sure, I said; but what kind of life is that when you have to “pass” with another identity in order to feel accepted, or even safe?

I feel for my Arab friends, and other non-Arab Muslims (Afghan, Pakistani) who are being profiled and stereotyped every day. I apologize to them all for this country’s failure to uphold its ideals of equality before the law. The only way forward I can see is continued dialogue and education; unfortunately, that burden falls disproportionately on the “suspects.”

Tags: Arab, Islam, Muslim, Ramadan, surveillance, Tariq Ramadan

I am back from the Notre Dame peace conference, reflecting on what I learned in the spare moments I have while catching up with my “real life.” Of course I learned a TON and came back with notes, handouts, downloads, and a mental reading list  of a dozen books for starters . . . but as so often, sometimes the most important things that happen at human gatherings aren’t the Planned Agenda Items, but the things that Just Happen. There is no substitute for human and social interaction; or maybe I’m just a social learner.

On the very first day of the conference, I noticed several men in the audience (yes, they were all men) had very tiny, unobtrusive computers on their laps. And just like my students who LOOK extra-serious when they bring laptops to the classroom, most of them were NOT doing work; they were checking their e-mail during the presentations. (This is why I’m considering a new classroom policy: “Sure, you can use your laptop in my classroom . . . if you sit up front with your back to me so I can see your screen at all times!”)

Still, when I’m on the other, listening, side, I would LOVE to be able to check my e-mail during all kinds of meetings, whether academic or administrative; and of course do relevant things like take notes or fact check (which, to be fair, students in my classes have also done). So once I knew peoples’ names, I asked about the tiny laptops and learned about the Netbook! What a GREAT invention! It’s about half the size of a laptop; does just about everything a laptop can do, though maybe not as quickly or all at once; and costs around $300.

I now have one, of course, thanks to the magic of Amazon Prime (this is NOT an endorsement). I got the Acer AspireOne, based both on reviews and on the price; I paid $329 after taxes. I wouldn’t want to work on it ALL the time; the keyboard IS smaller (though this model has one of the larger ones), and the small screen compresses websites in an annoying way. BUT: I toted it to GFT (local coffeehouse) in my purse! It won’t take up half the space in my carry-on when I travel! Small is beautiful! And for cash-strapped students, what a brilliant way to get everything you REALLY need without dipping into the student loans! You have to replace these things every 3-5 years anyway; why spend a fortune on them? (Have we entered the age of the disposable computer?)

And THAT’s the first concrete outcome of my time at Notre Dame! Learning is a strange and mysterious process . . .

Today at a session on the relationship between International Studies and Peace Studies, George Lopez made the statement, “Peace Studies is like the tortoise, coming from behind slow and steady; International Studies is more like the hare that’s just been dropped out of a helicopter.” His point was that the “heyday” of IS is past; the funding was strong in the 80s but has dropped off, and Peace Studies is the movement of the future.

Now George Lopez is a very cool guy and intense scholar, and he has been in academia longer than I have; check him out at http://kroc.nd.edu/people/directory/faculty/george-lopez        And I know that part of his purpose in making that statement was to encourage Peace Studies, not discourage International Studies. But still, I am not sure I agree. I have no doubt that Peace Studies is important, relevant, and poised for growth, but it seems to me that issues of sustainability are more at the forefront of donors’ and foundations’ minds. The two are related, of course; but if there’s anything to the notion that “resource wars” will fuel many conflicts in this century, then it makes more sense to devote funding / attention to solving those underlying problems than to resolving the conflicts that will arise if we don’t address the environment.

But this is not an entry about academic turf wars; may we all live long and prosper! Rather, whether I or anyone else agrees with the view that IS is passe depends very much on how one defines, and redefines, International Studies. Our “parent” field, International Relations, may offer an incomplete and discipline-bound view of the world, but it’s certainly not obsolete–not when our president is travelling to Cairo to lecture the Egyptians on why Israel has a right to exist. “Area Studies” gets short shrift these days; but when I look at what is going on in Central Asia (Pakistan/Afghanistan), having people with a solid understanding of particular regions seems more urgent than ever. (Most multinationals are still organized by world region; despite the internet, we remain still physically and culturally captive to geography.)

The big difference between International Studies and Peace Studies, it seems to me, is that IS is a “catch-all,” an over-arching endeavor that risks becoming too diffuse if it tries to be all things to all people. At the undergraduate level, though, it provides a flexible framework for students to discover “what in the world” they want to learn, do, and be. Peace Studies is a much more closely defined field; and since our notions of what “disciplines” are keep changing, I wouldn’t be surprised if an area like “conflict resolution” is considered a discipline in the future. It has some clear foundational insights, methods and methodologies that are very coherent. Hal Culbertson today kept referring to conflict resolution as a “skill”–which it is, in the real world; but as a subject of academic study, I think it’s more than that. (Kroc has an assistant professor of conflict resolution, Larissa Fast, so perhaps they’ve dubbed it a discipline already!)

These are “academic” questions about how we organize knowledge and teaching, and I’m sure the university of the mid-21st century will contain a number of fields we haven’t even imagined yet. But the question for students right now is, “what do YOU want International Studies to be?” What knowledge and skills should this field of study give you; what areas of eneavor (aka jobs) should it prepare you for? Drop me a line and let me know!

The Kroc Institute has scheduled our peace studies conference very intelligently: recognizing that  as much learning can take place through individual conversations as in lectures (“frontal instruction,” or Frontalunterricht, as the Germans call it), they’ve built in scheduled and unscheduled time for the participants to interact. Tonight, taking my place next to a “random” participant at a local pizza parlor, I found myself sitting next to Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer. At some point in the conversation, he mentioned that he had run against Al Franken for Minnesota’s Democratic nomination to the Senate. He described his campaign as “movement building,” using a strategy he teaches in Peace Studies. He spoke at VFW halls across the state, making a pitch that went something like this: “We are a declining empire trying desperately to hold onto power through military might. If you had to decide right now whether to invest billions in this proven failure of a strategy, or to take that same money and build a real renewable energy program that would create green jobs, which would you choose?” He said that 10-15 years ago he would have been kicked out of most VFW halls with this speech; in 2008, though, this crowd was with him.

The “Peace Studies” folks at this seminar all seem to integrate theory, practice, and teaching in very interesting ways. Nelson-Pallmeyer has also written a book called Saving Christianity from Empire (available in the BGSU library,  BR115.P7 N365 2005 ), in which he critiques the uses of Christianity to justify American empire-building, manifest destiny, etc. going back to the beginning of the republic. (He has an M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary, so this is neither a Bible-basher nor a Bible-thumper!)

All of us around the table talked about the still-fledgling Obama presidency. Some of my colleagues are disgusted with the new president already, while I remain hopeful (“cautiously optimistic?”). But I remember how hopeful I was during the first Clinton campaign; he promised healthcare reform, too! Jack outlined all the ways in which Obama has already gone back on campaign promises: a gutted version of cap and trade, a sustained presence in Iraq, a watered-down healthcare reform proposal that he already seems to be backing off of. It was sobering; I found myself wondering whether history will view Obama as a tragic figure (the true idealist ground down by the political machine) or as simply a masterful “player” who disappoints reformists because he knows how to be realistic about what can actually be accomplished. I’m kind of rooting for the latter.

Rarely, though, have I had such good discussions with academic colleagues as at this conference: disagreements are respectful, and these colleagues are truly more interested in asking the right questions to get at the core of the other’s ideas than in hearing themselves talk. Perhaps I can say that better: these people ask genuine questions, questions that show a real interest in the topic and in the interlocutor. Too often in “discussions,” questions are really meant to show off, disguise a speech as a question, or make the other person feel stupid. “Peace people” seem to have a knack for asking GOOD questions!

Time for bed if I hope to do it all again tomorrow!

Today’s tidbit from the Peace Institute: Speaker Dr. Kathleen Maas Weigert, Director of the Center for Social Justice at Georgetown: http://socialjustice.georgetown.edu/

She made the interesting statement, “Peace Studies values non-violence, but that does not mean we have to all be pacifists.” I asked her to clarify this during Q&A; how could non-violence NOT lead to pacifism, I wondered? She explained that it’s a continuum: advocating a non-violent approach to conflict doesn’t mean that one has to “sign on the dotted line” as a committed, no-violence-under-any-circumstances pacifist.

This reminded me of the difference between German “Zivis” in the 80s vs. today. “Zivis” are youg men who choose to perform civil service rather than the obligatory military service. In the cold-war atmosphere of the 80s, they had to attain conscientious objector status to do this–and that meant giving the “right” answer to questions like, “if someone attacked your girlfriend while you were walking down the street, would you defend her by hitting the assailant?” Any hint that you would even consider violence got you enlisted in the military. Today, it’s routine for young men to choose civil service without having to go through “vetting” as conscientious objectors. They can choose a non-violent aternative without necessarily being whole-hearted pacifists.

A preference for non-violence–it’s a start!