Brown at the Big Green

By Alison Flint

Courtesy of The Dartmouth

The former Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Gordon Brown, came to Dartmouth College on Tuesday afternoon to give a speech on global economics. Cook Auditorium was packed; Dartmouth’s weak attempt to deter spectators did not stop dozens of students from sitting on the floor and in the auditorium’s doorways. I was still nervously counting the fire exits when our own Carol Folt introduced the Right Honourable “Mr. Brown.” I had seen Brown earlier that day. He had been walking with President Jim Kim and they both seemed to be having a good time. They were laughing, although the two men trailing them weren’t (bodyguards?). At the lecture, Brown seemed to be just as jovial as before, kicking out a few jokes before commencing with anything of the economical sort.


The substance of the lecture was a reminder of what the world economy looks like after the financial crisis of 2008 and vague recommendations of what we should be looking towards for the future. Brown described the world of today as a strange limbo where 60% of manufacturing is in the East and 60% of consumption is in the West, and he gave an estimate of ten years before the numbers are geographically balanced. I think we all know this, and I would even guess that the transfer of consumerism would occur a bit earlier. His main point on this subject was that there will be vague opportunities as this transition is made and that an Asian middle class is growing that businesses can take advantage of.  Not only would clever businesses prosper but the economy would recover faster. The only thing in the way of a full recovery from 2008 is a lack of confidence to invest in the East, which we should face, according to Brown, by forming “trade agreements.” What kind of agreements, Brown did not go into great detail, but he also pushed for agreements on environmental progress.


Brown bounced from story to story, loosely connecting them with subject matter, but the apparent theme of the afternoon was interdependency. The wave of new leadership across Europe comes from the people’s impatience with the slow economy, but the slow economy comes from people who think the issue can be solved nationally. Gordon Brown is explaining this to the room, and it’s true, but unoriginal. I wanted to know what he thought was needed to get every nation to approve of a plan. As a self-admitted slippery politician, he would probably say cooperation. Oh, Gordon Brown, you know what I meant.


I’m sorry, Right Honourable Dr. James Gordon Brown, but I would’ve liked the details. I suppose it’s obligatory for an hour lecture to leave me unsatisfied, but I felt that Brown only skimmed the top of what could have been brought up. As a politician he probably saves his controversial talk for cameras. Or should I say Cameron? Sorry, bad pun. But he knows that his audience has been told this lecture before. The difference is that Gordon Brown is saying the words and he’s throwing in jokes. I don’t mean to be overly critical, I was in awe of his ease with speech and the crowd, but he could have given us more to think about.


Admittedly, he tried to. He talked about places in Africa where there are no schools or funds for education and how developed countries should seize the opportunity to invest in human capital. I agree completely. Used correctly, the world has the resources to make everyone everywhere smarter and healthier. This dilemma is as old as humankind and in a way, although I was hoping for more, it’s nice that Gordon Brown is reminding his audiences of its presence. He ended his speech with a Robert Frost allegory, highlighting decision-making and destiny, which was cheesy but in a charming way. Overall, the former prime minister was a blur of cordial anecdotes and good intentions, leaving me and 350 others unfulfilled but entertained.

Voluntourism

By Mary Peng

“You can change the lives of these orphans in three weeks! Make a difference, NOW!”


Upon reading these catchy slogans flashily printed below photos of emaciated African or Asian children, we may feel as much empowered as we are haunted by those desperate gazes. We sense not only a responsibility to act, but also firm confidence that whatever we do in those three weeks — whether building a school, teaching English, or working in a clinic — will indeed kindle hope in the hapless strangers we bless and end their sufferings.

Perhaps we will inspire in the children such a strong desire to learn that they will quit lounging in the streets and instead study to change their own lives. Or maybe we would drastically ameliorate the run-down medical facilities in the local community (of course the community could not do it without you) and enable tuberculosis patients to finally receive adequate treatment.


In recent years, the media has created the illusion that smart and energetic Western youths are fully capable of “changing lives” in foreign, under-resourced communities. The result has been a new sector: “voluntourism.” Volunteers pay to travel to impoverished regions in developing countries and engage in community service during their stay. According to the association of gap-year providers in U.K., up to 200,000 British high school students embark on these self-fulfilling service trips every year through agencies that organize gap-year programs. In the ideal win-win scenario, volunteers would learn from the service experience while the local community would benefit from “expertise from the West.”


In reality, however, the volunteers and the firms providing these services often benefit more from voluntourism than the communities that they were supposed to serve. At the 2012 Unite for Sight Conference, Michael Fairbanks, co-founder of the SEVEN Fund (a philanthropic foundation devoted to finding entrepreneurial solutions to global poverty) and long-time senior economic advisor to Rwandan President Paul Kagame, presented a marvelous critique of the burgeoning “voluntourism” industry: “Do we allow high school students to teach in American elementary schools and work in orphanages? No! So why should they  be allowed to think that they can go to Kenya or Cambodia and do a better job of teaching or working in orphanages than certified professionals without receiving any or little training?”


Although voluntourism allows youths to become cognizant of the poverty rampant in many parts of the world, it also runs the risk of dumbing down the difficulty of development work and perpetuating the belief in Western superiority. We often associate poverty with poor governance and backwards traditions, and believe that the orderliness of our own prosperous and democratic societies somehow provides us with sufficient credentials and skills to excel at development work with little to no training.


Encouraging youths to travel to poor parts of the world is critical to facilitating cultural understanding and increasing awareness of the poverty that beleaguers more than half of the world’s population. However, volunteers must not be brainwashed into believing that they can affect change in a matter of weeks or even a few months. Rather, successful poverty development anywhere relies on long-term dedication, planning, and method evaluation. As Mr. Fairbanks mentions in his talk, voluntourism can only be most beneficial if volunteers begin their travels with genuine humility and curiosity toward the culture and people they will encounter. Voluntourists can only try to maximize their learning about the foreign space and perhaps return one day, after being fully trained, to undertake the difficult task of development. 

Gender Inequality and the Arab Uprisings

By Nick Donlan

When discussing and analyzing the events of the last eighteen months in the Middle East and North Africa, many commentators have framed their narratives and explanations around the “heroic martyrdom” of Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who famously set himself on fire after having his wares confiscated by a local police officer. Although his act and story became a catalyst for the Tunisian Revolution (and, some argue, the ongoing uprisings throughout the region), the conventional media account of the incident tends to omit how Bouazizi’s self-immolation may have been the product of more than simply the economic injustices he experienced. While Bouazizi’s difficulties finding a suitable job have been well-documented, pundits frequently overlook (or disregard) his own family’s suggestion that his suicide may have been a response to the shame and humiliation he felt after being slapped in public by a female government official. The world will never know exactly what motivated Bouazizi to strike that fateful match, but his family’s speculation should serve as a reminder to those attempting to comprehend the Arab uprisings that issues of gender inequality are inextricably linked to concerns about economic opportunity and political participation.

In the wake of Bouazizi’s death, specific circumstances and motivations aside, public dissatisfaction with the actions and policies of authoritarian dictators gave way to the rise of widespread protests throughout Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, and beyond. Over a year after these protests began, the region’s governments continue to scramble to consolidate power and regain — or establish — legitimacy with their citizens as they face increasingly uncertain futures. However, the plights of these regimes pale in comparison to those of women throughout the region, many of whom played unprecedented and often vital roles organizing and participating in demonstrations. Although nascent democracies have emerged in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, early evidence seems to suggest there are no guarantees that more citizen representation will translate into more beneficial outcomes for the women of these countries.

In the most recent issue of Foreign Policy, Mona Eltahawy argues convincingly that the political changes have done little for women across the Middle East and North Africa because of deeply rooted patriarchal attitudes that hamper the prospects for sweeping social changes. In Egypt, for example, women turned out to the streets after the fall of Hosni Mubarak to celebrate International Women’s Day only to be harassed by a rival protest of men spouting insults like, “Go home, wash clothes,” and, “You are not married, go and find a husband.” With just eight women in Egypt’s new 500-seat parliament dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists, practices like forced marriage and female genital mutilation may remain part of the status quo for the foreseeable future. Perhaps even more troubling are the signs of backsliding in traditionally tolerant Tunisia; several female university professors and students have voiced concerns over Islamists’ open hostility towards them for not wearing hijabs.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Yemeni activist Tawakel Karman marked an important moment of international recognition of the bravery of an Arab woman. However, despite this recognition, Karman still endures criticism from fellow Yemenis who have labeled her leadership style as “dictatorial” and accuse her of ruining the morality of women. Until men and women present a united front against repressive governments, these revolutions will fall well short of their potential to remedy not only gender discrimination, but also other social and economic ills. Indeed, as Eltahawy eloquently put it in her piece: “The Arab uprisings may have been sparked by an Arab man … but they will be finished by Arab women.”