Past Blogs

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West African Cuisine

By Jane Zhang

Last Saturday night, I sneaked into the West African Cuisine class in McCulloch International Residence, taught by the lovely Baaba. I thought I stumbled into food heaven. I looked inside their trash can, and I have to say, I was impressed—plantain peels, burnt rice, yam skins. Baaba, who is from Ghana, though has lived in the U.S. for a while, was teaching peers to make spinach stew.

Spinach stew consists of a primary ingredient that, excuse my ignorance, I had never heard of before: palm oil. Palm oil is actually widely used for cooking in West Africa, Southeast Asia, and Brazil. For cooking enthusiasts, the rest of the ingredients were bouillon cubes, tomato paste, diced onions, diced green pepper, diced garlic, and smoked turkey.
While the stew was simmering, students in the class patiently peeled plantains and yams using knives. The plantains and yams were cooked in water and salt.
Then, mushrooms and spinach were heated in a pot before combining with the rest of the stew.
Other students opened containers, happy to discover that the leftovers smelled just as good. I had never seen so much food in a dorm kitchen at Dartmouth before. My mouth was watering from just looking at all of the food scattered throughout the kitchen. Such a gluttonous person as me really shouldn’t be covering food events.
Overall, it was a wonderfully lighthearted atmosphere. We drank Malta Goya, though I wasn’t such a big fan of the syrupy texture. Unfortunately, I had to leave before the food was ready, but I’m sure everyone who stuck around got to eat several helpings and go home with new recipes and plenty of leftovers!

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What’s all this about a euro crisis?

By Kristy Choi
Courtesy Sean Gallup (Getty Images)

Every few days, there seems to be a new headline in the news about how “the Eurozone is in crisis!” Yes, since 2008 Europe has been having financial problems like the rest of the developed world. Ok. But why are they the crisis spot when tons of other places are having a rough time of it too? Big newspapers aren’t saying the same thing about the US anymore, so why focus on Europe?

Fear not dear reader. I shall be sloughing it through those Economist articles so you don’t have to. When the Federal Reserve thinks the US economy is in trouble, they generally flood the markets with a little extra cash (it’s more complicated than this, but this simplification will suffice). Why doesn’t Europe do this? Well, because the Eurozone is a system of several countries adopting the same currency — this lowers transaction and trade costs. While the economies were still doing well, everyone was convinced the system was working. However, after the crisis it became clear that the central monetary authority, the European Central Bank (ECB), was largely handicapped because individual countries still had to vote to approve measures. Greece, for example, is in huge trouble. Germany, on the other hand, is doing just fine. Central bank policies must be the same throughout. As a voting party in a loose union, (never mind the main source of funds) Germany can object — and object it does.

However, the problem became so severe and the Greeks so deeply in debt that even their government bonds were rated as ‘junk’ because nobody believed they could be repaid. Investors were essentially worried that Greece was going to collapse because Germany (and to a lesser extent France) were not willing to do what was necessary to save them, only barely creating bail outs — and never without a large number of strings attached.  This was not unfounded thinking — after all, why should they fund the poor decision-making of their peers?  They were the hard-workers and Greece the prodigal son, returned home from partying a little too hard.  However, their lack of action led to fears that the entire system of the euro was under threat — Greece’s woes were pulling the whole system down.

Over the summer, there were increasing calls for a “Grexit” or an exit of Greece from the euro. Greece could then devalue their currency to stave off collapse, and the rest of the EU could become more stable. However, even if Greece was the most toxic, there were fears about other economies as well. If Greece exited, what about Ireland, Portugal, Italy, and Spain? They too were all in deep straits. And Spain is the EU’s fourth-largest economy. If all these countries were forced to leave, many feared it would be a downward spiral the EU would not recover from. And the collapse of the euro?  According to the former head of the World Bank, that “runs the risk of sparking a Lehman-style global crisis that will have dire consequences.”


That changed a couple months ago.  Mario Draghi, head of the ECB, finally vowed “to do ‘whatever it takes’ to preserve the euro.” This helped bolster investor confidence. But was it going to be enough? The ECB and the important parties have dragged their feet at every turn.  Even now, there are quarrels from within. Notably, the head of the German Bundesbank, the only person to vote against Draghi’s plan, claimed that with this plan the “monetary system [could be] destroyed by rapid currency depreciation.” He was also quick to cite inflationary worries in a system he believed was tantamount to simply printing money. What would be so bad about depreciation? Certainly it would make European exports more competitive and bolster economies, including Germany’s. However, that massive depreciation would come at the heavy cost of imports becoming excessively expensive. Consumer lifestyle suffers; each European will find the same income will now buy them less. For a country like Greece, that is an acceptable price to pay in the face of state bankruptcy; for a country like Germany, that seems like a cost they would rather not bear. Yet Draghi’s plan to utilize the ECB’s printing press is going into action anyway. Greece lives to fight another day. For the moment, the markets rest easy.  European leaders at last seem committed to keeping the euro alive. This is all good news for the euro. But it is still only the start for a system seriously under siege.

Sources
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/business/global/28drachma.html
http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2012/06/germany-and-future-euro-1
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jun/16/world-bank-euro-collapse-crisis
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/business/global/european-central-bank-leaves-interest-rates-unchanged.html?pagewanted=2
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/558d7996-01af-11e2-8aaa-00144feabdc0.html#axzz28SkudCsX
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443507204578020323544183926.html

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The Senkaku/Diaoyu Island Dispute: Part Three

By Nicole Boyd

Political Analysis

What are the political motivations underlying the dispute?


In China, Anti-Japanese protests over the island dispute are concerning to political leaders because a lack of diplomatic response on the Chinese Communist Party’s part could cause discontent to turn to domestic issues, which is a circumstance Beijing has been extremely careful to avoid. As a result, Chinese leadership must appear strong in the face of Japan’s activity regarding the islands. This has manifested itself in a call to boycott Japanese goods and the sudden presence of state fishing vessels in the disputed waters. Despite thinly veiled threats of economic and military retaliation, however, Beijing is highly aware of the cost such ventures could pose.


Japan and China are highly economically co-dependent; trade between the two countries is at an all-time high, amounting to nearly $350 billion in 2011. On top of this, Japan accounts for roughly 11 percent of foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, making it the nation’s third largest source of outside investment after the U.S. and Hong Kong. Pursuit of more aggressive economic means of fighting Japan on this issue would have an undesirable effect on both economies and serve as a negative shock to the world economy, possibly impeding global recovery. A full-out military war with Japan would be extremely costly financially, not to mention the inevitable toll on China’s growth rate. The issue is further complicated by U.S.-Japan security agreements. U.S.-Chinese relations are frequently strained, but the fact is that both states are highly interdependent on one another economically, and the fall out of a war between the nations regarding lost financial and human resources would be enormous.


Such outcomes are undesirable for China. The nation’s leaders are highly dedicated to regional security as a means of promoting economic growth. It is unlikely that diplomatic actions in this dispute would go so far as to jeopardize this overarching agenda. It should be noted that before the latest excursions following Japan’s announcement that it had purchased the islands, Chinese vessels had not ventured into the disputed waters since August of last year. The Chinese government initially encouraged anti-Japanese sentiments as a means of distracting the public from internal issues, but now it is clear that Beijing feels threatened by the widespread protests and is making an effort to restrain them.20


Japan’s leaders are also facing internal pressure. Since the 2010 incident, domestic criticism of Japan’s weakness in diplomatic dealings with China has escalated. Governor Ishihara, author of the controversial book “The Japan That Can Say No,” is a prominent figure speaking for the rightist nationalist segment of the population that wants Japan to take a more aggressive stance in foreign policy. After Ishihara’s public steps toward buying the islands, the government stepped in not only to appease the nationalism the events stirred up but also as a measure of restraint against Ishihara.


Tokyo leadership has other things to consider as well; elections must be held before the summer and polls indicate a shift in power from the currently ruling Democratic Party to Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party. Naturally this is a period of time when democratic leaders are most sensitive to shifts in public opinion, increasing the effect of domestic criticism on policy decisions. Japan also stands to lose from a prolonged confrontation with China, however pressure from the right is impeding Tokyo’s ability to cooperate by demanding a strong uncompromising image. The way Tokyo has chosen to project that image is not only to engage in verbal battle with Beijing, but also to call upon Japanese-American security relations as another means of threat against would be “invaders.” 

Taiwan’s involvement in the dispute is less intense than it’s larger counterparts. Like China, it also saw fit to make a statement by sending vessels into the disputed waters. However, at the risk of complicating its own sovereign relations with Beijing, Taipei is careful of being too vocal on the issue. 


Taiwan is a major trading partner with both Japan and China and a security partner with the U.S. At the moment, other than its brief show of defiance it appears that Taipei has decided not to complicate it’s relations with the U.S. and Beijing and remains on friendly terms with Japan.


Implications for U.S. Foreign Policy


What does this mean for the future?


Despite speculations in the Wall Street Journal on the outcome of a Sino-Japanese naval war, full-scale warfare seems highly unlikely. Tensions may continue to rise, however, if the governments in question fail to calm elements of nationalism within their respective countries. This will likely manifest itself in the form of increased skirmishes between the Japanese coast guard and Chinese (and to a lesser extent Taiwanese) vessels entering the disputed waters. China might seek to withhold certain imports to Japan as it did with rare earths in the 2010 incident. If such measures are taken, however, Tokyo will feel considerable pressure to fight back economically; the government has already threatened to halt investment in China. This could set off a chain of such attacks that would have the potential to rapidly escalate.


Despite China’s criticisms of “American hypocrisy” regarding its simultaneous claims of neutrality and support of Japan in military defense of the islands under the US-Japan Treat of 1960, to renege on that agreement would have disastrous effects not only on relations with Japan but in the larger scheme of American security interests in the Pacific. With China’s increasing military capabilities, U.S. allies in the region have to consider the ramifications of a potential conflict between the two powers and the possibility that the U.S. is no longer capable of providing the protection that it could in the past. If the U.S. appears to be unwilling to follow through on its security agreements it will send a message to other Pacific allies that with China’s rise a U.S. security agreement no longer guarantees assistance, which will likely spell the end of U.S. dominance in the Pacific.


On the other hand, the U.S. should discourage its allies from deliberately provoking China because they are confident in U.S. support. Not only does this undermine regional stability, but it puts the U.S. in a difficult position diplomatically and undermines reassurances that the U.S. is not trying to contain China. Therefore restraint should be encouraged not only on the Chinese side, but on the side of our allies as well.


The U.S.’s role should continue to be one of neutrality, with no acknowledgement of either sides’ sovereignty over the islands. The situation is a complicated issue historically, legally, and emotionally – to become further entangled in the dispute is to risk relations with all parties. Leaders should continue to encourage calm diplomacy, a point U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta stressed in his visit to Beijing on the 18th. All parties stand to lose from prolonged conflict; most of the governments’ aggressive actions have been designed to alleviate internal pressures. With the importance of saving face so prominent in this dispute, Track I diplomacy will likely be hampered by politicians’ attempts to avoid inflaming public discontent by appearing too conciliatory. Therefore, this represents a good situation in which to consider employing Track II dialogues as well in order to promote cooperation between parties and talks that go beyond the party line. A method of doing this would be to encourage confidence-building measures such as joint fishing and or drilling rights in the disputed waters to try to ease tensions between the nations. 



Sources
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/chinese-government-both-encourages-and-reins-in-anti-japan-protests-analysts-say/2012/09/17/53144ff0-00d8-11e2-b260-32f4a8db9b7e_story.html  http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/aa82cf7a-6f68-11e1-b368-00144feab49a.html#axzz27guHsxfp
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/20/opinion/china-japan-dispute-kingston/index.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20120914/as-japan-politics/

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The Other Side of War: A Lecture by Zainab Salbi

By Tausif Noor
Courtesy of The Economist

To summarize British journalist Anthony Loyd, the event of war can be regarded as the final frontier of mankind. That is to say, once man has established civilizations and settlements and a system of order to control these civilizations, he seeks to acquire more territory and resources through conquest. This realist notion of the mechanisms by which war is undertaken has been propagated and contested, but its pragmatism neglects the more human dimensions of violence. Zainab Salbi, founder of Women for Women International, has made it her duty to face the rippling effects of violence that touch the lives of ordinary citizens, in particular women and children. The nonprofit humanitarian organization, founded in 1993, works with women in eight war-ravaged nations in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Through a one-year training program, the organization give women access to knowledge about their rights and resources to establish their own agency and independence from domestic violence and economic disadvantages. Thus, the organization centers on sustainable development. Its goal is to facilitate a process whereby women can stand on their own feet and establish businesses.


Salbi’s Filene Hall discussion stressed the importance of approaching humanitarian aid and development through a system of mutual respect and empathy. Inspired by her meeting with the Dalai Lama, Salbi stresses that in order to help others, you must respect them. In the words of the Dalai Lama himself, “If you can’t respect those you are serving, better not to serve at all.” In her experiences working with rape victims in Bosnia and Iraq, Zalbi has learned that approaching situations with the intent of being a savior or a completely knowledgeable human being is inherently flawed. In order to serve, one must accept that privilege does not create the full picture of knowledge and ability. She stresses that most of the time, the people whom humanitarians are serving know the solutions to their problems and simply need help realizing these solutions. She relates an anecdote of how a woman from Bosnia wanted a microcredit loan in order to start a chicken farm. While Salbi was able to calculate the costs of maintaining the farm and benefits, she did not know how many eggs a chicken laid in a day. When she asked the Bosnian woman this question, she was met with a look of incredulity. How could this woman expect to help in a meaningful way when she didn’t have even basic knowledge that everyone in the community would? Salbi states that what she has learned from such humanitarian missions is that you must approach situations with an open mind and seriously take into considerations the knowledge that the people in the community already possess.


In order to take the advice that Salbi so urgently stresses, one must embrace the importance of personal development and personal commitment. Having an outlook of openness, and having the conviction that one can learn from others increases the likelihood that those whom one is serving will tell their stories. This is at the heart of Zainab Salbi’s discussion. For Salbi, who is a refugee and survivor of rape, personal narratives are the key to understanding development. She has documented the narratives of women from Southern Sudan, Congo, Iraq and a host of other spaces and collected them in the hopes that other women can live free from fear and believe in their own ability to better their lives. She urges that we cannot conflate the material benefits, like food and money and jobs, with sympathy. When she asked a Rwandan woman who had suffered from hunger and rape during the years of genocide what women truly want, what the agent of change truly could be, the answer was both simple and powerful: all women want is inspiration.


What can we take away from this simple story is that humanitarian efforts are much more complex than we often realize. Though structural adjustment programs from multilateral corporations and microfinance endeavors are implemented to assuage the flawed top-down approaches of development, there is much more to be said about the ethical and philosophical implications of aid. From the perspective of a feminist, war is brutal in a gendered manner: though the front lines are led by men who enact the actual violence, women play an equally significant role in maintaining the home and ensuring that there is relative stability for children. When women are excluded from the negotiations of a war’s aftermath, it becomes impossible to achieve peace in the midst of the destroyed, chaotic zone. And if Salbi stresses the importance of personal commitment and openness in addressing humanitarian aid, she calls us also to consider the human aspect of women and their agency and significance in international crises. 

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The Senkaku/Diaoyu Island Dispute: Part Two

By Nicole Boyd


Modern Significance

The islands’ true value lies in the right to extend Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) that a legal claim to them would provide, which would provide the holder with singular access to the fishing and natural resources located in the surrounding seas. In 1969, the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) released a report estimating huge oil reserves located beneath the region’s ocean floor. Such resources would clearly be immensely valuable in today’s fierce competition for oil, especially for China: as the world’s largest energy consumer, China is acutely concerned with securing enough resources to meet the demands of its expanding economy. It was only after this research was released that China and Taiwan sought to dispute Japan’s administration of the territory. Currently, all three parties claim sovereignty over the islands, but only Japan claims a 200 nautical mile EEZ including the islands.

The islands are of strategic significance as well. Located 120 nautical miles west of the coast of China and 90 nautical miles north of Japan’s Ryukyu Islands, sovereignty over the surrounding waters would give the controlling country the potential to exercise military capabilities closer to the others’ shores, as well as increased potential for control over sea trade that passes through the area.

Nationalism also plays an important role in the dispute. Sino-Japanese relations have never fully recovered from bitterness regarding Japan’s imperialism towards China from the latter half of the nineteenth century through the end of World War II. Anger toward the Japanese is still prominent in Chinese society, and incidents that are perceived as affronts to territorial sovereignty such as the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute are particularly incendiary to the Chinese public. Both countries have experienced rising nationalism in recent years; this adds pressure on each respective government to maintain the appearance of supremacy in the dispute, a fact that complicates international attempts at resolution.

The Current Situation

The dispute has been simmering unresolved in the background of East Asian politics for the past four decades and for the most part it has been put aside by policy makers; however, the issue has remained a flashpoint for conflict in recent years. In 2010, a Chinese fishing boat rammed two Japanese Coast Guard vessels, resulting in the detainment of the Chinese boat captain in Japan for the duration of the investigation. The incident sparked Chinese outrage, leading Beijing to block exports of rare earth materials to Japan. The captain was released after two weeks and normal trade relations resumed, but the result was widespread internal criticism of the Japanese government for its weakness in the face of Chinese aggression.


Recent events have once again brought tensions to the forefront. The catalyst for this disruption to the status quo was Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara’s announcement on April 16th of his intentions to buy the islands out of private ownership, after which he set up a “Senkaku Fund,” accumulating 1.47 billion yen ($18.7 million) from numerous private donations over a period of roughly five months. In order to avoid possession of the islands from legally falling under the purview of Ishihara, whose strong nationalism and determination to have Japan “say no” to China might have caused relations between the countries to deteriorate even further, the national government made the decision to purchase the islands itself.


The result has been a wave of anti-Japanese protests across China, as well as the destruction and looting of Japanese businesses. Since the announcement of the islands’ purchase on September 11th, China has sent numerous patrol boats into the disputed waters and has cancelled the celebration of the 40th year anniversary of the rekindling of Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations. Taiwan also made a statement on Tuesday, September 24th, sending over forty fishing boats and ten surveillance ships into the area. When the ships did not respond to warnings from the Japanese Coast Guard, the Japanese vessels shot at the Taiwanese boats with a water cannon, prompting the Taiwanese vessels to withdraw. 



Sources
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/senkaku.htm
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703720504575376712353150310.html
http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2010/09/28/a-sea-of-trouble-in-sino-japanese-relations/
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14799850902886617
Shirk, Susan. China: Fragile Superpower. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/09/the-history-behind-china-and-japans-anger-over-a-few-empty-islands/262702/
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201206090024
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9534711/China-deploys-two-warships-after-Tokyo-announces-disputed-island-purchase.html
http://asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4860&Itemid=214
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/sep2012/chjp-s26.shtml
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-26/china-japan-foreign-ministers-meet-as-island-tensions-hurt-trade.html

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The Senkaku/Diaoyu Island Dispute: Part One

By Nicole Boyd

This is the first part of a three-part series on the disputed territory in the East China Sea. Stay tuned for parts two and three!

The Issue

Arguments are heating up in the East China Sea over the disputed sovereignty of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. The islands represent a long-standing territorial dispute between China, Japan, and Taiwan. Tensions have increased as a result of the Japanese government’s purchase of the islands from private ownership, straining relations between the nations. This is a delicate situation for the United States, which officially maintains a neutral position but stands by the islands’ inclusion in the 1960 U.S.-Japan security treaty, which would require the U.S. to support Japan in any military dispute concerning the islands. Mismanaging the situation could result in damaged relations with all parties involved. I seek to outline the history of the dispute, its current significance and political implications, as well as recommend that the U.S. continue to maintain its neutral position regarding the sovereignty over the islands, provide military support to Japan under the 1960 security treaty, and promote diplomacy and restraint rather than economic or military retaliation in resolving the dispute.

Conflicting Claims

The disputed islands, called the “Senkaku” in Japanese, and the “Diaoyu” in Chinese, are a small chain of 5 islands and 3 barren rocks located in the East China Sea. The islands were administered by Japan from 1895 to 1946, when they were transferred to U.S. control following World War II under the San Francisco Treaty between Japan and the allied powers. In 1972 the U.S. returned control of the islands to Japan.


Japan makes the following arguments for its rightful claim to the territory:


1. Japan surveyed the land in 1894 and determined that it was Terra Nullius, or “land belonging to no one.”The cabinet then formally decided to incorporate the islands into its territory in 1895 on the principle of discovery and acquisition as its right under widely accepted conventions of international law.
2. China did not administer the region nor dispute Japan’s claim prior to 1971 when the U.S. began preparing to transfer control to Japan.

3. The islands were never a part of Taiwan or administered by the Chinese government, thus are not contained in the Treaty of Shimonoseki in which China ceded control of “The island of Formosa [Taiwan], together with all islands appertaining or belonging to the said island of Formosa” following the end of the first Sino-Japanese war in 1895. As a result, the islands were not included in the San Francisco Treaty of 1951 in which Japan renounced control of Taiwan.


Both the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) dispute Japan’s territorial control of the islands.  As each claim that they are the rightful seat of the Chinese government, they make the same arguments for “Chinese” rights to the islands:


1. China had knowledge of the islands in documents and maps as far back as the 14th century, thus refuting Japan’s claim on the basis of Terra Nullius.
2. China argues that the islands were included in the 1895 Treaty as part of Taiwan, and thus were included in the San Francisco Treaty and should have been returned to China with Taiwan.

3. In 1971 China used this argument to formally oppose the island’s return to Japan by the U.S.

These arguments are still widely disputed. The current U.S. position is one of neutrality, but with the affirmation that it will hold to the U.S.-Japan Treaty of 1960 with respect to the islands, which calls for the U.S. to help defend Japan against military attacks to its territory.

Sources
http://news.yahoo.com/u-believes-japan-u-security-treaty-covers-disputed-031746983.html
http://www.taiwandocuments.org/sanfrancisco01.htm

http://csis.org/files/publication/Pac1257.pdf
http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/vajint14&div=17&g_sent=1&collection=journals
http://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/79_S4.pdf
http://www.taiwandocuments.org/shimonoseki01.htm
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-09/25/content_15782260.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11341139

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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.
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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. 
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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.”
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Witness to History

By Grace Afsari-Mamagani



As the lights dimmed in Filene Auditorium on Wednesday afternoon, photojournalist James Nachtwey ’70 took community members in attendance on a visual and emotional journey. Influenced by images from Vietnam and the civil rights movement during the 1960s, Nachtwey said he began to consider the potential of photography and media to change the course of history and engrain pictures within a cultural collective consciousness.


“At its best, journalism is social intervention,” he said. Journalism, and powerful photography in particular, puts a human face to the abstract issues negotiated by world leaders; documentary photography interprets the stories of citizens on the ground, who feel the real and daily impact of the implications of policy. Photography, according to Nachtwey, is not the end in itself, but a means to the end, a tool for social awareness and tangible results.


Nachtwey — whose first book, Deeds of War, was published in 1989 — began his career as a war photographer in Ireland, documenting the everyday battlefield of Belfast. From there, he went on to photograph soldiers fighting the Central American proxy wars resulting from Cold War politics, car bombers destroying Lebanon in the heat of civil war, and the continued “conquest through… bible and sword” of European oligarchy in Guatemala. When the Berlin Wall fell, he traveled to Romania to document the AIDS epidemic in orphanages, bribing officials in the country with cigarettes, chocolate, and bottles of brandy, he said. “What I witnessed in Romania was nothing less than a crime against humanity,” he explained, his work motivated essentially by the hope that the world would respond.


His second book, Inferno, is a chronicle of crimes against humanity. In the case of his coverage of Somalia, the New York Times ran the story on the front page; the following day “the phones were ringing off the hook with people wanting to know how they could help… I believe that people will care if journalists will give them something to care about.” In the wake of Nachtwey’s photographs, the U.S. government, U.K. print media, and soon the entire world seemed to be paying attention: the UN came to the rescue, and the largest-ever International Red Cross mission saved approximately 1.5 million lives. 

“That’s the power of the press,” he said.


Nachtwey photographed a range of other humanitarian crises, from southern Sudan to Chechnya to Rwanda (the last of which, in the immediate aftermath of Nelson Mandela’s election in South Africa, was akin to “taking the express elevator to hell”).  He traveled to Kabul at the end of the Afghan war, was assigned to an American platoon in Baghdad following 9/11, explored the field of military medicine for National Geographic, photographed hundreds dying of tuberculosis, and documented crime and punishment in America.


“Photographers go to the extreme edges of experience to show a mass audience things they can’t see for themselves,” he said. His craft, despite the horrors he encounters regularly, is one of empowerment, of retaining the dignity of subjects who have nothing left to lose but continue to fight for life; his art, he said, is one contingent upon the sense of right and wrong, an ability to identify with others, and a refusal to accept the unacceptable. For the international community, the war photography produced by Nacthwey constitutes an invaluable service. It compels organizations to offer aid, attracts attention to the horrors we would otherwise forget, and, ultimately, seems to convey some basic humanity. It offers a voice to the marginalized and oppressed and can enact real political change. And it operates under the finally humble reminder to the journalist — and to the individual in the vast immensity of time — that “the stories we work on are far bigger than we are.”