Wellesley "Global Tea" on Middle East Peace Plan

I led a discussion for Wellesley’s “Global Tea” series, on the repercussions of Trump and Netanyahu’s recent announcement of their “peace plan” for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which aims to outright annex much of the West Bank and potentially strip many Arab-Israelis of their citizenship. According to many commentators who had previously resisted the comparison, the plan would fully realize apartheid in Israel, and create a Bantustan-like Palestinian state with no real sovereignty or control over its security.

I presented the interactive satellite maps of B’Tselem to students. They cover the fifty-plus year history of settling and encroachment of the West Bank and Gaza since the 1967 war, in a remarkably thorough, factual, and irrefutable way.

I was asked to present by Ify Nwolah, an Albright Fellow from Nigeria helps direct “Global Tea.” Given Ify’s aspiration to one-day become the Minister of Education in Nigeria, I was pleased to introduce her to my friend Oby Ezekwesili, who has served in that role.

Introducing Maheen Akram to Gaurav Tiwari

I continue to work with Albright students. I introduced one of the Albright Institute Fellows I mentored, Maheen Akram, to Empower alumnus Gaurav Tiwari. Maheen, who intends to work towards socio-economic development in her native Kashmir, is graduating from Wellesley this year, and seeking mentorship as she begins her professional trajectory in finance and business strategy.

Empower with Muhammad Yunus, Gaurav second from right

It was a pleasure to introduce Maheen to Gaurav, who has a remarkable background as a strategic thinker and practitioner. As an Empower Fellow during his time at Fletcher, he won Tufts’ $100,000 social entrepreneurship prize, as well as $100,000 from both MIT and USAID, for Sanergy, a firm Gaurav co-founded that provides sanitation and waste management in under-developed areas.

Gaurav is now at State Street, and has enthusiastically agreed to advise Maheen on her future, as well as other students as a mentor for Convisero.

Jess Ostfeld joins LEAP

Jess is one of the wonderful students I had the pleasure to mentor in my role for the Albright Institute at Wellesley College. Given her interest and undergraduate research in environmental policy and sustainability, I introduced her to Peter and to LEAP, which sponsored her internship in water research in France’s Alsace region. Jess kept a journal to which she recollected the following in 2019:

This week was an introduction to the subject matter, study site, and my colleagues. This summer, I will be helping Agnes Lambardche collect data for her thesis on hydrology of groundwater-fed streams in the Alsace region. Last summer, Serge Dumont noticed that these streams reached such low levels that fish and plants perished. In the nearby areas farms use groundwater during the summer to water their fields, particularly maise. Maize, or corn, does not normally grow in France, but its production has been encouraged by EU policies, such as the CAP program. These dynamics show just how complex the issue is, how it is has been shaped by local geography and commerce, regional and national agricultural goals, and international policy. 

University of Strasbourg PhD student Agnes Labarchede, and her advisor, Geography and Development Professor Carmen De Jong, have done a wonderful job in working with governmental agencies so that there is minimum overlap and maximum collaboration. One of the main reasons why I wanted to work with Carmen and Agnes this summer was to learn how to work with policymakers and governmental agencies to shape policy through research. Given Carmen’s previous work on artificial snow, the resulting media stories, and her success in shaping policy at her focal sites, I have hope that their research will help improve Grand Est (the French Region within which the study is taking place) water management. Over the summer, I look forward to learning from them both about successful stakeholder involvement, media relations, and how to translate complicated scientific jargon into something everybody can understand. 

Nichole Sobecki - "Her Take: (Re)Thinking Masculinity"

One of my extraordinarily talented former students, Nichole “Nicki” Sobecki, is now one of the VII Photo Agency’s photographers.

She has just visited Boston with other members of the “Seven of VII” - the seven women of VII Photo Agency - to present on their project “Her Take: (Re)Thinking Masculinity.”

Nicki is an EPIIC alumna, and one of the first formidable student leaders in the Institute’s inaugural photojournalism program, Exposure.

Her stellar undergraduate documentary work with Exposure included A Khmer Prognosis: Health in Cambodia, Disarming the Kibus: Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Battle for Lebanon: The Nahr Al Bared Conflict, and Between Bhutto and the Border in Pakistan. In Rwanda, she also created the Amahoro Project: Obstacles and Advances in Rwandan Reconstruction (Amahoro Kinyarwanda word for “peace”).

She shot and edited the video documentary “The Luckiest Man: Gun Violence in Urban America,” and “Shooting for Peace” in Uganda.

Nicki presenting her photography

I brought her and her colleagues in “Seven of VII” to the Albright Institute at Wellesley, where she also presented her work on refugees impacted by climate change in Africa.

One of her colleagues who presented with her was Sara Terry. LINK

Sara was one of Exposures mentors, and her Aftermath Project co-led Exposure trips in Uganda and at Wounded Knee.

Sara Terry, center

Wintersession Culmination

The culminating project of the Albright Fellows occurs during Wintersession, when the students give group research presentations before the Scholar in Residence. This year, they presented to Amb. Samantha Power.

I had last met Samantha when she and I were ushers at the memorial service of a wonderful mutual friend, Amb. Jonathan Moore, at Harvard’s Memorial Church.

I approached her to ask if she would deliver an inaugural Lecture on Ethics and Global Affairs at Institute for Global Leadership in honor of Jonathan, and she agreed. This is the last program I initiated for the Institute.

Albright Institute Faculty Director, Professor Takis Metaxas, and Ambassador Samantha Power

Takis Metaxas and Secretary Madeleine Albright

Albright Institute Wintersession

The most gratifying aspect of Wintersession for me is meaningfully interacting with the wonderfully impressive Fellows.

I look forward to working with them, opening my network to them, and connecting them to experts and practitioners I know in the subject areas they will be researching for their group presentations to Samantha Power.

As one example, yesterday I had breakfast with a close friend, Dan Holmberg, who is open to corresponding with all of the Fellows. He has decades of experience in foreign aid, disaster response, and public health issues in Africa and the Middle East.

I am also enthusiastic to learn of the personal and professional trajectories and aspirations of the Fellows, and hope to assist them into the future wherever I can. Among the students who spoke with me on the opening day, one already has an admirable background in sustainable development and is interested in the LISD’s LEAP program.

Another is a young woman from Kashmir who intends to work in development in the region upon graduating, and would love to be connected to Healing Kashmir, whose founding director Justine Hardy is a good friend, and whose program manager is my wonderful former student Cody Valdes.

Here are the research groups and their eclectic topics:

The Legacy of the Arab Spring in Egypt

Rhea Mehta, Sabrina Beaver, Yuxi Xia, Tanvi Kodali, Mariana Hernandez

Climate Change Lawsuits by Youth Against Australia

Alexandra Saueressig, Charlotte Kaufman, Megumi Murakami, Annabel Rothschild, Kavindya Thennakoon

Populist Authoritarianism in Brazil

Sarah Smith-Tripp, Hazel Wan Hei Leung, Aniqa Hassan, Christine Halle Rubera, Emma Burke

Authoritarian Challenges to the European Union

Frances Dingivan, Xiao Rosaling Liang, Abeer Dhanani, Maheen Akram, Emma Carter-LaMarche

Tech Policy in the Chinese Market

Gabriela Varela, Sarah Winshel, Natalia Bard, Aida El Kohen, Jessica Ostfeld

Democratizing Access to Antimalarial Medication

Soumaya Difallah, Tarushi Nigam Sinha, Daria Osipova, Hollis Rammer, Esa Tilija (not present)

Political Violence in South Africa

Yookyung Sandra Chung, Denise Becerra, Yashna Shivdasani, Mar Berrera, Alberta Born-Weiss

Erasure of Rohingya Cultural Identity and Narratives in Myanmar

Tine Oginga, Elizabeth Lambert, Maggie Ugelstad, Catherine Stauber, Malak AlSayyad

First Meeting with Albright Institute Fellows

I have held my first session with the Fellows of the Albright Institute at Wellesley, for whom I serve as their inaugural Fellows Mentor.

I presented a talk on the topic of “Distorted History and the Perversion of Politics,” which is both of profound personal interest to me and, I believe, critical to understand at our own current juncture in history.

To impress on the Fellows the importance of challenging their convictions and preconceptions, I heavily referenced a book which has challenged my own, In Praise of Forgetting by David Rieff. Writing as a contrarian to the aphorism that “those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it,” Rieff questions whether collectively remembering the traumas of the past really leads to reconciliation or justice in the present.

On this theme, I introduced them the work of EPIIC alumna Dacia Viejo Rose, with whom I had the recent pleasure of reconnecting as I interviewed her for EuropeNow on her research.

The talk was attended by a large cohort of Wellesley students, many of whom were not Fellows. I was pleased by their enthusiasm and receptivity to the topic, and I am eager to beginning working with them individually.