At November’s Brink

What Will Decide The Election of Our Lives?

The most consequential US presidential election in living memory is fewer than fifty days away. At stake are the foundations of US democracy, growing contempt for the rule of law, and the politicization of justice and public institutions.

What factors will decide the outcome? What lessons have we learned or ignored from 2016? How will our most pressing problems - a chaotic response to COVID, racial discrimination, a coast ablaze, and staggering wealth inequality - play in this election season?

We convened an urgent exploration of these questions with Tufts Professor of Political Science Eitan Hersh, author of Politics is for Power: How to Move Beyond Political Hobbyism, Take Action, and Make Real Change, and Matt Bai, former NYTimes journalist, Washington Post political columnist, author and screenwriter. Their interlocutor was my wife Iris Adler, former News Director and Executive Director for Programming, Podcasts and Special Projects at NPR affiliate WBUR.

Matt’s writings on the dangers of our current politics can be found in his column for the Washington Post. Eitan’s research and findings are summarized in a recent article for The Atlantic and interview with NPR’s Hidden Brain. 

Nasrin Sotoudeh: Iran's Mandela

On August 10th, Nasrin Sotoudeh began a hunger strike to protest the conditions and risk of COVID-19 infection in Tehran’s Evin prison, where she is currently being held. Nasrin was arrested and sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes, on charges of acting against Iran’s national security through her advocacy on behalf of detained women who had protested the compulsory hijab law. 

We have become involved in the PEN campaign to bring attention and support to the woman called “Iran’s Mandela,” through the intervention of Amir Soltani, a dear beloved longtime friend and a former student from my first full year at Tufts University, 1985-86. Amir has been a consistent human rights campaigner and activist whose consuming passion has been to restore dignity and justice to people.  Here is but one example – Zahra’s Paradise.

On September 21st, 42 days into Nasrin’s hunger strike, we convened the first in a series of webinars with PEN America, featuring a panel with Amir and other new and old friends:

• Karin Karlekar, Director of Free Expression at Risk Programs at PEN America. 

  Here is the PEN America petition demanding Nasrin’s release, signed among many others by Kweku Mandela, Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah, Hillary Clinton, Geralyn Dreyfous, Azar Nafisi, Samantha Power, and Gloria Steinem.

• The Honourable Irwin Cotler, former justice minister and attorney general of Canada, Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights (RWCHR) and Nasrin’s international legal counsel. 

• Roya Boroumand, Executive Director, and Ladan Boroumand, co-founder and Senior Fellow, Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran.

  ABC’s goal is to "prepare for a peaceful and democratic transition in Iran and build a more just future in which citizens’ rights are respected and mass killings and crimes against humanity belong in the history books.” Here is ABC’s library documenting pro-democracy movements and human rights violations in Iran.

  Here is ABC’s report of the threat of COVID in Iran’s prisons.

As part of Convisero’s effort, we have also reached out to secure support and social media activity from Samantha Power, Ken Roth, Michael Ignatieff, Jianli Yang, the Human Rights Foundation, and the Senior Fellows of the Wallenberg Centre.

The Olympic File of Israel and Palestine

A Convisero discussion with San Charles Haddad on his recent book, The File: Origins of the Munich Massacre. San was a participant in the IGL's 2000 EPIIC year on Global Games: Sports, Politics, and Society, and shortly thereafter became Founding President of the Palestinian Rowing Federation. He has served as a consultant to the Palestine and Qatar Olympic Committees.

San presented the remarkable and troubling history of sport in Mandate Palestine between the world wars. That history, meticulously researched and unrivaled, includes the true story of the first Palestine Olympic Committee, the influence of Nazi Germany in Mandate Palestine, and the long-forgotten attendance of a Palestinian delegation to the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.

These elements, buried until San unearthed them, fueled a distorted and dangerous narrative that he argues contributed, in part, to the tragic 1972 Munich Massacre, the 48th anniversary of which will be observed this year on 5-6 September. The same false narrative helps sustain the Palestinian-led movement to sanction Israel in international sport, which further encourages activists of anti-normalization and the Boycott Sanctions Divestment (BDS) movement.

San discussed the potential reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians through recognition and commemoration of their shared sport history. He proposed joint sport initiatives to promote the spirit of friendship, solidarity, fair play, and “the harmonious development of humankind” that is foundational to Olympism.

San’s interlocutor was the award-winning journalist Ken Shulman.

The File can be purchased here in print, ebook, and audio formats. San is also contributing a series of articles to the Journal of Olympic History on the research he has chronicled in The File, and further findings he has made since the book’s publication. Here are his first (pp. 35-50) and second (pp. 20-35) contributions thus far.

San Charles Haddad graduated from University of Rochester in 1997 with a BA in Art History and Italian Studies. He moved to Cambridge to train for a spot on the 2000 U.S. Olympic rowing team. However, the Oslo Peace Process presented a unique opportunity to qualify a Palestinian rowing team for the Sydney Games. Haddad founded the Palestinian Rowing Federation and served as its president for eleven years.

In 2002 and 2003, Haddad was a consultant at the Palestine Olympic Committee. From 2009 to 2015, he advised the Qatar Olympic Committee on strategic, financial, and executive training as part of its increasing presence in the Olympic Movement.

Haddad holds an Executive Masters in Sport Organisation Management and a Masters of Arts in Teaching. He is author of Managing Finances in Olympic Solidarity’s textbook Managing Olympic Sport Organisations (2007). He is an adjunct and visiting professor in organizational behavior, organization development, and corporate strategy with a focus on international trans-organizational systems. He was a participant in the IGL EPIIC Colloquium in 2000’s Global Games: Sports, Politics, and Society.

Ken Shulman is a longtime international correspondent for NPR’s “Only A Game,” and host and executive producer of “Away Games,” a television travel show and learning platform based on sport and social justice. He is a two-time RTDNA Edward R. Murrow winner for excellence in broadcasting, and was named a Champion of Justice by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

A veteran print and broadcast journalist, Ken has explored the intersection of sport, politics, and human rights for The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, The International Herald Tribune, National Public Radio, and the BBC.

Ken is a graduate of Middlebury College, and holds a Masters Degree in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Confronting the Deportation Machine

On Tuesday August 4th, Professor Adam Goodman (EPIIC ‘00) discussed his new book, The Deportation Machine: America's Long History of Expelling Immigrants, and contemporary U.S. Trump Administration policies, with Diane Rish (EPIIC ‘05), Associate Director for Government Relations of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Though the iniquities of our immigration system have rarely been as stark as in the present moment, they are preceded by 140 years of unjust expulsion policies. The Deportation Machine is a meticulous, passionate, and devastating rendering of that history, unveiling the underlying fear, economic realities, and human costs. It delivers a painstaking understanding of the systemic mechanisms of use-of-force, militarized borders, mass incarceration, and consistent violations of due process.t

The question at the core of these issues has immense importance today: is the United States to be a nation of immigrants - multiracial, multicultural, and multilingual - or a nation of anti-migrant sentiment, racial prejudice, and xenophobia? Public involvement and action are urgently needed to tackle that question, and to begin confronting the past that has gotten us here.

The event entailed an engaging discussion of The Deportation Machine with Adam, and then turned to ways in which individuals can help challenge the machine by advocating for those who are currently detained and calling for a more humane and just treatment of immigrants in our communities. 

Justine Hardy

For decades, Justine Hardy has conducted extraordinary international work dealing with the critical issue of trauma and mental health in conflict zones. A trained psychotherapist, author, and longtime journalist in India for the BBC, she founded Healing Kashmir, having become very involved in the region in the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake. Healing Kashmir provides unique paramedic training, mental health education and training in the midst of the ongoing often violent, dangerous separatist conflict in the Kashmir Valley in India, a region with dramatically underdeveloped mental health resources. It has been able to reach and treat tens of thousands of people in need, and has developed a unique youth program to break cycles of anxiety and depression in adolescents and young adults. It has done this with a determined egalitarian sensibility, intentionally with a majority Kashmiri staff.

I first met Justine ten years ago, at the Oslo Freedom Forum of the Human Rights Foundation, (HRF) for whom I am a senior strategic adviser. She was a distinguished featured speaker and honoree for her work with Healing Kashmir. I had then just founded the Oslo Scholars Program at the Institute for the HRF, which invites undergraduate and graduate students to attend the Freedom Forum, and pairs them as summer interns with carefully selected Forum activists to assist their work  The Institute sent many of its students to very successfully work with Justine, and Healing Kashmir, on the ground in Kashmir over the years through the Oslo Scholars Program. Some alumni of the Institute have continued on working with Healing Kashmir professionally, and thus inspired and mentored, as later professionals in mental health around the world. 

I have tremendous admiration and awe for Justine’s intellectual depth, cultural sensitivity, staunch courage, deep empathy, and determined resilience, working with distressed people in an environment that is highly challenging both emotionally and politically. This is especially true since Modi has taken the leadership of India and ethnocentrism and xenophobia reign unchecked.  

In 2014, I invited Justine to become an INSPIRE Fellow at the Institute, to help instruct and mentor my students, and to provide insights into her remarkable experience, distinctive cultural sensibility, and extremely impressive positive approach to global mental health. Her work is not restricted to South Asia. Its models are adapted in many circumstances and locales, in the MENA region, England and the U.S. She continues to advise and mentor our community. Many alumni have personally told me time and again of her remarkable value.  I was honored by Justine when she agreed to speak about our Institute at our 30th Anniversary Gala celebration.

Her decades of tremendously important work with UK's New Bridge Foundation, focusing on the rehabilitation of life sentence prisoners before their release, and with India's Development Research and Action Group defying slum politics to create schools in Delhi, is likewise indicative of Justine's passion and concern for people in need.

Jason Clay

Dr. Jason Clay, the Executive Director of the Markets Institute at the World Wildlife Fund.

Jason is the author of 15 books, more than 300 articles and 700 invited presentations. His most recent books are World Agriculture and the Environment, and Exploring the Links between International Business and Poverty Reduction: A Case Study of Unilever in Indonesia. In addition to his role at WWF, Jason is National Geographic's first ever Food and Sustainability Fellow. He also won a 2012 James Beard Award for his work on global food sustainability.

Jason is a superb and recognized global thinker, and an expert on environmentally sound agriculture, sustainable supply chains, and the protection of human rights through ecological practices. He is a deeply committed practitioner, a researcher and prolific writer having published influential books and many precedent setting policy reports. His collective work has had a profound influence on governments, corporations, NGOs, and activists.

His current work with the World Wildlife Fund focuses on lessening the negative impact of global industries, large scale agrobusiness, aquaculture, and disruptive supply chains on deforestation, environmental degradation, and worker poverty. 

He is noted for his distinctive extraordinarily effective consultation with Fortune 500 companies, focusing on sourcing, accountable and metric-driven corporate social responsibility, and responsiveness to the ecological pressures of global food systems.

He characterizes his role as that of an “extrapreneur,” who creates innovative and impactful relationships between diverse organizations and communities. 

Jason has been a friend and colleague for decades. I had the honor of being his best man at his wedding.

I first met him in 1987 when he was a researcher and advocate at Cultural Survival, a human rights organization defending disadvantaged indigenous peoples globally, and helping to integrate them equitably into world markets.

He has helped me create the rationale for what became the Institute. He served on its first Advisory Board, and some of early themes that we explored were deliberate outcomes of his thinking, such as 1993’s Militarization of the Third World, which resulted from his work in Africa.

He is one of the most resourceful and intellectually provocative thinkers I know, and his intellectual impact at both the personal and systemic level is indisputable. Though a visionary, he is a very tactical and tangible results-driven person.

He writes powerfully about how coming from an impoverished farming background to learn and then teach at Harvard and Yale, he understands the challenges of overcoming poverty and the dilemmas of agriculture, climate, and sustainability.

Jason is tremendously thoughtful and his criticism, always meeting the full measure of constructive feedback and inclusivity. Strong-minded, he is nonetheless both flexible and very self-critical.

He is a man of disciplined passion, and rarely have I met someone who better fits the description “suffering no fools.” His intelligent voice and prescient warnings need to be resonated, and his advice heeded. As it often is.

"I learned early on that I needed to find a job that I was passionate about and that would make me feel good. While I got a PhD and was expected to teach in a university, I never really wanted that life. That said, I have taught at Harvard and Yale. What I have always been most excited about was being on the cutting edge of change and helping improve the lives of others. 

Since childhood, I benefited so much from the support of others. It has always seemed only natural that I needed to pay it forward—not help those who had helped me but help those who had similar backgrounds to my own and needed a hand. My entire education was paid for by scholarships, grants and what I earned at the time. I had a total debt of only $500 for nine years of education. It was important for me to obtain an education without incurring a huge debt. 

To this day, I have only applied for one job. After I got it, I turned it down. I have either created jobs for myself or have been asked if I would be interested in working with others I know and respect to do something that could benefit either people or the planet. 

Jason on his work!

My career has focused on two key areas—human rights work with indigenous people (e.g. Native Americans or indigenous groups in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East) with a group called Cultural Survival based in Cambridge, MA and environmental work with the World Wildlife Fund-US based in Washington, DC.

Through a 45-year career, I have not only attempted to achieve results on my own, but also influence the strategies of others. Toward this end, I have: 
• Worked in 80 countries, including 15 in any given year.
• Given more than 800 talks, with more than 70-80 talks per year at this point. One talk alone reached more than 700 million people through a Reuters article what went viral.
• Given one of the most influential TED talks with millions of viewers.
• Generated more than 3,000 news clips about my issues, solutions and work. 
• Wrote 20 books and more than 500 articles, pieces, blogs, etc. 
• Raised more than $500 million to reduce human rights abuses, support poverty reduction programs, and reduce key environmental impacts.
• Helped raise more than $5 billion for other institutions to address the same issues.

Here are a some of the main accomplishments of my career.  

Human Rights—Giving a Voice to Those Who Aren’t Heard, 1980s and 1990s
• First to demonstrate that human rights violations could be predicted by showing the links between ethnicity, refugees, famine, armed conflict and the control of natural resources. Developed a database of 6,500 indigenous groups and their territories that is used by the US War College to predict armed conflicts.
• Proved that reliable, replicable research could be undertaken within refugee camps on the causes of refugee flows. More than $1 million was spent to discredit my research in Central America and Africa, but it withstood the challenges and generated credible data that changed US (as well as other countries’) policies towards Ethiopia, Guatemala, Mozambique, Sudan and Uganda. 
• Proved that “victims” viewpoints (whether indigenous people, ethnic minorities, famine victims, refugees or displaced people) are no less credible than those of government officials, researchers, aid agency personnel, journalists or others.
• Documented the misuse of famine assistance in 1986 and redirected $2 billion of famine assistance to Ethiopia in 1985-86.
• Drafted the World Bank policy on tribal people for Africa.
• Founded and edited the award winning Cultural Survival Quarterly, 1980-1992, which generated $1 million per year of core support for the non-profit.

Rainforest Marketing—Proving the Value of Rainforests in the Marketplace
In 1988, established a trading company (with loans from US AID and the MacArthur Foundation for a company within an NGO) to buy and sell rainforest products. 
• Founded the first Environmental/Fairtrade product certification program in the US.
• Created Rainforest Crunch ice cream flavor with Ben and Jerry’s (as well as Chubby Hubby) and more than 200 other products with 50 other companies. 
• Generated sales in the US, Europe and Japan of more than $100 million per year.
• Leveraged more than $1 billion in assistance from foundations and multi-lateral and bi-lateral organizations to help local groups and their donors undertake similar work. 
• Generated media coverage in more than 1,500 outlets over 4 years for rainforest conservation and rainforest marketing efforts.
• Featured as a Harvard Business School case.

Commodities—Reducing the Impact of Producing Food and Fiber
Since the 1990s, I have focused on drivers of deforestation—agriculture, cattle ranching, and mining; and developed strategies to halt deforestation that included governments as well as key private sector actors. 
• Identified the impacts of producing 21 key agricultural commodities and what is known about measurably reducing those impacts. 
• Identified the key impacts of producing the 13 fastest-growing aquaculture industries as well as how to reduce them to acceptable levels. 
• Identified the 25 most significant minerals reshaping our planet in the 21st Century. 
• Convened 8 global groups to agree on key impacts of commodity production, identify measurable indicators, and adopt performance standards. Each group includes producers, companies, researchers and NGOs. Each group includes retailers who represent 5-15% of global production.

Supply Chain Management
Since 2000, have focused on helping companies understand how they can use their supply chains to improve the quality of the products they purchase, reduce their negative impacts, and reinforce their “license to operate” in developing countries. 
• Developing ‘carbon neutral food” beginning with payments for carbon sequestration in tree crops and for sugarcane that is harvested without burning. 
• Advised Coca-Cola, Unilever and Mars about how to incorporate carbon payments into their product sourcing to comply with the Kyoto Protocol.
• Worked with Tabasco and Cadbury to purchase ingredients from landless producers and use forward contracting to help them obtain loans with contracts as collateral. 
• Advised Mars on supporting tree planting to offset their carbon footprint while improving the quality of the cocoa they purchase.
• Worked with Unilever to develop carbon sequestration payment systems to cover 30% of the cost of planting new oil-seed, tree crops.  

Corporate Responsibility
The power for change is increasingly with the private sector. What is less clear is that improving their performance regarding the environment or poverty, actually makes companies more profitable. 
• Oversaw the first study of the impact of a multi-national food company on poor people in a single country, looking at Unilever in Indonesia. 
• With WWF, the Calvert Group, Inter-American Development Bank, and the MacArthur Foundation, launched the first ever, $20 M investment fund to help small-scale producers and workers buy equity in downstream agricultural processing operations. 
• Evaluated 15 different worker-owned agriculture operations in Brazil to determine which might be relevant models to guide World Bank investments."

Anne Goldfeld

Anne Goldfeld is a pioneer and a visionary leader.  In work spanning clinical medicine, basic science, and human rights, she has broken through barriers and dogma to make fundamental paradigm shifts changing what we thought was not possible into a reality.

The quintessential physician-scientist, Anne has seamlessly and spectacularly straddled the interface between care in the poorest and most dangerous environments in the world, and the scientific bench at Harvard.  All the while making fundamental scientific discoveries, and changing clinical practice impacting millions suffering from curable or treatable diseases, she has worked to change the tide of the great epidemics of her time, tuberculosis (TB) and AIDS.  In parallel, she has addressed the great social issues of her time before they became celebrated causes, making a profound impact in each instance.  

In all areas of her endeavor, she has challenged and overcome dogma, using her deep intelligence, commitment of heart, and gifts of insight and observation.

Trained as an internist and infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School, she was perhaps the first medical resident who understood the importance of working and devoting herself to patients in areas of conflict or of extreme poverty in the early 1980s, well before there was a field of ‘global health’.  She lobbied hard at a time when it was not accepted, to spend a month on the Thai-Cambodian border in May 1983 when she was a second year medical resident at MGH.  Working to provide health care in what was at the time a no-man’s land between Thailand and Cambodia with constant shelling in an active war zone, she cared for refugees from the Khmer Rouge genocide and became deeply interested in the medical scars of torture and war, and in treating curable tuberculosis. Upon her return to Boston she began to work on what would turn out to be a landmark piece of scholarship documenting the medical and psychological signs of torture. This study was the first paper to describe the high rate of sexual violence that women experienced in war and torture, and literally opened up the whole field of gender-based violence (1).  And around this time Anne chose to turn her career towards infectious diseases so she could be best prepared to help in conflict zones and in areas where patients did not have access to medicines, and

After completing her clinical infectious disease fellowship at MGH, she received equally intense training in molecular biology in the Biochemistry Dept. at Harvard University so she could apply her scientific interests in developing new therapies and vaccines.  It is there that she started her seminal work on the regulation of the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) gene, the gene, which plays a major role in defense against infectious diseases whose overexpression is responsible for death from hemorrhagic viruses such as Ebola and malaria, and is at the root of many different forms of arthritis.  In the lab, based on novel experiments, she first broke down the strong dogma at the time—facing down strong scientific resistance in the early years, that the TNF gene was only expressed in one cell type.  Her studies led her to describe a new paradigm in understanding how genes are regulated in different cell types based on her discoveries (2).  Furthermore, she was the first to describe how HIV avoided the host immune system and avoided triggering the activation of this gene and literally snuck into cells without setting off the cell’s antiviral responses (3).  Even in those early years of her scientific training, her ability to make connections no one else was seeing, characterized her work.

In parallel with her scientific work, her profound commitment to the poor and afflicted in the world stayed strong.  As this first phase of her scientific work came to a reflection point, she returned again to the Thai-Cambodian border in 1989, and was asked to lead the team of doctors and nurses for the American Refugee Committee team that ran the medical care for the 130,000 residents of the Site II South refugee camp.  Confronted by daily human rights abuses by the Thai border guards, she began a systematic effort in the camp to document the violations using medical intake forms she developed based on her research of the medical signs and symptoms of torture.  Her recording of clinical findings based on her research on torture, providing a first demonstration of a medical human rights approach that would be widely emulated. 

As landmine victims were brought into the camp, she named it accurately a “medical epidemic” and began the first ever landmine prevention campaign in the world to educate refugees in the camp to not wander in the fields outside the camp to scavenge food or shelter materials in newly opened up and highly mined areas as the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese backed troops withdrew further into Cambodia.  Again, she used her documentary and scientific skills and snuck her camera into the camp to document carefully each casualty to use it to show the world what a landmine does (4). 

Anne made one of, if not, the first call publicly to eradicate landmines as a weapon of war in a press conference in Bangkok in December 1990 (6). She followed this with the first call to ban landmines before Congress in 1991 (5).  And she began to write about what she had seen and about the global problem. She wrote op-ed after op-ed in the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Boston Globe etc. alone and with Holly Myers urging for a ban (7).  Anne was one of the earliest members of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which eventually won the Nobel Peace prize in 1997.  Serving as an advisor to the Campaign in its early years, she co-founded the US Campaign to Ban Landmines with Myers in 1994 (6).

Simultaneously Anne worked at Harvard Medical School going deeper into immunology and discovering new molecules that regulated TNF and new patterns of gene regulation—work that continues until today.  And increasingly, she applied her scientific skills to address the monumental problems of TB and AIDS in the world and more recently in the last 2 years, Ebola.

As the landmine campaign gained extraordinary global traction, and the refugees who had been in the border regions of Cambodia repatriated, Anne began to turn her attention to TB, forming the Cambodian Health Committee with a Cambodian colleague.  Begun as a tiny NGO in the post-war destruction of Cambodia in 1994 to provide care in this country with one of the highest TB problems in the world non-existent TB care, it has gone on to have a massive impact on the suffering of adults and children from tuberculosis (TB) and AIDS, not only in Cambodia but also in Africa, and regionally in southeast Asia—most recently in Myanmar. The community-based strategies Anne and CHC pioneered have been scaled up to the entire country of Cambodia and they were at the origin of treating AIDS in the country.

Anne was one of the first people to see the connection between TB and HIV and their deadly synergy and while she began to scientifically document the terrible toll of TB and HIV co-infection and to seek scientific answers, she began to advocate publicly to address the human disaster of TB and AIDS.  She engaged the photojournalist and celebrated war photographer James Nachtwey to focus on TB and on TB and AIDS and they began a long collaboration to show the suffering of people unable to access treatment for curable TB and treatable AIDS (http://www.womensconference.org/struggle-for-life/).  The photoessay Nachtwey did of Anne’s work in 2003 (http://www.poyi.org/61/mpoy/nachtweythree01.php), earned him his 7th award as Photojournalist of the Year in 2004 and began to raise awareness of the problem.  Anne and Nachtwey showed their work together (his pictures and her documentation of the stories) in exhibitions in Paris, Bangkok and Berlin.  Anne’s work was featured in Nachtwey’s exhibits at the UN at the US capitol, and in a myriad of publications highlighting the disaster. 

Meanwhile, Anne’s focus in the lab turned more and more to TB and AIDS.  She pulled together the French/US/Cambodian team that would eventually perform the CAMELIA (Cambodian Early vs Late Introduction of Antiretrovirals) Trial, which is recognized by many as the most significant contribution to TB/HIV in the last decade.  The CAMELIA study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2011, showed that the earlier timing of AIDS drugs resulted in a 34% reduction in mortality (8), which translated on a global scale to ~450,000 lives saved yearly with the new regimen, which was then adopted by the World Health Organization. She would be awarded the Presidential Medal from the Cambodian Prime Minister in 2010 in recognition of this work.

Since 2008 Anne has expanded her work in Cambodia to Ethiopia where she began the countrywide program for drug resistant TB in the country with the NGO she co-founded in Cambodia, under its new name, Global Health Committee (GHC).  Passionately committed to the basic human right of assuring that everyone has access to medicines for curable or treatable diseases, she brought the model that had been developed in Cambodia to Ethiopia. In a remarkable and almost unprecedented outcome, as she was told staring the program was impossible, the collaborative program of GHC and the Ethiopian Ministry of Health GHC has treated over 2000 patients as of May 2017 and has reported the highest outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa for treatment for drug resistant TB (11). Anne’s work again turned a dogma on its head—this time that therapy for this disease could not be offered safely and rapidly in a country such as Ethiopia. With the Ethiopian and Cambodian teams she is currently finding ways to expand care for drug resistant TB in Myanmar to children and hoping to initiate care in South Sudan in follow up to a mission she made there in 2014.

Apartheid In Israel and the West Bank

A conversation with Benjamin Pogrund, prominent Israeli-South African journalist. Benjamin was deputy editor of the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg, closed down because of its stand against apartheid. He has lived in Jerusalem since 1997 and was founding director of Yakar's Center for Social Concern. He is the author Sobukwe and Apartheid: How Can A Man Die Better, and Drawing Fire: Investigating the Accusations of Apartheid in Israel. Benjamin will speak on the nature of Israel’s internal governance, politics and social attitudes, its occupation policies, the looming annexation of large sections of the West Bank, and the potential reality of Israeli Apartheid. His interlocutor is Sherman Teichman, Founding Director Emeritus (1985-2016) of the Institute for Global Leadership, and Founding President of The Trebuchet. He was a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy from 2017 to 2019, and is the Senior Strategic Advisor of the Human Rights Foundation.

We convened a webinar conversation with my close friend Benjamin Pogrund, prominent Israeli-South African journalist. Benjamin was deputy editor of the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg, closed down because of its stand against apartheid. He has lived in Jerusalem since 1997 and was founding director of Yakar's Center for Social Concern. We discussed the nature of Israel’s internal governance, politics and social attitudes, its occupation policies, the looming annexation of large sections of the West Bank, and the potential reality of Israeli Apartheid.

In 2007, I has asked “Benjie” to become an INSPIRE Fellow at the Institute for our EPIIC year on Global Poverty and Inequality, and to advise the New Initiative on Middle East Peace. I encouraged him to write a book on his experiences living in both Israel and in South Africa, where he was a close friend of Nelson Mandela and Robert Sobukwe (he is the author Sobukwe and Apartheid: How Can A Man Die Better). In his time at the Institute, he wrote the original outline and first chapters of what became Drawing Fire: Investigating Accusations of Apartheid in Israel. The book was published in 2014, and now only a few years later, Benjie now warns that if Israel adopts policies such as the Nation State Law, and pushes to annex much the West Bank, it will take the reality of an Israeli-Palestinian Apartheid “right over the edge.”

Urban Violence and Aggressive Policing

A conversation with Teny Oded Gross, the Director of the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago; Chris Patterson, the Institute’s Senior Director of Programs and Policy, and Professor John Hoberman, author of Dopers in Uniform: The Hidden World of Police on Steroids. Over the July 4th weekend, many of Chicago’s neighborhoods erupted in a tremendous upsurge of violence, which resulted in ninety shootings and seventeen tragic deaths. In response, the Chicago Police Department is organizing a citywide “suppression” unit, to the concern of Chicago’s communities and advocacy groups, who remember the outcomes of similar police efforts in the past. What are the root causes of and solutions for urban violence and poverty, gang warfare, inter-community conflict, racial discrimination, and abusive police practices, in Chicago and other US urban communities? Teny has a unique perspective on these realities at street level, having spent decades on the front lines in Boston, Providence, and Chicago. He has consulted on community engagement and nonviolence strategies with police departments and municipalities, domestically and internationally. Chris is a Chicago native and a specialist on gang culture and its impact on society, with over a decade of experience in community engagement. His memoir is 21: The Epitome of Perseverance. Professor Hoberman is an expert on race and society. His research provides insight into Chicago’s history and ongoing policing dilemmas, particularly on the curtain of secrecy that protects both police brutality and police steroid culture. Along with Dopers in Uniform, he is the author of Black and Blue: The Origins and Consequences of Medical Racism, and Darwin's Athletes: How Sport Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race. Their moderator is Sherman Teichman, Founding Director Emeritus (1985-2016) of the Institute for Global Leadership, and Founding President of The Trebuchet.

We held a webinar discussion with EPIIC ‘93 alumnus Teny Oded Gross, the Director of the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago; Chris Patterson, the Institute’s Senior Director of Programs and Policy, and a good friend, Professor John Hoberman, author of Dopers in Uniform: The Hidden World of Police on Steroids. 

Please learn more about the critical work of the Institute for Nonviolence here, and consider supporting.

Over the July 4th weekend, many of Chicago’s neighborhoods erupted in a tremendous upsurge of violence, which resulted in ninety shootings and seventeen tragic deaths. In response, the Chicago Police Department is organizing a citywide “suppression” unit, to the concern of Chicago’s communities and advocacy groups, who remember the outcomes of similar police efforts in the past.  What are the root causes of and solutions for urban violence and poverty, gang warfare, inter-community conflict, racial discrimination, and abusive police practices, in Chicago and other US urban communities? 

Teny has a unique perspective on these realities at street level, having spent decades on the front lines in Boston, Providence, and Chicago. He has consulted on community engagement and nonviolence strategies with police departments and municipalities, domestically and internationally. 

Chris is a Chicago native and a specialist on gang culture and its impact on society, with over a decade of experience in community engagement. His memoir is 21: The Epitome of Perseverance.

John is an expert on race and society. His research provides insight into Chicago’s history and ongoing policing dilemmas, particularly on the curtain of secrecy that protects both police brutality and police steroid culture. Along with Dopers in Uniform, he is the author of Black and Blue: The Origins and Consequences of Medical Racism, and Darwin's Athletes: How Sport Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race.

In Memoriam: Michael Hawley

Michael, his son Tycho, my former student and NPR reporter Tovia Smith, and my wife Iris Adler

I had the great privilege of befriending Michael Hawley. I was but one of thousands. A remarkably prodigious polymath, he is a person who for me defines the phrase sui generis. I greatly admired the thinking he epitomized in extolling the virtue and necessity of Renaissance education.

The four years of an undergradu­ate ­education (for the minority of the population that gets that far) have become less of an exploration and more of a routine. Even the path to college has become a pipeline of preparatory crash courses, tests, in­terviews, and campus visits. Graduate schools are even more constricting. In an age that is fomenting the greatest expansion of knowledge – and of its means of ­distribution – in history, our educational system is churning out ever more narrowly focused scholars. One wonders if, along with biodiversity and cultural diversity, the diversity of the individual mind might be another casualty of modern life.

I was honored when he agreed to be a mentor for Convisero. His dedication to his students was extraordinary, and he will be greatly missed. This virtual Festschrift speaks to his special warmth and humanity.

His adventurous, unprecedented eclectic accomplishments are legendary. I nominated Mike for the 2020 Tällberg Eliasson Global Leadership Prize. Here is what I had written then:

I am nominating Dr. Michael Hawley, brilliant distinctive icon of interdisciplinary thinking, and a champion of the critical need for eclecticism and versatility in education, especially necessary in the digital information age. 

At the MIT Media Lab, where he has taught and innovated, and globally, through Fellowships, lectures, writing, and by example, Mike has inspired generations of flourishing cutting-edge thinkers, research professors, friends, and especially his students. He encourage all think boldly about their own educational and vocational pursuits, to dare to create, and to explore the intersections and hybridizations of their interests in innovative and exciting ways.

He lives and encourages others to live in a manner that is open to ideas, deeply intellectually curious, exploratory, experimental, daring, oblivious to failure, but grounded in rigorous preparation, practice and expertise.  He is a perpetual student and thinker and tinkerer. 
Disinterested in traditional incentives, academic "tracks" and standard rewards, he has courageously followed unusual paths, from the foothills of Himalayas to concert halls, from luge runs to Lucas Labs, to pursue his passions for art, music, photography, computer science, engineering, ecology, artificial intelligence, sport, and so much more. 

I have been a teacher and global educator for fifty-five years. As a youth I was inspired by the biography of Benvenuto Cellini. The concept of a "Renaissance Man" never left me. Rarely has an individual approached this, and beyond, and continues to inspire more than Mike. Here is a true modern-day renaissance man. For the founders of the Media Lab - once branded the educational lab "inventing the future" - he is their avatar. From advances in digital publishing for LucasFilm to performance technology for the American Everest efforts he has produced extraordinary tangible results.  

I knew of him since 1995 when I organized my Institute's tenth anniversary, and many Media Lab folks, including Mike's mentor Marvin Minsky, were engaged. Years later I read his inspirational seminal lament “Whither the Renaissance Man.” And now I have had the privilege of his personal friendship for the past few years.

What an Eliasson recipient he would make! 

Harvard IRC & LEAP

We have initiated a meaningful sustained relationship between LISD and Harvard’s undergraduate International Relations Council. The Trebuchet has successfully collaborated with the IRC in the past - we secured the IRC as a permanent host for the Oslo Scholars Program of the Human Rights Foundation, and helped them convene a College Freedom Forum in the Spring of 2019.

For LISD we have mediated a very exciting and promising initial exchange with Peter Droege and Davis Tyler-Dudley, the IRC’s President for the 2020-21 academic term.

Mindful the virtual learning necessitated by COVID in addition to the ongoing LEAP offerings of embedded internships, reverse internship coaching, and opportunities with the LISD network, Peter has proposed to provide thesis guidance and support for students conducting capstone research on sustainability issues.

Particularly exciting, both as a conceptual direction, and as a framework for internship and research opportunities, are LISD’s new T2 Programs: Terra 2 - Transformations for a Changing Planet, and the Global Engagement for Active Interns Project. T2 is a call to universities, agencies, institutions and concerned individuals to squarely focus on the habitability of a future Earth with a far different and more extreme climate than our current one, and to envision a permissive economic, political, social, and cultural environment globally that will nurture the breakthroughs we need.

Lebanon Background for "Imagine: Reflections on Peace"

I wrote the following brief history and background of post-colonial Lebanon for the website that the VII Foundation is developing in support of the publication of Imagine: Reflections on Peace:

Shatila Refugee Camp, 2007

Nichole Sobecki, EPIIC ’06, EXPOSURE ’04-‘08

Lebanon has endured decades of sectarian struggle, bitter internecine conflict, bloody vendettas, suicide bombings, invasions, and wars. 

Since its independence in 1943 from France’s Mandatory rule, Lebanon’s fragile governance has been based on its National Pact, a complex division of power granting preferential status to the then majority Maronite Christian community, over its Shiite, Sunni, and Druze citizens. The rationale for this was Lebanon’s 1932 census, the only official census conducted to this day.

Despite being the Arab world’s first democracy, Lebanon has been in a perpetual battle for supremacy between its eighteen sects, enflamed by religious hatred, extremist leftist secular politics, and Palestinian radicalism. This noxious brew ultimately immersed the country in a brutal civil war that lasted from 1975 to 1990. The war was marked by many atrocities, including the 1976 Karantina massacre of approximately 1,500 Palestinian refugees by right-wing Christian militias. The casualties counted well over 100,000 fatalities, and an estimated one million internally displaced people.

In 1975, Syria, which always considered Lebanon to be part of “Greater Syria,” aligned itself with the Christian Maronites. In 1982, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards entered to arm and support their Shiite co-religionists. The nucleus of their army became Hezbollah, which in 1983 committed a devastating jihadi suicide bomber attack on the barracks of US Marine Peacekeepers, hastening the American departure from Lebanon.

The Saudi-brokered 1989 Taif Agreement finally ended the atrocities and enacted structural reforms in an effort to create a more equitable political balance of power. It disarmed sectarian militias, but allowed Hezbollah to retain its arms as a “resistance force” against Israel. 

Lebanon’s sovereignty has frequently been violated. In 1948 and then again in 1967, the country was forced to absorb Palestinian refugees fleeing Israel. In 1970, a large number of Palestinian fighters fleeing Jordan entered Lebanon after failing to overthrow the Hashemite Kingdom. The Palestinians attempted to create their own armed enclave among the Shiite Muslims in the south, but their presence was deeply resented. Palestinians cross-border incursions into Israel prompted two Israeli invasions of Lebanon, one in 1978 and one in 1982. The Israelis forced the Palestinian’s north into Beirut, beseiged the city, and forced Arafat’ and his fighters to depart for Tunisia. The Israelis then created a security buffer zone in southern Lebanon and occupied the twelve-mile territory through a mercenary Lebanese force for eighteen years, until 2000.

Recently, Lebanon’s fragile internal equilibrium has been further battered, with one and a half million civilians escaping the Syrian civil war crossed the border, seeking refuge. Currently, refugees compose a staggering one-quarter of the Lebanon’s population, the largest proportion refugee per capita in the world. Temporarily settled in camps, towns and cities, fifty-eight percent of them live in extreme poverty. The strains on its infrastucture and economy have been severe.

The Lebanese government’s problematic policies towards refugees further complicate its search for peace and stability. Palestinians are kept stateless. Even if born in the country, they cannot gain citizenship and they are banned from most professions and business ownership. Two-thirds of the estimated 175,000 Palestinians live in poverty in refugee camps.

The country also suffers from other challenges. Institutions are exceedingly weak, rule of law is ineffective, and corruption is rampant. These all contribute to stark inequality and wealth disparity. Given the decades of chaos, unrest and violence, far more of Lebanon’s citizens have opted to live abroad than in their own country.

While Lebanon’s civil society is weak, it has at times exposed the potential for reform.  In 2005, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was killed in a truck bombing, in which the Assad Syrian regime was implicated. A massive, sustained non-violent protest movement, the Cedar Revolution, finally ended thirty years of Syrian occupation. And in 2015, a coalition of nonsectarian students, social actvisits, and remnants of a middle class, all disgusted with an ossified system of patronage and political paralysis, organized the “You Stink!” movement. Sparked a garbage collection crisis of many months, they organized mass demonstrations challenging the status quo. The mobilization ultimately had limited environmental impact, but the challenge was enough to unify the usually polarized factions, which came together to narrowly defeat the protesters in 2016 municipal elections.

To this day, Lebanon remains a hot arena for proxy warfare between Palestinian factions, Israeli forces, Hezbollah and other Shiite clients of Iran, and Saudi Arabian influence. In 2017, Saudi Arabia invited Sunni Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to Riyadh, where he was detained and forced to publicly resign in a humiliating attempt to collapse a Lebanese coalition government that empowered Hezbollah.  Hezbollah nonethless gained strength and ministerial positions in the 2019 elections and remains a powerful and coercive force.

Domestically, the Taif Agreement failed to confront Lebanon’s intense underlying domestic emnities, providing no process for reconciliation of the powerful Christian, Muslim and other Lebanese sectarian factions. In her essay, “Fire Under the Ashes,” Robin Wright identifies how identity politics have hardened in Lebanon and in much of the Arab world. She believes that “perhaps the most enduring legacy of Lebanon’s civil war may be a string of new wars,” whether internal or external.

The odds of success seem remote for the demands of young reformers: that the country’s veteran warlords finally cede to a new technocratic leadership. Lebanon remains an avatar of what conflict experts term “negative peace,” the absence of overt violence, in stark contrast to “positive peace,” efforts at harmony and community healing. The Palestinian actress, activist and writer, Mira Sidawi, born in Lebanon’s Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp, asserts that “peace needs equality,” and speaks of her desire to “work in the path of peace. A path to freedom for everyone.” She asks, “Perhaps we should all lose the privilege of identity. Why can’t we all become refugees?

Suyu Zhang

 Suyu is an alumnus of the 2012-2013 EPIIC “Global and Health” Colloquium. Suyu graduated in 2013 with a BS in Biology from Tufts University, and is currently pursuing a M.D. from New York Medical College.

Suyu was born in Zhengzhou China, and grew up in Sendai Japan, New Haven and Cheshire Connecticut. After he graduated from college, he eventually settled in Crown Heights, Brooklyn to “find himself” before medical school. He had the privileged opportunity to work with individuals facing the hardship of economic and healthcare inequality in NYC. Through this experience Suyu developed a deep passion for listening to the story of different people, and advocating for social justice. “You can learn something from everyone”, being a favorite quote of his. Through his work with Memorial Sloan Kettering, Suyu has developed a passion for taking care of the “whole patient”, understanding that the quality of life is a vital consideration of ethical medicine. As a first-generation immigrant American, and a global citizen, connecting with others, and building community is something that is close Suyu’s heart. Shortly before coming to NYMC, Suyu backpacked, India, Southeast Asia, and Japan. His final destination was his childhood home of Sendai, which he had not visited for 16 years. Using old Kodak photos, he tracked down his childhood friends, and teachers. This touching reunion left an indelible mark on him, teaching him that people are worth all the efforts. 

During his time in medical school, he continued to pursue his passion for the intersection of humanism, resilience, public policy and medicine. He founded a narrative medicine and social-connectedness project called Humans of NYMC. Modeled after Humans of New York, Humans of NYMC engages medical school students in free script interviews of peers, whereby the interviewee and interviewer work together to craft a narrative to be shared with the rest of the community. This project empowers students to develop narrative competence, that is the ability to better understand the purpose and the meaning from a story that better allows professionals/individuals to connect with others- a key component of providing humanistic medical care. This project also aims to create open dialogue between people of differing backgrounds. In 2019, this project was selected as one of 5 keynote student innovations to be presented at the annual Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Conference in Phoenix,Arizona.

https://www.humansofnymc.com/

During medical school, Suyu also pursued his interest in resilience. A topic heavily covered during his EPIIC course. He dove into the literature by Dr. Carol Dweck, Dr. Angela Duckworth, Dr. Trzeciak, Dr. Daniel Kahneman and many others on the metatheory of resilience, positive psychology, neuroplasticity, heuristics, flow, growth mindset, grit, compassion, empathy, antifragility, gratitude, mindfulness, overcoming adversity & trauma, and the science of wellbeing. He founded, and now directs the NYMC Resiliency Curriculum, an entirely student designed, driven, implemented and researched resiliency curriculum. He is currently writing the official curriculum that is training all medical students at NYMC to cultivate their resilience and resiliency in fighting burnout in the medical field to self actualize their journeys as healers.  Suyu views resilience as an innate drive present in everyone, that can be fostered and strengthened through cultivating our values, and passion. Resilience thus can drive the development of our resiliency, traits that allows us to not only manage the adversities and challenges that the medical education journey and our profession presents us, but to learn to reintegrate these adversity into our lives as sources of growth. Suyu strongly believes in the growth mindset: that our abilities, lives, and futures are not fixed nor set in stone, but rather can be improved through effort.

https://nymcresiliency.wordpress.com/

What’s being your experience in medical school, and how has it brought back to the passions you cultivated during your time with EPIIC and the IGL?

I was a Longitudinal Integrated Curriculum Scholar as a third year medical student. Students undergo an application process to be selected into this unique learning program across medical schools in the United States. Specifically students engage in a patient-centered learning program, where instead of short block rotations (the traditional format of clinical medical rotation) , they learn the core skills of doctoring by following a panel of patients longitudinally, over substantial time. This experience allowed me to follow a preterm infant through her birth at 27 weeks until when she was discharged at 40 weeks, counsel the mother through the psycho-social challenges of managing the unexpected nature of the birth and helping her be resilient throughout the “wait and see” period; an elderly patient with limited family support suffering from stage III peripheral artery disease; a patient attempting to navigate managing seizures as a result of and rehabilitation from her neurological surgery to remove a meningioma. This patient centered education allowed me to see many wonders of biomedical sciences radically change the lives of those ill; erythropoietin and blood transfusion ameliorate a less than optimal delivery, lamotrigine controlling seizures, phototherapy clearing the newborn of excess bilirubin. Yet, this experience has also highlighted to me the frustrating shortcomings of health care in tackling complex problems that require both compassionate clinical care and a larger policy response.

One patient that I met, a 26 year old male, had suffered a relapse of his opioid addiction. On his chart, he had a multitude of other mental health disorders, including depression, and anxiety. He’d been in and out of rehab, and suffered social wounds as repercussions of his addiction. A recent study by a group of physicians at University of California Los Angeles found that social pain is processed in some of the same brain areas that process physician pain and is quelled by pain relivers. In a sense, the paper states that stigmatizing treatment of people who use drugs, such as ignoring or rejecting them maybe the equivalent of a shock in the cycle of drug addiction: it’s a powerful social penalty that spurts further drug taking. Discussing this patient with many of my physician mentors and teachers, they lamented that aside from stabilizing his post-overdose symptoms, recommending rehab (again), and offering compassionate support, they had little else to offer. I could see the burnout in their eyes; as providers we learn to numb the pain that result from not being able to alleviate our patients’ suffering. My mentors often tell me that “we need a larger policy response”.  Incidentally, a recent scientific literature estimates that over half of practicing physicians and one-third of nurses in the United States suffer from burnout.

In 2013 I traveled to Kosovo as a student researcher, as a part of the Tufts Institute of Global Leadership Program on Global Health and Security. Having grown up in China, Japan, and now living in the United States as an American citizen, I’ve also had a natural curiosity for the diversity of our global communities. This interest blossomed into a scholarly interest in global development, human rights and healthcare during my undergraduate studies. In Kosovo, I was able to study the way in which the nation rebuilt its healthcare infrastructure after decades of conflict in the aftermath of Balkanization. I met and learned of the different ways that multiple institutions and various professionals coordinated to improve primary care, addressing health disparities of ethnic minorities, and design systemic interventions for a crisis of PTSD in a recently post-conflict nation. After graduating from my master’s program, I interned as a health policy researcher at New York University’s School of Population Health, where I had the opportunity to work on a national initiative aimed at improving the cardiovascular health outcomes for underserved populations in the greater New York City Area. Here, I had the opportunity to research different health care delivery and reform models that coordinated efforts between local and federal government, academic institutions and non-profit healthcare organization in an attempt to implement policy and structural changes that has the potential to move the needle on people’s health in a way isolated clinical alone cannot achieve. More importantly, I spent 2 years working one on one with the homeless at a soup kitchen in New York City. This experience taught me how much I loved hearing people’s stories, and making the work (clinical, policy, or academic) about me. To be frank, my time at NYU jaded me a little bit to policy work. Working at Memorial Sloan Kettering really helped realign my passion for the humanism, which set my course for medical school. It’s been great to slowly merge that passion for humanistic medicine, compassion, with the larger policy work that could feel depersonalizing/abstract.

In medical school, I have served on my school’s student government as an elected representative. One of the first thing that I did was perform a qualitative assessment of the needs of our peers (specifically addressing a lack of mental health support amongst my peers). This has led to my founding and directing of the NYMC Resiliency Curriculum. Our resiliency curriculum is based on extensive research into the literature behind resilience, neuroplasticity, the growth mindset, and the spectrum of mental health distress and burnout that exists in a continuum across the medical field: from medical students to residents to physicians. In designing this curriculum, I’ve had the opportunity to further my understanding of burnout, and mental health; along with the opportunity to apply strategic leadership skills in creating partnership with the administrative, different student organizations, peers, and mentors. 3 years after its founding, our program is now an integrated part of our medical school curriculum, trains every single medical school student at our school, and has been recognized nationally for its merits. Most importantly, through my research, I’ve realized that many of the challenges that our patients’ face: for example not being able to receive adequate primary care that not only manages disease but also promote health, are linked to several causes of student, and practitioner burnout: feeling as though their practice does not reflect what they believe medicine should be.

In designing this systematic intervention program, and directing its implementation and growth, I saw my passions for global health, health policy, intersect with my new found interest in the science of compassion and mental health; and most importantly my “ex-tra medicine passions” directly intersect with my career as a future physician. The literature pointed towards the connection between the rising deaths of despair (https://www.npr.org/2020/03/18/817687042/deaths-of-despair-examines-the-steady-erosion-of-u-s-working-class-life those from suicide, drug overdose and alcoholic liver disease) to the lack of resilience in our patients. If we can train our physicians to become more resilient, and teach resilience to our patients, could that bridge be overcome? Can we make evident the incentive for decreasing physician burnout is aligned with health policy changes that would better coordinate patient care, and improved health outcomes? These are some of the questions that I hope to answer in pursuing a career of patient centered innovation: bettering shaping medical care to effectively treat individual illnesses, advancing scientific understanding of disease processes, whilst designing, evaluating and implanting policy changes improve community health outcomes, along with better empowering physicians to heal their patients.

On a more personal note, I hope to continue to follow my passion for travel, and world futbol in the future. I’m trying to improve my Spanish, so that I can backpack Latin America before all my loan obligations become too burdensome. I’m looking forward to catch some of the classic futbol rivalries like the NorthWest Derby, El Classico, Superclasico, Milan Derby, and Der Klasskier in person. I need to go watch Manchester United play at Old Trafford and Lionel Messi play in person before he retires. How is this related to EPIIC? How is it not? Our passions are related to our success. And success to our passions.

Ananda Paez

Visiting a women’s livelihood center in Morocco

Describe your experiences with the Institute and its immersive education.

One of the first things I did at Tufts as a freshman was join the Institute for Global Leadership. In fact, IGL was one of the main reasons I chose to attend Tufts in the first place. Exposure to the Oslo Scholars program during my senior year of high school convinced me that Tufts had the international focus and opportunities that I was interested in. I joined EPIIC Global Health and Security as a freshman, and over my 6 years at Tufts (4 as an undergraduate and 2 at Fletcher) I was involved in EMPOWER, Oslo Scholars, NIMEP, FieldEx, and others. I also co-founded the Tufts Latin America Committee that became part of the IGL in 2015.

IGL shaped my experience as a student at Tufts in two ways. First, it offered a challenging and insightful environment in the classroom where, by being exposed to a variety of perspectives and tough questions, my learning experience was enhanced. Second, IGL provided the unique opportunity to have international hands-on experiences that were essential to shaping my career. For instance, it was through the IGL that I was able to do a summer internship at the World Bank. This positive experience contributed to my decision to return to the World Bank after completing my master’s. Throughout my involvement with IGL, Sherman’s mentorship and guidance was and continues to be invaluable to me.

How have these many activities at the Institute opened up opportunities and provided you with mentors?

While at Tufts, the opportunity to do research and internships abroad was invaluable. For instance, my experience with NIMEP in Jordan, Junaid at the World Bank and BRAC in Sierra Leone gave me a lot of exposure and helped me understand the international development sector fairly well. This is why I think I was excited to start my master's right after undergrad. They also opened the doors to a lot of opportunities I wouldn't have had access to otherwise. My experience with Junaid at the World Bank in particular was amazing because not only did he offer mentorship, but he also encouraged me to make the most for my experience at the World Bank. During my time in DC I spent a lot of time speaking to people who were happy to mentor me and it was in great part through these conversations that I identified my interest in the intersection of development and humanitarian emergencies.  Most recently, the Convisero community has continued to be a source of mentorship for me. For example, Dan offered amazing career advise and access to his networks in the region that have been invaluable for me.

How will you engage with the Convisero community?

I definitely want to remain very actively engaged with the Convisero community, by continuing to exchange ideas with its members. In particular, I look forward to mentoring younger students or recent graduates who are interested in international development, in the same way that so many mentors helped me.

What are your intellectual passions?

I am working on expanding the work I did on my master’s thesis on coping mechanisms to drought and hopefully publishing a paper about it in the near future. Though my work right now focuses on specific projects, my core passion has always been broader policy and understanding how everything is connected. For example, given that I am currently working in an area that is affected by severe drought and previously worked in a conflict zone, understanding the nexus between humanitarian response and sustainable, long term development policy is something I have focused on a lot. I was recently surprised to find a UN document from the 1970’s that talked about this nexus, given that the discourse today continues to treat it as something that is new and upcoming. The fact that the humanitarian and development sectors remain separate and that synergies between them are yet to be fully understood or developed is concerning. On a more personal note, writing fiction has always been a passion that I am not trying to pursue more seriously as well. 

Your aspirations?

In the short-term, I would like to continue to learn from mentors and friends to gain more experience and a nuanced understanding of key issues in development. In the medium to long term, I wish to work on broader international development and humanitarian policy. I am particularly interested in resilience and system-building and response.

What are your thoughts and critiques of aid assistance, and your reaction to the Jameel Poverty Action Lab winning the Nobel Prize in Economics?

I believe that the development sector still has many flaws but also important strengths. For instance, power dynamics in the aid sector are extremely pronounced and often shape relationships between donors and recipients in negative and unsustainable ways.

 I was delighted when Kremer, Duflo and Banerjee won the Nobel as I believe that it is a big win for development economics and will give a lot more visibility to the benefits of this type of work. Randomized Controlled Trials and other impact evaluation methods can help assess the effectiveness of interventions and provide information on how to best use scarce resources. They are the basis of evidence-based decision-making in development which I think is crucial. That being said, there are certainly limitations to RCTs and I find that using them as panaceas is very dangerous. Experimental work can also be easily manipulated to yield particular results in a specific case that then compromises how generalizable they are and their policy relevance. I believe that the more investments in RCTs focus their policy relevance, the more the aid sector will benefit.  

You are to me essentially a "cosmopolitan" - a world citizen. How does rising global ethno-nationalism impact your thinking?

It is definitely concerning to watch the rise of ethno-nationalism around the globe. I am very interested in humanitarian response, and issues of migration and forced displacement are extremely relevant to my work. In the past year I have had a lot of conversations with mentors at the World Bank and other organizations about refugee policy. Something that strikes me is that policy-makers seem to be increasingly clueless about how to address negative reactions within host communities to the presence of migrants and refugees. Evidence suggests that refugees and migrants bring more benefits than drawbacks to a society, and there is little relationship between numbers and the popular discourse, which means that negative reactions are entirely political in nature. It really saddens me to see how this and other issues have been exploited by the ethno-nationalist discourse to serve political gains at the expense of logical and evidence-based policy.

LEAP at Tufts

Chris Swan, Sarah Freeman, and Doug Matson

We met on February 21st, 2020 with Professor Chris Swan, Dean of Undergraduate Education at the Tufts School of Engineering, Professor Douglas Matson, and a wonderful Institute alumna, Sarah Freeman. One objective of this meeting was to secure the naming of Tufts’ Engineers Without Borders in honor of our deceased wonderful common friend, Fred Berger. He was a long time member of the Institute’s External Advisory Board. The occasion also allowed us to introduce LEAP to Tufts Engineering, EWB, and Sarah.

In 2004, Institute Board member David Cuttino had introduced me to Fred, then the Chair of the Board of Louis Berger, Inc. An engineer by profession, Fred was an alumnus of the Tufts Department of Economics, and became a member of the Tufts Board of Trustees. He expressed to me his interest in the creation of what he termed an “engineering Peace Corps,” and his frustration at the lack of traction this idea received at Tufts. With his support, the Institute suggested creating an Engineers Without Borders chapter, and honored Bernard Amadei, the Founding President of EWB-USA, with a Dr. Jean Mayer Award.

Our vision, and the EWB mandate, was to encourage students to work closely with faculty mentors and field experts to provide engineering support to serve the needs of communities in developing countries. To ensure the sustainability of their projects, the students built relationships with the communities that they work in before beginning their projects, and developed a plan in collaboration with, and fully sensitive to the interests and concerns of, those community.

EWB’s very first trip to Tibet was led by Sarah, then an undergraduate engineering student under the advising of Doug Matson. The project created latrines and solar-powered cookers to destroy medical waste. Mindful that they were traveling to a Chinese-controlled zone, we sensitized the students to what it means to work in such a sensitive environment, providing orientation sessions on language, culture, and China-Tibet governance and politics.

I have reconnected with Tufts Shafiqul Islam, a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Professor of Water Diplomacy at Tufts University, a good friend, and the father of one of my wonderful former students, Maia Majumder. Shafiqul and I affectionately call each other “Bunky,” commemorating the time we spent as bunkmates during an EPIIC Outward Bound retreat.

For the 2005 EPIIC Oil and Water year, together we convened a professional workshop on “Water as a Source of Conflict and Cooperation: Exploring the Potential,” which then became the Water Diplomacy Project at Fletcher and the Water Systems, Science, and Society initiatives. These are part of the wonderful legacies that the Institute left for Tufts. Shafiqul will serve as a Convisero and LEAP mentor.

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.

Gregg Nakano joins LEAP

Gregg who I affectionately call the “Ramrod” of ALLIES has become part of the LEAP network. Peter Droege will help Gregg create an overture to UNESCO and its Small Island Developing States (SIDS) program, framed by “slow onset disaster” and the existential risk posed to the territory and cultures of Pacific island nations, and help secure a potential UNESCO delegation to the Festival of the Pacific (FESTPAC).

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.

Marcy Murninghan joins LEAP

I introduced Peter Droege to Marcy Murninghan, who was an Institute INSPIRE Fellow during the 2007-08 EPIIC year on “Global Poverty and Inequality.” In her time at the Institute, she wrote a report on Fighting the Fury: Climate Change, Natural Disasters, and the Stewardship Ethic - building on her decades of experience in corporate social responsibility and ethics - which links the military services and civil and business sectors in a integrative framework to respond to climate disaster.

Fighting the Fury examines existing practice and opportunities for cultivating private sector and civil–military partnerships and leadership, opportunities that traverse the humanitarian community, and the overlapping arenas of corporate and investor social responsibility, as well as academe. It suggests how these partnerships might be strengthened and new ones created, while engaging, too, other actors such as social entrepreneurs, foundations, and the media.”

Marcy has developed a new Equity Culture / Civic Fiduciary initiative that encompasses the concept of a civilian disaster corps that she developed at the Institute. In addition to being an integral contributor to ALLIES - my Institute’s civil-military program - with her emphasis on civil-military collaboration on climate response, she is now a LEAP fellow, and with Peter and LISD’s insight will continue to develop and advocate for this framework.

A Convisero Retrospective

Dear Friends,

Allegedly retired, I have actually begun what Iris terms a “new chapter” in my life. Reminiscences and active continuities….

Jerome and I are constructing a new platform, Convisero, (Latin for “Unite”), as The Trebuchet's effort to create a dynamic interactive interface, among experts and alumni from my fifty years of teaching and programming, and the new people I now interact with in my Emeritus life. 

What follows is a recounting of a weave of recent encounters and interactions with friends, old and new. It spans approximately two month’s activity from November 2019 to January 2020. 

I could have easily chosen any such time period in my Emeritus life over the last three years, and created such a tapestry. 

Alumni Networking

Chris and Petar

• I recently had lunch with two wonderful Institute alumni, Petar Todorov and Chris Ghadban, who in the context of EPIIC’s year on Global Health and Security created two derivative IGL initiatives, one an iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machines) competition team, and after the team’s success, a synthetic biology club. Petar is now in a PhD program in Copenhagen, and Chris is a bioinformatics scientist with AstraZeneca in Boston. 

They are enthusiastic about Convisero, and will be writing profiles and mentoring. They have already begun the mentoring aspect, having cofounded a forum called GapSummit, a global intergenerational gathering of biotech experts featuring a “Voices of Tomorrow” cohort of 100 young leaders in the industry. This all began with my introducing them to Juan Enriquez, who enabled a select number of Institute students to attend the Whitehead Institute open house, which is usually only open to donors. 

Having Petar and Chris aboard particularly exciting, given that they not only represent the true interdisciplinary of what I tried to create, but open up broad vistas to enable me to help students in the bio sciences that I ordinarily would not have access to. 

David Walt is a close friend, and I am asking him and Juan to purposively join Convisero, not only to help students, but to help me enlarge the Pugwash model that I am working on. 

At times, this helps even my direct family. I have introduced Petar and Chris to my son Nathaniel and his girlfriend Kelly. Nathaniel is advising Chris on his application to business schools, and Kelly has begun a conversation with them about her own work at Artemis, a firm developing innovative farming techniques. Chris has previously worked in this field with the Good Food Institute and Granular Farm Management. 

Chris also knows the founder of a potential platform to begin connecting our community, called Lounjee, and will introduce us to see if he can create a closed network for Convisero

• Suyu Zhang, an EPIIC alum from the 2012 Global Health year, a few weeks ago sent me a curriculum he designed with peers on mental resiliency for medical students. He is currently at New York Medical College, and deeply concerned by the ability of students to cope with the immense stress and pressures of training to become a physician. I sent his project to my personal physician, whose brother is the former dean of the Harvard Medical School. I soon will share it with Professor of Psychiatry Kelly Posner Gerstenhaber, the Director of the Columbia Lighthouse Project who spoke for EPIIC’s colloquium on the recommendation of her close friend, my wonderful alum and Trebuchet Secretary, Jennifer Selendy. They are the founders of the unique Speyer School.

And I had the pleasure of connecting Suyu to another EPIIC alum and Synaptic Scholar, Nnenna Okoye, who is finishing her medical residency at UC San Francisco. In time, I hope to link many of my former students now in medical school, and our recent medical school grads, to this effort. I am also sending it to Professor Stephen Soumerai, who is very interested in this topic.

• Josh Malkin, an EPIIC alum and one of my former “aides de camp,” sent me his proposal for a program helping high-achieving, but underserved, middle school students in New York to pass the SHSAT high school entrance exam. Josh who taught for Teach for America in New Orleans, is now a student at Columbia Law School.

I introduced him to Josh Laub, an EPIIC alum from 1989, and one of my most activist students, who remains deeply concerned with societal inequality.  He was a high school principal in the Bronx for twelve years, and is now the Director of Youth Development in New York City’s District 88, working with youth transition from jail, back to school. They have begun to correspond. Josh L. also disrupted EPIIC’s 1988 forum on Covert Action when we brought CIA Director William Colby, and was detained by Tufts Police. I missed several hours of the symposium to talk with him, and he enrolled in our EPIIC 1989 Drug year, and it was a wonderful moment when a radical brilliant young man saw the virtue in open non-polemical environments. He has remained a very close friend.

I also introduced Josh M. to David Puth, as cares deeply about youth development in his role on the board of Robin Hood. He was my Tufts student in 1978, (yes 1978!...I was there for one semester and never expected to return ) in a political science course on Middle East politics. In true Convisero fashion, we remained very close. I once had the pleasure of being interviewed in Bloomberg news, speaking to David's integrity and intelligence. Of course I reached him to become Trebuchet’s Treasurer. 

• I Skyped with a member of my first EPIIC class, Professor Turhan Canli. Turhan just published this piece in EuropeNow, the monthly publication of the Council for European Studies. As a member of the Development Board of CES, I had introduced Turhan to their Director, Nicole Shea, in early 2017. Together, they co-edited the issue of EuropeNow, "Forced Migration, Cultural Identity, and Trauma," in which I interviewed Mike Niconchuk about his socio-neurology work in the Za'atari refugee camp.

Turhan shared with me his newest project on "War-Trauma and Disease." I am putting him in touch with Many Stefanakis, a former Institute Advisor Board member and a friend of the Niarchos Foundation, and Alan Stoga of Tällberg, for potential funding.  

Middle East Activity  

I am creating a community of Israeli/Americans, American Jews and Israelis, living and studying in Boston to support existing and new progressive Israeli and Boston/Israel initiatives. We are resonating a new collective voice that will reassert itself against very intensifying conservative trends in Jewish communal life.

We also seek to effectively address the resurgence of anti-Semitism, while also confronting actions within our community that we consider antithetical to our values, such as attempts locally to stifle freedom of expression in the Newton South High School system, by Jewish activists alleging that its curriculum is biased against Israel; or as in Trump's recent regrettable executive order on Title VI that affects Universities.

Over time we hopefully will ultimately be significant enough to influence U.S policy towards Israel, and Israeli policy. 

• Amitai Abouzaglo, a Harvard senior, is a member of our nascent community. I met him two years ago through my ongoing effort to support Combatants for Peace (I have joined the Academic Advisory Board of their American Friends organization). His academic major is religion. I successfully nominated him to become Harvard's first Human Rights Foundation Oslo Scholar, a new program I have embedded in the offerings of the Harvard undergraduate International Relations Council, which I advise. 

Larry Bacow and Itai

I am also an advisor to Amitai's new promising NGO, Embodying Peace. 

Amitai wanted Itai Kohavi, the founder of International Peace Accelerator to meet me. On November 20th, while talking with Itai at Harvard’s student center, Harvard President Larry Bacow stopped by to warmly greet me. Larry was a strong supporter of my efforts while President of Tufts until 2012, and germane to MENA region issues, he helped support the creation of NIMEP.

Anna

Witnessing this by chance, Anna del Castillo came by and reintroduced herself to me as a former IGL Synaptic Scholar. Now a Harvard Divinity School graduate student, her project, as a Harvard Presidential Fellow, centers on the potential for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation, I introduced her to Itai, and Amitai, and they all expressed interest in collaborating. 

Itai and I have now had several detailed conversations. I have agreed to join his Advisory Board, and I am considering his offer to direct an IPA workshop in the region. He has extraordinary links to the highest echelons of both Israeli and Palestinian political leadership and entrepreneurship. Enclosed a picture of Larry, Itai and myself; and Itai sent me a picture of himself with his Palestinian co-founder, Huda El-Jack of Ramallah and former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert.

Janette, Shula, Shai, and Amir

• On November 15th I met with Daniel Sokatch, the CEO of the New Israel Fund, and Stephane Acel-Green, NIF's Deputy VP for Regional Development in Boston. Together with Harvard’s Shula Gilad, a member of our group who works closely with J-Street, we met again with Stephane, and with J Street’s Regional Director Janette Hillis-Jaffe, seeking to investigate and encourage the utility and value of leveraging integrated, common efforts between NIF and J Street. Heretofore, they have traditionally operated in differing domestic and international spheres. 

I reached out to an EPIIC alumna from my 1987 West Bank and Gaza year, Brenda Needle (now Brenda Needle-Shimoni), who immigrated to Israel, and who was a long term consultant for Shatil (1992 through 2003), the NIF’s operative arm and initiative for social change. (By what I term serendipity, she is the one who hired Daniel to originally come to NIF)

Amitai had met the Israeli Policy Working Group last summer in Israel while working to grow Embodying Peace. He introduced us, as one of the original concerns I had with convening our group in the first place, is to support groups working specifically on human and civil rights in Israel. The PWG is chaired by Israeli Ambassador Alon Liel. We have begun a meaningful correspondence.

The Convisero web thickens. The Ambassador’s wife, Rachel Liel, is currently the chair of ACRI. She and Brenda had also worked closely together when Rachel was Shatil’s Director. 

Understanding what we are hoping to create now, Brenda alerted me to an informal coalition of progressive Jewish organizations she had helped create in Boston in the late 1980’s with Donny Perlstein, who was then regional director of NIF for New England. 

Donny had introduced me to his son, Ben Perlstein, when Ben was still in high school. Ben participated in our Inquiry high school program, enrolled in Tufts, and joined EPIIC and Synaptic Scholars. Now a friend, he is currently finishing his rabbinical studies at Jewish Theological Seminary. 

Ben has joined our effort, and I have invited his father. Yes, we are truly intergenerational…

• We learned of an important article “Arab Thinkers Call to Abandon Boycotts and Engage With Israel” about a distinguished group of journalists, scholars, diplomats, and artists that share a view that "anti-normalization," isolating and demonizing Israel was self-defeating. We have reached out to one of their group, Dr. Mohammed Dajani, the Palestinian professor who created the Wasatia initiative.

I had brought Dr. Dajani to Tufts in 2014 for EPIIC’s Future of the Middle East and North Africa colloquium, and honored him with a Dr. Jean Mayer Award. The student BDS movement at Tufts was in opposition. He was later expelled from Al Quds University for taking his students to Auschwitz to better understand the Holocaust. 

I had already introduced him to Dr. Dajani, and now we have introduced another member of our group, Amir Grinstein, and his organization 50 50 Startups, to hopefully stimulate collaboration. 

Shula and Yousef

Shula introduced me to Yousef Alzaeem, the Founder and CEO of the Gazan-based Everest Trading Group who is currently at Harvard HKS. I have introduced Yousef to Sara Roy, a member of our group, and they have arranged to meet. I am trying to reach another of the group to Eglal Gheita, a British-Egyptian lawyer through my friend Mona Mowafi, founder of RISE Egypt.

• I was called by Anne Josephson, a lawyer and good friend, regarding my advice on the Newton South High School controversy over an alleged anti-Semitic curriculum. Both the Newton controversy and Trump's Title VI executive order play into the right-wing Israeli narrative equating any criticism of the state of Israel, or of Judaism with hate speech.

Anne and I will be reaching out to my friend, and Tufts alumnus, Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, regarding his position on the Trump executive order.

Convisero Mentors

• I have been involved with the Tällberg Foundation since participating in a Tällberg workshop on the Greek island of Lesvos in 2016. Their President, Alan Stoga, has since become a friend. 

On November 26th, the Tällberg Foundation announced the recipients of their prestigious 2019 Eliasson Prize for Global Leadership. I had the pleasure of nominating one of the three winners, Dr. Anne Goldfeld, one of over fifteen hundred nominees from one hundred and fifty countries.

Mike, Anne, and Alan

Anne, a good friend of several decades, is a former member of the Institute's Advisory Board. She was an exceptional mentor in our immersive education program, including taking two of our students enrolled in the 2012 EPIIC Global Health year on a research trip to Cambodia. I awarded her the Institute's Dr. Jean Mayer Award in 2013.

By serendipity, one of Anne’s Tällberg reviewers was my alum, Mike Niconchuk. He had been asked to join the Tällberg Board after meeting Alan, while accompanying me to the Lesvos workshop. 

Anne and Mike are now Convisero mentors. 

• At times, the level at which Convisero works is from expert-to-expert. On December 4th, a friend, Ambassador Samantha Power delivered the Institute's inaugural lecture on “Global Moral Leadership” in memory of our extraordinary mutual friend, Ambassador Jonathan Moore. I first asked her to give this talk when we were ushers at Jonathan's Harvard memorial service in June of 2017, and she asked me to wait until she finished her book, The Education of An Idealist.

I first met Jonathan in 1980 during his tenure as the director of Harvard's Institute of Politics. I was teaching two study groups there, on covert action and U.S. foreign policy, and U.S. MENA affairs.  He was in many ways my mentor, and responsible for my Institute's ability to conduct our global experiential immersive education programs, knowledgeably, safely, and responsibly. As a member of the Institute’s Advisory Board for ten years, he stimulated the creation of our Voices from the Field program. 

The lecture was a wonderful inspirational moment, joining former UN Ambassadors, whose ethics and idealism permeated everything we've done at the Institute when I was director.

• Two days later, I saw Samantha speak again, this time at WBUR's CitySpace, in conversation with a wonderful alum and friend, Sasha Chanoff, the founder of RefugePoint. The forum was convened by another good friend, Ina Breuer, the Director of New England International Donors. Ina was the Executive Director of the Project of Justice in Times of Transition when it was hosted at the Institute at my invitation for six years, and we created many programs together, viz. ACCESS.

Samantha spoke for the first time at the Institute's gathering of VII Photo Agency, for Exposure in 2005. Now as part of my responsibilities on the Advisory Board of the VII Foundation, I had just edited the afterword she wrote for the forthcoming VII Foundation volume Imagine: Reflections on Peace.

Sasha first interacted with the Institute when together we created the “Game of Nations” in 1998, creating a community soccer team to play the Tufts soccer team, comprised entirely of Boston-area refugees from across the globe seeking asylum in the US. I helped him create Mapendo International, the precursor to RefugePoint, and then had the honor of successfully nominating him in 2010 for the Bronfman Prize for his humanitarian achievements. I currently serve a Strategic Advisor to RefugePoint.

Jerome and I went to CitySpace with another good friend and former Institute INSPIRE Fellow, Dan Holmberg. He has recently returned from the field as Regional Advisor for Disaster Assistance for USAID in Nairobi. He had spoken for Voices from the Field with Sasha in 2012, during the EPIIC Global Health year. Knowing Dan is now looking to remain stateside, we went together to reconnect him with Sasha, and intentionally to meet Sam. I also introduced Dan to Ina, for whom he will now become a resource person for her international donors. 

Samantha, Ina, Sasha and Dan are now also all integral to Convisero. Attached is Dan’s letter to us. 

• Many of you know that I have a golden doodle pup named Remi, who continually delights me. A couple of weeks ago, on a late evening walk, she began to surprisingly bark at a silhouette neither of us recognized. It turned out to be a young woman vigorously jumping rope, as a boxer might, in Coolidge Park across from my home. And so we met Anna Savolainen, a young Finnish political scientist living in Boston for the year with her husband, who is doing a postdoc in nanotechnology at The Broad Institute.  

We had a delightful conversation, and soon met again at my home over tea and scones. I asked her the question I am fond of posing when people seek advice from me, "If you close your eyes and imagine your immediate future right now, what is your ideal outcome?" In this case, Anna, who completed her masters in Upsala on peacekeeping forces in Lebanon, expressed her interest in pursuing that course of study, and doing a PhD on transatlantic security cooperation. 

She went on to tell me she continued to have a sustained interest in peacekeeping, and also of an ideal PhD position she was interested in applying for, at the University of Leiden. Immediately, I was able to volunteer to put her in touch with another friend, and "Voice from the Field," Nick Birnback, a veteran field peacekeeper, now in charge of public relations for UN Peacekeeping Operations in New York. Then, I was able to aim a laser beam at her specific objective, when I realized that the supervisor for the PhD position she desires is none other than my friend Professor Joachim “Joe” Koops. 

Joe and I had several meetings with his faculty in Belgium where he offered me the position of Distinguished Professor of Ethical Global Leadership at the Vesalius Institute in Brussels he directed; and an offer to create and direct a potential new center with the felicitous acronym, VITAL (Vesalius Institute for Transatlantic Leadership). I really wanted to remain stateside, and ultimately it came to naught when he took the new position of Chair of Security Studies and Scientific Director of the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at Leiden University’s campus in The Hague. (in any case, Iris has done a brilliant job of keeping me on a “short leash” by agreeing to the aforementioned Remi!)

Even though Finland is hardly on this side of the Atlantic, if it works, I will consider it a "vital" success. 

• One of my very close friends, Jason Clay - I was the best man at his wedding - wrote to tell me of this Markets Institute newsletter on food trends. I sent it on to my son's girlfriend Kelly Ward, who is an Enterprise Account Executive at Artemis, and to my good friend Boaz Wachtel, the founder of the Green Leaf Party in Israel, now a developer of innovative agriculture with Roots. They are in contact now. 

Criminal Justice Concerns 

• I attended a benefit concert to endow student scholarships for Roxbury Community College, organized by a close friend, the jazz impresario, Ted Kurland. The evening was in honor of the legendary drummer and Roxbury resident, Roy Haynes, now in his nineties, who was in the audience. His grandson Marcus Gilmore is already a force. The incomparable Pat Methany was the featured artist. Ted is their agent, as he was, and is, for many other jazz greats, from Nina Simone to Wynton Marsalis.

There, I met the president of Roxbury Community College, Valerie Roberson. We briefly discussed my intent to link her College's criminal justice program to the Innocence International archive of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. I had brought him to Tufts to speak and we became friends in the last years of his life. At my intervention he agreed to house his archive at Tufts' Tisch Library. 

A wonderful 2010 EPIIC alumna, Taarika Sridhar, who just passed the Massachusetts Bar and is joining the prestigious Boston law firm, Ropes and Gray, will be doing her pro bono work with the Innocence Project, and she has agreed to take on students from Roxbury's criminal justice program as interns.

At the concert, I also met a former TA of mine from Emerson College days! 1984! Lisa Zopatti. She remembered me immediately when she saw me, and in conversation asked me to get engaged with Year Up. We have pledged to meet.