The World Is Our Classroom

IPS Students Report from Rwanda

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

ica.stanford.eduica.information@stanford.edu

Vol. 1, Issue 5

ICA PROGRAMS & CENTERS:

CENTER FOR AFRICAN STUDIES

CENTER FOR EAST ASIAN STUDIES

CENTER FOR LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES

CENTER FOR RUSSIAN, EAST EUROPEAN AND EURASIAN STUDIES

CENTER FOR SOUTH ASIA

EAST ASIA INTERNSHIP PROGRAM

THE EUROPE CENTER

FORD DORSEY PROGRAM IN INTERNATIONAL POLICY STUDIES

FRANCE-STANFORD CENTER FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES

HAMID AND CHRISTINA MOGHADAM PROGRAM IN IRANIAN STUDIES

INNER ASIA @ STANFORD

MEDITERRANEAN STUDIES FORUM

PROGRAM IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

SOHAIB AND SARA ABBASI PROGRAM IN ISLAMIC STUDIES

THE STANFORD HUMAN RIGHTS INITIATIVE

TAUBE CENTER FOR JEWISH STUDIES

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After meeting with IPS students, President Kagame shakes hands with trip participant Sarah van Vliet.

Students in the Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies (IPS) visited Rwanda over Spring Break. This student-led study trip was conceived and coordinated by second-year students Micaela Hellman-Tincher, Lukas Friedemann, and Danny Buerkli, giving 18 first-year students an experience they’ll never forget. But, why Rwanda?

“Nearly twenty years ago, this was a country in the midst of a terrible genocide,” says IPS Director Kathryn Stoner. “This trip to Rwanda, although short, enabled students to see how a divided country can reconcile and rebuild while facing extreme poverty and few resources. Students were able to take knowledge acquired in the classroom and see how it might apply in a real-world situation.”

The students traveled to several regions in Rwanda and learned first-hand how a small, landlocked country, at one time torn by genocide, is slowly transforming itself.

According to student leader Danny Buerkli, "Organizing this study trip was a great experience. It was an opportunity to give back to the program and to deepen our own understanding of Rwanda. And Professor Jim Fearon, our faculty leader, contributed so much to the trip with his unparalleled understanding of ethnic conflicts."

Students wrote about the trip and share highlights on the following page.

2 The World is Our Classroom (continued from page 1)

Chris Coke This was my first trip to Africa, and really my first to a developing country. Of course, I gained perspective on true human suffering, something that can easily be lost while studying at Stanford. However, I drew the most value from deeply pondering major international and humanitarian issues in a specific setting with a small group of people all doing the same. I had more experiences debating political vs. economic development than I would have had in a year here at Stanford. Complete immersion, even if just for a week, was a great experience.Emmanuel Ferrario Our first trip within Rwanda was to a genocide memorial site. The memorial helped us comprehend the extent and implications of the peace and justice process in Rwanda. The Rwandan people we met conveyed clearly that reconciliation among the different ethnic groups was built on this premise: first, peace; second, development.Cho Kim Traveling alone, I would never have had the chance to participate in such intimate discussions with the Minister of Health, Agnes Binagwaho; the Permanent Secretary of MINAFFET, Mary Baine; or the President, Paul Kagame. I also enjoyed the meetings with the Akilah Institute, an organization that trains and educates women who might otherwise find it difficult to find employment. As one interested in the microfinance and education sectors, I appreciated hearing how the organization was carefully planning to help women finance tuition costs through micro-loans.Jessie Brunner When we visited the memorial at Nyamata Church, where thousands of men, women and children were slain in 1994, I was incredibly affected by the stoic manner in which the woman who led our tour, probably my age and seven months pregnant, recalled stories of the genocide. This interaction cemented my awareness that a vast percentage of the population (about 12 million) lives with memories of the genocide, either as survivors or perpetrators, in

a country with only seven practicing psychiatrists (there were none in 1994). The implications of this reality has encouraged me to pursue a much deeper understanding of transitional justice and what judicial mechanisms can be employed to encourage post-conflict justice and reconciliation. Ron Yamada I was amazed by the orphan village we visited in eastern Rwanda. Each child is assigned work such as farming or cooking. The children are studying a wide range of subjects, including math, history, chemistry, English, and French. One of the kids told me about his dream to start a business trading livestock domestically and internationally, which was why he studied economics. The children’s ambitious plans and bright faces touched my heart. Lu Liu Our meeting with President Kagame was definitely one of the highlights of this trip for me. The fact that he spent more than two hours with us, answering all the questions that we had posed, attested to the depth of the meeting. While there was clearly a limit to how much he could share with us, I thought that he was candid about the challenges and frustrations that Rwanda has had to face during its reconstruction. Deirdre Hegarty Throughout the week, there were many times when class material from our first two quarters literally “came to life” during our meetings. When we met with the CEO of Crystal Ventures, John Birungi, he talked about the merits of an import substitution (IS) strategy for Rwanda. Most of us had taken the IPS course on International Trade, and we ended up in a lively discussion about the merits and limitations of an IS strategy. When we met with Mike Hammond of the Department for International Development (DFID) and his staff, we gained insight into the tension between DFID’s development goals and the Rwandan government’s interests. Reading about issues of development is much different than listening to a conversation between staff members regarding the actual trade-offs they must make.

Meghan Farley I have learned many things in my short time in Rwanda, many of which will stay with me for a long time, and many of which I am still slowly processing. But the things that will stay with me most are:• Nothing is black or white. Between

a democracy that fails to provide economic development and adequate public services, and an authoritarian regime that pulls its people out of poverty and solves public health issues while restricting some civil liberties, which is better? I no longer think this question can be answered in an absolute manner.

• There is a distinction between reconciliation and peaceful cohabitation. Sometimes the former is beyond what is reasonably possible, and the latter is the only road to peace.

• Policymaking has more challenges than I could have ever possibly imagined. From the time a need is revealed, to when an idea is formed, to when a policy is formulated and then implemented, a successful outcome is never guaranteed, and there are many things that can go wrong along the way to turn a good idea into a policy with awful consequences.

Siyeona Chang Without this trip, it is unlikely that I would have had the chance to get to know Rwanda in such depth. On our small group trips, we saw trucks carrying petroleum from Uganda, reminding us of the development challenges of a landlocked country. On another occasion we were faced with the juxtaposition of a Rwandan farmer, who receives 25 cents for a kilogram of coffee beans he harvests, and our guide, who took us to the coffee washing station and was managing his schedule on the newest iPad Mini. I found this a fascinating metaphor for the growing inequality and societal challenges that lie ahead.

The Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies (IPS) is a multidisciplinary master’s program dedicated to the study and analysis of the international system. Contact ips-information@stanford.edu for more information.]

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Five Questions for Director Abbas Milani

The Division of ICA contains a variety of programs representing many different cultures. What do you think the introduction of a program in Iranian Studies has contributed to ICA? It was remarkable that a university of Stanford’s stature did not have an Iranian Studies Program until a few years ago. Initially the vision of Hamid and Christina Moghadam, and the encouraging support of academic leaders at Stanford, helped us launch the program. After a few years, major donations by Bita Daryabari allowed us to expand our work in the domain of literature and arts. Iran has been for almost three thousand years a country of great importance to the West, and to the evolution of our common human heritage. ICA rightly prides itself for standing at the forefront of cultivating, encouraging, and articulating truly interdisciplinary, multi-cultural research and pedagogy at Stanford, and Iranian Studies has been, from its inception, as much about the politics and economy of Iran as its literature, arts and theater. The fact that the Program has invited many of the foremost scholars, artists, filmmakers, poets, and political scientists from Iran (or working on Iran) to Stanford, and the fact that many of our colleagues at ICA—and many of our students—have attended these events, underscores our contribution to the enrichment of the scholarly, intellectual and political discourse on

Iran here at Stanford and, through the community of our students, in the rest of the world. Finally, if we have had any success in our endeavors, it has been in no small measure because of the tireless and always gracefully efficient work of our program manager, Ms. Pasang Sherpa.

Since its establishment, what do you think the Iranian Studies Program has offered to the Stanford community at large? I think our most important contributions to the Stanford community have been in the realms of pedagogy and cultural/political awareness. When I began at Stanford, I was the only person at the University teaching courses on Iran. The Language Center had a part-time instructor in Persian as well. Today we have a wider variety of courses—from Dominic Parviz Brookshaw’s course on medieval Persian images of wine to Bahram Beyzaie’s course on the semiotics of modern Iranian cinema, from my own course on the politics of modern Iran to Shervin Emami’s course that studies texts in their original Persian. This year the Program will be granting its first undergraduate certificate in Iranian Studies. Moreover, through a variety of activities—either events the Program sponsors, or those co-sponsored with other groups at Stanford—the Program in Iranian Studies affords the Stanford community the chance to see some of the best Iran has to offer.

Your nonpartisanship is fairly unique. What do you think the value is of a nonpartisan approach to the type of research that you do? How do you think it has benefited your work here at Stanford? Policymakers no less than students, scholars no less than journalists, want to hear the truth and it has always been my belief that as scholars our foremost responsibility is to seek and speak the truth. In speaking the truth, we sometimes disturb the facile peace of partisans of one view or another, but impartiality, or what one scholar calls “eclipsing the self,” is the very foundation of scholarship—and good policy.

What kind of interaction do you see (if any) between your role as a professor, in which you are working primarily with students, and your role at the Hoover Institution, in which you are working more towards providing information for policymakers? Do the two positions affect each other in any way? In my experience, the two aspects have no essential conflict; indeed they are, in my view, complimentary. To offer advice to policymakers requires, more than anything, familiarity with the subject, and students, too, expect nothing less. While in a policy paper I can freely offer what I think is the best way to tackle a problem—after adequately and accurately describing the problem—in a class, I think it is my responsibility to give students, not my views, but the range of views, attitudes, theories, or surmises about the subject. Needless to say, “eclipsing the self” completely, even in the context of a class, is virtually impossible, but it is our goal and responsibility.

What new research are you currently working on? How does it connect to your work in the Iranian Studies Program? As you might know, last year I published a book on the Shah (called The Shah, published in the US and UK by Palgrave Macmillan.) I have now written an expanded version of the book in Persian. The government in Iran has banned my books, and perforce, I am publishing it outside Iran and making it accessible to those in Iran through the Internet. The book is a political history of modern Iran through the prism of the Shah’s life. It tries to trace the roots of the Islamic revolution and explain why from a modernizing authoritarian regime a clerical despotism emerged. It covers, at some length, the role the US played in Iranian politics, particularly from 1941–1980, and much of what I teach in my classes covers these very issues.

For more information about the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies, visit iranian-studies.stanford.edu.]

Questions by Cara Reichard, '15

Abbas Milani is Director of the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Iranian Studies Program, and Research Fellow and Co-Director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution.

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