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Impact
From Finland to Nigeria to New Orleans:
through the UMass Boston Fund you touch the world
The Moakley Chair, The Center for Dispute Resolution, and The Asian American Studies Program
are making a difference
McCormack Graduate School professor leads secret Iraq peace talks
September 4, 2007 – After four days of discussions in Finland, 16 delegates from Sunni and Shiite groups in Iraq have agreed to a 12-point framework intended to guide Iraq to a lasting peace.
The secret talks were organized by the University of Massachusetts Boston’s John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies and Helsinki-based Crisis Management Initiative. Helping lead the discussions were several veterans of the peace processes in Northern Ireland and South Africa, including McCormack Graduate School’s Padraig O’Malley, holder of the John Joseph Moakley Chair of Peace and Reconciliation.
“The road to reconciliation in Iraq, like in any fractured society, is long and tortured,” said McCormack Graduate School Dean Steve Crosby, “but we hope that Padraig O’Malley can use the expertise that he’s gathered in Northern Ireland and South Africa over the years, and the legacy of Joe Moakley, to get the journey on that road started.”
Congressman Moakley was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1972 and served until his death in 2001. In addition to serving as chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee, Moakley’s investigation of the murder of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador opened the way to a peaceful settlement between the rebels and the Salvadoran government.
O’Malley, the founder and editor of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies’ New England Journal of Public Policy for more than 20 years, has also authored many books, among them the award-winning Uncivil Wars: Ireland Today, Biting at the Grave, and Shades of Difference: Mac Maharaj and the Struggle for South Africa, which was published in April.
The framework for peace, titled the “Helsinki Agreement,” includes recommendations on non-violence, independent and effective courts, the protection of human rights, and the creation of a truly inclusive political process—all things, said Dean Crosby, that need to be in place before a nation can move forward.
“This is representational of the kind of work that we think a public policy school should do,” said Crosby. “The university believes that a public policy school should be deeply involved in public policy issues, and this is one of the most profoundly troubling public policy issues, and one, principally through the Moakley chair, that we want to be very much involved in.”
July 2008 Boston Globe
Op-Ed by Professor O'Malley
UMass Boston wins grant for Nigerian Youth Leaders Exchange Program
The University of Massachusetts Boston’s Graduate Program in Dispute Resolution will be hosting an exchange program to connect Nigerian youth leaders and members of civil society organizations working to bridge the country’s Muslim-Christian divide with American experts in conflict management and resolution. The exchange program will be led by Assistant Professor Darren Kew, and is being supported by a grant from the US Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
“Building Citizen Engagement and Conflict Resolution Skills in Civil Society: An Exchange Program for Nigerian Youth Leaders” is broken into two main phases. First, the Nigerian youth and civil society leaders will spend 3 weeks in Boston as they participate in workshops and site visits, working with American conflict resolution professionals experienced in interfaith and intergroup dialogue and consensus building. In addition to UMass Boston, American professionals will come from partnering organizations including Public Conversations Project, the Consensus Building Institute, the Massachusetts Office of Dispute Resolution and Public Collaboration, The Mediation Group, and CDA Collaborative Learning Projects.
Six months after the Nigerians visit Boston, American conflict resolution practitioners will travel to Nigeria where they will meet and conduct training programs with Nigerian partner organizations including Academic Associates PeaceWorks in Abuja, the Interfaith Dialogue Center in Kaduna, the Centre for Democratic Research and Training of Bayero University in Kano, and Settlement House in Abuja.
Darren Kew specializes in the connection between institution building in Africa and the development of political cultures that support democracy, particularly in terms of the role of civil society groups in this development. He has worked with the Council on Foreign Relations’ Center for Preventative Action to provide analysis and blueprints for preventing conflicts in several areas around the world, including Nigeria, Central Africa, and Kosovo. He has also been a consultant to the United Nations, USAID, the US State Department, and to a number of NGO’s, including the Carter Center in a 1999 effort by former President Carter to mediate the Niger Delta conflicts and a 2007 effort to improved the Nigerian election process. His work on how conflict resolution methods promote democratization of national political cultures is one of the first of its kind in linking these important fields.
Vietnamese Down South:
Student reflects on the university's annual efforts to rebuild New Orleans
By Anna Tsui
It is what they sought, not what they saw, that differentiates six UMB students from other curious spectators who made the long journey to New Orleans. On November 10, 2005, these students, Nam Le, Soramy Le, Judy Mai, Phuong Nguyen, Jen Nguyen, and Catherine Tran, went in search of unheard voices amidst the enormous physical destruction and human devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Lost in the shadows of the national media coverage that publicized Katrina as a Black and White problem, they found, were the experiences of large Asian American Communities throughout the Gulf Coast.
Four of the students were from Professor Peter Kiang’s Asian American Studies course, “Boston's Asian American Communities.” Two others were graduate students affiliated with the Asian American Studies Department. All shared the vision that the trip would take them on a journey of realization, exploring poignant issues of race and relocation, echoing memories of previous refugees forced to uproot from their land and flee their homes. The group, composed of five Vietnamese students and one Cambodian student, sought to utilize their knowledge of Vietnamese culture and language to understand the experiences of those dispersed by the disaster. They visited communities in New Orleans, Louisiana, Bayou La Batre, Alabama and Biloxi, Mississippi.
When the group first arrived, they were struck by the torn landscape. Fallen trees, leveled homes, and entire casino barges lay halfway submerged in water. As if to wash over every last sign of civilization, a thick residue of soot and gravel, the remnants of receding water, blanketed the streets, roads and highways. “It was everything that you saw on television, only much worse because it was all around you and you couldn’t escape it or look away,” recalls Nam Le.
“When we got there, it was an absolute ghost town,” says Jennifer Nguyen, who has family living in Louisiana, home to over 60,000 Asian Americans, more than half of whom are Vietnamese. She reflects on how eerie it felt to have the city almost completely abandoned. Bourbon Street and downtown New Orleans, once bustling, were completely empty. “I had never seen anything like it before,” she says.
While researching local Vietnamese communities, such as church groups and ‘The Boat People SOS,’ the students learned about the large number of Asian Americans living in the South, simultaneously realizing how little these communities are represented in mainstream media.
Walking through the streets of New Orleans, the students encountered Vietnamese from all walks of life. Some were volunteers for FEMA, while others were older citizens who stayed with the intention to rebuild and work whatever jobs they could find. These people spoke about their experiences with ease, making an effort to sound hopeful under the overwhelming circumstances.
The second day of the students’ journey brought them to Bayou La Batre, a small fishing town in Alabama whose shrimping industry was suffering a recession before Katrina hit. After the devastation, boats, the lifeline for the community, were irreversiblydamaged, forcing the people to choose between moving and rebuilding.
For some, like Thanh Lu, there was no choice. Mr. Lu immigrated to the United States after he had served as a member of the South Vietnamese Air force. When he first arrived in America, he applied for work everywhere and was rejected many times. At over 60 years old, he was able to find work in the seafood industry in Bayou La Batre and has stayed ever since. Mr. Lu says that even if the Vietnamese community and his children leave, he will still choose to stay because this is the only place that accepted him; this is his home.
The idea of relocation is not new to many of the older generation, who have previously been forced to seek refuge in foreign countries from the political and economic turmoil of their homelands. Though not new to estrangement, no one was at all prepared for the wreckage of Katrina. “No matter how much you have surgery, it still hurts,” remarked Father Cu Duong, priest of a predominantly Vietnamese Catholic parish when he spoke to the group. Regardless of their histories, many will continue to carry the scar of Katrina for years to come.
Unlike their elders, the younger generation tends to be more comfortable moving on to larger cities and rebuilding their lives. Nevertheless, the destruction of Hurricane Katrina gives these young people a profound glimpse into their parents’ immigration experiences in America. Burdened with the loss of their homes and jobs, many are packing up the remnants of their lives, and in essence, becoming refugees of the land, like their parents many years before them.
The students returned to Boston several days later to gather their data and thoughts about all that they saw on their journey. For Soramy Le, it was frustrating to see the lack of Asian American footage on television, an even further validation of the importance of their research efforts. “Every time I watched what they were showing on TV, I got so angry because I knew they were not telling the complete story,” says Soramy. In this sense, the students were fortunate enough to be able to personally explore the stories and life experiences the national news failed to report and do their part to bring this information to the awareness of the public.
A panel titled “Vietnamese Down South,” allowed the students presented their research findings to the UMass Boston community. Their presentation was welcomed by a full house of professors, students and staff members. The Asian American Studies department, through gifts to the UMass Boston Fund, has supported the students to return to the South for further research and Followup on the stories they uncovered. (this article originally appeared in Lux, the UMass Boston Honors Program Magazine.)
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