Fletcher Magazine Summer 2017

Fletcher

For Alumni and Friends of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University  Summer 2017

Magazine

CAN UKRAINE SAVE ITSELF?

Envoy

BEST FOOT FORWARD Peter Sacco, F17, wore the same pair of stylish two-tone brown leather wingtips every day for months—sometimes even with gym shorts. The shoes were prototypes, handmade in Guatemala, for his new startup, Adelante Shoe Co. The company got a big boost from a Kickstarter campaign last fall that blew past its original goal of $30,000 in just 14 hours and eventually raised more than $65,000. Early supporters received a Founders Club discount of $25 on a pair of shoes that usually sells for $175 to $199. Adelante also won $50,000 in cash and in-kind support from a Tufts competition in April.

A 25-year-old Massachusetts native who has lived and worked in Guatemala, Sacco touts the social impact of his

business, which takes its name from the Spanish word for “forward” or “ahead.” His goal is to ensure that the artisans making the shoes can support their families comfortably.

Sacco has arrangements with 10 craftsmen in Pastores, Guatemala, to make shoes for the U.S. market, starting with five designs for men and four for women. With Fletcher School professors and students, he’s developed a “living well line” that translates to $16 a day in Pastores, and has pledged to pay the Guatemalan workers that rather than the $11.50 “fair trade” wage.

“Making money is OK,” he said. “What’s not OK is making money at someone else’s expense.” ­— HEATHER STEPHENSON

PHOTO: ANNA MILLER

Contents

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Features

6 A JUMBO MISSION

As poaching threatens populations worldwide, Kaddu Sebunya, F02, and others from Tufts try to save elephants in the wild.

8 FACT CHECKER

A Fletcher economist launches an authoritative nonpartisan website as an antidote to fake news and political wrangling on policy issues.

BY TAYLOR MCNEIL

10 THE REFORMERS

A wave of political newcomers is trying to upend Ukraine’s history of corruption, but entrenched interests are making the job difficult—and dangerous. Does change stand a chance? BY HEATHER STEPHENSON

COVER STORY

18 THE LONG ROAD TO PEACE

After more than 50 years of civil war, Colombia has forged an agreement that lets rebels lay down their arms and return to civilian life.

Professor Kimberly Theidon discusses the challenges. BY HEATHER STEPHENSON

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24 TOFRUMP AND THE COST TURNING INWARD

In Every Issue

The need for humanitarian assistance is growing around the globe, yet the U.S. has threatened to cut back foreign aid. The results could be disastrous. BY DYAN MAZURANA AND KAREN JACOBSEN

Cover illustration

by Tang Yau Hoong

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2 LETTERS 3 DEAN’S CORNER 4 DISPATCHES News from Around the Globe 27 CONNECT Keeping Up with the Fletcher Community 34 CLUB NEWS

36 CLASS NOTES 56 IN MEMORIAM 64 DETAIL

Letters EYES ON KOREA The cover story of the Fall 2016 issue of Fletcher Magazine (“The Dictator”) was particularly timely. The new administration is rightly giving highest priority to North Korea and its erratic leader. The comments of Professor Sung-Yoon Lee were insightful and helpful. I would add two comments.

First, the focus on sanctions is appropriate, but comparisons with Iran and other countries are less so. U.S. sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)—even if the United States moves more aggressively into financial sanctions of Chinese banks and enterprises—are still far more limited because 90 percent of DPRK trade and economic relationships are with China. The United States can do more, and we should do more, but winning the support of China and other nations for U.N. Security Council sanctions is far more effective in the long run than America going it alone.

Multilateral diplomacy is the key to success here. We need U.S. leadership, not an arrogant take-it-or-leave-it approach.

Second, we should not overlook the vital importance of increasing access to information inside the North. Kim Jong-Un can carry out his outrageous policies because he tightly controls all information reaching his people. With South Korea and others, the United States needs to ramp up programs to funnel information into the North—and it has to be real news. As novelist Tom Clancy said, “Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.” We need to be sure that Kim alone does not control the information reaching his people.

dangerous and violent. As the co-president of Fletcher Veterans and as the only veteran in many of my classes, it is deeply important to me to show the profound humanity of the people who fight America’s wars.

At my last command in a special operations unit in the U.S. Navy, there was no stigma on seeking mental health care—in fact, it was expected and encouraged because PTSD, traumatic brain injury and chronic pain were common. For many veterans, the greatest challenge comes after leaving the military, and departing a tightly knit community with the shared experience of constant deployments. Returning to civilian life can feel isolating. I hope Kitching’s article encourages the greater Fletcher community to consider hidden experiences endured by the military community and that it fosters thoughtful discussion.

ANDREA N. GOLDSTEIN, F18 SOMERVILLE, MASSACHUSETTS

LIVING THE DREAM

AMBASSADOR ROBERT R. KING (RET.), F67, F70

Thank you for such a wonderful story about the life Harry Radliffe lived (“Support for Storytellers,” Fall 2016). We’re often told to pursue careers that reflect our passions and to go forth and make a difference in the world. But as we all know, things do not always work out that way. Harry’s childhood passion to tell a story that helped people understand the world meant that he lived what he believed and believed what he lived.

It’s magnificent to see that a Harry A. Radliffe II/CBS Endowed Scholarship program has been created at Fletcher. That gesture should remind us to remain true to our calling as we strive to make a difference in the lives of others.

FORMER U.S. SPECIAL ENVOY FOR

PATRICK KABANDA, F13

NORTH KOREA HUMAN RIGHTS

SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND

MCLEAN, VIRGINIA

VETERANS AMONG US I was pleased to read Brian Kitching’s article on continuing a career in the U.S. Army while living with PTSD (“Soldiering On,” Fall 2016).

As a Navy veteran, I am grateful that his account specifically negated the too-prevalent stereotype that veterans with PTSD are

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Fletcher Magazine welcomes your letters.

Send them to Heather Stephenson, Editor, Fletcher Magazine, Tufts Publications, 80 George Street, Medford, MA 02155 or email heather.stephenson@tufts.edu. Letters are edited for length and clarity.

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V O L U M E 3 8 , N O. 2 S U M M E R 2 017 Editor HEATHER STEPHENSON heather.stephenson@tufts.edu Editorial Director JOHN WOLFSON john.wolfson@tufts.edu Editor-in-Chief FRANCIS STORRS francis.storrs@tufts.edu Design Director MARGOT GRISAR margot.grisar@tufts.edu Designer LAURA MCFADDEN Deputy Editors COURTNEY HOLLANDS TAYLOR MCNEIL Senior Editors LAURA FERGUSON JULIE FLAHERTY MONICA JIMENEZ HELENE RAGOVIN GENEVIEVE RAJEWSKI Staff Photographers ALONSO NICHOLS ANNA MILLER Multimedia STEFFAN HACKER Contributing Editor KARA PETERS Editorial Advisors JAMES STAVRIDIS Dean, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy KATE RYAN Senior Director, Development and Alumni Relations LINDSEY KELLEY Assistant Director, Alumni Relations LEANNA KAKAMBOURAS Alumni Relations Coordinator Stay connected with Fletcher.

School website: fletcher.tufts.edu Online community: tuftsalumni.org/olc LinkedIn: fletcher.tufts.edu/Alumni/ LinkedIn Fletcher Magazine is published twice annually by the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. The opinions expressed in this publication are the authors’ own and do not necessarily represent those of the Fletcher School.

Send correspondence to: Heather Stephenson, Editor, Fletcher Magazine, Tufts Publications, 80 George Street, Medford, MA 02155 or email heather.stephenson@tufts.edu. © 2017 TRUSTEES OF TUFTS UNIVERSITY Printed on 25% postconsumer waste recycled paper. Please recycle.

Dean’s Corner

ACHIEVING SECURITY IN CYBERSPACE THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT repeatedly

infiltrated the computers of both major parties in the U.S. presidential election, stealing data and emails in an effort to influence the outcome.

In a separate cyberattack in October 2016, a large-scale denial of service blocked access to more than 1,000 key websites, from Amazon and Twitter to the BBC, for users across North America and Europe. This May, a ransomware attack seized hundreds of thousands of computers around the globe, including those for Britain’s public health system, Chinese universities and the delivery giant FedEx. We live in a world where no information is safe, regardless of whether it sits on hard drives in the State Department or that mobile device you carry around in your pocket. Cyberattacks pose grave threats to the core of our democracy. Cyberattackers spy on us; steal our intellectual property and personal information; extract, manipulate or destroy our data; control our devices and systems; and wipe out essential infrastructure. And that’s just for starters.

With such wolves at our digital door, it is urgent that we train a new generation of cyber-smart leaders.

This summer, a pre-eminent authority in electronic security and privacy, Susan Landau, will join the Tufts University faculty as a Bridge Professor in cybersecurity and policy. Her expertise in the technical side and leadership on the policy issues will help the university advance its goals in this area. Professor Landau will

hold a tenured position that “bridges” two schools at Tufts—the Fletcher School and the Department of Computer Science at the School of Engineering.

Professor Landau comes to Tufts from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she is a professor of cybersecurity policy and of computer science. She has held senior positions in industry, including at Google, where she was a senior staff privacy analyst. An accomplished scholar, her work includes the studies Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption (with Whitfield Diffie) and Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies. She has been a Guggenheim and a Radcliffe fellow, and she has served on numerous national committees and boards dedicated to cybersecurity.

Professor Landau will guide our students as they deepen their understanding of society’s vulnerabilities to cyberattacks and the policies that can strengthen our response. As our future policymakers, military leaders and diplomats, Fletcher students must be fluent in assessing risks in both private and government systems, developing solutions and preventing future attacks.

Now more than ever, cybersecurity must be a collective responsibility. Whether our graduates work in the Foreign Service or Foggy Bottom—or in any number of fields—we will all be safer knowing that they are prepared to keep us cybersecure.

Sincerely,

JAMES STAVRIDIS, Dean

PHOTO: KELVIN MA

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Dispatches “We have a double objective,” Heinzelman said. “One is for development workers to let off steam and have fun. The other is to provide a way into conversations that can be “We have a difficult.” double objective JadedAid got its start in with Jaded Aid,” Jessica 2015, after Heinzelman Heinzelman said. “One is for and a friend played the development workers to let off steam and have fun. The other is similarly formatted to provide a way into converCards Against Humanity sations that can be difficult.” game with colleagues in Washington, D.C., who also worked in development. The party was so big that they ran out of answer cards and started writing their own, many of which struck a chord because they dealt with international work.

“Things are funnier if they’re based in truth and shared experiences,” Heinzelman said. She and two friends decided to formalize the game through a Kickstarter campaign in the fall of 2015, with the promise of delivery by mid-December. They reached their goal of $12,000 in two days and raised more than $50,000 in a month.

The group quickly crowd-sourced its final 34 questions and 165 answers from development and humanitarian aid workers, who held game-testing parties from Cambodia to Senegal. At one such party in a Beirut bar, the most popular combinations involved cards related to ISIS. “They were right across the borHE ATHER STEPHENSON der in Syria, less than 50 miles away,” said Victoria Stanski, a friend of Heinzelman’s who was working on HAT’S THE SECRET to peace in the Middle East? the humanitarian response to Syrian How about “a vial of Bono’s tears,” “bombing in refugees in Lebanon at the time. Cards the name of freedom,” or “another damn cookstove”? in which aid workers poked fun at If you’re playing JadedAid, a satiric card game themselves or referred to sex or drinkco-created by Jessica Heinzelman, F11, the answer ing were also hits, she said. might be any of these. The fill-in-the-blank game uses That’s how you get combinations humor to skewer the jargon, stereotypes and limitations of internalike “Save the Children will now be savtional development and humanitarian aid. ing … indigenous alcohol” and “What

Cards for Humanity A cheeky game co-created by a Fletcher alum is a hit among stressed-out international development workers.

BY

W

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PHOTO: ALONSO NICHOLS

NEWS FROM AROU ND TH E GLOBE

is the 18th Sustainable Development Goal?” Answer: “Learning to poop in a Ziploc bag.”

In its first year, JadedAid sold more than 5,300 sets of cards, at a cost of $19 per pack of 200. Half the orders shipped outside the United States, said Heinzelman, who now works with a tech company in California “to get the next 4 billion people online.” She and her co-founders have reinvested the game’s earnings into inventory and the creation of a Peace Corps expansion pack, which was released last fall with 10 more questions and 46 answers. (For example, “Peace Corps! Spend two years focused on … (a) Hooking up at in-service training; (b) A long-awaited care package; (c) Nothing.”)

Heinzelman said several people at the original party in D.C. didn’t want to be associated with the game, fearing

its

In this crowd-sourced game, you get

combinations like “What is the 18th Sustainable Development Goal?” Answer: “Learning to poop in a Ziploc bag.”

cheeky humor and profanity could hurt their careers. She and her co-founders carefully vetted the final cards, rejecting those that made light of issues they deemed too sensitive. She said she hasn’t gotten negative reactions from anyone who has played, and noted that she and her co-founders are not as disillusioned as the game might make them seem.

“We’re all very hopeful,” she said.

“If we weren’t, we wouldn’t still be

working in the developing world.”

In fact, they hope JadedAid can spark change. Although they don’t expect the game to transform systemic problems in the development field, they believe it can help individuals recognize their own questionable behaviors. Cards about cringe-worthy topics such as the white savior complex, poverty porn and “helpies”—selfies taken to brag about helping—may make some players reconsider their actions, Heinzelman said.

CHARACTER SK ETCH

CALM UNDER FIRE Maria Kristensen, F02 Kristensen grew up in rural Denmark, but at age 20, she embarked on a life-changing solo expedition through Southeast Asia, spending significant time with tribes in Indonesia’s Papua province. Since then, she has led humanitarian missions in Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, western Sahara, Ukraine, South Sudan and Russia’s North Caucasus region.

STEELY RESOLVE: One morning in the winter of 2006, Kristensen and her colleagues in Darfur found a note from an armed group warning of an impending attack. Some staff froze up, but Kristensen sprang into action, organizing a quick move from their Danish Refugee Council compound to a safer location. “You never know what you’re capable of until you’re NAME:

FAR FROM HOME:

PHOTO: COURTESY OF MARIA KRISTENSEN

tested,” she said. “I happened to be the calm one.” Two weeks after being evacuated to Denmark, Kristensen returned to Darfur to continue her work helping people displaced by the armed conflict.

ACCOLADES: Kristensen is the recipient of this year’s Fletcher Women’s Leadership Award for her courageous work in dangerous and complicated situations around the world.

KEEPING THE FAITH: Working in war zones, Kristensen has often felt powerless to stop the violence, which has taken a toll on her emotionally. But she has also witnessed a great deal of strength, compassion and sacrifice. “I have a lot of faith in humanity,” she said, “in spite of seeing the worst that we are —DIVYA AMLADI capable of.”

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Dispatches

A Jumbo Mission WILD ELEPHANTS will no longer roam the earth by 2030 if poaching continues at the current pace of one death every 20 minutes, according to the 2016 Great Elephant Census.

“Saving these magnificent creatures will take untangling a web of social, political, economic and cultural forces—such a nuanced dynamic that it will require an intellectual army.

Fortunately, we have that army right here at Tufts,” said Ellen McDonald, a Fletcher School librarian who helped found

Tufts tackles saving the elephants. the Tufts Elephant Conservation Alliance. Tufts faculty are attacking the problem on several fronts—conducting conservation field research, studying acoustic equipment that can detect and protect distressed herds, and ensuring that the importance of biodiversity is reflected in the curriculum.

They also taught a new undergraduate course on elephant conservation this spring.

Join the cause at go.tufts.edu/savejumbo.

730

$

The wholesale price in U.S. dollars for two pounds of ivory in 2017, according to Save the Elephants.

The profits fund militant groups and crime cartels.

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Height in feet of Jumbo, the Tufts mascot, when Tufts trustee P.T. Barnum purchased him in 1882. After Jumbo was killed by a runaway train in 1885, the circus showman donated the stuffed hide to the Barnum Museum of Natural History at Tufts.

Alas, the building burned to the ground on April 14, 1975. What remains is “The Greatest Tail on Earth,” in the university archives; a jar of Jumbo’s ashes in the athletics department; and a life-size bronze statue that stands outside Barnum Hall.

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The number of elephants killed each day for their ivory tusks, according to the Great Elephant Census.

PHOTOS FROM LEF T CLOCKWISE: TUF TS DIGITAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES, ISTOCK

WILDLIFE’S CHAMPION

2.5

The age (in years) at which a young elephant is no longer dependent on milk. Baby pachyderms struggle to survive when their mothers are killed for their ivory. At the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi, Kenya, each orphaned elephant drinks more than six gallons of formula a day.

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China is the biggest market for illegal elephant ivory, followed by the United States and Thailand, the U.N. reports. It is sold as “medicine” or carved into jewelry and trinkets.

PHOTOS FROM TOP CLOCKWISE: ALONSO NICHOLS, TIM LLEWELLYN, ISTOCK

As president of the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), Kaddu Sebunya, F02, helps protect elephants and other animals that are endangered by poaching, deforestation, conflicts with farmers and diseases that spread from people to animals.

AWF funds sniffer dogs to detect ivory and other contraband at airports and seaports. The foundation supports local guides who track wildlife with GPS, informing preservation efforts.

And the organization underwrites tourist lodges and primary schools near conservation areas, providing benefits to local communities and underscoring the value of coexisting with wildlife and preserving wild lands.

When Kenyan authorities burned $172 million worth of elephant tusks and other illicit wildlife goods in April 2016, Sebunya said, “we were excited, because it sent the message to the markets that an African country means business.” As many of the continent’s economies surge and foreign investment increases, he sees an opportunity.

“This is the time to negotiate the mode of development. What’s the vision for Africa, and what is the place of wildlife and wild places within that development space?”

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Follow the Money

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ILLUSTRATION: DOUG CHAYKA

Fact Checker A Fletcher professor launches a website to offer concise—and objective—analyses of timely economic issues. BY TAYLOR MCNEIL

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HE COVER OF a recent issue of Time magazine posed the question “Is Truth Dead?”

Tufts economist Michael Klein has responded with an emphatic no. He and Edward Schumacher-Matos, F73, director of the Fletcher School’s Murrow Center for a Digital World, launched the online publication EconoFact (econofact.org) as a nonpartisan antidote to fake news, “alternative facts” and political wrangling.

In it, Klein and more than 40 other academic economists are waging their own campaign for veracity by posting short, easily understandable analyses of pressing economic and social policy issues.

The genesis for EconoFact was the 2016 presidential election, Klein said, when candidates of all stripes seemed to selectively pick and choose their economic evidence to support positions on everything from job creation to trade policy.

“I was concerned that simple and straightforward economic reasoning didn’t have much of a place in the campaign, and that nobody was being held to account for making statements that were not aligned with basic economic ideas, and certainly our experience,” said Klein, the William L. Clayton Professor of International Economic Affairs at the Fletcher School.

After the election, he decided to improve the discourse in Washington— and the country—by writing policy briefs about economic issues. He’d done that when he served as chief economist in the U.S. Treasury’s Office of International Affairs in 2010-11, and found it was a good way to cut through the thicket of political posturing. He enlisted other U.S. economists who specialized in a range of areas, from the environment to immigration, and created the EconoFact Network.

The question then became, how do we get this information out in the public sphere? Since the launch of EconoFact in late January, the site has grown steadily, and now features more than 46 posts on topics such as “Do Undocumented Immigrants Overuse Government Benefits?,” “Education Funding: Tax Credits Cost the Federal Government Money,” and “Who Owns Us? Foreign Investment and Trade Deficits.” In its first three months, the site had more than 120,000 page views from about 50,000 unique users.

Each post succinctly defines an issue, reviews the facts and reaches a conclusion in a section called “What This Means.” In a world filled with excess verbiage, each piece is a mastery of brevity.

“We provide frameworks, ways to think about things,” Klein said.

Another of Klein’s goals is to avoid the tendency of some media outlets to give too much weight to one side of an issue to appear fair, what’s called false equivalence. Take climate change. The overwhelming majority of scientists who study the issue agree that climate change is happening, and the cause is human-generated carbon emissions.

When a media outlet seeks a conflicting point of view in the quest to present both sides, it distorts the facts, Klein said, as if the opposing point of view is held by half the experts in the field.

On EconoFact, the facts are given a fair and appropriate hearing, he said, from a deep bench of economists from Harvard, Princeton, UCLA and Tufts, to name just a few. The intent is to reach a broad audience, including those who simply want to be better informed as well as policymakers and politicians, thought leaders and journalists.

“We’re trying to be nonpartisan,” Klein said, “and just bring to the public discourse the insights and experience of people who have looked very carefully at these issues with thoughtful tools.”

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After Ukrainians ousted their corrupt president three years ago, a spirit of revolution brought a wave of young, energetic reformers into government. What they lacked in experience, they made up for in passion. But upending the crushing status quo hasn’t been easy.

BY HE ATHER STEPHENSON ILLUSTR ATION BY TANG YAU HOONG

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uly 1, 2016, was a beautiful day for a barbecue at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Kiev. Hundreds of guests had gathered to celebrate America’s Independence Day, milling around the terraced grounds and helping themselves to burgers and ribs, glasses of Jack Daniel’s, and an elaborate cake in the form of an American flag. Ukrainian diplomats, military officers and government staffers mingled beneath red, white and blue balloons, but Olena Tregub, F13, stood off to the side. “I don’t usually enjoy socializing at such events,” she told me, glaring at some of her fellow Ukrainians, “perhaps because I know too much.”

At 34, Tregub was a director in the country’s Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, charged with overseeing a multibillion-dollar portfolio of international development projects. She had returned to her native Ukraine in 2015, after the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych, as part of a wave of reformers driven to remake the corrupt Ukrainian government from within.

Much of Tregub’s job involved efforts to make international assistance to Ukraine effective and transparent. That morning she had flown home from Denmark, where she’d committed the country to publicly tracking its international aid. She hoped to establish an online database—a tool common even in much poorer nations—to document the roughly $12 billion in grants and loans that other countries and international groups have pledged to Ukraine.

But she knew she would face resistance.

Similar public databases had been proposed for Ukraine five times over the past 20 years, only to be rejected. And little wonder why. “Right now,” Tregub said, “the people who are profiting the most from lack of transparency and public oversight are officials.” She said some of them were even at the barbecue, smiling for the photographers.

Twenty-five years after Ukraine was reborn from the collapse of the Soviet Union, its political and economic independence remain under constant

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threat. Commentators often say the nation is now fighting a war on two fronts. The first is the east, where Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014 and supports an ongoing insurgency that has killed some 10,000 people and displaced about 2 million others. The second front, a metaphoric one, is in the capital city of Kiev, where citizens wage an internal battle against the fraudulent conduct of their own leaders. Building a democratic system in which government officials serve the public—rather than line their own pockets—has proved more difficult than anyone could have expected.

Corruption, as Tregub lamented, is woven through all levels of Ukrainian life, from the bribes given to teachers for good grades to the backroom deals at top levels of industry and government.

Last fall, when politicians were required for the first time to declare their personal assets online—a milestone for reform—few Ukrainians were surprised to learn that some of their legislators were in possession of Fabergé eggs, large collections of weapons and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. All this in a country where the average monthly income is under $200 and more than half the population lives below the subsistence level.

Ukraine ranks 131st out of 167 nations on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, putting it on par with Iran. In December 2015,

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then U.S. Vice President Joe Biden told the Ukrainian parliament that the international community could withdraw its support if clear action was not taken to eliminate corruption. Two months later, the International Monetary Fund threatened to halt its participation in a four-year, $40 billion bailout program.

In other words, addressing Ukraine’s pervasive corruption will be essential to maintaining the diplomatic, financial and military support from the West that the country depends on.

But even with so much at stake, the path to becoming a truly independent nation has proved to be rocky.

Several years into the process, influential oligarchs and holdovers from the Yanukovych administration still wield outsized power in Ukrainian politics and are using it to maintain the status quo. The best hope for the transformation of the country rests with energetic new reformers like Olena Tregub—including several with ties to Tufts University and the Fletcher School—approaching their government and civil society posts without much experience sometimes but with a passionate dedication to their mission.

As their hope is being tested in the battle to make Ukraine fair and ethical, the question remains: Will they give up on the country, or soldier on?

Tregub, for one, clearly relishes the fight. “People in the top leadership, they want us out, the sooner the better,” she told me. “This is a struggle. It’s not like a normal job—it’s like you go every day to some battlefield.”

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wo days after the ambassador’s barbecue, I visited Kiev’s Independence Square, known as the Maidan (literally “the square”). It looked like any bustling metropolitan center on a summer Sunday. A street had been closed off to traffic so children could ride go-carts, vendors sold ice cream and beer, and

souvenir stands displayed traditional embroidery and cheap trinkets. Coffee shops and restaurants were busy with customers. Others emerged from a subway—though unlike the stops in other cities, this one was built during Soviet rule to double as a bomb shelter in the event of nuclear war.

This square was the site of the Euromaidan, a series of protests starting in 2013 to demand greater integration with the European Union and an end to Yanukovych’s corrupt presidency.

In early 2014, the revolt turned bloody when riot police and government snipers killed more than 100 demonstrators.

When I arrived more than two years later, the dead were memorialized by photographs, candles and flower arrangements that lined the sidewalk.

The Euromaidan protests led to the ouster of Yanukovych—he fled to Russia in February 2014 with the help of troops from Moscow—and vividly revealed the depth of the challenge ahead. When citizens visited Yanukovych’s 350-acre estate just north of Kiev, they found a mansion full of gilded chandeliers, gold-plated golf clubs and other markers of gaudy opulence: a petting zoo, a fleet of vintage cars and a floating restaurant built in the shape of a Spanish galleon.

Many assume it was all paid for with taxpayer dollars—how else could a president officially earning $100,000 a year afford such luxury?

Olena Tregub was living in Washington, D.C., pregnant with her second child, at the time of the Euromaidan, which she followed closely in the news. Watching government forces shoot down citizens in the city where she had once studied political science, she questioned the path that had led her far from home. She had co-founded a global study abroad/ internship program and was a freelance journalist, but the kind of desk jobs she was likely to land in the Beltway paled in comparison with the chance to rebuild her native country—a chance that

COURTESY PHOTOS

WORKING TOWARD A NEW UKRAINE Fighting corruption and rebuilding democratic systems in Ukraine hasn’t been easy, but a range of indomitable people with ties to Tufts is tackling the challenge. Here’s a look at some of those who’ve devoted themselves to transforming the country, whether from within the government, through private efforts, or in their roles with the U.S. and international organizations.

OLENA TREGUB, F13 After returning to her native Ukraine in 2015, Tregub became a director in the country’s Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, overseeing a multibillion-dollar portfolio of international development projects. She pushed to make such aid more effective and transparent.

ANDREI PIVOVARSKY, F03 Pivovarsky was appointed Ukraine’s minister of infrastructure in 2014 to manage the nation’s ports, airports, railways, roads, postal service and a staff of half a million people. A businessman, he considered government service akin to being drafted.

DMYTRO POTEKHIN A Ukrainian nonviolent resistance trainer, Potekhin argues that the Ukrainian media and protesters failed to properly identify how the former president usurped power. This is the third year he will participate in an intensive summer institute on civil society co-led by Peter Levine, a professor at Tufts.

WILLIAM (CHIP) LAITINEN III, F98 Laitinen spent the last two years working as an economic counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, before leaving this June for a 12-month post in Islamabad. His wife, Valeria Scott Laitinen, F98, teaches at an international elementary school in Kiev and heads the Fletcher Club of Ukraine.

INNA DZHURYNSKA, F15 A Ukrainian business lawyer who grew up under communist rule, Dzhurynska is increasing her focus on public policy, thanks in part to the inspiring example of a generation of younger Ukrainians.

JEFFREY ERLICH, F07 An American, Erlich has worked in Kiev since 2014 for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which coordinates projects to improve security and the development of democratic laws and institutions in Ukraine.

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Andrei Pivovarsky, center, describes a newly built road to Ukraine’s prime minister, right, in March 2016.

Resistance to weeding out corruption was strong—and sometimes violent. “In Ukrainian politics,” Andrei Pivovarsky said, “it’s not House of Cards, it’s Game of Thrones.” seemed within reach with Yanukovych gone. In 2015, she decided to put her skills to work helping Ukraine.

While her husband stayed behind in Washington, where he works for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, she returned to Kiev, their two young daughters in tow.

The newly reshuffled Ukrainian government was welcoming people from outside of politics—and sometimes outside of the country—into top posts. Three chief ministers even had to be granted Ukrainian citizenship by presidential decree before assuming their roles. In this revolutionary atmosphere, Tregub eventually was hired as a director in Ukraine’s Ministry of Economic Development and Trade. The agency, then headed by a Lithuanian, calls “fighting corruption” one of its core missions, but Tregub ran into resistance from the old guard outside the ministry almost immediately. Just two days after her formal appointment, her entire set of responsibilities was nearly assigned to another agency. Only when the plan was revealed to some top government officials and openly discussed was the decision reversed.

Tregub’s office is in a Stalinist-era

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building originally constructed for the Soviet police. I visited her there the afternoon of the barbecue and she led me on an extensive tour. These days, the building feels both imposing and outdated. Next to a grand, sweeping staircase is an elevator that doesn’t stop on every floor. Outside there’s a park that Tregub has never set foot in; she said it’s reserved for the prime minister.

She told me there were indications that her office was tapped, but that didn’t seem to make her speech more guarded.

Government employees have traditionally supplemented their meager state salaries with under-the-table payments.

But when Tregub started, she demanded what she called a “normal transparent salary.” The response, she said, was “Yeah, you’ll get your normal salary.

It’s 300 bucks [per month]. So enjoy.”

Tregub paid for her computer router and business cards out of her own pocket, and buys her office paper herself. When she doesn’t have child care, she brings her daughters to work in the evening, even though security guards have told her children are not allowed in the building. “The state can’t afford paying me a good salary. I cannot have two nannies,” she once told them. “If I have

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the necessity to bring my child to finish my work, then I bring my child. You get it?’” The guards backed off.

One of Tregub’s biggest challenges was finding staff willing to work for low wages. Early on, she fired some workers, freeing up about $3,000 a month for the department that she put toward improving salaries. She also hoped to get additional money from the European Commission, which has disbursed about $2 billion in development assistance to Ukraine since early 2014. But during meetings that Tregub said representatives of her ministry were physically blocked from attending, those expected funds were allocated to a different project. That led to the departure of a number of Tregub’s new hires. “They all left because I hired them with the promise that we’re going to have an adequate salary, market salary, and this promise was not fulfilled.”

As the tour continued, Tregub introduced me to a deputy minister who gestured to the air conditioner that she’d had to pay for herself. The woman, who had held her post for a little more than a year, had recently decided to quit.

Tregub has seen many of her colleagues follow the same path, including her former boss, the Lithuanian-born minister of economy, who had resigned a few months earlier, saying he wouldn’t be a “puppet” for officials blocking reforms.

Tregub said she would like to quit, too. A Ukrainian magazine had named her one of the 100 most influential women in the country, which felt great, but where were the lasting results to show for it? Efficient aid management, new programs and new development partners were not enough for her. She wanted to change the rules. She planned to stay long enough to get her online database of foreign aid up and running. Only then could she move on without feeling like she failed. Once she and other reformers made changes, she reasoned, it would be much harder for the kleptocrats to return things to the way they were.

PHOTO: ANDREW KRAVCHENKO

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ith enough support, reformers can, in fact, get things done in Ukraine.

But as Andrei Pivovarsky, F03, can attest, it is never easy. Pivovarsky was appointed Ukraine’s minister of infrastructure in 2014 to oversee the nation’s ports, airports, railways, roads, postal service and a staff of half a million people. He came into the job with the intention of weeding out corruption and mismanagement, but resistance to those aims was strong—and sometimes violent.

“In Ukrainian politics,” he said, “it’s not House of Cards, it’s Game of Thrones.”

Having worked in investment banking, Pivovarsky spoke with the dispassionate tone of a management consultant hired to restructure a failing company. A native of Kiev and the former head of one of Ukraine’s largest holding companies, he had a strong business background, but little interest in politics—and none in becoming a politician. He’d been tapped for the ministry post at age 36 because the new government was looking for technocrats, he told me. He accepted the position out of a sense of service to his country— hoping he could help save Ukraine from economic collapse. He knew he’d be working pretty much for free, but to him it was the same as being drafted into the military.

On Pivovarsky’s first day as minister, his entire support department walked off the job, unwilling to serve him.

He didn’t even know how to work the elaborate phones. But over three weeks, he cobbled together a new team made up of some employees he was able to offer paltry state salaries, and many— like Troy Etulain, F04, his advisor for nine months—who volunteered their services.

Still, Pivovarsky encountered opposition elsewhere in the government.

Occasionally it was subtle. For example, when he needed the signatures of bureaucrats from other ministries to

make rule changes, he said, “some of them would get sick indefinitely.” (His fellow “technocrat” ministers would intervene in such cases to get the job done.) Other times, the opposition was more blatant. One day, all cargo trains in southern Ukraine simply stopped running because the head of the southern division of the national railway company refused to allow them onto the tracks. “I had to intervene brutally,” Pivovarsky said. “I had to fire the head of the southern division. I knew it was sabotage.” Over the next few months, he also fired the company’s acting CEO and two more of the six regional heads.

Pivovarsky and his wife, who have two daughters, required around-theclock security “because the things I was doing made a lot of people upset,” he said. The stress left him unable to eat, and he lost 15 pounds in the first three months on the job. (“Well,” he said, “that’s the price you pay for transforming the country.”) Others suffered more seriously. When Pivovarsky introduced weight restrictions on the nation’s roads, incensed truck drivers severely beat some of his inspectors, sending them to the hospital.

Despite the challenges, Pivovarsky could point to several accomplishments. After his team wiped out layers of corruption at Ukraine’s ports, ships that used to have to wait up to a week for clearance to unload could now be approved in as little as 15 minutes. His team corporatized the state railway system, putting it under the authority of a CEO who is independent from the ministry, and liberalized the market for airline carriers, thereby increasing air traffic. His team’s anticorruption efforts and improvements in efficiency resulted in about $400 million in annual savings for the private sector, he said. Pivovarsky and his group also allocated more money for road construction to the local level, where some districts saw immediate improvements.

Not that Pivovarsky took anyone’s

word for it. At one point, he said, he and Ukraine’s prime minister drove all 76 miles of a new highway, “just to make sure that it was really there.”

Pivovarsky lasted about 15 months on the job—a longer-than-average tenure for that post—before returning to the private sector. He’d actually tried to step down earlier, but the parliament refused to accept his resignation.

In the end, frustration with the lack of bureaucratic reform, and the inability to pay good wages for good people, drove him out.

He hoped that his hand-picked successor, who had served as his deputy, would be able to safeguard their accomplishments, as well as push through others. The new minister had already recruited more businesspeople willing to devote a year or so to the cause, replacing staff who had left for better pay. “I’m quite positive we’re going in the right direction,” Pivovarsky said. “If you don’t have emotions—if you operate with a cold mind—you can deliver a lot.”

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he need for reform in Ukraine is not limited to the legislature and government agencies. The judicial system is also rife with corruption, with long-serving judges susceptible to bribery and intimidation. Still, William (Chip) Laitinen III, F98, told me he was seeing some progress. “I’m an American diplomat,” he told me with a chuckle. “We like to be optimistic.”

When I met him at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, Laitinen had been working for two years as an economic counselor there. His wife, Valeria Scott Laitinen, F98, teaches at an international elementary school in Kiev and heads the Fletcher Club of Ukraine. (This June, Laitinen left for a 12-month post in Islamabad, while his wife stayed behind with their two children.)

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During his tenure in Ukraine, Laitinen told me, he witnessed a number of advances. On the economic front, he welcomed the phasing out of across-the-board gas subsidies—which had led to over-reliance on Russian gas—in favor of targeted subsidies for the poor; a cleanup of the banking sector that took “oligarchic piggy banks” out of the system; and reforms that brought transparency to the bidding of government projects. He also praised the development of new systems to supplant parts of the old. For example, the government had launched newly hired police patrols, highly visible in their white Priuses, trained to serve the public fairly.

At the time we met, the United States was about to disburse its third $1 billion loan guarantee in two years, a sign of its support for the progress underway. And yet, the Ukrainian courts still weren’t convicting corrupt officials, Laitinen acknowledged. “It’s two steps forward, one step back.”

In a big step forward, a newly installed special prosecutor got off to a promising start by bringing Ukraine’s first major graft trial to court this spring. The head of Ukraine’s equivalent of the IRS, Roman Nasirov, is accused of abusing his power in an embezzlement scheme involving more than $70 million in tax revenue.

Nasirov was detained by officers of the fledgling National Anti-Corruption Bureau in March, has been suspended from his position and could face up to six years in prison.

That’s the kind of improvement that provides a glimmer of hope for Inna Dzhurynska, F15, a Ukrainian business lawyer who grew up under communist rule and is now trying to reinvent herself as a public policy maker. She’s skeptical that Ukraine’s courts will rein in corruption, since many judges themselves are on the take, but believes reformers will ultimately prevail. “We have a very smart younger generation

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that will demand changes,” she told me. “I will demand them too.”

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short walk from the Maidan, tucked off a side street, is a bar popular among journalists and activists called Baraban. On the afternoon I visited, a notice outside the door informed patrons that 25 percent of proceeds would support the troops on the eastern front, many of whom buy their own boots and bulletproof vests.

(At the start of the conflict with Russia, the troops were so poorly financed that children held bake sales to provide them with supplies.)

I’d come to meet with Dmytro Potekhin, a 40-year-old Ukrainian nonviolent resistance trainer with a salt-and-pepper beard and a bohemian air. Over a non-alcoholic mojito, he explained that he came to the same bar in 2004 to help organize the Orange Revolution, a nonviolent protest that succeeded in invalidating a rigged presidential election that would have put Yanukovych in power. A decade later, Potekhin suggested a nonviolent strategy to remove Yanukovych, but the Euromaidan demonstrations took a different turn. When he showed up during the violent conclusion of the protests, “I was handed a Molotov cocktail,” he told me. “I didn’t use it.”

The day before we met at the bar, Potekhin and his co-author, Eugenia Kuznetsova, held a press conference to release their analysis of the media’s role in propping up Yanukovych after he was elected in February 2010 (in a vote whose fairness Potekhin questioned). In their paper, they argue that the newly installed president illegally influenced the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, which altered the country’s constitution in September 2010 to expand his powers. Potekhin said that most journalists and observers—and even organizers of the Euromaidan

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protests a few years later—missed the significance of this moment and kept recognizing Yanukovych as legitimate.

When Potekhin and Kuznetsova analyzed media coverage of Yanukovych, searching for the Ukrainian term for usurping power, they found that it was rarely used in 2010 and 2011. And when it was used, it was more often presented as a threat (“Yanukovych is on the way to usurpation”) than as the reality.

Sitting in a booth at the bar, Potekhin, who teaches informal courses on nonviolent civil resistance, said that most of Ukrainian civil society and journalists had failed the Ukrainian people—and their choice of words had life-and-death consequences. If the media had stopped calling Yanukovych “president” and started calling him a “dictator” or a “clown,” Potekhin argued, security forces might have refused the orders leading to bloodshed on the Maidan. “You need to let them know their bosses are illegitimate.” But most Ukrainian reformers know little about strategies for nonviolent change, he said. “No surprise they failed to remove Yanukovych nonviolently; no surprise they have problems consolidating liberal democracy now.”

Potekhin’s commitment to nonviolent change led him to Tufts. In 2015, he participated in an intensive two-week institute on civil society being taught in Ukraine by a team including Peter Levine, associate dean for research and Lincoln Filene Professor of Citizenship and Public Affairs in Tufts’ Jonathan Tisch College of Civic Life. Shortly after I met with him, Potekhin was scheduled to teach at another institute with Levine, this time in Germany. And they were already making plans for a similar discussion of nonviolent civic movements in the summer of 2017.

When a dictator is removed from power, you might think you no longer need courses like these, Potekhin observed wryly. “Until you realize there is another dictator.”

Memorials near the Maidan remember the more than 100 protesters killed there in 2014.

Three years after Ukrainians took to the streets and called for revolution, the revolution has yet to arrive.

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hree years after ukrainians took to the streets and called for revolution, the revolution has yet to arrive. Yanukovych’s successor, President Petro Poroshenko, served in the previous government. He has not fulfilled his campaign promise to sell his massive confectionery business.

That company and the national television news channel Poroshenko owns are just two parts of a pool of assets worth an estimated $720 million. In addition, the Panama Papers—millions of documents from a Panamanian law firm that were leaked anonymously in 2015—revealed that he set up a secret offshore company in 2014, an arrangement that may have saved him millions of dollars in Ukrainian taxes.

“I want to believe that the president himself is honest but I don’t see him seriously fighting corruption,” a lawmaker from Poroshenko’s own party told Foreign Policy last summer. U.S. officials are naïve, the lawmaker continued, if they think “an oligarch will put his kind into jail. This government will stall on reforms unless the U.S. leans on it.”

After Donald Trump’s election to the U.S. presidency, that has seemed increasingly unlikely. Trump often spoke

PHOTO: HEATHER STEPHENSON

favorably of Russian President Vladimir Putin on the campaign trail, and possible ties between his campaign and Russia have become the subject of intense scrutiny. It is not clear that the United States and other nations will continue to shore up Ukraine. That means it’s up to the Ukrainians themselves.

At the U.S. ambassador’s barbecue, with its triumphant references to America’s own revolutionary beginnings, the politicians and diplomats belted out Ukraine’s national anthem, which proclaims that the country’s glory “has not yet died.” Many in the crowd chanted, “Long live Ukraine!”

In the late-afternoon heat, one guest causing a stir by her mere presence was Nadia Savchenko, a Ukrainian military pilot released from a Russian prison just six weeks earlier. While on trial from 2014 through early 2016 for murder related to fighting along Ukraine’s eastern border, Savchenko demonstrated her feisty spirit by embarking on a hunger strike and making obscene gestures at Russian judges. Ukrainians back home took notice, electing her to parliament while she was still in prison.

But one inexperienced hero, no matter how plucky, cannot transform a system alone. (Especially if she’s an

erratic maverick: Savchenko’s popularity soon plummeted amid criticism because she secretly met with leaders of the separatist movement in the east.)

Ukraine needs many reformers, working at all levels, in government, business, the police and the courts. Would enough people keep fighting the status quo to make a lasting difference? Would they give up in frustration—or would the old guard force them out?

By late January of this year, Olena Tregub had reached her milestone: She launched a website, Open Aid Ukraine, that lists all the international assistance coming into the country. The site represents an unprecedented victory for transparency. But it was only a pilot project funded by an EU grant and its future was uncertain. By June, Tregub said, the current head of her ministry had eliminated her entire department— the one in charge of international aid coordination—and with it, her job.

She planned to remain in the country and look for a different position. “For Ukraine, it would be better if I stayed” in the role overseeing international aid, she said, “but one cannot fight corruption inside the system if it is supported on the top of this system.”

At the party last July, Tregub could not foresee this outcome, but already she seemed to have her doubts. As evening approached, she met Jeffrey Erlich, F07, an American who’s worked in Kiev for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe since 2014. “The first year on the job, I didn’t go to events like this, I was so busy,” Tregub told him. “Now, since the pace of reform has slowed down so much, I can attend.”

“You’re settling in for the long haul,” he responded.

Tregub looked skeptical. “That’s an optimistic way to put it,” she said, and took another bite of her hamburger.

Send comments to HEATHER STEPHENSON at heather.stephenson@tufts.edu.

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THE LONG ROAD TO PEACE Three decades ago, an agreement designed to end the Colombian civil war collapsed in bloodshed.

Last fall, voters rejected a second deal years in the making. Now, the country has a rare third chance to make peace work.

BY HE ATHER STEPHENSON

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PHOTO: REUTERS

CREDIT: TK

Colombian rebels, members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), take up positions in trenches in the 1990s.

CREDIT: TK

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ver more than 50 years, civil war in colombia has killed an estimated 220,000 people, and displaced as many as 8 million. Last September, after six years of talks, the Colombian government finally signed a peace accord with the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)— only to see citizens narrowly reject it in a shocking October referendum result. Days later, President Juan Manuel Santos, a former fellow at the Fletcher School, won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the suddenly ailing agreement.

Calling the Nobel a “gift from heaven,” Santos said it buoyed his efforts to salvage the deal and end the bloodshed. He quickly worked to strike a balance between granting amnesty to some former fighters and holding accountable those who committed war crimes. Under the revised accord, the FARC, which launched its guerrilla war in 1964, would relaunch as a political party and its estimated 7,000 fighters would disarm under United Nations supervision.

This time, Santos bypassed the popular vote; he signed the agreement in November and the country’s Congress swiftly approved it. The challenge now is getting the plan to work.

Since 2005, Kimberly Theidon, the Henry J. Leir Professor of International Humanitarian Studies at Fletcher, has consulted with the government of Colombia on transitional justice and reconciliation, and is now focusing on the mass demobilization and reintegration of former FARC fighters. She previously investigated similar issues in Peru, writing the book Intimate Enemies to chronicle the experiences of ordinary Peruvians working toward reconciliation after 20 years of armed conflict in their country. We spoke with Theidon about whether Colombians who lost loved ones in the civil war will accept former rebels in their neighborhoods and their legislature.

were over. Polls predicted that the public would approve peace accords by a 2 to 1 margin. What happened?

FLETCHER MAGAZINE: In late September 2016, it seemed the years of negotiations

I am guardedly optimistic. I was part of a U.N. Expert Mission on Gender and

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Transitional Justice in February, and the challenges are multiple. Moving from a complex peace accord to implementation will require great resources and considerable political will.

Some voters opposed the accord’s provision of stipends, support and training to help former fighters transition into civilian life.

These opponents framed the provision as a form of rewarding—rather than punishing—individuals for their acts of violence. Opponents also criticized how the accord made rank-and-file FARC fighters eligible for amnesty, provided they were not involved in war crimes or crimes against humanity.

And some voters opposed how the agreement promoted the equality and participation of women and LGBTI groups.

The geographic distribution of the referendum votes suggests that people in regions that experienced high rates of violence voted in favor of the peace accords. The “no” vote revealed the deep gap that exists between certain urban centers—whose inhabitants see the war as the distant past and currently a subject for television series—and people in regions of the country in which the living legacies of war are a part of daily life. In those rural areas, the peace accords were embraced not for their perfection, but for their promise.

KIMBERLY THEIDON:

What do you think of the revised accord?

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This isn’t the first time that Colombia has tried to end the war with FARC. In the 1980s, FARC agreed to a ceasefire and created a political party, only to have 3,000 of its members assassinated by paramilitaries. How can Colombia better protect former combatants this time?

There’s a lot of bad faith on all sides around what’s going to happen next.

The 1984 assassinations hovered over all Kimberly Theidon in her home.

of the negotiations. One of the sticking points was, where will the former combatants be concentrated? How will they be kept safe? How will those around them be kept safe? The idea is that they will be in concentration zones, with some forces guarding on the periphery to make sure that they have actually put down their weapons and that they are being kept safe. The U.N. will be in for a year at least to make sure that people are living up to the accords.

How can the former fighters reintegrate into communities and rebuild their lives, without being pulled into drug trafficking or other criminal enterprises?

What do you offer that can begin to compare with the amount of money people can make in an illicit economy?

You can’t win on those terms, so you have to find something that you gain by setting down your weapons.

The high-level commanders who helped negotiate the agreement got some benefits for themselves, such as reduced jail time. Frequently concessions will be made to bring the most powerful to the table.

The foot soldiers may be eager to leave the fighting behind, but drug traffickers are always trying to recruit them. So you need to be able to say, “We will ensure that you don’t get

killed,” and then, “We’ll make sure you make enough money to support you and your family in a dignified way.”

That’s pretty powerful.

What about the midlevel commanders who won’t be happy with $200 a month?

They are your spoilers. They’ve got the entourage; they’ve got the big SUV with the tinted windows and the guys in the back with the guns. They’ve had a certain lifestyle that they may not be so eager to give up. These guys, in a lot of people’s eyes, don’t just get to come back. In some instances, quite frankly, there may be some jail time handed down to some of them.

“I’VE HAD TO LEARN, EVEN IF IT DOESN’T SIT WELL WITH ME, AT TIMES THERE HAVE TO BE SOME TRADE-OFFS. BECAUSE IF YOU THINK IN ABSOLUTES, THAT’S THE KIND OF POLARIZATION THAT FREQUENTLY KEEPS WARS GOING.”

PHOTO: SUZANNE KREITER/THE BOSTON GLOBE VIA GET T Y IMAGES

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“THERE’S MUCH MORE STIGMATIZING OF FEMALE FORMER COMBATANTS THAN THERE IS OF MEN: ‘THEY’RE BAD WOMEN. THEY ABANDONED THEIR FAMILIES.’ THERE NEEDS TO BE A SCRIPTING OF NEW GENDER ROLES AND EXPECTATIONS.”

A rebel preparing to demobilize in January.

How do poor Colombians react to the government helping former fighters?

If all the government seems to be doing is doling out something to individual combatants each month while all the other poor people in the neighborhood look on, forget it. It’s socially toxic.

How many times have we heard, “Oh, I’d be doing better if I’d killed somebody. That’s what I should have done, and the government would have given me some money, too”?

There has to be security for the combatants, and there has to be security for the people with whom they’re going to be living as civilians again. And then perhaps a communal development project, so that everyone says, “OK, we’re going to give this a try, because it benefits all of us.”

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Would a process of apologizing help?

I never underestimate the power of people having to apologize and to earn the trust and respect of others. I saw that a lot in Peru in local communities with former guerrilla members.

They would apologize, promise they wouldn’t do it again, do some kind of work for the good of the entire community—repair some of the damage they’ve done.

Justice isn’t just jail time. That’s a really slender little piece of it. We need to look at a broader repertoire of justice. It may include apologies. It may be working in rebuilding houses that you are considered to have burned, working on behalf of the widows, doing some kind of reparation.

Getting to that broader sense of

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what satisfies people’s sense of justice is very important.

What do you think of how the accord grants amnesty to combatants except those who committed the worst atrocities, such as massacres, rape and torture?

If we look at the Peace and Justice Law that was applied to the paramilitaries in Colombia—where if you confessed, you got a reduced sentence, eight years maximum—was that enough time to serve in prison if you killed 2,000 people?

No. Did some of those paramilitaries confess and were bodies found in mass graves and identified? Yes. So what is that equation of wanting to get truth and some kind of justice for people?

I hate to sound so crassly pragmatic, but what do you do to get the

PHOTO: LUIS ROBAYO/AFP/GET T Y IMAGES

perpetrators to open their mouths and say anything? The reduced prison sentences, they’re not enough. But what else are you going to do with them?

Say, “You’re going to go to jail for the rest of your life”? That’s not much of an incentive structure.

I thought more in terms of absolutes early on. I’ve had to learn, even if it doesn’t sit well with me, at times there have to be some trade-offs. Because if you think in absolutes, that’s the kind of polarization that frequently keeps wars going.

In Rwanda, people who committed atrocities were offered forgiveness by survivors. Could that work in Colombia?

I have to make a distinction between forgiveness and reconciling. Huge distinction. People told me in Peru, “We do not have to forgive them, and nobody can make me forgive them. But we can live reconciled to the extent that it’s coexistence and we stop harming one another.” I hear that now in Colombia.

You cannot mandate that anyone feel forgiving. The burden of hatred is such that some people will want to let go of it if they possibly can. That is a choice people make. But I think we have no right to make survivors feel like they bear the burden of forgiving folks for whom they may have tremendous resentment and whom they may hold responsible for their greatest losses.

Has that been done wrong elsewhere?

Yes. The South African Commission set up this equation: revealing is healing, truth equals reconciliation, more truth equals more reconciliation.

And many would say they skipped over the justice component. It was a very heavy-handed use of a theological understanding of reconciliation. We have to ask ourselves, is it really fair to place the burden of forgiving on the shoulders of survivors who may have seen no form of justice whatsoever for

their losses? I just don’t think that’s a reasonable thing to do.

You have argued that reconciliation is more difficult when people have lost not only loved ones, but also their land and livelihoods, as happened to millions of Colombians displaced from their farms by violence. What kind of land redistribution is necessary to make the reintegration there work?

One of the reasons that reconciliation’s hard is you have to look at a redistribution of resources. Poverty is a reminder of all that you’ve lost. There is a political economy to emotions, and people may feel more compassionate with one another when they are not living in grinding poverty, especially if you perceive that those people—and whoever those people are depends on who was on the other side— if those people are doing better than you are. I talked to widows in Peru who lost everything: “They sit there in their house with their families, they have a roof, they have food at night, and you tell me I’m supposed to forgive them?”

One real quick way to get yourself on a hit list in Colombia is to be seen as demanding land. But if you want any kind of sustainable coexistence, there’s going to have to be a redistribution of land. It’s key. You have 5 million, 5 and a half million internally displaced people. Where are they supposed to go?

Not everyone will want to go back to their land. But they’re going to want to have something.

You’ve said that some disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programs suggest that female combatants need to be “redomesticated.” How do they do that?

When women are violent actors, there’s a sense of that being deeply transgressive of our notions of what women are supposed to be doing. So you find that there’s much more stigmatizing of female former combatants than there

is of men: “They’re bad women. They abandoned their families.”

The DDR program ads they were using to get the women to demobilize said things like “Guerreiras. Women combatants: Demobilize. Be a woman again.” And they would have these women putting lipstick on—“Come and feel like a woman again.” The gender essentialisms that have infused how they’ve gone about this are huge.

The redomestication is about getting the women to be good women again, back into the nuclear family and having babies within that heteronormative matrix. And that’s not going to cut it.

There needs to be a scripting of new gender roles and expectations, not assuming, “OK, now it’s all over, so let’s go back to how it always was before.” Which wasn’t always that great, probably.

If it was transgressive for women to join the guerrillas, was it considered normal for men to do so?

It’s been part of a broader culture. In a neighborhood where pretty much all of the guys either became paramilitaries, gang members or FARC guerrillas, I’ve talked to some young men who say, “Oh, I just couldn’t wait to grow up and be a man and have a gun.” This has permeated a broader swath of culture in Colombia than just the folks who joined.

We should study the fusion of masculinity with weaponry and violence.

For many men, setting down your weapon is experienced as emasculating.

So how do we script new ways of feeling that you get to be a man? What are some of the other positive connotations of what you learned out there? Was it solidarity with those around you?

What can we say is positive about these masculinities and disarticulate them from “I’m going to grab a gun and go shoot somebody”?

Send comments to HEATHER STEPHENSON at heather.stephenson@tufts.edu.

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Front Lines

TRUMP AND THE COST OF TURNING INWARD The future for millions of displaced people worldwide—especially women—could be dire with a U.S. administration hostile to foreign aid. BY DYAN MAZURANA AND KAREN JACOBSEN

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ar, persecution and natural disasters are wreaking havoc on communities across the globe, and will compel some 96 million people to require humanitarian assistance over the coming year. We are grappling with the largest number of people displaced in human history, with more than 65 million forced to leave their homes in 2016, of which

21 million are now refugees in other countries, half of them children. Hundreds of thousands of desperate people undertook long and dangerous migrations across the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean to reach safe countries last year. Thousands lost their lives. The United Nations has declared famines in South Sudan and Nigeria, and Somalia and Yemen face a “credible risk” of mass starvation.

Crises of these proportions will require more, not less, humanitarian assistance and leadership from the United States. Yet President Trump has proposed cutting the U.S. commitment to humanitarian and foreign assistance. Even if his 2018 budget proposal is seen as a blueprint that will be revised through the legislative process, the vision of the future it sketches is alarming. The proposal includes cuts of up to 29 percent in next year’s budgets for the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.N. If these cuts happen, along with related policy shifts being proposed and enacted, there will be a number of consequences, including that more women will die in conflict zones and that more people will risk their lives trying to find safety in the coming years. At

ILLUSTRATION: SAM WARD

the same time, by failing to strengthen weak states through development aid, the U.S. will find it has strengthened the allure of extremism, which will not only harm those abroad, but may affect us here at home. for the past sixty years, the u.s. has been the world’s leader in responding to humanitarian crises, providing more humanitarian assistance and resettling more refugees than any other country.

Globally, the U.S. has been recognized as the most generous and responsive country, the least willing to shirk its global humanitarian responsibilities and one of the strongest voices speaking on behalf of persecuted people in danger. The U.S. has made assistance available to all peoples, no matter their religion, nationality or ethnicity.

President Trump and his new administration have sharply questioned the value of foreign aid. Along with the proposed budget changes, Trump’s

“America first” rhetoric and executive orders seeking to impose travel bans and reduce refugee resettlement suggest that the U.S. will no longer be a global humanitarian leader.

Trump’s rhetoric and proposed budget indicate he is deeply suspicious of multilateral organizations such as the United Nations that play a paramount role in addressing humanitarian crises.

He has also called for “ending the current strategy of nation building,” which could mean cutting back U.S. funding for health care, clean water and sanitation, education, and the rule of law in poor, fragile and conflict-affected countries.

How much does it matter if the Trump administration scales back funding for humanitarian response?

Quite a lot, actually. USAID is currently the largest humanitarian donor in the world, providing more than double the amount given by the next largest donor, the United Kingdom. In 2015, the U.N. agency responsible for refugees, the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), received 40 percent of its budget from the United States.

With less funding for humanitarian response, U.N. agencies that work to protect and assist displaced populations, like UNHCR, the Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights and UNICEF, will be hampered in their ability to support refugees and displaced people, and less able to promote human rights and dignity in countries where

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conflict, violence and depravation have forced citizens to flee from their homes.

Trump’s proposed budget would also decrease funding for the U.S. agencies that lead on humanitarian response and displacement, including USAID and the State Department. With such a reduction, humanitarian workers will be less able to deliver services in places hit by the world’s worst crises—Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Yemen, Palestine, the Central African Republic and the disaster-affected areas of the Sahel and Horn of Africa.

and long-term development aid provide direct services to address problems such as poor sanitation and access to clean water, limited access to food, and stresses on health systems. Humanitarian and development aid also helps build a state’s capacity to provide these essential functions. The future of such assistance is unclear under Trump, who has called for a halt to nation building abroad, but has also said that the U.S. should provide aid to prevent greater instability in some nations that are friendly to the U.S.

if the funding is reduced, we anticipate at least two outcomes. One is that more women will die and they will die at younger ages. Why? Because it turns out that, although more men are killed in combat, it is women who die more frequently and at younger ages from the indirect consequences of war and natural disaster. In fact, sex, gender and age are among the key factors that determine how armed conflict and natural disasters affect people.

For instance, a 2006 study published in the journal International Organization looked at 18 armed conflicts, each of which lasted for at least 10 years. The study found that the direct and indirect consequences of armed conflict combine to kill more women, and kill them at a younger age, than their male counterparts. In other words, the indirect effects of war are the most deadly. These effects include limited access to food and water, poor sanitation and hygiene, weak or collapsed health services, forced displacement and family dislocation, and increased family stress and domestic violence.

The more severe the disaster, the more severe the effects on women’s life expectancy compared with men’s. Importantly, this effect is strongest where women and girls have low social, cultural, economic and political status—as is the case in many of the countries facing the most devastating crises today.

Short-term humanitarian assistance

The second outcome we expect if U.S. funding for foreign aid is cut is that the countries that now host millions of refugees will be less able to support them. An estimated 86 percent of the world’s refugees are hosted by countries in the Global South, and they are stretched to capacity.

The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) is already struggling to meet the needs of more than 5 million displaced people in Syria and neighboring countries. Today WFP provides electronic food vouchers to about 1.5 million refugees in countries bordering Syria—which represents only the poorest quarter of the refugees living there.

This aid was already reduced because of lack of donor funding in 2015. If it is cut further, it will increase the burden on those host countries and make life more difficult for the refugees. Indirectly, that could cause more Syrians to try to migrate to Europe and elsewhere. It was when humanitarian aid was cut in 2015 that the first outpouring of Syrians to Europe began. A similar effect might follow additional cuts.

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trump has said that he will focus his foreign policy on perceived threats to the U.S. that include Islamic extremism, terrorism and migration. Preventing extremism and terrorism is a complex and multifaceted endeavor, but it includes preventing or stopping governments from abusing and terrorizing their own citizens.

Such abuse, for example, coupled with widespread corruption among the South Sudanese leadership on both sides, has led to the current famine there. In fact, in all of the countries currently facing famine —South Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen—the key factors driving the famines are armed conflict, counterinsurgency strategies and tactics, and politics. By contrast, a foreign policy that supports and finances the provision of health services, education and employment in weak countries, and that works with government to support meaningful citizen participation, can boost human rights and offset the allure of extremism.

We need to find common ground between the Trump administration’s foreign policy goals and existing efforts to address the problems of fragile states and the displacement that ensues. In addition, we need to find better ways, perhaps involving the private sector, or through civil society effort, to work with other countries and humanitarian organizations to promote leadership and provide financial support for humanitarian and development response. We cannot leave it up to other countries or a future U.S. administration to address the needs of the millions of people being driven from their homes by war, persecution and politically driven natural disasters.

DYAN MAZURANA is an associate research professor at the Fletcher School and a research director at the Feinstein International Center and a Fellow at the World Peace Foundation at Tufts. KAREN JACOBSEN is the Henry J. Leir Professor of Global Migration at the Fletcher School and a research director at the Feinstein International Center.

Connect Connect K EEPI NG UP WITH TH E FLETCH ER COM MU NITY

K E E PI NG UP WITH TH E FLETCH E R COM MU N ITY

WALKING WHILE FEMALE made this quilt, called “Isolation,” for the United Nations’ challenge to fiber artists to create art quilts on the themes of women, peace and security. She and her husband, Dick Wilbur, F90, raise awareness of issues that affect women through their organization Quilt for Change (quiltforchange.org).

ALLISON WILBUR, F90,

QUILT IMAGE COURTESY OF ALLISON WILBUR

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Hardball from the Left Indivisible, an anti-Trump guide, rips pages from the Tea Party playbook.

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IKE SO MANY revolutions, this one started over drinks in a

bar. Leah Greenberg, F12, and her husband, Ezra Levin, were chatting with one of his college friends this past Thanksgiving weekend. The friend had been so appalled

by Donald Trump’s recent election that she had begun to help lead a support group on Facebook. But what else could she do? Make phone calls? Sign petitions?

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BY HEATHER STEPHENSON

The conversation turned to the Tea Party, the conservative movement that sprang up after President Obama’s election in 2008. Obama had seemed poised to enact much of his progressive agenda, but the Tea Party managed to thwart him at many turns, largely by

ILLUSTRATION: DOUG CHAYKA

organizing effectively and presenting unified, unyielding opposition to just about everything he proposed.

As the friends sat in that bar in Austin, Texas, a thought began to work its way through the minds of Greenberg and Levin: Why not deploy the Tea Party’s battle-tested tactics against Trump?

Greenberg and Levin had been congressional staffers, and the rise of the Tea Party had been painful to them. Now they could put the experience to good use.

The couple enlisted the help of more than two dozen friends and quickly wrote an online guide that explained how coordinated efforts, like asking tough questions at town hall meetings, could derail the new president’s agenda. The idea was to help people across the country who were looking to do something, but weren’t sure what their individual action would amount to. “We linked the tactics to a larger strategy,” Greenberg said.

The 26-page handbook, called “Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda,” went online in mid-December. Within days, liberal stalwarts like former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and the Star Trek actor-turned-activist George Takei were promoting the guide on social media.

It took off. The guide has now been downloaded more than a million times, and 5,800 or so local groups across the country, in all 50 states, have registered on the Indivisible site, making it easier for anti-Trump activists in their communities to find and join them.

Indivisible has already played a part in at least one high-profile Trump setback—the stunning failure in March of Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Part of what doomed that effort was the loss of support of moderate Republicans who were pressured by groups using the online guide. For instance, the Virginia Representative Barbara Comstock eventually came out against the measure after facing opposition from Indivisible Virginia District 10-East, a group based in

the district Comstock represents.

Although the House approved a revised plan by a slim margin in early May, Comstock voted against the new bill and its fate in the Senate was uncertain. Greenberg said the March setback

“There are two prongs,” Greenberg said.

“Organize locally and play defense.”

That means opposing the agenda of the party in power at every step by pressuring individual senators and representatives concerned about re-election.

The strategy is to oppose the agenda

of the party in power by pressuring individual senators and representatives concerned about re-election.

proved the power of citizen action.

“Three months ago, the political consensus was that Obamacare would be repealed,” she said. “But constituent advocacy shapes what members of Congress think is politically possible, and repealing the protections of the Affordable Care Act was deeply unpopular [at the time of the March debates].

Members of Congress saw political danger for themselves.”

Indivisible planned to keep the heat on those legislators as the health-care deliberations continued. as indivisible picked up steam, Greenberg and Levin recruited more volunteers to create a website and video, translate the guide into Spanish, and even make an audiobook. Indivisible became a nonprofit in January and since has received more than $500,000 in small online donations, Greenberg said.

The guide takes its name from the Pledge of Allegiance, as in “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” and reads like a pep talk to liberal activists. (“Together we have the power to resist—and we have the power to win.”)

In four chapters, it explains how the Tea Party succeeded, and how those opposed to the current president’s agenda can, too. The strategy is simple.

As local groups have sought guidance to focus their efforts, Greenberg and the Indivisible team have scrambled to respond. The website now includes a calendar that recommends actions for each day, toolkits for campus and community group leaders, tips on managing crowds and giving media interviews, and scripts for phone calls on issues such as immigration policy.

Even with about 150 volunteers, it was hard to sustain the project, Greenberg said. So Levin left his job in February and became Indivisible’s executive director. Then, in late March, Greenberg quit her position as policy director for the progressive Democrat Tom Perriello’s campaign for Virginia governor to become the chief strategy officer at Indivisible. Soon after, Casey Hogle, F13, another early volunteer, joined the team as senior manager for development, and the group started to fill several other positions.

“We want to build the kind of organization that’s in it for the long haul,” Greenberg said. That may not be a problem, given that the new president’s term has only just begun. “Trump’s agenda is an assault on our fundamental values and the basic tenets of American democracy,” she said. “Resisting is the only ethical option.”

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On the Shelf THE DUST OF KANDAHAR Naval Institute Press “At the age of fifty-five I went to war.” So begin these memorable journal entries by JONATHAN S. ADDLETON, F82, F91, chronicling his year as the senior embassy representative in southern Afghanistan. While military operations in the region garnered most of the media’s attention, civilians like Addleton were quietly working alongside soldiers and Marines—as well as lawyers,

BY KARA PETERS

aid workers, agricultural experts and political officers—to help create a functioning nation that could defeat the Taliban. He ate in mess halls, rode in Black Hawk helicopters and attended countless military funerals, all while building relationships with Afghan tribal leaders, government officials, religious figures and businessmen. His vivid account of the April 2013 suicide bombing outside a Zabul school that killed his translator, a fellow Foreign Service officer, and three American soldiers is a powerful reminder of the often-unsung sacrifices made by U.S. State Department officials who labor

to promote democracy and defend American interests around the world.

PEACE THROUGH ENTREPRENEURSHIP Brookings Institution Press Counterinsurgency, state building and billions of dollars in military spending have barely made a dent in the extremist violence that plagues the Middle East and threatens international security. According to STEVEN R. KOLTAI, A76, F78, E12P, these

Hope and Despair in Syria JOURNALIST ELLIOT ACKERMAN, A03, F03, landed in Gaziantep, a city of about 1.5 million in southern Turkey, in 2013 with a couple of American friends who hoped to start a consultancy to monitor humanitarian aid for Syrian refugees. Located about 60 miles north of Aleppo, Gaziantep soon became familiar turf as he reported on the war in Syria for the likes of The New Yorker, The Atlantic and The New Republic.

Gaziantep was a crossroads for many: humanitarian aid workers, journalists, diplomats and roving members of the Free Syrian Army, the Islamic State and the al-Nusra Front, Ackerman said. He knows plenty about war: after graduating

Elliot Ackerman, seen here in Istanbul.

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from Tufts, he enlisted in the Marines and served five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, earning a Silver Star, a Bronze Star for Valor and a Purple Heart. After his service was up, he went back to his first passion—writing—and focused on the Middle East.

While reporting a story on the Syrian war, he went to a refugee camp in nearby Kilis and met a Syrian man who had been sliced from his neck to below his navel. “It was such a horrible wound,” Ackerman said. “He was talking to me and showing me this, sharing cigarettes, wearing this purple T-shirt that said The Music Will Live Forever.”

Ackerman described the scene to a novelist friend, who urged him to write it down. What emerged was his second novel, Dark at the Crossing (Knopf), about Haris Abadi, a naturalized Iraqi-American who comes to Gaziantep, wanting to cross the border into Syria to fight the Bashar al-Assad regime. As he tries to cross, he’s betrayed by a fixer he’s paid and winds up penniless on the Turkish side of the border.

Later he is taken in by a Syrian emigré couple.

Dark at the Crossing has garnered strong reviews.

Ackerman said he hopes the novel “conveys the emotional topography of what’s going on there right now. If I’ve done my job as a writer, by the time you finish the book, you might feel the conflict within so many of these people who –TAYLOR MCNEIL have been trapped by this revolution.”

PHOTO: ILKER GURER

strategies fail to address the root cause of global unrest—joblessness. His prescription involves creating economic opportunities for desperate young men and women by prioritizing entrepreneurship as a cornerstone of foreign policy.

Koltai defines entrepreneurship as “the scalable innovation of Silicon Valley and Sam Walton,” rather than rural microfinance or small-scale trade. He argues that we must foster a healthy entrepreneurial ecosystem—an objective that currently accounts for less than 1 percent of the U.S. foreign aid budget—by identifying aspiring entrepreneurs, connecting them with seasoned mentors,

helping them secure funding, working with the government on policies that enable business growth and celebrating entrepreneurial culture.

AN ERA OF DARKNESS Aleph In May 2015, SHASHI THAROOR, F76, F77, F79, visited the Oxford Union and delivered a speech on British colonialism that quickly went viral, making evident the urgent need to explain the horrific effects of the

British Raj to a new audience. An Era of Darkness (Aleph) deftly documents the history of Britain’s 300-year occupation of India and its legacy of violence and exploitation. In demolishing the arguments of apologists for empire, who contend that British rule had positive byproducts, including the spread of democracy and the English language, Tharoor corrects many common misconceptions about this highly fraught period of Indian history.

Have you published a book this year? Let us know by emailing heather.stephenson@tufts.edu.

ALSO OF NOTE Drawing on research from four continents, the 10 case histories in Criminalized Power Structures (Rowan & Littlefield), edited by MICHAEL DZIEDZIC, F72, examine the nexus between illicit wealth and political power and the danger it poses to lasting peace.

From blood diamonds in Africa to drug trafficking in Afghanistan and human trafficking in the Balkans, the cases examine the underground political and economic forces that propel conflict. The companion volume, Combating Criminalized Power Structures, offers nuts-and-bolts recommendations for systematically stemming the tide of corruption.

The global arms business enjoys staggering influence at the highest levels of government. Its

outsized role in domestic and international politics is sustained by seven myths that PAUL HOLDEN, an assistant research professor at the Fletcher School, outlines in Indefensible (Zed Books). Arms merchants and their enablers claim that their products make us safer, that the defense sector creates jobs and that we can control where weapons end up. Equipped with ample research and an engaging prose style, Holden dismantles these and other spurious arguments for preserving the dangerous status quo.

The Association of Foreign Intelligence Officers’ Guide to the Study of Intelligence, edited by PETER OLESON, F68, is an invaluable tool for students, people interested in intelligence careers and instructors in history,

political science, international relations and security studies.

This extensive volume covers the history of intelligence from antiquity to the present and provides an overview of intelligence disciplines, a guide to espionage and an examination of policy and oversight, among a variety of other topics.

Edited by NADIM N. ROUHANA, Fletcher professor of international negotiation and conflict studies, Israel and Its Palestinian Citizens (Cambridge) features the perspectives of Arab, Israeli and American contributors aiming to advance the understanding of Israeli society’s relationship with Arab citizens. More broadly, these essays tackle the complex dynamic between ethnic privilege and democracy.

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Five Keys to Good Leadership

My takeaways from 50 classics that admirals and generals recommend. BY JAMES STAVRIDIS LEADERSHIP IS AN ART,

not a science. But there is an aspect of leadership that can be improved by study, largely centered on reading books that illuminate some lessons other successful leaders have learned.

In writing our new book, The Leader’s Bookshelf, former naval officer Bob Ancell and I asked more than 200 senior admirals and generals what books had given them the greatest insight into successfully leading highstress operations. From their input, we came up with a list of 50 classic books that cut across all genres, but had one thing in common—they had helped the leaders we surveyed achieve at the very highest levels.

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Here are five key attributes that jumped out across the 50 books: INNOVATION IS THE HEART OF LEADERSHIP.

What inspires people in the end is the new idea, a different way of seeing the challenge, and the creative process that allows the leader to think his or her way to success. Many of the books on the list make this point, none more powerfully than the Mark Twain classic A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, about a time-traveling engineer who uses technology to shape the world in which he suddenly finds himself.

FINDING THE BALANCE BETWEEN CARING FOR YOUR PEOPLE AND ACCOMPLISHING THE

Again and again in the 50 books, we see leaders

MISSION IS THE HARDEST TASK.

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struggling with the need to drive their subordinates hard to accomplish a critical task while still taking care of their teams’ physical, psychological and material needs. This theme is beautifully personified in Patrick O’Brian’s epic series of sea novels, beginning with the classic Master and Commander.

Captain Jack Aubrey seeks to successfully accomplish his missions, but in a way that enriches his sailors.

ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL. Throughout the 50 books, there are dozens of approaches to how leaders can succeed.

Perhaps the best presentation of that spectrum can be found in Michael Shaara’s extraordinary depiction of the Battle of Gettysburg in Killer Angels.

He gives us very real portraits of leading Union and Confederate generals and shows us that there is not a single formula for success.

INTEGRITY IS THE BEDROCK OF LEADERSHIP. The

50 books demonstrate over and over the value of taking the “hard right” over the “easy wrong.” The book that illuminates moral choices best is Anton Myrer’s story of two Army careers, Once an Eagle. As the novel contrasts two officers working their way up the chain of command, we see the fundamental value of taking the higher moral and ethical ground, even if there are short-term costs.

COLLABORATION IS A WINNING STRATEGY.

The very best leaders want to create win-win outcomes with their peers.

One book that personifies teamwork is Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s terrific study of Abraham Lincoln’s ability to put together a cabinet of political rivals who eventually become so much greater than the sum of their parts.

Leaders win by working with peers, often overcoming jealousy and the ill winds of the public sphere to do so.

JAMES STAVRIDIS, F83, F84, is the dean of the Fletcher School. His book The Leader’s Bookshelf, co-authored with R. Manning Ancell, was released

by Naval Institute Press in March.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: EDMON DE HARO

A PLACE FOR PRAYER

Cornyn

FLETCHER STUDENTS LOOKING for a quiet place to pray between classes have a new haven: a multifaith meditation and prayer room that opened in Cabot Hall this year. While it’s designed to accommodate Muslim practices, anyone with a Tufts ID card who is looking for a place to pray or meditate is welcome.

The pattern of the room’s wall-to-wall carpet points toward Mecca, indicating the direction that Muslims face when praying. The room also includes a foot bath, a floor screen for privacy and meditation cushions.

Because practicing Muslims pray five times a day at prescribed hours, having a convenient space is particularly important. The number of Muslim students at Fletcher has grown in recent years, University Chaplain Gregory McGonigle said.

Angga Dwi Martha, F17, uses the prayer room in Cabot Hall.

Breaking The Glass Ceiling Women are well-represented at Fletcher— composing half of each incoming class—but they face different hurdles than their male peers. That’s why VIRGINIA “GINNY” CORNYN, F63, decided to fund the creation of the Leadership Equality and Diversity (LEADS) program, a pilot initiative that will promote equality through a two-year series of workshops and a mentoring initiative.

The workshops aim to empower Fletcher women and educate the entire Fletcher community about topics such as salary and benefits negotiation, public speaking, sexual harassment and diversity. Students who attend all seven workshops will earn a certificate.

“Women in foreign affairs and in business are really hitting a glass ceiling, and in a number of different fields, harassment and discrimination are ways to keep women out of power,” said Dyan Mazurana, an associate research professor at Fletcher and research director at the Feinstein International Center, who co-directs the LEADS program. “Coming out of Fletcher, these are issues women are going to face and men are going to see, so we have to train students to stand strong against discrimination and stop it from happening.”

BROADCASTING LIVE, FROM FLETCHER Breaking news moves fast, so if TV reporters can’t get an expert on camera quickly, they’ll find someone else. That used to put the Fletcher School at a disadvantage.

But thanks to a new media studio in the school’s Ginn Library, professors who once had to travel

to TV studios in the Greater Boston area to offer on-air commentary can now whisk in and broadcast live between classes.

“As part of our strategic plan, we wanted to raise our global profile and reputation,” said JAMES STAVRIDIS, F83, F84, dean of the

PHOTOS CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: KOU VANG/MOUNT MARY UNIVERSIT Y, ANNA MILLER

Fletcher School. “Investing in our media presence—having a high-quality, immediately accessible studio where our professors can do a lot of commentary on air—creates a real bounce, a sense in the larger world that Fletcher matters.”

The studio, funded by THOMAS

SCHMIDHEINY, H99, opened in September 2015. In its first year, Fletcher faculty and the dean used it more than 100 times. Combined with the 49 interviews that took place elsewhere, that made a total of 149 on-camera interviews, compared with just 90 interviews the year before.

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Hong Kong

Brussels

Club News ATLANTA The Fletcher Club of Atlanta and the Atlanta Council on International Relations hosted a luncheon for more than 80 people at the Capital City Club on Nov. 16, 2016. U.S. Army War College Dean Richard Lacquement gave a presentation on U.S.-North Korean security concerns. Club leader STEVE BERGEY, F06, helped organize the event.

CHICAGO The Fletcher Club of Chicago welcomed Dean JAMES STAVRIDIS, F83, F84, for a reception at the Renaissance Blackstone Chicago Hotel on Oct. 19, 2016. In attendance were DANIEL BALSAM, F97; EMMA BELCHER, F04, F10; JEFF DODSON, F12; STEPHANIE LANDERS, F12; CHRIS PETERSEN, F14; NINA SKAGERLIND, F14; and BROOKE SMITH, F12.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Gen. JOSEPH DUNFORD, F92, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke at a Fletcher Club of the District of Columbia event on June 23, 2016, which was organized

by JIMMY ANTIA, F09. Dunford discussed threats to the U.S. and how

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the Department of Defense responds to them. Fletcher board members JOHANNES BINNENDIJK, F69, F72, F06P, F09P; HARLAN ULLMAN, F72, F73, F75; and SCOTT DEPASQUALE, F15, attended. Other attendees included Vice Admiral FRANK PANDOLFE, F86, F87, and TOM SHANKER, F82, of The New York Times.

BRUSSELS The Fletcher Club of Brussels held a well-attended holiday gathering at the home of GAIL SMITH, F84, on Dec. 13, 2016. Attending the party were, from left: NICOLE MONTER ESCARDINO, F98; ALVILDA JABLONKO, F01; IVETTE TARRIDA SOLER, F09; and MARK BAKER, F95. ROBERT MICALLEF, F01, who works with the Maltese permanent representative to the EU, provided a summary of Malta’s priorities as it prepared to assume the presidency of the EU. In January, MARK BAKER stepped down as the club leader, and GEORGE-MARIAN ISBASOIU, F15, and Robert started co-chairing the group, with George as the primary contact person.

HONG KONG JASON FUNG, F10, and COURTNEY

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FUNG, F12, welcomed the Fletcher Club of Hong Kong and Bhaskar Chakravorti, Fletcher’s senior associate dean of international business and finance, for dinner on their family sailboat on Sept.

6, 2016. In attendance were DOROTHY CHAN, J97, F03; ALICIA EASTMAN, F04; MICHAEL FUNG, A79; Fletcher Club of Hong Kong leader HASHAM MEHMOOD, F09; PAUL SCHULTE, F88; and STUART SPENCER, F89.

MADRID The Fletcher Club of Spain celebrated a Thanksgiving dinner over a discussion of international affairs on Nov. 25, 2016. Attendees included CELIA DE ANCA-RAMOS, F90; ISABEL RAVENTÓS, F84; LOURDES GARRIDO, F09; JUAN DE LUIS, F84; and club leader ALBERTO LÓPEZ SAN MIGUEL, F96.

PARIS The Fletcher Club of Paris welcomed Bhaskar Chakravorti, Fletcher’s senior associate dean of international business and finance, in September 2016. He spoke on “The Future of Europe’s Innovation Economy Post Brexit,”

discussing his own research and drawing out the audience’s perspectives on competitiveness, the political environment in the United Kingdom and on the continent, and some post-Brexit scenarios.

SENEGAL The Fletcher Club of Senegal held its first meeting, hosted in Dakar by LOUISE CORD, F84, F91, head of the World Bank in Senegal. MOHAMMED WALIULLA KHAISHGI, F58, Pakistan’s former ambassador to Senegal, attended, as did MIMI ALEMAYEHOU, F98, TRISTAN BEGAUD, F16, and PATRICK GILMARTIN, F13, all with Black Rhino Group.

SINGAPORE SYETARN (CREEK) HANSAKUL, A87, F88, and ANTHONY NASH, F04, were featured speakers at a Tufts dinner reception in Singapore on Oct. 28, 2016, to which members of the Fletcher Club of Singapore were invited. More than 40 alumni and parents of current students attended the event.

Creek and Tony talked about major world events that affect the economy in Asia.

CLUB CONTACTS UNITED STATES ARIZONA

MORGAN LERETTE, F13 morganlerette@gmail. com CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES MARK NGUYEN, F98 mark@planetlarecords. com SAN DIEGO BOB STECK, F81 robert.steck@ml.com SAN FRANCISCO BEN BALL, F02 mrbenball@hotmail.com COLOR ADO

DENVER* SAM STONBERG, F10 sstonberg@gmail.com DISTR ICT OF COLUMBIA

JIMMY ANTIA, F09 jimmyantia@gmail.com fletcherclubofdc.org FLOR I DA

MIAMI Seeking new leadership GEORGIA

ATLANTA STEPHEN BERGEY, F06 stephen.bergey@alumni. tufts.edu HAWA I I

GREGG NAKANO, F01 gmnakano@gmail.com ILLI NOIS

CHICAGO* Seeking new leadership MASSACHUSETTS

BOSTON ADRIA CHAMBERLAIN, F08 fletcherboston@gmail. com NEW YORK

NEW YORK CITY & TRI-STATE AREA MUNISH PURI, F09 fletcherschool.nyc@ gmail.com OREGON

PORTLAND EDIE MILLAR, F85 millarhk@hotmail.com KRISTEN RAINEY, F06 rainey@alumni.princeton.edu P E N N SY LVA N I A

PHILADELPHIA* JOCELYN BRADDOCK, F12 jocelynbraddock@gmail. com JONATHAN MARTIN, F12 jamartin4@gmail.com

PITTSBURGH TOM ETZEL, F11 etzelcpa@comcast.net ELISABET DENNEHY, F89, F90 erodriguezd@comcast. net TEXAS

Houston SAMINA JAIN, F08 saminajain@gmail.com WASH I NGTON

SEATTLE JENNIFER CAUSTON, F13 causton.jennifer@bcg. com

INTERNATIONAL A F G H A N I STA N

KABUL Seeking new leadership ARGENTINA

BUENOS AIRES LUIS ROSALES, F98 lrosal@hotmail.com ARMENIA

ARUSYAK MIRZAKHANYAN, F04 arousiakm@yahoo.com AUSTRALIA

MELISSA CONLEY TYLER, F96 m.conleytyler@gmail.com AUSTR IA

VIENNA* TIHOMIR TSENKULOVSKI, F09 ttsenkulovski@gmail. com BANGLADESH

DHAKA SARWAR SULTANA, F98 sarwar_sultana@ hotmail.com BELGIUM

BRUSSELS* GEORGE-MARIAN ISBASOIU, F16 george.isbasoiu@gmail. com ROBERT MICALLEF, F01 robert.c.micallef@ gov.mt BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVI NA

SARAJEVO HARIS MESINOVIC, F00 harismesinovic@ hotmail.com BRAZIL

SÃO PAULO PAULO BILYK, F92 paulo.bilyk@riobravo. com.br ALBERTO PFEIFER, F02 pfeifer@usp.br

BRASILIA* ENRIQUE ORTIZ, F90 Rick.Ortiz@trade.gov HOLLY LOOMIS, F17 holly.loomis@tufts.edu BULGARIA

NADJA MILANOVA, F12 nadia.milanova@skynet. be RADKA BETCHEVA, F11 radka.betcheva@gmail. com CAMBODIA

Seeking new leadership CANADA

TORONTO* Seeking new leadership CHILE

ANDRES MONTERO, F85 amontero@intertrust.cl GERMAN OLAVE, F97 germanolave@gmail.com CHINA

BEIJING JASMINE BARRETT, F12 barrettjasmine@gmail. com HONG KONG DEIDRE LO, F90 lokwokling@gmail.com HASHAM MEHMOOD, F09 mehmoodh@gmail.com SHANGHAI JAY DONG, F00 jaydong2000@yahoo. com COLOMBIA

STELLA CUEVAS, F95 stcuevas@ymail.com CO STA R I C A

MARIANO BATALLA, F11 batalla@alumni.tufts. edu ECUADOR

QUITO GENEVIEVE ABRAHAM, F11 genevieve.abraham@ gmail.com ENGLAND

LONDON TANNAZ BANISADRE, F06 fletcherclublondon@ gmail.com FRANCE

PARIS WILLIAM HOLMBERG, F05 fletcherclubofparis@ gmail.com fletcher.tufts.edu/ fletcherclubofparis

GERMANY

BERLIN* ADRIANA RAMIREZ, F14 Ramirez@mexale.de FELIX HOFMANN, F13 fe.ho@me.com FRANKFURT JOEL EL-QALQILI, F15 j.elqalqili@gmail.com GREECE

GREGORY DIMITRIADIS, F06 gregory@alumni.tufts. edu THOMAS VARVITSIOTIS, F99 tv@vando.gr HUNGARY

BUDAPEST ANITA ORBAN, F01 orban_anita@yahoo. com INDIA

DELHI

SANDHYA GUPTA, F08

sandhyagupta02@ gmail.com MUMBAI VIKRAM CHHATWAL, F01 vikram.chhatwal@gmail. com IRAQ

BAGHDAD Seeking new leadership ISRAEL

JERUSALEM JORDAN HERZBERG, F98 jordan@herzbergmanagement.com I TA LY

ROME/MILAN CHIARA DI SEGNI, F15 chidisegni@gmail.com JA PA N

MEXICO

GUSTAVO E. ACEVES RIVERA, F12 gustavo.aceves@gmail. com ENRIQUE ALANIS, F12 enriqueraul.alanisd@ cemex.com N E PA L

RAM THAPALIYA, F02 ram_thapaliya@yahoo. com NETHERLANDS

JENNIFER CROFT, F99 jcroft2@gmail.com PA K I STA N

MUMTAZ BALOCH, F13 mumtaz@mfapk.org PHILIPPINES

CATHERINE HARTIGANGO, F92 cathartigango@hotmail. com POLAND

WARSAW NICOLAS FIERENS GEVAERT, F09 nfierens@hotmail.com ROMANIA

SINZIANA FRANGETI, F07 sinzianaf@gmail.com RWA N DA

KIGALI IMAD AHMED, F11 imad.ahmed@alumni. tufts.edu SAUDI ARABIA

JAMIL AL DANDANY, F87 jamil.dandany@aramco. com DAKAR PATRICK GILMARTIN, F13 patrick.james.gilmartin@gmail.com

K E N YA

SINGAPORE*

KOSOVO

CHRISTINE SHEPHERD VERMEULEN, F12 shepherd.christine@ gmail.com LEBANON

Seeking new leadership M A L AYS I A

SHAHRYN AZMI, F86 shahryn.azmi@gmail. com

GENEVA EVERETT PEACHEY, F05 swissfletcherclub@ gmail.com ZURICH* FREDERIC GANNER, F13 fredericganner@googlemail.com TA I WA N *

PAUL HSU, F65 paulhsu@phycos.com.tw THAILAND

BANGKOK EKACHAI CHAINUVATI, F03 ekachai@siam.edu TURKEY

NESLI TOMBUL, F12 nesli.tombul@gmail.com UGANDA

Seeking new leadership UKRAINE

KIEV VALERIA SCOTT LAITINEN, F98 valeria_laitinen@ hotmail.com UNITED ARAB E M I R ATE S

DUBAI PAUL BAGATELAS, F87 CHRISTINE LAUPER BAGATELAS, F87 bag@eim.ae VIETNAM

HO CHI MINH CITY NICOLAS DE BOISGROLLIER, F03 ndeboisgrollier@gmail. com

SE NEGAL*

TOKYO MARIKO NODA, F90 mlh11461@nifty.com NAIROBI ANNE ANGWENYI, F02 anne_angwenyi@ alumni.tufts.edu

SWITZERLAND

DORA CHEOK, F99 cheokd@gmail.com SOUTH AFRICA

JACQUES ROUSSELLIER, F01 jacques_roussellier@ alumni.tufts.edu SOUTH KOREA

SEOUL SUKHEE HAN, F94 shan65@yonsei.ac.kr S PA I N

MADRID ALBERTO LOPEZ SAN MIGUEL, F96 fletcher.spain@gmail. com

SHARED INTEREST FLETCHER ALUMNI OF COLOR A S SOC I AT I O N

KELLY SMITH, F03 kellymillersmith@gmail. com F L ETC H E R P H . D. ALUMNI

ANTHONY WANIS-ST. JOHN, F96, F01 anthonywanis@gmail. com FLETCHER WOMEN’S NETWORK

KIMBERLY CORCORAN, F14 fletcheralumnae@ gmail.com * Change since the last issue of Fletcher Magazine

SUM MER 2017 | F L E T C H E R M AGA Z I N E

35

TRAILBLAZER

Hilda ‘Peggy’ Kirby

A jewelry business luminary and longtime advocate for women, at age 102 HILDA “PEGGY” KIRBY, F37, a trailblazer in the jewelry business, died on Nov. 6, 2016, at age 102. She was the oldest known living graduate of the Fletcher School and had returned to campus frequently, most recently for the 2014 commencement ceremonies.

Through her estate plans, she established a scholarship to make a Fletcher education more accessible to women.

She was particularly interested in providing opportunities for women in Turkey, in recognition of the work of her late sister, Fay, an international scholar who taught in that country for many years. The estate gift also honored her alma mater, which she credited with helping her understand international relations and the intricacies of business contracts.

Kirby encouraged her great-nephew, Kirby Reiling, F09, a Foreign Service officer, to study at Fletcher. “She was pleased how much the Fletcher School had grown,” said Reiling, who was named after the branch of his family that included his paternal grandmother, Kirby’s younger sister Jane.

Peggy Kirby was raised in Boston, the daughter and granddaughter of jewelers. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan in 1935 and then enrolled at the Fletcher School, in part because MIT didn’t have bathrooms for women, according to family lore. While she thrived at Fletcher, which had just opened in 1933, professional doors in government and diplomacy were closed to her as a woman once she graduated. “She was pleased to see how opportunities for women had opened up in her lifetime,” Reiling said.

Her first job in the fashion industry was at Tailored Woman on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Then, through a family connection, she began working at Finlay-Straus, a small jewelry chain store in New York, in 1940. She eventually became vice president of Finlay Fine Jewelry New York, the first woman corporate vice president in her industry.

She retired in 1978. She was one of 12 founding members of the Women’s Jewelry Association, a business group that honored her with its first Hall of Fame award in 1985. In her

retirement, she wrote for trade magazines, such as Executive Jeweler, and continued to be involved with the Women’s Jewelry Association, attending her final board meeting last fall.

Throughout her life, she traveled extensively in the United States and around the world, often accompanied by her longtime friend, Ethel Harper. Some of her favorite trips included visits to the United Kingdom, Turkey, China, Iran, Kenya and Egypt. She also joined Fletcher faculty on several occasions at the Tufts European Center in Talloires, France.

Through her travels, she accumulated many friendships spanning decades, and in some cases she remained close with her friends’ children and grandchildren.

Possessed of a sharp mind and excellent memory, she organized a bus tour of her beloved home, New York City, to celebrate her 100th birthday, and she was the guide for dozens of friends and relatives. She organized similar celebrations in Boston and Salem for her 90th and 95th birthdays, respectively. During the trip for her 90th, the bus driver got lost on the way from Copley Plaza to Brookline, Massachusetts. “Although Aunt Peg had not lived in Boston since 1938, she figured out where we were and directed the driver the rest of the way,” Reiling said.

Kirby advised her younger friends and relatives to set goals for their own advancement. Reiling recalled how she quizzed his future wife, Courtney Kemps, F10, when they first met. “Dear, what are you studying at Fletcher?

Where do you see yourself in your career in five years?” he remembered her asking. “It was like a job interview.” But the questions were nothing he hadn’t heard before. When he was younger and expressed an interest in music, she gave him a gift certificate to Carnegie Hall, but also said, “You won’t make anything as a musician. Have you considered diplomacy?”

She is survived by seven nieces and nephews, 17 grandnieces and nephews and 26 great-grandnieces and nephews. A graveside memorial service was held on May 6 at Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline.

SUM MER 2017 | F L E T C H E R M AGA Z I N E

57

WHAT YOU GIVE US COULD AFFECT WHAT SOMEONE GIVES THE WORLD. Innovation is the cornerstone of the research being done at The Fletcher School. Your contribution to The Fletcher Fund will help inspire new ways of thinking in areas such as global energy, international security, and agricultural economics. As we continue to advance policy and diplomacy in the 21st century, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll benefit from your gift. More importantly, the world will.

G I V E T O D AY. FLE TCHER.TUFTS.EDU/GIVENOW2

Detail

OPTIONAL SLUG

Where I Belong Through my nomadic childhood, I thought of Syria as home.

Now I find myself protesting in the U.S.—and fitting right in.

BY BASMA ALLOUSH, F16

I

I was 3, long before the current conflict.

Because my father worked with the United Nations, I lived in Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain by the time I turned 17. I finished high school in the United Arab Emirates and came to Boston for college, but I always thought I would return to the land of my birth.

Syria was the place of family visits and midnight ice cream runs

by Aleppo’s ancient citadel. It was also a place of fear. After more than four decades of the Assad regime’s authoritarian rule, Syrians abroad and at home did not discuss politics in public. I learned at a young age that the mukhabarat (the secret police) and their informants were everywhere.

When the Arab Spring erupted, I watched events unfold from my dorm room at Northeastern University. I

64

LEFT SYRIA WHEN

was excited for Tunisia and Egypt. But when Syrians took to the streets in March 2011, demanding democratic reforms and the release of political prisoners, I was conflicted. Bashar al-Assad is a reformer, I remember thinking. He is much better than his father. It was only after Syrian security forces opened fire on those protesters that I realized the regime was not open to change.

In April 2012, I participated in my first anti-Assad protest, in Boston’s Copley Square. I was terrified. I did not want my participation to affect my relatives in Syria. However, as I began to raise my voice and really feel the words I was chanting, I realized that for the first time in my life, I was free to speak my mind.

When I graduated from Northeastern that May, it was no longer safe to return to Damascus. I was thrown into limbo, but I knew I was lucky. Unlike

F L E T C H E R M AGA Z I N E | SUM MER 2017

the hundreds of thousands who have been killed in Syria or risked their lives fleeing, I was safe in the United States.

I filed for asylum. For four years, I could not travel outside the U.S. I did not know if I would be allowed to stay, and if I was forced to leave, I didn’t know where I would go. No one wants a Syrian these days.

And yet I felt welcomed in Boston.

Growing up, I was always treated as an outsider. That’s not true here. Even though my name, nationality and religion might mark me as different, here you can be different and still belong.

You might think that’s because I “sound American” (as people tell me), but even my mother, who wears a hijab and speaks English with an accent, says she feels more at home when visiting Boston than she does in the Middle East.

I got my green card in December, and I’m now considered a permanent resident of the United States. I’ve lived here almost a decade, more than twice as long as I have lived anywhere else.

Unfortunately, my travel document has not been renewed, and I don’t think it will be for a while because of the Trump administration’s attempts to restrict travel by Syrians. But even with the hateful rhetoric of a “Muslim ban,” I can see myself becoming an American citizen, gaining the right to vote and participating in what I hope will remain an open society. Once I am able to, I expect to travel the world again to work in humanitarian aid and development.

I see repressive trends building in the U.S., but at least here I’m able to speak up. I joined the Women’s March in January as well as protests against the travel restrictions. My voice matters here, and that makes me feel at home.

BASMA ALLOUSH, F16, is the advocacy and communications officer at the Norwegian Refugee Council’s office in Washington, D.C. This essay grew from a talk she gave on campus as part of the Fletcher Ideas Exchange.

ILLUSTRATION: MADDY BARRETO

‘‘

‘‘

I will always be grateful to Fletcher and Tufts for my education.

For Raymond H. Fredette, A49, F50, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, establishing scholarships in his estate plan for The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Tufts University was an “obvious and appropriate” way for him to repay the gift of education he received. He arrived at Tufts in the fall of 1948, a decorated veteran of 31 combat missions flown over Germany. He was one of four veterans Tufts accepted that year as transfer students from the University of Massachusetts at its then Fort Devens Campus.

Col. Fredette commuted to Medford by train from Ayer, Massachusetts, where he lived with his wife and young son. He received a bachelor’s degree in history, followed by a master’s at The Fletcher School in 1950.

After graduating from Fletcher, Fredette was recalled to active duty, serving in Morocco, Germany, and Vietnam. He is the author of The Sky on Fire, a definitive account of the German bomber raids on London in 1917–1918. He has also written an unpublished biography of Charles A. Lindbergh and numerous articles on aviation history.

“The cost of education is a heavy burden on students today,” says Fredette, now 93, “and I am willing to help with scholarships.” He is a member of the Austin B. Fletcher Society and the Charles Tufts Society, in recognition of his contribution, which celebrates the past and

looks toward the future.

For more information about including a gift for Fletcher in your estate plans, please contact the Gift Planning Office: 888.748.8387 • giftplanning@tufts.edu • tufts.edu/giftplanning

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Change of address? Questions? Email heather.stephenson@tufts.edu.

4 Cards for humanity

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18 Laying down arms

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As poaching threatens elephants like these orphans in Kenya, KADDU SEBUNYA, F02 , and others from Tufts race to protect them.

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