Communique - Spring 2019

PERHAPS NONE 7 An alum’s choice not to have children.

A RISING TIDE 14 Monterey beaches at risk of disappearing.

Communiqué SPRING 2019

Eyes on Terror Jason Blazakis leads the Institute’s newly revitalized center for terrorism research.

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THE VIEW FROM SEGAL

Global Reach, Local Impact

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Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Institute Jeff Dayton-Johnson.

ne of the interesting quirks about the Institute is the fact— and I know many Communiqué readers can attest to this—that you’re at least as likely to run into someone who’s familiar with the Institute while walking down the street in Washington, D.C., or Vienna, Austria, as you are while doing the very same thing here in Monterey.

This reality is one of the reasons I invited several dozen local community leaders earlier this year to an event we titled “Institute Impact: Updates on Local and Global Activities.” In addition to display tables highlighting the work of different campus entities such as the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, the Center for the Blue Economy, and our language and professional programs, the event featured an overview of the Institute that purposely highlighted how our internationally focused programs also have a major impact right here in Monterey County.

That impact can be expressed in raw economic terms—an operating budget of $46 million, around 250 employees and 750 students, events that attract local community members to our downtown campus daily, and so on. I shared all of that, but at least as interesting was our discussion of the Institute’s broader qualitative impact on the Central Coast—how we enhance the community conversation about critical issues and contribute to crafting solutions.

I explained how researchers from the Institute’s Center for the Blue Economy have been working with local officials on identifying strategies for adapting to sea level rise. I shared the work of students and faculty from the META Lab who have been conducting data research and analysis for the city of Salinas to support conversations around public policy. I told them about the Team Tandem project, which pairs students seeking to improve their Spanish with Spanish-speaking area residents who want to improve their English. And I highlighted the work that translation and interpretation students are doing in local health clinics to ensure that patients and doctors can communicate.

These are all examples of immersive learning, a core element of the Institute’s approach to professional education today.

As much as these projects benefit the community, they may benefit the students engaged in them even more, by offering them the opportunity to apply the skills they are learning in the classroom directly to real-life issues.

As we look to expand access to our programs by diversifying our modes of delivery to include more hybrid, low-residency, and accelerated programs, we’re also seeking to deepen connections, both across all of Middlebury and between the Institute and the Central Coast community that is our home. We will continue to highlight the ways in which the Institute has both global reach and local impact. n

These are all examples of immersive learning, a core element of the Institute’s approach to professional education today.

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COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT ELLIS | PHOTOGRAPH BY BRIDGET BESAW

FIVE MINUTES WITH MAX TROYER

The Real Thing Globe Multilingual Services, the brainchild of Professor Max Troyer MAT ’09, offers students in the Institute’s Translation and Localization Management (TLM) program the opportunity to work on real translation and localization projects for real clients in real time. We recently asked Prof.

Troyer to share the backstory of this unique community asset, as well as his hopes for its future.

Q: Tell us about the origins of Globe.

A:

The roots of Globe Multilingual Services are in a student club we formed with the goal of giving students who wanted more experience working with real clients the ability to work with one—the Institute. They were translating Web content, subtitling videos, and so on, and I was the club’s faculty advisor. The old GLOBE Center (Globalization and Localization of Business Exports) was associated with the mba program. When it wound down in 2014, I asked if we could reuse the name, which pretty soon evolved into Globe Multilingual Services.

Globe’s focus is on translating and localizing content—on a volunteer basis— for nonprofit organizations, including the Institute. Today, the localization practicum that all second-year localization students take is essentially staffing Globe Multilingual Services.

Q: What

kinds of projects and clients does Globe take on?

A:

Typically students are the project managers who make the connections, manage the teams, manage the timelines, and work with the technology. For the Institute, Globe is currently translating several pages of the website so that they are accessible to prospective students’ parents who don’t speak English, as well as subtitling videos and other things. We have a

ILLUSTRATION BY CHANTAL BENNETT

budget, and students who work on Institute projects get paid.

Globe also typically has about 15 external nonprofit clients each semester; we see Globe as the public-facing side of our program. For example, last semester alumna Narit Gessler maips/mba ’09 asked us to translate materials that her organization (Free the Slaves) uses to train people in the various countries where it is active.

We facilitated the translation of their entire 90,000-word training guide into Haitian Creole, by local volunteer translators, in about two weeks. It was a really impressive effort by our students to coordinate that.

Q: What are your biggest obstacles?

A:

Our biggest obstacle is finding volunteer translators for the projects. When we choose our nonprofit partners, our first question is always “Who would be willing to translate these?” Sometimes MIIS translation and interpretation students and professors are the volunteers, and sometimes we work with professional translators who just want to give back.

One of the things we’re working on this semester is partnering with translation schools around the world. We’re currently working on translating Web Strategies for Student Fact Checkers by Mike Caulfield into six languages, starting with Ukrainian. We’re partnering with a school in Ukraine that has 30 or 40 stu-

dents eager to translate this 26,000-word book. Next we’re going to translate it into Chinese and then four other languages.

Q: What is your ultimate goal for Globe?

A:

Globe’s mission is to offer students practical experience that will give them an extra edge in the job marketplace.

When a prospective employer says, “Tell me about a time when you had a huge challenge on a localization project,” our graduates will already have a real-world experience to share. I now coteach the localization practicum with Prof. Alaina Brandt, and our ultimate goal is to have second-year students hand Globe off to first-year students each year, so that it becomes self-sustaining with minimal faculty input. n

Spring 2019 3

FEATURE

The Terror File

Jason Blazakis wants to better understand what motivates terrorists to do what they do.

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fter you get past the piles of unopened boxes and the stark white walls in Jason Blazakis’s office in the McGowan Building, your eyes will eventually come to rest on an intriguing black-and-white framed photo of two men under the news headline from 1975 “Fugitives for 34 Years on Crete Are Pardoned.” Blazakis, who joined the Institute this past fall to head the newly revitalized center dedicated to terrorism research, renamed the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC), has been too busy establishing the center to have time for either unpacking or decorating. The lone photo on his wall features a man family lore says is his great-uncle, Spiros Blazakis, who was considered an outlaw for decades after first fighting against the Nazis and later fighting on the side of Communists during the Greek Civil War. By the time Jason was born, the government’s views on Spiros’s actions had changed.

When he left government, Jason Blazakis’s interests had shifted slightly from thinking about terrorist groups and sanctioning them, to trying to think more deeply about motivations of individuals— why they are doing what they are doing.

He came to the Institute after serving

for 10 years as the director of the Office of Counterterrorism Finance at the U.S. State Department, a role he came to after several years working on various aspects of counterterrorism and intelligence within the government. “The Islamic State represented a shift in the way terrorists communicate. You think of Al Qaeda, and you think of old people like bin Laden or al-Zawahiri sitting in front of a video camera just talking and talking with their gun next to them and a black flag behind them. The Islamic State took it to a new level in terms of trying to motivate people using social media, with younger communicators who could appeal to a younger audience.”

On September 11, 2001, Blazakis was living in New York, where he was earning his second graduate degree at Columbia University. “It really hit me, the profound devastation.” The indelible experience of living in the city during that time coupled with the helplessness he felt after the attacks led him to return to government service after completing his degree, this time focusing on having a positive influence to counter what terrorists do. “A lot has changed since 9/11.” Over his nearly 20-year career he has seen several shifts in terms of the focus of counterterrorism

efforts, from dealing with the more limited, in many ways, scope of Al Qaeda to the widespread nature of threats from the Islamic State and other terrorist groups operating today. “All of this has changed how we think about terrorism,” Blazakis says.

The middle part of the center’s name, “extremism,” is especially important today, according to Blazakis. The overarching objective of CTEC is to give graduate students an opportunity to work in this field by directly carrying out research on terrorism, extremism, and counterterrorism policies. “We are working on a project with a client to explore far-right-wing extremism, why certain messages may resonate with audiences, what key phrases, words, are being used to spread that message, what messaging is effective or not effective.”

Blazakis believes that some actions of the U.S. government have undeniably bolstered the recruitment of people to terrorist organizations, in particular the Iraq War and the false pretenses behind which it was fought, and most recently the visa restrictions to the U.S. from predominantly Muslim countries. “Another place where the administration is missing the thread is domestically, the threat posed

“I have a family member who was probably considered a terrorist until 1975, when he was considered a freedom fighter.”

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JASON BLAZAKIS

by individuals influenced by extremist messaging within the United States. The resources allocated by Congress and the executive branch to combat the domestic threat are insufficient compared to resources provided to combat the transnational threat.”

CTEC offers students access to a variety of experiences to enhance the learning that goes on in the classroom. In addition to an impressive speaker series, Blazakis worked closely with Professor Moyara Ruehsen to organize the Monterey Threat Financing Forum, a professional conference in the fields of counterterrorism financing, threat financing investigations, and compliance. There is great synergy between the work that CTEC does and

PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT ELLIS

the Financial Crime Management specialization offered at the Institute. “We hope to do research in the future to complement classroom learning on the financing and fundraising of terrorism groups and how it evolves.”

The center also works closely with Middlebury College Professor Orion Lewis on the Special Operations Research Database, where students have collected information about special operations activities and interviewed high-level figures to better understand the policy implications of using unconventional forces to combat unconventional security threats.

While working at the State Department, Blazakis taught evening courses at

Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland. He says he started thinking about making a move to academia a few years ago to “pay it forward” to young people who are heading into careers in public policy or the private sector, where they will be the ones influencing future policies as they relate to national security issues. The photo of Spiros Blazakis on his office wall is a great reminder about what lies at the root of motivation for terrorism and how there will always be different perspectives of what is considered a just cause.

“I have a family member who was probably considered a terrorist until 1975, when he was considered a freedom fighter.” n

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ESSAY

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Perhaps None Jhon Arbalaez-Novak MAIEP ’11 explains why he has decided not to have children.

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come from a big latino family. My father is one of 12; my mother one of 13. I have dozens of cousins, many who ended up having multiple children of their own. My sisters and I were the last set of cousins without children. Eventually, they had children of their own, leaving me as the last one not to have kids.

When I visit family, one of the first questions I am asked is “When are you having children?” When I say that I don’t want children, I’m told things such as “Your life is not complete until you have a child,” and “You need to have a kid already; you’re already married and getting old.” Friends who have children often tell me I would be a good dad in the hope that such a sentiment will change my mind, even though I have mentioned that I do not want children. In one unfortunate instance, I was told I was just being selfish, and that all I wanted to do was travel instead of settling down and starting a family. As painful as hearing that comment was, it is true that not having a child has allowed me freedom to do what I want in comparison to others. I have been able to complete an advanced degree, grow my career, and explore the world. However, selfishness is not the reason I choose to remain childless.

People living in the developed world consume resources at a rate almost 32 times that of those in developing nations.

A child born in the developed world requires a huge amount of resources—diapers, clothes, and toys—which are often disposable by design. This requires raw materials such as water, minerals, cotton,

ILLUSTRATION BY JASU HU

and petroleum that are often acquired from areas of the world where environmental regulation and human rights are lax. This amounts to a tremendous strain on natural resources and creates a huge impact for populations in less developed areas of the world. Some parents are better able to purchase materials that don’t have as much of an impact; however, not everyone is as fortunate.

The last few years have shown us that the impacts of human-induced climate change will only get worse. Wildfires, floods, rising sea levels, and intense hurricanes have become the norm. The world we know today will not be the same in 100 years, or even in the next 20 years. Scientific experts tell us that we must make drastic changes to protect our world. A study by statisticians at Oregon State University found that “the long-term carbon impact of a child born in the U.S.— along with all of its descendants—is more than 160 times the impact of a child born in Bangladesh” (Murtaugh, 2009).

The study concluded that for the average American, the total CO2 saved by all other conservation measures (living car-free, recycling, etc.) over an entire lifetime of 80 years is 488 metric tons. In contrast,

if the average American chose to have one less child (or no children), the CO2 savings would rise to 9,441 metric tons.

I made a conscious decision not to have children. I’m not selfish, and there’s nothing missing from my life. I respect people who do choose to have children, and just like them, I experience the same feelings of happiness, joy, sorrow, and stress. I am fulfilled and content in the decision I have made, and my life experiences are no less special. Not having a child is my way of doing my part. I am also a vegetarian, and I recycle and compost, drive an electric car, have installed solar panels on my roof, and purchase green products when available.

I absolutely love having a big family.

Spending time with my nieces, nephews, and young cousins is the highlight of any family visit. I enjoy having friends with children over and seeing their kids’ happy laughter when they play with my dogs.

Not having kids doesn’t mean I advocate for everyone not to have them. My decision is not a one-size-fits-all solution to the environmental problems our planet faces.

Although I understand many will disagree with my choice, I can only hope that one day they will perhaps come to understand why I chose not to have children. n

I made a conscious decision not to have children. I’m not selfish, and there’s nothing missing from my life.

Spring 2019 7

WHAT I’VE LEARNED

Regarding Gaza Current student Hajar Masoud MAIPD ’19 talks about her life in Gaza—and how the experience has shaped her view of the world.

“I

wish you peace of mind” is the greeting of choice for Hajar Masoud maipd ’19. Born in Egypt to Palestinian parents who fled their homeland during the 1967 war, Masoud moved back to Gaza when she was a teenager. She knows what it means to freeze in terror when bombs start falling, how to find her own strengths, what it is like to be treated as a second-class citizen—quite literally—and how beautiful life can be in the most unlikely of circumstances. She shares with us some of what she has learned.

Stories are very powerful. When we were living in Egypt, my grandmother would tell us wonderful descriptive stories from Palestine, of the amazing people, the incredible beauty of the land, and the incomparable citrus from the trees in Gaza.

My siblings and I had only ever known life in Egypt when our family decided it was time to move back, yet we were ready and excited to go home.

Nobody wants war. There are good people in Gaza, and there are good people in Israel. The good people just need to speak up more, and the world needs to listen. A mother is a mother no matter where she is from. I would like people to realize we are human beings.

Empathy can be nurtured. Our father was a surgeon at a Palestinian hospital in Egypt and he would take my sister and me to work with him. He wanted us to meet other Palestinian children and build our character so we would be more empathetic. I first volunteered with the Red

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Crescent (Red Cross) in 2001, but in reality, I have been volunteering to help others my whole life.

You don’t realize how strong you are until you look back on what you have gone through. It shocked us when we first experienced an invasion after moving back to Gaza. For others it was less shocking, as it was considered comparatively minor. You never get used to serious war.

I understand what it means to freeze when you are scared. On Saturday, September 27, 2008, I was pregnant and standing on my balcony at home. The time was somewhere between 11:30 a.m. and noon, which is when children are walking home from school. Bombs started falling and I completely froze. My father pulled me inside.

The safest place is to be together. In 2014, when my son was around five, the war coincided with Ramadan, so we were all fasting during the day. In each house people decide what is the safest place, and that is where they gather when the bombing starts. My son held my hand and said, “It will be fine. It is just fireworks.” After 10 days of staying home I took him with me to work, inspecting aid distribution sites. You realize that there is no safe place. You cannot keep children inside forever.

I always volunteer when there is a war. I can drive and my English is good. I have skills that are useful, and I like to use them to help people. When international organizations coordinate for journalists to come,

I am always happy to show them our side of the story. The first thing we always do to celebrate their arrival is to bring them to a place that is open and serving food.

Often these journalists will get children the help they need. A reporter from New Zealand and I once met a nine-year-old girl who desperately needed surgery, and after the reporter wrote about her, the girl got out and was treated in Turkey.

Something inside of me told me I would be happier doing the work I am doing now.

I am actually a very good civil engineer.

My expertise is water infrastructure. Even when I worked on an infrastructure project as an engineer, I volunteered with the Red Crescent. Before coming to Monterey I worked as a monitoring and evaluation specialist for international aid groups for many years. The field is constantly evolving, and I am grateful for the opportunity to learn with and from other people. My family has loved Monterey while we’ve been here, but a part of me feels guilty every time there is a bombing or crisis, as I feel I should be there to help.

Gaza is an experiment in resiliency. We are actually surviving really well despite restrictions on so many parts of life. We dress well, we enjoy everything. People are like people anywhere else; sometimes they love life, sometimes not. We take great pride in the things that are within our control, like food. Gaza has the best food. We recycle, reuse everything. It is a wonder to see all the amazing ingenuity our young, educated population has shown adjusting to energy scarcity and lack of materials.

It is actually quite beautiful.

HAJAR MASOUD

Unfairness is too hard to bear for some people. Around half of the population of Gaza is under the age of 18, and even though people are well educated, there are very few opportunities. Movement is restricted, as are most other aspects of life. We keep being asked to be more fair, more open. For some people it is too much to handle. In reality it is a very small part of the population that causes problems, yet everyone is judged by their actions.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT ELLIS

Sarcasm helps. We have a saying that Gaza is like a disease that gets into your body so strongly that you cannot leave.

We cope by basically laughing through the tears, which is sometimes all you can do. I have a cousin who called me once to say that he was uncomfortable because the electricity had been on too long, and I told him not to worry, it would be out soon.

The many varieties of Arabic can be vastly different. I struggled with the language

when we moved back home, as many of the basic words are very different from the Arabic spoken in Egypt. We actually did a segment on MIIS Radio where five of us—a Palestinian, a Syrian, an Egyptian, a Sudanese, and a Moroccan—all spoke our variety of Arabic—well, except the student from Morocco; he knew we would not understand him, so he spoke the common language. n

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FACULTY ADVICE

How to Navigate a Divisive World Political dialogue in the United States has reached a point where opposing sides sometimes sound as though they’re not just coming at issues from different perspectives but living within entirely different realities. What role can the faculty, staff, students, and alumni of the Middlebury Institute play in facilitating the kind of critical conversations that are needed?

When we engage in social media–based discussions and see or hear individuals presenting obvious falsehoods, we should point out that while they are entitled to their opinions, we are not persuaded. We should indicate the credible sources of information we use to form our opinions. Whenever appropriate, we should cite information from the authentic sources—and multiple sources—of information we know from outside of the U.S. Citing only U.S.-based media sources runs the risk of contributing to the echo chamber character of contemporary discourse. —Tsuneo Akaha, Professor of International Policy and Development In the Sustainable Coastal Management class, we explore practical strategies to assess vulnerabilities of coastal communities to various threats, including climate change. We explore different ways to frame climate-related issues and focus on multiobjective and multidisciplinary approaches. We search for adaptation strategies that also provide social, environmental, and economic benefits, and identify specific issues that are important to a diverse audience. By recognizing what we have in common, rather than focusing on political differences, we may find a way to move forward. —Juliano Calil, Adjunct Professor of International Environmental Policy The first thing that we teach our interpretation students at MIIS is to listen—to listen actively and carefully to the words of the person talking. I could not think of a better role for all of us in the MIIS community than listening in order to understand better the issues at hand and be able to find consensus and common ground for the good of our country and humanity in general. —Leire Carbonell Aguero, Associate Professor of Translation and Interpretation What we need to do is fully restore the Institute’s original commitment to

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truly free and open debate—precisely the opposite of what is now happening on many, if not most, university campuses across the nation, including the Middlebury campus, where the shameful incident with Charles Murray occurred. This would not only be in keeping with the Institute’s founding ideals, but with the mission of any legitimate institution of higher education, and we need to lead by example throughout the Middlebury enterprise. —Michael Gillen, Professor of Translation and Localization Management, and Translation and Interpretation First, close your computer. Second, turn off your phone. Third, shut down your iPad. You off-line yet? Do any of the following.

Do more than one. 1. Join a group outside your comfort zone. 2.

Run for office in the manner you wish others would. 3. Come to speaking terms with people in your family who are politically opposite you. 4. Read good books—well researched and well argued—by people who disagree with you. 5. Donate to 501(c)(3)s that create dialogue across differences. —Kent Glenzer, Associate Professor of Business Administration and Public Administration Language classrooms can serve as transformative spaces where we cultivate dialogue around controversial issues and critical incidents rather than debate. While debates involve looking for gaps in the opponent’s argument, dialogues enable us to enhance our understanding of a topic and truly hear the other’s voice and intended meaning. Disagreements then serve as a natural and healthy component of conversations. Confronting difficulties and conflicts honestly rather than smoothing over them facilitates social cohesion and intercultural understanding.

—Deniz Ortactepe, Assistant Professor of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages/Teaching Foreign Language (TESOL/TFL) n

ILLUSTRATION BY ROBERT NEUBECKER

BOOK MARKS

we need to establish what we want, and then we can start really discussing the setting of rules and regulations. It is not enough to deal with it within the scientific community or to have business lead the way. To have a real debate about the opportunities and challenges, we need a multistakeholder forum that includes governments and civil society.

Q: What

A Conversation with Olaf Groth As systems running on artificial intelligence (AI) govern greater parts of our daily decisions and interactions, we might be in for some “wobbly stretches of human-machine interaction.”

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n Solomon’s Code: Humanity in a World of Thinking Machines (Pegasus, 2018), Olaf Groth maips ’93, Hult International Business School professor of strategy, innovation, and economics, and Mark Nitzberg, executive director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence, offer a broad examination of how AI shapes human values, trust, and power from a global perspective. The authors do not belong to the camp of doomsday predictors who are sounding alarms of a dystopian future where humans have lost control—as long as care is taken to manage the wobbles, and to build a solid foundation for human-machine interactions. We asked Groth to explain.

Q: What do you think people are missing in the current debate about AI and its impact on our lives today?

PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT ELLIS

A:

Artificial intelligence is at the same time underhyped and overhyped. There is an underawareness of both the tremendous transformative potential of AI for humans and societies and also just how pervasive this thing already is—it is already in our cars, in our Internet search engines, in our phones, in our online shopping and social media, in our home thermostats, on our highways, in our courtrooms and hospitals. So the train is leaving the station and the average human is not that interested in the intricacies of technology, such as algorithms; they just want it to be easy to use and to work. We are all at the mercy of brilliant minds who are advancing technology but who have not always thought of the unintended consequences to our lives. Clearly, we need to develop a better view of the different aspects of human decision making when we talk about new initiatives. First,

role do consumers have in making sure our digital future serves us, rather than the other way around?

A:

That is a tough one. We need to become better informed. But most people are really busy with their lives, and they might not really know where to start.

There is also the conflict between helping AI systems become more useful to consumers while simultaneously guarding their privacy. It is the duty of policy makers and innovators to make things more palatable to consumers, and some of them are working on ways to do that. We test technology systems constantly for integrity of the coding, but we never test the effects of algorithms across society. We do this for drug, airplane, and car safety, so why not for code that impacts millions of people’s behaviors at a time?

In addition, because algorithms, data, and top AI talent flow across borders easily, we need transparency through an ethics-driven “Fortune 500 AI Readiness” (FAIR) index and a multistakeholder-driven “digital Magna Carta” that frames responsible opportunity for the cognitive society. To that end, we’re in dialogue with members of the House of Lords in the U.K., the chancellery and foundations in Germany, and some corporations in the U.S. and Europe. But it’s wickedly complex, because AI touches everything. So it’s all hands on deck, and we invite all globalists in the MIIS community to join our efforts. n

Spring 2019 11

WHAT I’VE LEARNED

Temie Giwa-Tubosun MPA ’10 Job Title Founder, LifeBank Residence Lagos, Nigeria

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PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF LIFEBANK

A Race Against Time Healthcare entrepreneur Temie Giwa-Tubosun MPA ‘10 is bringing critical lifesaving infrastructure to her native Nigeria.

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er innovative approach to saving lives in her native Nigeria—by providing safe and fast distribution of medical products via motorbikes—has earned praise from people like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Brandon Stanton of Humans of New York, and her start-up, LifeBank, emerged as a winner of the 2018 MIT Solve Global Challenge. Temie Giwa-Tubosun mpa ’10 shares what she has learned along the way, as well as her ambitious plans to expand her “business of saving lives” model.

Fresh eyes offer new perspectives. The only person I know who has won the U.S. visa lottery is my mother, and her good luck led us to move to Minneapolis when I was 14. We had been a middle-class family in Nigeria, and it was not until we moved away that I became aware of some of the serious issues facing our country. As a college student I was very interested in learning about Africa’s structural problems.

Dreams evolve. When I enrolled at MIIS I had a plan of working for the United Nations. As students we were encouraged to get field experience, and I got an internship working with Partnership for Transforming Health Systems 2 (PATHS2) doing household surveys in northern Nigeria.

I was not keen on health care before, but it became my passion. From that experience I also knew that I wanted to have a career where I was helping people directly.

Life-changing encounters happen. During my internship in northern Nigeria we met a young pregnant woman who was going through a very difficult birth. We took her

in our bus to a hospital in the city some distance away, where the doctors were able to save her but not her baby. That encounter changed my life. I now had this commitment to maternal health care.

Do the research. I still had to finish grad school and do my IPSS, but I kept doing research. I discovered that lack of access to blood transfusions is the major cause of death for mothers in Nigeria, and actually all of Africa. Postpartum hemorrhage is the number one killer of women in childbirth. It took me five years of research while I worked other jobs to figure out that safe distribution of blood and blood products would be a key to solving this issue.

The universe might be trying to tell you something. I was very lucky to be in Minneapolis when I had my little boy. It was very surreal as it was a breech birth and I needed an emergency C-section, just like the girl I had met all those years ago.

When I got back to Nigeria I decided this was what I was going to work on.

Life will only get more complicated. It was definitely a big risk when I left my fulltime job to focus on this new venture. I had a family and responsibilities, and I really liked going to the spa. I felt that if I did not do it then, I would never do it, because other things would just get in the way. I am lucky that my husband and my family agreed with me, and I took the leap.

You don’t always have to reinvent the wheel. I knew I needed to raise capital and create a distribution system. By founding LifeBank as a business, I was able to get

people to invest in my idea and get it started quickly. The idea was to take something that was already present, motorbikes, and make a new use case—blood distribution.

Traffic is so horrendous in the big cities of Nigeria that the only way to transport blood quickly is to get around it.

We are not saving anyone unless the blood is safe. I knew it was an issue of logistics and supply. Not many people donate blood in Nigeria, and there has been a problem with proper information collection, storage, and safe distribution.

We are committed to the safety of our products, and our proprietary system, SmartBag, uses blockchain to record and preserve manufacturing, supply, and safety information of cold-chain-dependent medical products such as blood.

A lot can happen in three years. We have gone from a rented desk to a company operating in two of Nigeria’s largest cities, with 30 staff members who have helped save over 3,000 lives. Our delivery time is now 45 minutes from the time the request comes in, and we are always working on improvements, including offering the delivery of oxygen.

Any problem is an opportunity to do something that matters. I’m filled with wonder every time I think about the lives that we have saved. A change in mindset is key, opening your eyes to problems and seeing them as an opportunity. I get excited when I’m confronted with problems, as I see that there are elegant solutions out there, waiting to be implemented. n

Spring 2019 13

A Rising Tide FEATURE

“For me, it’s difficult to picture Monterey without Del Monte Beach and San Carlos Beach,” says Andrea Fisher maiep ’18 of the two beaches that sandwich the wharf and marina areas of downtown Monterey—and that are both in danger of disappearing entirely in the coming decades, according to a recent study by the Institute’s Center for the Blue Economy (CBE).

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ith funding support from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Sea Grant Program, the study examined the impact of climate change–driven sea level rise on three coastal segments that fall within the city of Monterey: Del Monte Beach; the harbor area from the Municipal Wharf to the Coast Guard Pier; and the area from the Coast Guard Pier to the Pacific Grove city line that encompasses San Carlos Beach and Cannery Row. “The harbor already has a lot of protection, so we focused more on Del Monte Beach and the Cannery Row segments of the shore,” explains Dr. Charles Colgan, leader of the study team and director of research for the CBE. “With Del Monte Beach, the short-term problem will be

Del Monte Beach in 2019, facing east from Wharf #2. Studies project the beach will disappear entirely within a few decades due to sea level rise.

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erosion; the beach will get narrower progressively over time, at first mostly during the winter, and then for longer and longer periods during the year. Ultimately, with the higher sea level several decades out, the beach disappears.”

Loss of Del Monte Beach is only part of the potential impact of climate change, though, according to the study. “With the barrier of the beach eroded away,” says Colgan, “major flooding and property damage along Del Monte Avenue will recur. Floods will damage houses and businesses, and over time Del Monte Avenue, one of the most heavily traveled streets in the city, will become impassable more and more frequently.”

An earlier 2016 study of various sealevel-rise mitigation strategies, spear-

headed by the Nature Conservancy and with the participation of Institute Professor Fernando DePaolis, estimated that Del Monte Beach currently attracts approximately 88,000 visitors per year, who pour $2.7 million into the local economy.

The option that both studies recommend to local policy makers as the most cost-effective for trying to stave off these long-term effects is “continuous beach nourishment”—essentially, grabbing sand from elsewhere and depositing it on the beach, assuming sand continues to be available from other sources.

The projections for San Carlos Beach, where throngs of scuba divers gather every weekend to explore the kelp forest just offshore, are at least as alarming as those for Del Monte. “San Carlos Beach

Condominiums subject to flooding under most projected sea-level-rise scenarios.

ILLUSTRATION BY ROBERT NEUBECKER

will most likely be gone by 2050 under all but the most dramatic reductions in climate change,” says Colgan. “It just won’t be there as a beach. In fact, based on the latest projections, in a worst-case scenario San Carlos could be effectively gone in as few as 10 years.”

Fisher holds fond memories of both beaches from her time in Monterey. “Del Monte Beach and San Carlos Beach were places for solitude. I spent time on both beaches thinking and recovering from the stress of school, and also kayaking, free diving, and swimming with friends.

The beaches help create a sense of community because they attract so many different people.”

Farther west along the Monterey coastline, the effects of sea level rise will be felt differently. As Colgan explains, “Cannery Row’s problem is that all the hotels and refurbished cannery buildings are built into the rock and held up over the water by cantilevered structures, which have been degrading over time.”

But wear and tear on the buildings’ understructures isn’t even the biggest concern. “In 30 to 40 years, most of those buildings will be sitting at or near sea level. That means in a storm, waves are

Del Monte Beach House now has waves striking the front deck regularly during high tides.

going to come crashing right through the first-floor windows and doors.”

The options for addressing these risks are also different. “On Cannery Row, you’re going to need engineering changes to the buildings themselves. Beyond that, you may have to build some kind of offshore barrier to prevent the waves from literally climbing into someone’s hotel room,” says Colgan. “That would almost certainly create environmental problems, because it would interfere with the kelp forest that is key habitat for sea otters.

And, to be really effective, it would have to be high enough to block part of the view.”

Alumnus Matt Shipley maiep ’15 shares Fisher’s fond memories of time spent along the shore in Monterey. “Cannery Row is the second downtown of Monterey,” he says. “I remember biking, skateboarding, dancing, and sightseeing along Cannery Row as a student.”

The timing of these impacts on Cannery Row and the Monterey-area beaches is challenging to project. “Until the last year, the general consensus was that the greatest chance of these sorts of impacts occurring was after 2070, but there’s a chance that it could begin to occur

as soon as 2020. One of the things our analysis does is to recognize that there are very severe, although low-probability, events that could cause these really damaging effects to occur much sooner.”

Colgan adds that the most recent data on climate change and sea level rise, which was not available in time for this study, “probably advances the risk of the most serious effects by 20 years.”

The current study developed an interactive software platform that models over 10,000 possible computer-generated futures over 80 years using recent data to determine the maximum economic and environmental benefit of various sealevel-rise mitigation strategies.

Shipley sums up what the study’s findings mean to students and alumni who enjoyed these unique community assets during their years in Monterey: “I remember having bonfires on Del Monte Beach with fellow students and making new friends that I stay in touch with till this day. Losing these beaches to sea level rise would have a huge impact on recreation for both locals and tourists.” n

Berm built to prevent potential flooding of recreation trail and parking lots during king tides.

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Q&A way the language plan and language skills test are reviewed.

One key addition to the admissions process is scoring all applicants on a standard rubric, which staff then test against outcomes. We’ve worked with faculty and staff to develop an extensive rubric that we use to try to identify ideal candidates. We rate elements of each application and record all of this data. After a student graduates, we go back and look at their initial rubric score and how well they did in the program to make sure we are making the best decisions we can for both the applicants and the school.

A Conversation with Sadia Khan Admissions Director Sadia Khan has lived in her native Pakistan, Germany, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and the United States and considers herself a true citizen of the world. Since Khan arrived at the Institute in 2015, she and her team have reviewed and revamped the admissions process. We asked her to share six things you might not know about the admissions process.

T

he main goal of the Admissions Office is to make sure those admitted will get maximum benefit from the investment they’re making in graduate school. We are the gatekeepers. That means our office is always working closely with faculty to identify candidates who are going to do well in our programs. We’re not here to put roadblocks in their path; we’re here to ensure that they have a high likelihood of succeeding at the Institute and feeling good about their investment of time, effort, and money.

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Khan and her team have thoroughly reviewed and fine-tuned the admissions process. My goal over the past four years has been to build a very efficient, fair, and standardized admissions process that takes a holistic approach to reviewing each candidate. We look at their undergraduate transcripts, professional experience, internship opportunities, language skills, international experience, and more. We set up admission committees to make sure we’re assessing everyone in the same manner. We introduced the interview process and made changes to the

Interviews—typically conducted over video chat—are now an integral part of the Institute’s admissions process. As part of our assessment process, we interview every single eligible candidate, looking in particular at their professionalism and employability. Assistant Director Isabelle Dubrana and I usually conduct eight to 10 interviews a day, each running 30–45 minutes, depending on the number of questions the candidates have for us.

Admissions interviews don’t always go according to plan. I’ve interviewed people who have never used Skype, or are using it from their phone, and they don’t realize all I can see on my screen is part of their eye or nose. One applicant who was doing Peace Corps did her interview outside, and because of the mosquitoes she kept slapping herself all through the interview.

Admissions staff love their jobs! The other day I interviewed five candidates— from Pakistan, Madagascar, Burma, Ghana, and Russia—and I did them all sitting in my office here in Monterey. And when students write back after they’ve graduated and say, “Thank you for helping me really understand what I was looking for, and for believing in me,” that’s the absolute best part of my job. n

PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT ELLIS

IN BRIEF

recent news from members of the institute community in monterey and around the world.

SIGHTINGS ›› Central Coast Congressman Jimmy Panetta invited Anthony Musa MANPTS ’17 to be his guest at the State of the Union on February 5. Musa, a national security intelligence analyst in the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, was furloughed during January’s government shutdown. “As a federal employee serving to bolster our national security, Anthony is dedicated to protecting our country,” said Panetta. “Due to the shutdown, he and his colleagues could not properly execute their mission on our behalf.” ›› A column penned by Professor Lisa Leopold that offered advice to public figures on how to deliver a thorough and effective apology garnered significant interest in light of the current political climate.

The column was initially published by The Conversation and then was republished by several other media outlets.

education, government, and nonprofit sectors; and the media, enjoyed interactive showcases of Institute programs and centers, and heard presentations from Dean of the Institute Jeff DaytonJohnson and student Paula Granger MANPTS ’19. ›› Russian Ambassador to the United States Dr. Anatoly Antonov gave a presentation to Institute students, faculty, and staff in October before enjoying an informal lunch and conversation with Russian and American students from the Middlebury Institute and Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) dual master’s degree program in nonproliferation.

Antonov was the guest of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) and its director, Dr. William Potter, and the Graduate Initiative in Russian Studies (GIRS) and its director, Prof.

Anna Vassilieva.

and sanctions consultants with up-to-date knowledge and tools “to help combat the growing threat posed by sanctions evaders, terrorism financing, WMD proliferation financing, cryptocurrency crime, and more.”

AWARDS AND ACHIEVEMENTS ›› The interpreting corps at

›› The Institute announced

last fall’s World Economic Forum meeting in Tianjin, China, included at least five Middlebury Institute alumni: Donglei (Dolly) Zhao MAtI ’17, Yichi (Luna) Zhang MACI ’14, Shan Jiang MACI ’12, Pei (Peggy) He MACI ’14, and Mengnan Li MACI ’16. The conference was attended by more than 2,000 people from all over the world.

the fall 2019 launch of its new Professional Certificate in Spanish Community Interpreting, offering students the opportunity to receive nine months of training to become medical or legal interpreters, with only five days of residency in Monterey required. “Students who earn this certificate qualify for some of the most in-demand jobs in the interpreting marketplace today,” said Patricia Szasz MATESOL ’06, associate dean for language and professional programs.

›› First-semester students Danielle Fultz MAIEM ’19 and Randall Yamaoka MAIEM ’19 beat out established professionals in the international education management field to win a case competition at the Region XII NAFSA international education conference in Reno, Nevada, in October. “We were given 21 hours to create an internationalization plan for a made-up university,” said Fultz.

›› Profs. Moyara Ruehsen and

PRESENTATIONS ›› Several dozen community leaders gathered to learn more about the Institute’s impact, both globally and locally, at the inaugural “Institute Impact” event in January. Guests, including local elected officials; leaders in the business,

Jason Blazakis spearheaded the Monterey Threat Financing Forum held at the Institute March 20–22. The conference aimed to provide private sector compliance professionals, federal and state regulators, law enforcement, multilateral agency financial crime experts,

in the U.S. for up to three years after graduation. “The reclassification acknowledges that the TLM program requires high-level technical skills, including advanced computer skills and knowledge of programming languages,” notes TLM Program Chair Max Troyer MAT ’09.

›› The recent reclassification of the Translation and Localization Management (TLM) degree program as a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) program means that international students who earn the degree may now qualify to stay and work

›› When celebrated author Éric Vuillard, winner of the Prix Goncourt 2017, toured the U.S. last fall to promote the publishing of the English translation of his awardwinning novel L’Ordre du Jour (The Order of the Day), his interpreter was translation and interpretation professor Christiane Abel. “I was quite excited by this relatively rare opportunity to work with a prestigious author,” said Abel, adding that Vuillard gave elaborate answers to questions. The experience underscored to Abel the importance of constantly

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IN BRIEF

“ The designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) is precedent setting. Never before has the FTO sanctions tool been directed at a state body.”

—Prof. Jason Blazakis as quoted in a Wall Street Journal story, “U.S. to Designate Iranian Guard Corps a Foreign Terror Group.”

working on improving your general knowledge, and “also the fact that even experienced interpreters can be stressed and have to work on managing their adrenaline.” ›› The winner in the category of Favorite Short Story in the first Favorite Speculative Fiction in Translation Poll was City X: A Novel in 101 Tweets

by Alberto Chimal, translated from the Spanish by Institute students Sara Caplan MATLM ’20, Rita Correa MATI ’20, Mónica Bravo Díaz MATI ’20, Rachel Echeto MAT ’20, Emily Gilmore MATI ’20, Lauren Hammer MATI ’20, Hannah Mitchell MATI ’20, Matthew Mogulescu Ross MAcI ’20, and LaTasha Weston MATI ’20, under the guidance of Professor George Henson.

COLLABORATIONS ›› Alumnus Vincent Lauter MATESOL ’13 combined his English language teaching skills with his background in journalism and online content development by developing a special English for Modern Media Skills course for professional journalists in Turkey. The course grew out of collaborative work Lauter did with Turkish journalists,

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university communications faculty, and students in the U.S. Department of State’s American English E-Teacher Program. “Turkish journalists are very dedicated professionals who have endured a lot of politically and economically motivated stress in the last decade,” said Lauter, explaining that the primary goal of the project is “to raise the journalists’ English language proficiency in order to support interaction with international media outlets and provide the Turkish public with objective reporting.” ›› Working with Dr. Orion Lewis of Middlebury College, Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies student Chuck Woodson BA/MANPTS ’19 took on an ambitious directed study project to create Middlebury’s very own Special Operations Research Database. Their goal is to better document the experiences of the special operations community in order to draw analysis and lessons for future counterterrorism policy, and to create “a publicly facing database for researchers working on issues of asymmetric conflict,” such as government agencies, public policy think

tanks, academic institutions, and nongovernmental organizations. ›› Lisa Donohoe MATESOL ’09 and Alicia Brent MATESOL ’03 of the Institute’s Custom Language Services program recently developed a hybrid program titled English Communications for Disaster Management. Initially delivered in India, the program has now been picked up by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department of State, who have asked Donohoe and Brent to implement it at the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management in Jakarta. Interest in the course is particularly strong given Southeast Asia’s recent history of natural disasters and frequent use of English as a common language for intergovernmental communications. ›› When city officials in Nashville, Tennessee, were looking to reengineer the city’s proposal for a Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ), city staffer and Institute alumnus Maxwell Dotson MAITED ’17

contacted program co-chair Robert Rogowsky, who in turn connected him with Prof.

Warren “Wes” Small, along with Jennifer Romanin MAITED ’18 and Gunther Errhalt MAITED ’18, students in Small’s Trade Compliance course. The focus of the project was to develop a more effective approach to incorporating small and medium-size enterprises into the Nashville FTZ.

PUBLICATIONS ›› Multiple scholars connected to MIIS contributed to the new Routledge publication Understanding New Security Threats. Coedited by, and with an introduction coauthored by, Prof. Michel Gueldry, the book includes a chapter on global terrorism authored by Prof. Sharad Joshi and the late Crister Garrett MAIPS ’87.

Another introduction coauthor was alumna Gigi Gokcek MAIPS ’97. ›› In recent months, Jason Blazakis, director of the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, has published multiple opinion and analysis pieces in The Hill and other media outlets, as has student Shazar Shafqat MANPTS ’20.

Communiqué EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

Matt Jennings ›› Zachary Kallenborn MANPTS ’15 collaborated with Prof.

Philipp Bleek on two articles on the dangers of drones as a delivery system for weapons of mass destruction, which appeared in War on the Rocks and CBRNe World. ›› Prof. Sharad Joshi also had an article published in the journal Asian Security titled “How Terrorist Actors in Pakistan Use Nuclear Weapons for Political Influence.”

PASSAGES ›› Longtime MIIS community member Dr. Crister Garrett MAIPS ’87 died of cancer in March at the age of 56. He was the son of Stephen Garrett, a professor in the International Policy Studies program from 1972 to 2011. After earning his PhD, Garrett joined the Institute staff for several years, ultimately serving as an adjunct professor in 1998 and 1999. He then taught at the University of Wisconsin– Madison before moving in 2005 to the University of Leipzig in Germany, where he taught American history and contemporary politics and was regularly interviewed by the German media regarding American policy and politics.

President Emeritus Steve Baker said, “I knew Crister as the engaging son of my colleague Steve Garrett; as a brilliant student; and as an incredibly effective professor.

We lament his loss.” Former Director of Alumni Relations

Leah Gowron MPA ’97 said, “Crister represented the true spirit of a MIIS alumnus—his commitment to international education, living and working in a number of countries and acquiring languages along the way. The fact that Crister shared and hopefully instilled that same spirit and desire for adventure and learning in generations of students will be his legacy in academia.” ›› Alumna and faculty member Esther NavarroHall MACI ’85 passed away in November after a short illness. Prof. Navarro-Hall was “a pioneer in the translation and interpretation field in the United States who was loved and respected by so many,” said her friend and colleague Laura Burian MATI ’98. When her native Mexico was hit with the strongest earthquake in a century, Navarro-Hall organized an “interpreter brigade” that focused on coordinating assistance and directly aiding people in nonSpanish-speaking areas. “As interpreters and translators, we are a vital link in the communication chain that is so essential to all aid efforts,” she said at the time. Longtime colleague and friend Professor Barry Slaughter Olsen MACI ’99 added that it was his “privilege to work with her in and out of the interpreting booth over the years, including teaching together.” Prof. Holly Mikkelson MAIC ’76 praised Navarro-Hall’s “brilliance, her

warm heart, and her devotion to excellence in interpreting and in teaching.” Burian added, “I was thrilled to watch her travel to Mexico with Governor Brown to interpret for his visit with the Mexican president a few years ago.” ›› Jason Spindler, an American citizen killed in the January 15 terrorist attack in Nairobi, Kenya, was an adjunct professor who taught in the Institute’s Frontier Market Scouts (FMS) certificate program in 2015 and 2016. The cofounder and CEO of I-DEV International, an investment advisor in emerging markets, Spindler led FMS courses in Monterey, Washington, D.C., and Amsterdam. “Jason was a perfect role model for our FMS Fellows, who are seeking to build a career in enterprise and investment management while keeping true to high ideals,” said FMS cofounder Professor Yuwei Shi. Spindler, a 9/11 survivor, spent several years working at Salomon Smith Barney before joining the Peace Corps. “Our students benefitted from Jason’s knowledge and experience in so many ways,” said Shi. “Not only did he possess great technical excellence, but he also truly lived his vision for doing good and building a better world.” n

SENIOR EDITORS

Jason Warburg Eva Guðbergsdóttir DESIGNER

Paul Dahm ABOUT COMMUNIQUÉ

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