Communique Winter 2016

AS THE DUST SETTLES 4 What it means to “rebuild” Nepal.

WISDOM AND WIT 8 What Pete La Raus mpa ’04 has learned.

Communiqué WINTER 2016

A Global Crisis The world did not notice until refugees landed on Europe’s doorstep, says Kate Sokol MPA ’10. PAGE 3

THE VIEW FROM SEGAL

FIVE MINUTES WITH KATE BROWN SOKOL MPA ’10

Seamless Boundaries Between Local and Global

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

onsider the news headlines of the past few months: leaders around the world are struggling to address monumental issues ranging from terrorism and migration to resource management and sustainable development, all while being challenged to collaborate with others with a language and cultural context different from their own.

These are big, thorny, truly formidable problems, yet I am heartened when I think about the work we are doing at the Institute, and how this work is preparing our students to participate on the global stage.

A few years ago, Professor Phil Murphy and his colleague Fernando de Paolis co-founded the Mixed-Methods Evaluation, Training, and Analysis (META) Lab to support a long-term student project involving collaboration with the police department and community organizations in neighboring Salinas.

Phil was our faculty speaker at Winter Commencement, and by way of introduction, I talked about how this hyper-local effort that is of paramount importance to our community could also serve as a blueprint for operations around the world.

A collaboration between META Lab and a community violence prevention program called Night Walks is a good example of this. Since 2009, community and governmental leaders in Salinas have

staged weekly patrols by local residents in neighborhoods with demonstrated high rates of crime. The idea is that if the patrols occur during the most dangerous hours for gang activity, the public presence of “civilians” will reduce the potential for violence.

Until recently, though, the program’s organizers operated by intuition and instinct, choosing locations and hours of operation without any real insight into when and where they were most needed.

Using aggregate police data and mapping software, the META Lab team was able to pinpoint specific hot spots of violence—locations, times, and frequencies.

The team is continuing today to use mapping tools to identify the ebbs and flows of gang violence in the city and better target resources aimed at prevention. They are also working on an evaluation of the impact of Night Walks on gang violence.

In this example, we’re talking about improving the lives of residents in three neighborhoods in Salinas. But it could just as easily have been five neighborhoods, or seven, or an entire town, and the town could just as easily have been in Korea, or Kosovo, or Kazakhstan.

The skills and principles are the same; only the context changes—and one of the things students come to Monterey to learn is how to tackle a wide range of problems in their own unique physical and cultural contexts. n

Until recently, though, the program’s organizers operated by intuition and instinct . . . using aggregate police data and mapping software, the META Lab team was able to pinpoint specific hot spots of violence.

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PHOTO: BRIDGET BESAW

Among the Rescuers As an emergency program coordinator with the International Rescue Committee, Kate Brown Sokol has seen humanity at its worst—and at its best. Crises have taken her to the Congo, Ukraine, and, most recently, the Greek island of Lesbos, where she was one of the first IRC emergency responders to arrive with the charge of aiding a flood of refugees fleeing conflict in Syria.

Here, her thoughts on what she has experienced.

The hardest part, always, is looking at people in front of you who are asking you for help and you aren’t able to give it to them. That is the personal. Professionally what I find the most challenging is keeping up with the policies and immigration systems that are evolving around us.

When I first arrived at the island of Lesbos in Greece, it felt like they were actually nonexistent, with only two police officers, working out of a shipping container, responsible for registering all of As bad as it has been in Greece, it is worse in many other places. I am always afraid that people forget about the rest of the world, the people in crises that also deserve their attention. Regarding this particular crisis I am sorry that it took people literally landing on your doorstep for the world to take notice of what is going on. The line between us and them is only imaginary; these are families just like ours who are facing impossible choices. I always try to remind people that, even though the numbers of people who are on the move are huge and

COVER PHOTO: CORBIS IMAGES

|

shocking, Europe is not being overrun.

These numbers are not so high when compared to the population of the continent.

The IRC global emergency response team can be called out with as little as 72 hours notice, but they try to give us more time if possible. Sometimes we will be called to assist in countries or areas where the IRC already has a program, but in other cases we have to start from scratch.

That means talking to partners and people on the ground to first determine whether or not we are needed. Once that has been decided, we can start prioritizing projects, hiring people, and setting up operations.

My first job with the IRC was as a grants manager, and I know that many people might see this as a necessary but boring first job in this field.I disagree about it being boring. I got to learn about the design and running of all of IRC’s programs in the Congo, first on a local level and later in Kinshasa where I also worked closely with the senior management. At first I did not want to commit to more than a year in

ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER

Africa because I had a serious boyfriend at the time (Evgeny Sokol MACI ’10), who is now my husband, and he was offered a great position with NASA in Moscow. But one year turned into three and even though we suffered through bad Skype connections we also acquired lots of frequent flyer miles and enjoyed our new careers.

The little things seem so trivial to me now. I guess living in places where electricity and running water are a privilege will do that to you. At heart I am a small town girl from Jefferson City, Missouri, and have always lived in a house with a yard, so living in an apartment in Moscow has been an adjustment. [As part of the emergency response team, kate has the flexibility to live anywhere she wants. Her husband Evgeny is Russian and works for NASA in Moscow.] Even though my Russian is getting better it is still hard to communicate, but I have found that I can find a way to enjoy myself anywhere. n

PORTRAIT ILLUSTRATION IN PROGRESS.

Winter 2016 3

ESSAY

“I came to understand that the worn temple represented Nepal: a modest yet proud country, with intricate details, symbols, and a unique structural system—all of which appears on the verge of falling apart but somehow holds together.”

As the Dust Settles What is means to “rebuild” Nepal.

BY AMANDA BENSEL

W

hen the peace corps invited me to serve as a volunteer in Nepal four years ago, the anticipation of spending two years in the heart of the Himalayas provided a palpable thrill.

The classic image of Shangri-la naturally captured my imagination—but the country I came to love proved to be much more.

Nepal is immensely divcerse, with landscapes ranging from sticky humid rainforests of tigers and elephants to

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barren alpine ridges and glacial peaks.

Confined to an area roughly the size of Tennessee, the people of Nepal make up 90 distinct ethnic groups, each with their own languages and cultural traditions.

Across the country, people practice Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, as well as blurred combinations and unique tangents of the major religions.

Walking the maze of Kathmandu’s narrow streets in my first week, I struggled to take it all in. A complex sym-

phony of car horns, the hiss of steam from dumpling pots, and the ringing of temple bells filled my ears. Goods spilled forth from open storefronts, and dense crowds navigated every shop display and pot hole with ease.

I distinctly remember discovering a dusty but dignified brick temple with intricate wood details and tiered roofing fringed in red and gold fabric. Upon closer examination, I found fresh marigold petals and red tika powder scattered

PHOTO: CORBIS IMAGES

on the ground, signs that the temple, despite its work edges, was frequently visitedA hundred yards farther, I spied a pair of Buddha’s eyes on a tall golden spire peeking out from a side alley.

Walking toward the spireI stumbled into a small square tucked away from the crowds. I sat down for a snack while a few older women shuffled past and an old man swept the dirt; hearning a noise behind me, I turned to see a stray cow nosing through some garbage.

In time, I came to understand that the worn temple represented Nepal: a modest yet proud country, with intricate details, symbols, and a unique structural system—all of which appears on the verge of falling apart but somehow holds together.

If home is defined as a place where the heart resides, then Nepal has become a second home for me. When the Gorkha earthquake ravaged the country in April 2015, just five months after I completed my Peace Corps service, I experienced all of the pain and frustrations that come from watching one’s home suffer from a distance.

From the beginning the media seemed to fixate on the sensational story: images of urban rubble and rescue teams, crumbled heritage sites, avalanches on Everest.

While these were significant tragedies, the limit of information angered me.

With every news photograph, I wanted to expand the edges to see the bigger picture, to see the full scene beyond the rubble of a crumbled building, to understand the extent of the damage beyond Kathmandu; to understand how people were coping.

As the 2015 spring semester wrapped

up, I joined the Ambassador Corps program through the Institute’s Center for Social Impact Learning, securing a position as interim director of a small NGO. I was soon on a plane, flying to Nepal, arriving just six weeks after the earthquake.

I was relieved to discover that Kathmandu was far from flattened. Yes, the destruction—collapsed buildings, fallen temples—was evident, but so was life being lived. Shops were open, the streets were jammed with traffic, uniformed children walked to school each morning, and the air smelled of it’s usual blend of incense, spices and petrol.

As far as I could tell, while the earthquake certainly caused new problems, it mostly exaggerated many issues that had already existed in Nepal. Those who had suffered the most—in both loss of life and of property—were predominately those who had struggled the most before the earthquake. The disaster could better be described as a class-quake than an earthquake, impacting the rural poor far more than the urban middle and upper classes. Similarity, the factors that slowed emergency relief efforts were the same that have slowed development in general. The rugged terrain and extreme summer rainfall pose an infrastructure challenge beyond the resources of the country to address. With poor roadways and limited electricity, even the simplest of transactions becomes a chore. One day at the start of the monsoon season, I traveled from the capital to a villiage 100 miles away. The journey required two taxi cabs and two buses, and involved a pair of flat tires and a lengthy walk. I ar-

rived 15 hours after I had departed.

Despite these obstacles, life goes on.

When a citizenry is accustomed to tolerating hardship, further encumberances are taken in stride. Binu Sapkota was in her two-story stone home when the earthquake hit. The building collapsed around her, trapping her for two hours and badly breaking her right leg. I met her two months later. In typical Nepali fashion, Binu was hospitable to a fault, inviting me to her shelter made of scrap plywood and offering me a tin cup filled with tea. When I asked her what she planned to do, I was somewhat surprised at her response. Rather than focusing on her immediate plight, she spoke more expansively. “We need more than money to rebuild,” she explained,. “We need engineers to teach us how to do it properly so this doesn’t happen again.”

Binu’s insight made a big impression on me. Just as the occurrence of a major earthquake was never a question of “if” but a quesiton of “when,” the current crisis is less a question of how long will it take to recover, but of what, exactly, recovery looks like.

If recovery is defined as “life back to normal,” then what about those for whom the pre-disaster status quo was never adequate? How can Nepal rebuild to be stronger than before? How can this momnt of heightened international attention and influx of resources be best leveraged to support long-term development and empowerment of those who suffered most?

As the dust settles, and I take on new roles in Nepal, these are the questions I

Winter 2016 5

NUMBERS

Q&A

A Conversation with Maria Laura Abal mat ’10 Staff Translator, U.S. State Department

Q: A historic policy change by the Unit-

ed States government had a direct impact on your work. What are you doing in connection with the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba?

A:

Our office has translated fact sheets, website content, diplomatic notes and letters, and speeches by Secretary of State Kerry. Yes, we are translating official documents. And yes, many of our translation requesters are in direct contact with their counterparts in Cuba.

Q: Are

the conversations you are facilitating more about the basic details of diplomacy (embassies and ambassadors)

or about broader policy issues (trade, immigration.) or both?

A: The conversations we are facilitating

are about basic details of diplomacy, such as the reestablishment of diplomatic relations, the reopening of embassies, and related issues. But the speeches and fact sheets we have translated, many of them available on line, touch on a wide range of bilateral issues.

Q:

Is this assignment for translation only, or are you doing interpreting as well?

A: Our division provides translation ser-

vices, but we work closely with the interpreters in the Interpreting Division of our

office. We engage in consultations, collaborate and share information. Thus, we ensure consistency and learn from each other, making our jobs more effective and enjoyable.

Q: How have your previous professional experiences prepared you for this assignment?

A: Everything

I have ever learned in different professional settings comes into play every time I am faced with an assignment. I lived in Miami for 12 years.

Working in the field of translation and interpretation there afforded me a great opportunity to learn about the history and culture of Cuba. On a related note, I was part of a municipal government’s international affairs team in its mayor’s office. In that capacity, I was exposed to a local government’s diplomatic perspective. A big priority was people-to-people exchange initiatives based on Sister Cities agreements. Being in direct contact with the people benefiting from those

Maria Laura Abal

assignment?

A: MIIS gave me exposure to the field

of translation in international affairs. At MIIS, I also learned translation-specific and language-specific techniques I put in practice every day. But most importantly, and having a major impact in my life beyond this assignment, MIIS gave me lifelong friends and colleagues who are always there for me (Claudia Tebay, Alfonso Ferrer Amich, Carmen Villalba Ruiz and Anna Martorell Fusté). MIIS made me a part of its community and I will always be thankful for having that support in my life.

your dream job?

A:

Where She Works: U.S. Department of State, Office of Language Services, Translating Division, Romance Language Branch

My current job was my dream job. I feel blessed.

Q: Aside

from its historic nature, what are some other challenges of this assignment?

When She Started Her Current Position: November 2014

A:

Translating diplomatic notes involves following certain time-tested practices, so that helps ensure accuracy and effectiveness. Translating speeches is completely different in that you need to engage the creative side of your brain. In an assignment of this kind, you particularly benefit from brainstorming with colleagues and finding inspiration in the culture of your target audience. n

What You Should Know: A month after Abal started her new job, President Obama announced the restoration of diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba.

Communiqué

Q: How has MIIS prepared you for this

Q: When you were a student, what was

Job Title: Staff Translator

6

efforts all over the world has shaped me in many ways.

In general, my past work experiences have made me aware of cultural differences we must consider in our line of work. In addition, having a legal translation degree from my native country of Argentina and legal translation experience has proven to be a plus in terms of accuracy and subject-matter knowledge.

PHOTO: ROBERT RIVES

each january, students from the Institute travel abroad for immersive learning courses in Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America. We take a look at where they went; what they do; why they go; and how their work is measured.

3

Percentage of indigenous population in Chile who receive any education beyond high school

5

Immersive learning courses offered by the Institute in other countries during 2015 winter term

50

Cups of Nepali milk tea consumed by students in Nepal daily

64

Number of students who participated in courses conducted in Spain, Rwanda, Peru, Chile, and Nepal

7,200

Elevation, in feet, of the Hotel at the End of the Universe, where students in Nepal stayed

12,000

Volunteer hours that the Institute’s partner in Chile, Andean Alliance for Sustainable Development, facilitate in one year

1,000,000

Rwandans served by Partners in Health, the host of Institute students in Rwanda, in partnership with the Rwandan government.

Winter 2016 7

WHAT I’VE LEARNED

FROM THE ARCHIVES people who need to get to the next day or the next week. There are no “thank yous.” It can take quite a toll emotionally.

One of the things I’ve said to myself is that I need to redefine what poverty means, because poverty is most definitely not just economic. It’s a poverty of experience, a poverty of perspective.

Today the focus is less on giving aid than on how we can mentor and help and create that capacity, that ability, that desire to grow as a community or a society.

Before I take any action, I want to really understand the context and the environment that I’m working in culturally and politically. It’s important to understand that some cultures have not always been welcoming of foreigners, and to understand when I need to use someone as a proxy, because I won’t be listened to. It’s about recognizing the context that I’m working in and better using the tools that are available to me. I would rather not do anything, than do the wrong thing.

PETE LA RAUS

Wisdom and Wit

P

ete la raus mpa ’04 has lived and worked in Bolivia, the United States, Sudan, Nicaragua, Indonesia, Colombia, Panama, Myanmar, and Nepal. He has served in the Peace Corps as a volunteer and as a country director, and he has worked for Save the Children as an intern and now as a deputy team leader for program development and quality.

He has discovered the perils of chewing betel nut to the emotional impact of devoting your life to work that can feel, at times, like trying to hold back a torrent of water by sticking one’s finger in a hole

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in a dam. This is what he’s learned along the way.

Development and relief work is an intriguing mix of academic questions and applied learning. It’s not purely theoretical; it’s complex work that can have a real impact on people’s lives.

The most challenging part is that you expect people to say “thank you”; you expect to see the best side of humanity.

The reality is that you are dealing with people in dire situations—people who don’t have a lot of experience outside of civil war or conflict or poverty. These are

I was amazed more by how similar things are than by how different they are, whether it was Malawi or Sudan or Nicaragua or Colombia or even Indonesia.

HIV is HIV. Poverty is poverty. Lack of access to health care is lack of access to health care. That was a great foundation for me in terms of understanding the very real challenges that exist in the development world.

The hardest part about Sudan was that it was lonely. Even though there were a lot of people around, when you’re at that level of intensity for an extended period of time, you don’t necessarily have a closeknit group of friends and family.

At one point I thought “It doesn’t matter what I do or what we do, it’s not going to be enough.” As an aid worker, it’s scary to think that. It’s that feeling like sticking your finger in a dam.

PHOTO: JONATHAN HOUSE

In Colombia, we were working on some child protection programs, and we’d been working in this one area where there’d been a lot of crime, a lot of delinquency.

And a couple of kids came up to me and said “Thank you. I can go to school now.

I feel safer now. I’m not worried about gangs anymore.” We didn’t solve the gang problem. But in the one area where we were working, the teenagers felt safe, and they were grateful. And that thank you meant a lot; it’s very rare.

I was sitting down at a formal ceremony in a community in Indonesia and as part of the ceremony, everybody had to chew a betel nut. It was expected of me as the country director and guest of honor. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing, and everyone’s eyes were on me. I put it in my mouth and immediately started to choke; it was kind of like chewing on a bunch of raw tobacco. I had red stuff all over my mouth and my cheeks and my lips and everybody’s looking at me, and I didn’t realize that you’re culturally expected to spit everything out. I don’t know how they did it, but the Indonesians were able to spit it in these very delicate little drops, but when I spit, it was more like an eruption that came out of my mouth, this rain of red betel nut juice.

You have to have the technical skills to do the job. But everything you do exists within the cultural context. The first time I was in Indonesia, I made a few people cry, because I had been too direct. I said “This doesn’t meet my expectations” and culturally, you just don’t do that. In Sudan, it was perfectly appropriate to yell at people; that’s what they were used to. In Asia, no way. In a lot of other cultures time is not measured the same way, or results are less concrete.

Knowing the language, just speaking a few key phrases if you’re going someplace where you’re not really expected to know the language, is huge. Understanding the

language helps you understand the culture, which helps you understand the best way to work.

I feel like a citizen of the world. I feel like I could go pretty much anywhere and make it my home, which is both good and bad. I know people all over the world, which is exciting and rewarding, but I don’t necessarily feel anchored to one place. At a certain point, I think it’s really important to know where you’re from.

When I come back to the States, a lot of people get upset about what I consider to be trivial things. When you’ve traveled all over the world, those kinds of things just aren’t important.

The biggest adaptation is really being flexible. It’s recognizing there’s a lot I don’t know, that I’m going to make a lot of mistakes, just accepting that, knowing it’s going to happen. And trying to be humble and flexible.

When I went to MIIS it put a real conceptual framework around everything that I had lived [in the Peace Corps]. It made me understand that what I had done before was just scratching the surface, and the classroom really propelled me to new depths of understanding and gave me the tools to do development work.

There’s more to life than a job. You can’t define yourself by what you do. It’s really important to have personal relationships, and to maintain them, because in this line of work, so many people come and go from one country to another every couple of years.

You can train and build capacity and coach and mentor and work as hard as you can, but ultimately development is not your decision. You create the environment and facilitate an environment where people can learn and grow and improve their lot in life, but the decision ultimately is theirs, not yours. n

Regarding WMDs in Iraq On February 6, 2003, Raymond Zilinskas, the director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation program at the Institute appeared on NPR’s afternoon program All Things Considered. In an interview with correspondent Michelle Norris, Zilinskas was quizzed about a now-infamous speech Secretary of State Colin Powell made before the United Nations the day before. ¶ Zelinskas was specifically asked about Powell’s assertion that Iraq was constructing mobile bioweapons facilities. He called the presentation “powerful,” and expressed concern about the diagrams of mobile facilities, but also cautioned that while not impossible to construct, it would require a considerable undertaking on the part of the Iraqis.

And then there was this caveat:

“I wouldn’t call this hard evidence because these were diagrams based on what sounded like the revelations of one defector. And Blix has said that they have not found any sign of mobile laboratories.” ​As to the strength of Powell’s argument:

“I must say, he looked like he really believed in what he was presenting.”

Winter 2016 9

Neutrinos Headline Goes Here and There collier, who previously served as senior director for inspiration and outreach at Stanford, is charged with creating Middlebury’s digital learning strategy, and she sees her role as creating fertile ground for experimentation—“a space for things to emerge, to play.” She believes technology in learning should enhance the existing deep connections between faculty and students and give each learner a space that represents their interests and needs.

Collier, who previously served as senior director for inspiration and outreach at Stanford, is charged with creating Middlebury’s digital learning strategy, and she sees her role as creating fertile ground for experimentation.

Collier, who previously served as senior director for inspiration and outreach at Stanford, is charged with creating Middlebury’s digital learning strategy, and she sees her role as creating fertile ground for experimentation. n

Understanding ISIS Jeffrey Bale has been sounding the alarm for some time.

TIMELINE 1983 Canadian physicists establish underground laboratory in Creighton mine, near Sudbury, Ontario.

Elevator carries research staff to well over a mile below the earth’s surface.

1985 University of Irvine’s Herb Chen publishes papers suggesting heavy water as a target medium. Heavy water or D2O can detect the type of neutrinos Davis measured as well as all other neutrinos.

Late 1980s The experiment must be constructed with extremely low radioactive background materials. The heavy water has too much Tritium, the light detector glass envelope is too radioactive, and the water and vessel in which the heavy water sits has to be extremely radiopure but also optically clear. Studies by INCO mining company show it’s possible to construct a large cavity as long as it was far enough from fault lines and low rock stress.

1986 An exploratory tunnel is excavated at Creighton’s 6800-foot level, and a suitable site for a 20m-diameter cavity is located.

1988 At Guelph University, Ferenc learns about neutrino physics and subsequently volunteers on the SNO project.

1990–1993 The SNO cavity in Creighton is the largest in the world at this depth, requiring the latest advances in rock stabilization and ground control techniques, as the rock is under enormous pressure.

SNO Labs Challenges included constructing the 12m-diameter acrylic sphere out of panels that had to fit perfectly together. And since components had to fit inside a cage elevator, the vessel was assembled above ground and then disassembled and shipped underground. The connectors of the light detectors also tended to break down during filling of the detector because of diffusion of air out of the PMT highvoltage connectors into the degassed water. To avoid this, the water was re-gassed with pure N2 using a gas-permeable membrane unit.

And to ensure a high level of cleanliness in the underground facility, specific procedures and protocols are instituted.

Ultimately, SNO confirmed that neutrinos from the sun oscillate from one flavor to another. This paper, with 150 authors, rocked the physics world and was ranked as one of the top three scientific breakthroughs of 2002 in Science and Discover magazines, and the American Institute of Physics.

Researchers arrive at the main floor of SNO lab and proceed through the cleaning process before entering the labratory.

We need a detailed caption that discusses what actually happens in the lab portion.

Perhaps Ferenc can write up a single paragraph and it can be distilled into something suitable for everyday readers. The overall length should mirror the length of this copy block.

ILLUSTRATION NOT TO SCALE

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ILLUSTRATION: MICHAEL NEWHOUSE

F

ollowing last november’s devastating terrorist attacks in Paris, many analysts in the international community expressed surprise at the occurrence of the Islamic State staging an operation far beyond its territorial base.

Jeffrey Bale was not one of those people. In an interview with the Washington Post, the associate professor in the Graduate School of International Policy and Management said: “Those Western government officials and academic ‘experts’ who were claiming that the IS was focused entirely on carrying out operations in territories in Iraq, Syria, or other Muslim countries, thereby suggesting that the group did not represent a serious threat to the West, have been wrong all along All one has to do to understand the motives and goals of Islamist groups is to pay attention to what they themselves are openly and, indeed, proudly saying.”

Bale, who leads Institute seminars on global jihadism, state terrorism, and apocalyptic millenarianism, has been studying terrorism and extremist movements for nearly 30 years, and his commentary on the terrorist organization known as the Islamist State has been consistent in its assessment of the danger it poses to the United States. “[The Islamist State has] identified us as their enemy,” Bale told CBS-affiliate KION in December, the day after President Barack Obama issued a four-point plan to combat the extremist group. “So when somebody is identifying you as their enemy, the least you should do is respect them enough to take them seriously. And say, you’ve identified us as your enemy, we will identify you as our enemy. And now that we’ve recognized you as our enemy, we are going to take whatever steps are necessary to weaken you and prevent you from carrying out attacks.” n

PHOTO: BRETT SIMISON

AMY COLLIER

How to Navigate the Digital Learning Space

Expert advice from Middlebury’s associate provost.

“

W

e have to ask ourselves: What are our goals?” says Amy Collier, the new associate provost for digital learning at Middlebury, “before we can start thinking about how to get there.”

When she talks about digital learning, she says that it’s a mistake to be fixated on the tools available at the expense of what is to be gained.

Collier, who previously served as senior director for inspiration and outreach at Stanford, is charged with creating Middlebury’s digital learning strategy, and she sees her role as creating fertile ground for experimentation—“a space for things to emerge, to play.” She believes technology in learning should enhance the existing deep connections between faculty and students and give each learner a space that represents their interests and needs.

A big part of Collier’s philosophy is not allowing tools to determine what we do and how we do it. She quotes the cyberanthropologist Amber Case, who studies what happens when we allow the tools we use to create identities that are a “templated self.” Pushing back on that, Collier has

launched MiddCreate, which gives everyone in the Middlebury community their own space on the web.

“The idea is to give faculty, staff and students a toolset where they can be agents of their own digital identity and work” she explains, and adds that one of the greatest benefits is that users own their data.

Collier’s exploratory approach includes reaching out to people who have already been working in this space across the institution, identifying collaboration opportunities, and making connections. Many faculty members have been experimenting with hybrid learning, and Collier sees more of that in the future. She cites a pair of pilot pre-immersion modules created for students enrolling in the Russian or Korean language schools as a good example.

Those students noted less anxiety for the summer course, according to Collier.

“You could also see us creating modules that help students transition to another culture before leaving for a study abroad program and allow them to stay connected afterwards.” In general, she says, “the more that people play with these projects, the more we all learn.” n —Eva Guðbergsdóttir

Winter 2016 11

Presidential Counsel

IN BRIEF

With the United States poised to elect a new president in 2016, Communiqué asked six faculty members in the Institute’s Graduate School of International Policy and Management to respond to this question: What advice would you give the next president of the United States?

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

As you take office as the 45th president of a republic that aspires to bestow all human beings with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, you must be guided by such principles in all your decisions. Today, millions of immigrants work in the pursuit of these principles, but live in fear as they are considered criminals for daring to work without proper documents. It is past time that you grant them the path to a life with dignity and freedom.

—William Arrocha, assistant professor, International Policy and Development

SIGHTINGS

The next president will face a number of complex challenges on the foreign policy and security front, including the terrorist threat from the Islamic State, the conflict in Syria, the Iran nuclear deal, and developments in North Korea, Russia, China, and the Asia-Pacific region, among others. This will require a set of strategies that focuses on the long term—keeping in mind known/anticipated (and the possibility of unknown) consequences—and does not tie the U.S. down with inflexible policy commitments.

—Sharad Joshi, assistant professor, Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies Focus on redesigning the American education system. First, Americans should stop seeing themselves as better than anyone else and the United States as the most

powerful country that can save the world. Second, Americans must overcome their simplistic worldview that “those who are not with us are against us.” Emphasize the importance of training in global history, geography, and international travel. All policies must incorporate greater self-examination by the United States, with an emphasis on dialogue imbued with concern for justice.

—Nukhet Kardam, professor, International Policy and Development; Public Administration Don’t assume you understand presidential power. It’s not like TV, unless you’ve seen the BBC comedy Yes, Minister.

After Eisenhower was elected, Harry Truman said, “He’ll sit here, and he’ll say, ‘Do this! Do that!’ And nothing will happen. Poor Ike—it won’t be a bit like the Army. He’ll find it very frustrating.” If you don’t want to be frustrated by cabinet members who say “yes” but do “no,” or bureaucrats who leak information, read Richard Neustadt’s book Presidential Power. Then watch Yes, Minister again.

—Jeffrey Lewis, director, East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Institute’s James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies; adjunct professor, Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies I believe we should revisit the recommendations of the bipartisan Simson-Bowles debt reduction plan of 2013. The underlying principles of that plan are sound, and they specifically address the most pressing issues, such as rising health care costs, an aging population, and an unintelligible and unfair tax code. Unfortunately, tax reform and raising the retirement age are not going to win votes, but we need to act soon. And since the president has to shape the budget together with Congress, I’m not holding out hope.

—Moyara Ruehsen, associate professor, Business Administration What the world needs now is… love. We need a clear-eyed, sure-footed stretch towards creating institutions that promote human solidarity and collaboration in every domain—from grappling with racism and drought to mitigating global climate change. The Paris climate agreement is a beacon, the biggest collective human undertaking ever attempted. With seven billion of us living in close quarters and relying on deteriorating life-support systems, the way forward requires inspired leadership in nudging us all toward cooperation.

—Lyuba Zarsky, professor, Business Administration; International Environmental Policy n

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ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER

›› International media coverage

of North Korea’s January 5 nuclear test highlighted the perspectives and insights of experts at the Institute’s James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) including Ferenc DalnokiVeress, Jeffrey Lewis, Melissa Hanham, and Miles Pomper.

Outlets featuring quotes from or interviews with CNS experts included the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, BBC News, CNN, Reuters, the Associated Press, HuffPost Live, and National Public Radio. ›› Former dean and current adjunct professor Wilhelm (Bill) Weber shared the news that alumnus Adrian Delgado mati ’93 had the opportunity to meet Pope Francis last fall— while Delgado was interpreting for United Nations SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon. Bill also shared news from the December climate talks in Paris, where Pascale LedeurKraus mati ’83 and Julien Brasseur mati ’02 produced the French translation of Bill Gates’ paper on his Initiative on Energy Innovation, under the supervision of Maureen Sweeney mpa ’94, a principal at Tiller Language Services in Seattle. ›› The release of Jonathan Pollard after 20 years in

prison for delivering highly classified U.S. intelligence materials to Israeli operatives produced numerous op-ed commentaries, including one in the Al-Monitor referencing Professor Avner Cohen’s description of Mordechai Vanunu, convicted in Israel of revealing secrets about Israel’s nuclear program, as the “original Edward Snowden.” ›› Prof. Christiane Abel mati

’96, Prof. Laura Burian mati ’95, Prof. Barry Olsen maci ’99 and several other alumni served as interpreters for the August 31 glacier Conference in Anchorage, Alaska, featuring speakers including President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry.

The Conference on Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement and Resilience, or glacier, highlighted international and domestic priorities in the Arctic.

PRESENTATIONS ›› Three faculty members from the Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies program were among the invited speakers at a workshop held at Oxford University in September 2015. Professors William Potter, Avner Cohen, and Jeff Knopf gave talks at a workshop titled “Re-Imagining the Global Nuclear Order,” co-sponsored by the American

Academy of Arts and Sciences, Stanford University, and Oxford University. The conference brought together leading experts from around the world on the topics of nuclear weapons and global governance. ›› Professor Laura Burian

mati ’98 represented the Middlebury Institute at the inauguration of new Middlebury President Laurie Patton in Vermont last October. In her remarks, Prof. Burian told the audience that “We at the Institute are delighted and honored to be the newest member of the Middlebury family, because we share so many values with our Middlebury colleagues here in Vermont and around the world. We all strive to educate global citizens who can bridge cultural, organizational, disciplinary, and linguistic divides to produce sustainable and equitable solutions to global challenges.” ›› Chen Kane, the director of the Middle East Nonproliferation Project at CNS, and Philipp Bleek, an assistant professor with the Institute and a fellow at CNS, co-led a Washington, D.C. workshop co-sponsored by CNS and titled “Elimination of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)—Lessons Learned.”

The workshop engaged more than 40 government officials and nongovernmental experts and covered strategic, diplomatic, legal, technical, and inter- and intra-agency

dynamics related to WMD elimination, as well as a number of case studies.

AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS ›› Three students—Sarah

Bidgood manpts ’16, Meagan Braun mba/maiep ’15, and Miranda Diebel mba/maips ’15—were among twenty American and twenty Russian students selected to participate in Stanford University’s U.S.-Russia Forum.

The program began with a fall conference in Moscow and will include eight months of work on collaborative research projects, culminating in a spring capstone conference at Stanford University. Meagan and Sarah have combined their participation at the Stanford program with professional field research supported by the Institute’s Graduate Initiative in Russian Studies. ›› Yuniya Khan mpa ’07 was

a finalist for the Fulbright National Geographic fellowship—but she didn’t win one. Rather than giving up on an initiative she believed in, however, she decided to pursue her project anyway. After completing a Frontier Market Scouts (fms) assignment in Amsterdam, she traveled to Brazil, where she has launched her original Fulbright project, capitalizing on relationships she developed during and after her fms experience. Visit www. emergesalvador.com for more information on Khan’s initiative to support Afro-Brazilian

Winter 2016 13

IN BRIEF

“We have to accept the fact that as long as we have a ruthless enemy determined to attack us, there are periodically going to be successful attacks.”

—Terrorism Studies professor Jeffrey Bale, commenting on the November 13 Paris attacks in the Los Angeles Times

entrepreneurs in the town of Salvador, Brazil. ›› The Monterey Bay Chapter of the World Affairs Council gave the Singleton Scholarship Award to students Kenji Tabery maiep ’16 and Sarah Bidgood manpts ’16 at a fall luncheon that also featured Professor William Arrocha as the keynote speaker, giving a talk on “The Global Migration Crisis.” ›› Executive Director for

Research Centers and Initiatives Amy Sands—whose former roles include deputy director of CNS—has recently participated on three different high-level advisory bodies in the security field. In fall 2014, she was appointed to a two-year term with the U.S. Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board; in spring 2015, she was appointed to the Argonne National Laboratory’s National Security Advisory Board; and during the first half of 2015, she served as a member of a task force formed by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) to examine the challenges of implementing the Iran Nuclear Agreement, which produced a report titled “Six Achievable Steps for Implementing an

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Effective Verification Regime for a Nuclear Agreement with Iran.” ›› Professor Tsuneo Akaha has

been elected to serve a threeyear term (2016-2019) as the Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast (ASPAC) representative on the Council of Conferences (COC) of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS). The AAS is the largest scholarly association in the world dedicated to the study of Asia.

The COC serves as the liaison between AAS and its nine regional affiliates, including ASPAC, for which Prof. Akaha served as president in 2013-15. ›› Alumna Jennifer An maci

’11 was recently honored with the Korean Literature Translation Award for New Career Translators for her translation into English of the short story “Lady Venus” by novelist Eun Heekyung. The Translation Award for New Career Translators, now in its 14th year, was created for the purpose of discovering and encouraging promising new translators. An came to the Institute as an advanced entry student, and served as chief interpreter at the 2010 Fall Forum as well as at TEDxMonterey 2011. Since

graduating, she has worked as a freelance conference interpreter and translator for the U.S. State Department and the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva and Washington D.C. ›› Last issue we reported that Alan Lovewell maiep ’10 and his non-profit organization Real Good Fish were one of 20 winners of a $100,000 Chase Mission Main Street Grant.

It turns out Lovewell was just getting started, as we learned subsequently that he and Real Good Fish were also one of ten winners of the J.M.K. Innovation Prize offered by the J.M. Kaplan Foundation.

The prize award consists of up to three years of support at $50,000 per year, plus $25,000 for technical assistance or project expenses. ›› CNS International Advisory

Council member Cary Neiman was selected as a Distinguished Honoree for the Monterey Peninsula community’s Philanthropy Day 2015. At a Pebble Beach ceremony attended by Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Institute Jeff Dayton-Johnson and CNS Director Dr. William Potter, Neiman was praised for “his

sustained philanthropic giving, advocacy, and support of the center’s outreach efforts,” and Potter expressed his great appreciation to Neiman for his “tireless efforts” on behalf of CNS. In addition to serving on CNS’s Advisory Council, Neiman also is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Vienna Center for Disarmament and NonProliferation. ›› In November, Arijit Sen maiep

’16 was named one of eight OneEnergy Scholars for 2015.

The five-year-old program, co-sponsored by OneEnergy Renewables and Net Impact, recognizes graduate students who “have demonstrated exceptional leadership and vision in the renewable energy industry.” OneEnergy Scholars receive mentorship from industry professionals, personalized career counseling, internships, and networking opportunities designed to “accelerate the development” of students targeting a career in the clean energy industry.

professional development to prepare them academically and professionally for a career in the U.S. Foreign Service. Holly describes becoming a Foreign service Officer as her “dream job,” and says of her first semester “I’ve met students from all over the world and have heard some fascinating stories.”

›› Professor Ed Laurance

COLLABORATIONS ›› After taking a Spanish class

with Professor Gabriel Guillén in her first semester, April Danyluk maiem/mpa ’16 was eager to keep practicing the language by connecting with native speakers in Monterey County. She discussed this with Guillén, who embraced the idea and immediately started exploring opportunities for students to connect with the large Hispanic community in the surrounding area. During fall semester he and April organized a pilot program that connects Institute students with a group of women in the nearby community of Soledad who would like to improve their English skills. Every month, Guillén and fourteen students traveled to Soledad to engage with the women in a two-hour tandem learning session, talking about a chosen topic for five minutes in Spanish, then five minutes in English, with Guillen providing a series of discussion prompts. ›› The first-ever Chinese

›› First-year student Holly Miles maiep ’17 received a Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship. Pickering Fellows receive financial support, mentoring and

education.” Professors Kathi Bailey and Peter Shaw provided insightful keynote presentations, followed by a panel discussion moderated by Professor John Hedgcock. The afternoon session included an “innovation-swap” trade fair showcasing innovative language teaching methods.

Innovation Forum convened on the Institute campus in October, aiming to “jumpstart and create a sustainable conversation of innovation for the field of Chinese language

and six students spent fall semester evaluating a violence reduction program conducted by the organizations UCAN and Ceasefire in Chicago.

The program recruits mature former gang members to work in high violence areas to interrupt violence before it starts and work to change the behavior of high risk youth involved in violence. The students—Chris Callaghan mpa ’16, Evyn Simpson maips ’16, Jasmine Lambert mpa/ maiep ’15, Jamie Stanton mpa ’16, Tom Stagg mpa ’16, and Slater Matzke mpa ’16— spent four days in Chicago interviewing the teams working in two neighborhoods, as well as collecting and analyzing data produced by the program.

PUBLICATIONS ›› Professor Moyara Ruehsen, whose areas of focus include money laundering and financial crime, teamed up with CNS Deputy Director Leonard Spector to co-author a paper titled “Following the proliferation money” for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Chair Professor Jeffrey Knopf is the editor of International Cooperation on WMD Nonproliferation (University of Georgia Press, 2015), a new book examining international nonproliferation cooperation outside of the major treaties such as the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (npt).

Prof. Knopf also wrote the introductory and concluding chapters in the volume, which grew out of a research project he directed. International Cooperation on WMD Nonproliferation is the first major study to systematically examine these other cooperative arrangements for limiting proliferation. ›› December graduate Muhammad Umer Khan manpts ’15 celebrated an extra accolade that day, after his research paper “Tackling Nuclear and Radiological Terrorism in South Asia: India-Pakistan Joint Nuclear Detection Architecture” won the 2015 International Journal of Nuclear Security writing competition’s Award of Distinction in Policy, Law, and Diplomacy. As a result of this award, Khan’s paper, which started as a term paper in Professor George Moore’s class on nuclear forensics, will be published in the Journal. Khan, who came to the Middlebury Institute with the goal of completing a certificate in nonproliferation studies, ended up earning a full master’s degree thanks to a generous scholarship from the Institute and CRDF Global. n

Communiqué EDITOR

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›› Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies Program

Winter 2016 15

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