Story and photos by Matthew Dewald
For an example of the unique power of international education, consider the case of six students learning about human trafficking
TRAVELERS WANTED; NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY
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by meeting with activists in Thailand and Cambodia.
he clumps of black cables and electrical wires strung across Bangkok’s telephone poles form a dense canopy of urban vines that wend every which way — through trees, across storefronts, and into buildings. In May, a pair of professors and a half-dozen students walked under them along a busy road looking for their first lunch in Thailand. The group had landed in the country about 12 hours earlier, in the wee dark hours, and everyone was hungry. The professors — political scientist Monti Datta and education professor Bob Spires — both knew Bangkok well. The six students did not. None had been in Thailand before. Only one of them, an Indonesian national, had ever traveled to Southeast Asia. One student had never even been off the East Coast. As the group walked in the tropical heat, Datta’s plan for lunch was falling through. A restaurant he had discovered while teaching at Thammasat University in Bangkok for
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