annual report 2005 - The Watson Institute for International Studies

CROSSCUTTING INITIATIVES
WATSON PROGRAMS
A growing number of Watson Institute research projects span more than one
programmatic theme. This area identifies those initiatives that cut across traditional
disciplinary boundaries to explore critical issues in international studies.
PROJECTS
CULTURAL AWARENESS
AND THE MILITARY
Keith Brown and Catherine Lutz, Politics, Culture, and Identity
Program, and James Der Derian, Global Security Program,
Principal Co-investigators
In a range of deployments since the early 1990s—Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo,
and now Iraq—the U.S. military has been tasked with making peace as well
as waging war and has been coming to terms with the importance of culture.
Since 2003, the U.S. media has reported on “cultural sensitivity training”
given to troops before deployment to Iraq. And, some high-ranking military
and congressional leaders have identified a “culture gap” in U.S. military
capacity and began to advocate various tactics to address a commitment to
understanding “cultural terrain.”
All this raises questions for social scientists concerned with the use (and
potential abuse) of the concept of “culture” by U.S. policymakers. In 2004,
the Politics, Culture and Identity Program launched a project with the Global
Security Program, which set out to investigate the ethical and practical
issues raised by the military’s quest for greater cultural awareness.
In collaboration with the Pell Center for International Studies at Salve Regina
University, a workshop was held in December 2004, titled “Prepared for
Peace?: The Use and Abuse of ‘Culture’ in Military Simulations, Training,
and Education,” which brought together social scientists and current serving
military personnel. U.S. Senator Jack Reed (RI) opened the event just after
returning from fact-finding trip to Iraq. The workshop sought to draw
lessons from participants’ experiences in diverse cultural milieus, especially
in the Balkans and Iraq, concentrating on training, education, and the use
of simulations in operational environments. Plans are being finalized for
another workshop in December 2005, which will link directly to a published
book and possibly a short documentary.
GLOBAL MEDIA PROJECT (GMP)
James Der Derian, Principal Investigator
In 2005, the Global Security Program initiated this new crosscutting research
initiative that intends to amplify the visibility and influence of Watson
Institute research through the production and distribution of public interest
media projects. GMP aims to provide critical media analysis, expertise,
and funding for these works, which will address and reframe urgent global
problems and strengthen public interest in media worldwide.
The project began planning for an October 2005 workshop to establish
benchmarks for what constitutes excellence, efficacy, and engagement
in the analysis and production of public global media. Long-range goals
include producing documentaries on topics that tap the Institute’s faculty
expertise and creating a spring 2006 seminar that will teach an international
studies approach to media analysis and production.
Another key component of the project is a collaboration between the project
team and Visiting Senior Fellow Christopher Lydon of public radio’s “Open
Source Radio.” Lydon draws on Watson faculty and visitor expertise
as a resource for the show’s programming, including the latest trends in
international affairs, possible guests, and opportunities to bring new voices
and methods to how international issues are dealt with on the air.
The project plans to build relationships with international funding
agencies to strengthen independent public media worldwide by developing
international studies training programs and sponsoring visiting programs
for independent media producers in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America,
and South Asia.
INTERNATIONAL WRITERS PROJECT (IWP)
Robert Coover, Literacy Arts Program, and Geoffrey Kirkman ’91,
Principal Co-investigators
More than a third of the world’s population lives in countries where freedom
of the press and creative expression are actively hindered. This project
makes available to an international writer, who works in fiction, drama, or
poetry, a one-year residency to practice his or her craft in safety within a
supportive environment. Each year the project hosts a festival highlighting
the particular national artistic and political identity of the resident writer.
In 2004–2005, Congolese playwright and novelist Pierre Mumbere
Mujomba became the second International Writers Project Fellow. The
author of seven plays and a novel, Mujomba’s conflict with the Congolese
government began in January 2003, after the performance in Kinshasa of
his play, The Last Envelope, which revealed the excesses of the Mobutu
regime. Shortly after this, Mujomba was targeted by death squads, and with
the intervention of PEN International, he left the Congo.
Although most of his work is not yet available in English, The Last Envelope
was translated and performed in New York in 2002 by the Lark Theatre
Company. It won the Le Grand Prix at the Prix Nemis in Chile in 1988 and
the Decouverte RFI Theatre Sud Prize in 1999.
As part of Mujomba’s IWP fellowship, he participated in Brown’s Second
Annual Africana Film Festival in April, which featured a panel on Congolese
artists and scholars titled “Writing for Theatre and Screen in the Democratic
Republic of Congo.” During the year, Mujomba also participated in other
readings and events at Brown, such as a symposium on his own work
organized by the Africana Studies Department.
The project is a partnership between Brown’s Literary Arts Program and the
Watson Institute, where the fellow is in residence during the academic year.
The William H. Donner Foundation funds the initiative.
MIDDLE EAST AND ISLAMIC INITIATIVES
For nine years, Brown University faculty, adjunct scholars, and visitors
have presented research on the history, politics, and culture of Middle East
and Islamic societies through conferences, seminars, and research activities
because of this Watson Institute initiative. Research topics have included
identity formation and citizenship, self-determination, preventing ethnic
conflict, and Islamic art and architecture.
Among the activities supported in 2004–2005 were a public lecture by
Irshad Manji, author of the international bestseller The Trouble with Islam:
A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith; a performance by Palestinian-
American poet Suheir Hammad, author of Born Palestinian, Born Black;
and a public concert by world-renowned Iranian musician Kayhan Kalhor
on the kamancheh, followed by a lecture titled “A Discussion of Persian
Classical Music.”
GLOBAL ETHICS
Neta Crawford ’85, Principal Investigator
This project makes ethical aspects of world politics explicit and prominent.
It seeks to support a cohort of scholars from different Brown departments
who can articulate and promote normative concerns, and to increase public
attention and understanding about the ethical dimensions of global issues.
In 2004–2005, the series addressed the questions of responsibility and
response to historical injustices, ranging from slavery, internment, systematic
rape, torture, to genocide. Using multidisciplinary lenses, the seminars look
at individual, institutional, intergenerational responsibility, and different
forms of redress. The main impetus for this theme was the examination of
Brown University’s role in the slave trade and slavery.
The topics covered included “Three Cases of Responding to Historical
Injustice: The Holocaust, Japanese-American Internment, and Japanese
War Museums”; “Psychological Perspectives on Historical Injustice/What
Happens to Victims and Perpetrators and What Should Happen to Them?”;
“Finding and Fixing Institutional and Individual Responsibility”; “The Law
and Politics of Reparations for Human Rights Abuses”; “Responses and
Responsibility for Bombing Japan”; and “Therapeutic Interventions in War/
Bearing Witness and the Practice of Reconciliation in Christian Thought: A
Critical Reading from the Perspective of Trauma Theory.”
The faculty seminar was co-sponsored by the Wayland Collegium,
Committee on Slavery and Justice, and Watson Institute.
DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Two Watson Institute visiting senior fellows are researching and writing
about democracy and human rights in their respective countries. Former
President of Burundi Pierre Buyoya joined the institute in the spring of
2005 to work on a book about Burundi’s peace and democratic processes
during the post-civil war period. Currently he’s engaged in work studying
reconciliation and power sharing in his country, as the president of the
Foundation for Unity, Peace, and Democracy.
Since December 2002, Xu Wenli has been researching and teaching about
democratic transitions and the establishment of human rights regimes,
especially in China. A leader of the Chinese Democracy Wall movement and
one of the founders of the China Democracy Party’s Beijing-Tianjin branch,
Xu was imprisoned for his political activities. This year, he completed work
on Letters from the Inside—a second volume to My Self-Defense—which is
based in part on his many years of confinement in prison. Additionally, he
is writing a memoir with his spouse, He Xintong, about their experiences
during his imprisonment and her house arrest. At Brown, Xu teaches an
undergraduate seminar in Mandarin titled “The Chinese Democracy Wall
and the Chinese Democratic Party.”
STUDIES IN RUSSIAN/SOVIET HISTORY
Two leading Russian/Soviet historians—Abbott Gleason, a senior fellow,
and Patricia Herlihy, a professor (research)—have each conducted
research or developed publication projects in 2004–2005. Gleason, an
expert on the Soviet period and totalitarianism, published his co-edited
volume On Nineteen Eighty-Four: Orwell and Our Future. He continues
as the primary editor for Blackwell’s forthcoming Companion to Russian
History and is working on a festschrift to honor Andrzej Walicki, a noted
expert on Russian and Polish history.
Herlihy is currently writing a biography of Eugene Schuyler (1840–1890),
who served in the U.S. Foreign Service as consul in Russia, Turkey,
Romania, Greece, Serbia, Britain, Italy, and Egypt. She is examining
Schuyler, who co-authored the Bulgarian 1876 Constitution, within the
context of nineteenth-century international relations. An expert on the
history of Odessa, Herlihy published in 2004 “Port Jews of Odessa and
Trieste: A Tale of Two Cities” in Yearbook 2003.
STUDIES IN AFRICAN
CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS
Newell M. Stultz, a Brown faculty emeritus, is involved in research on
the political process in African countries, specifically parliaments and/or
parliamentary elections in South Africa, Kenya, Tanganyika, and the Central
African Federation, the last two during the period before independence. Most
recently, he has analyzed the current constitutions of 14 “Anglo-African”
states presently led by presidents to determine if contemporary “African
presidentialism” is distinctive institutionally as well as geographically and,
if so, what are the likely political consequences of that fact.
ABOVE:
CATHERINE LUTZ (CENTER) CHATS WITH
ROLF WILLY HANSEN OF NORWAY’S
MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS AT THE
“PREPARED FOR PEACE?” WORKSHOP.
KEITH BROWN SITS TO THE LEFT OF LUTZ.
L–R:
PIERRE MUMBERE MUJOMBA
PATRICIA HERLIHY
L–R:
PIERRE BUYOYA
ABBOTT GLEASON
NEWELL M. STULTZ
XU WEN-LI
22 WATSON INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES ANNUAL REPORT 2005 23