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COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS | JANUARY 2004
SIPA
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SIPAnews
VOLUME XVII No. 1 JANUARY 2004
Published biannually by Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs
From the Dean
With this issue of SIPA News we introduce the
second installment of our effort to create an
informative and entertaining magazine of
this publication, once simply our alumni
newsletter. In doing so we have incorporated
the student magazine, known as Slant, and devoted a special
section to student writing. This ensures that our student writers
get more exposure and that our readers get more interesting
(and eloquent) stories, but it also means that writers and
readers alike should understand the ground rules. Within conventional
limits of civility, timeliness, and grammatical usage,
we do not authorize, approve, censor, or otherwise comment
on the content of these articles, and we do not accept responsibility
for the views expressed there. We inaugurate a column
of letters to the editor in this issue as well, however, and hope
that some of you will be moved to express any disagreement,
puzzlement, or admiration these articles may provoke.
As you will see, this semester got off to a very busy and
high profile start, as the University once again hosted a number
of world leaders on the occasion of the annual meeting of
the UN General Assembly in September. For decades SIPA has
been the fortunate beneficiary of our proximity to the United
Nations headquarters, and not only because students found
academic year internships and faculty served as formal and
informal advisers to everyone from the secretary general to the
heads of specialized agencies. Each fall we have welcomed visiting
heads of state and foreign ministers to the campus, providing
an opportunity for them to speak not just to their
colleagues at the UN but to students, to their citizens living in
the New York area (and there are always many, many of
those!), and to the American public. This year, the Earth
Institute joined us in issuing invitations to the heads of state of
several countries in which they have major research projects,
while our own Center for International Conflict Resolution
organized a day-long conference on Afghanistan, which
included not only President Hamid Karzai but many of the
international and American policymakers with whom his government
routinely interacts. Although all the activity—the
motorcades, the Secret Service, the closed streets, the security
screening of the audiences, the video feeds for overflow
crowds—taxed the resources of Columbia’s always patient and
cordial security staff, the opportunity to see and hear some of
the world’s most important figures talk about their hopes for
the world was a memorable way to start the academic year.
And it was a memorable year to start: this is the beginning
of Columbia’s 250th anniversary, and, as alumni around the
world are well aware, the University is celebrating its remarkable
history in style. Books and videos, conferences on campus,
and alumni club festivities around the world are all planned to
mark the occasion. It is a fitting moment for President Lee
Bollinger to launch a consideration of the role of Columbia in
the new era of globalization in the twenty-first century.
We at SIPA are excited by the prospect of these discussions,
and you, our readers, will be seeing some of their results
in the coming years.
p. 2
Why Reform the UN
Security Council?
By Edward C. Luck
p.4
The Battle for
the Soul of the
United Nations
By Dirk Salomons
Student Voices from
Around the World
p. 8
The UN and Its
University for Peace
in Costa Rica
By J. Paul Martin
p. 10
World Leaders
at Columbia
p. 17
The Other Side of Rio
By Celeste Tarricone
p. 21
Afghan Journalism 101
By Rachel Martin
p. 25
The Chechen Dilemma
By Marisa Robertson-Textor
p. 29
The Amazon School:
Promoting Human
Rights and the
Environment
By Ama Marston
p. 32
A Marathon a Day:
An Iranian’s Quest
Becomes Source of
Global Inspiration
By Ladane Nasseri
p. 34
Inside SIPA:
Faculty and
School News
p. 40
Letter to the Editor
p. 42
Development News
p. 46
Class Notes
p.15
contents

WHY REFORM
THE UN
SECURITY
COUNCIL?
Whatever neoconservative columnists
and some Washington officials
might prefer, there is no evidence
of the Security Council’s fading
from relevance. Indeed, the actions
of the Bush administration suggest
the opposite.
These are uncertain times for the UN
Security Council. Its prewar debate on
the use of force in Iraq was bitter, divisive,
and ultimately indecisive. As a
result, neither the supporters nor the
opponents of the war found much sustenance in
the Council’s performance. As in Kosovo four
years before, a coalition of countries, including
permanent members of the Council, concluded
that the inability of a divided Council to decide
should not paralyze those with the will to act
with or without the Council’s blessing. Once
again, they would argue that their war aims largely
coincided with previous resolutions of the
Council, though their chosen means clearly did
not. The political crisis within the Council has
prompted three basic responses: (1) that it has
become irrelevant; (2) that it needs radical
reform; and (3) that its place as the final arbiter
on the use of force by member states calls for
fresh thinking and debate. The first conclusion is
wrong, the second misguided, and the third right
on the mark.
Whatever neoconservative columnists and
some Washington officials might prefer, there is
no evidence of the Security Council’s fading from
relevance. Indeed, the actions of the Bush administration
suggest the opposite. Within weeks of
the onset of the “shock and awe” campaign, the
United States was back in the Council looking to
multilateralize the efforts to forestall North
Korea’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.
by Edward C. Luck
Ironically, on that front other member states suddenly
lost their enthusiasm for multilateralism,
preferring to keep the Council out of the diplomatic
fray. On the war on terrorism, Washington
continues to value the work of the Council’s
Counter-Terrorism Committee in seeking to
deny terrorists funding, space, and movement, as
well as the UN’s political and humanitarian
efforts in Afghanistan. Nor has United States
support for the UN’s numerous ongoing peacekeeping
operations around the world slackened.
The call for radical reform of the Council is
harder to dismiss, given persistent advocates like
Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the majority
of member states. But before joining the bandwagon,
one should ask whether radical reform is
either doable or desirable. The main stumbling
blocks to the last reform drive in the mid-
1990s—which states should be anointed permanent
members from Europe, Asia, Africa, and
Latin America—have not been resolved. The
splits within the regions, if anything, look deeper
today. A chorus of cries for change hardly constitutes
a consensus on what a reformed Council
should look like. Indeed, the very political crisis
that spurred these renewed calls for structural
reform will prove to be the undoing of the effort.
It is a little like deciding to remodel your house
because it is on fire. A better course would be
first to conduct a sober diagnosis of what sparked
the conflagration and then to launch a concerted
effort to address its roots. The starting point,
then, is to recognize that the Council is afflicted
by a political, not institutional, malaise.
A radical overhaul of the Council’s composition
could well exacerbate its political troubles.
While a modest expansion of membership to ease
the North-South imbalance is overdue, giving
any new permanent members a veto over
Council action and expanding membership from
fifteen to twenty-five or more would simply
make it that much more difficult for the Council
to act in a timely and decisive manner in crisis situations.
The unspoken agenda of some would-be
reformers—seeking to dilute U.S. influence within
the Council—would make the body even less
reflective of the balance of power and capacity
outside its chambers and would tend to confirm
Washington’s penchant for looking elsewhere to
pursue its security interests. When reform advocates
speak of renovating the Council to meet
the realities of the twenty-first century, what
realities do they have in mind?
In that regard, the radical reform of the
Council could well prove to be the fastest route to
its irrelevancy. For most member states, the
first—for some, the only—item on the reform
agenda is to expand the size of the Council table
so that they can sit there more often. This is advocated
in the name of equity, representativeness,
and democracy, the last a term never used in the
Charter. But the assumption that larger regional
powers represent the security interests of their
weaker neighbors gains little nourishment from
history or the nature of geopolitics, particularly if
they are to be given vetoes over international
enforcement action in their neighborhoods. Has
the expansion of the UN’s Economic and Social
Council (ECOSOC) twice, from eighteen to
twenty-seven to fifty-four, endowed it with
greater relevance? If size were the prime criterion
for relevance, then the General Assembly would
be the most relevant of all.
Adding more members will not heal the political
and conceptual split among the current ones.
They cannot agree on whether the Council’s primary
purpose should be to sit back and judge
whether the use of force by member states is justified
or to organize effective and collective
enforcement action, whether through economic
sanctions or military intervention. Was the centerpiece
of the Charter, in other words, to be
Article 2(4)’s caution against unilateral military
action or Chapter VII’s unprecedented enforcement
machinery? No doubt the founders recognized
that a workable multilateral system for the
maintenance of international peace and security
would require both individual restraint and collective
action. This tacit bargain has become
more than frayed in recent years, however. Over
the past decade, most member states have shown
a growing discomfort with employment of the
economic and military tools of coercion specified
in Chapter VII. Moreover, in an era of American
primacy, the reluctance of others to give their
assent to the actions of U.S.-dominated military
coalitions has been magnified.
For Washington policymakers, with a far
wider range of military options than the others,
the benefits of Security Council authorization
may seem of decreasing value, particularly if they
sense that others are seeking to use their numbers
in the Council to counterbalance U.S. military
superiority with diplomacy maneuvering. The
political problems caused by these power asymmetries
are exacerbated by asymmetrical perceptions
of the urgency of preempting the possible
use of weapons of mass destruction by terrorists
and of the utility of military means of doing so.
Until the Council provides more effective multilateral
alternatives for counterterrorism and for
stalling the spread of weapons of mass destruction,
it will be in a poor position to reclaim the
mantle of leadership in the pursuit of international
peace and security.
The end of the Cold War has left the Security
Council with a confusing, even paradoxical, set
of political legacies. On the one hand, there is a
prevalent desire to replace the rigidities of the
bipolar system with a more flexible and participatory
multipolar one, in which multilateral decision-making
processes through instruments like
the Security Council play a more central role. On
the other hand, the demise of the Soviet Union
and a decreasing willingness on the part of
America’s European partners to shoulder a substantial
military burden have made the world
increasingly unipolar, at least in military terms.
Until these conflicting geopolitical dynamics are
sorted out, any talk of radical reform of the composition
of the Security Council is premature at
best and potentially quite damaging to what
remains of its credibility.
Edward C. Luck is Professor of Practice in International
and Public Affairs and director of the Center on
International Organization at the School of International
and Public Affairs, Columbia University.
2 SIPA NEWS
SIPA NEWS 3

The Battle for the Soul of the United Nations
By Dirk Salomons
The facile answer to any question about the United
Nations’ future would be to say that it barely exists—
so how can it have a future? No territory, no population,
no army, not even a small supply of black helicopters,
notwithstanding rumors to the contrary.
There is a charter, there are a few staff members, no more than
you would find in the municipal offices of a large city, and then
there is a dream.
That dream is reflected in the Preamble to the Charter of the
United Nations, where “We the peoples of the United Nations”
reaffirm their “faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity
and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and
women and of nations, large and small.” After this moving and
visionary introduction, Chapter 1 of the Charter gets down to
business and sets out four core purposes and principles of the
organization: maintaining international peace and security,
developing friendly relations among nations, solving problems
of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and
serving as a center for harmonizing the actions of nations. The
“peoples” and their human rights have disappeared from the
screen, and the governments with their national
interests have taken over.
In the Charter, each of these four key objectives
gets its own principal organ: A Security
Council to guarantee the peace, a General
Assembly to warm up interstate relations, an
Economic and Social Council to ponder development,
and a Secretariat to organize meetings.
Where is the corresponding principal organ to
reflect the Preamble’s emphasis on human rights?
This dichotomy inherent in the Charter, veering
between the elated language of morality and
inclusiveness based on human rights and the legal
language of an international treaty meant to protect
states’ interests, creates a dilemma for the
United Nations. Does it belong to the “peoples”
or to the governments? Who can claim its soul?
The millions of people who look up to the organization
as the embodiment of a vision that transcends
national interests, that celebrates our common
humanity, and that projects solutions to our
common problems based on inclusiveness? Or the
numerous governments that see the United
Nations as a tool of limited value, convenient at
times, often a threat to their sovereignty, and
occasionally a timely scapegoat for failed conflict
resolution?
The United Nations of the “peoples” has
found its voice in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, in the work of voluntarily
funded entities such as UNDP (United Nations
Development Programme), UNICEF (United
Nations Children’s Fund), and UNHCR (United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), and
in the relatively new Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights. The United
Nations’ ideals shine through in its programs
that address the needs of people living with
HIV/AIDS, children in armed conflict, victims
of violence, or the marginalized. That idealistic
voice also can be heard in many of the Secretary
General’s reports and speeches, strengthened by
the powers of his office under Article 99 of the
Charter, which elevates the position beyond
that of a CEO: “The secretary-general may
bring to the attention of the Security Council
any matter which in his opinion may threaten
the maintenance of international peace and
security.”
That voice can also be heard in the advocacy
and field activities of the many NGOs and civil
society institutions that have taken up the challenge
of the United Nations’ most lofty creation:
an extensive body of international law in the area
of human rights, ranging from the two eponymous
conventions to instruments such as the
Convention on the Rights of the Child or the
Convention to Ban Landmines. These have now
begun to lead a life of their own, and their pursuit
and enforcement are no longer a matter for the
United Nations alone—on the contrary, Human
Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Save the
Children, and their numerous counterparts have
taken the battle for human rights out of the intergovernmental
arena and directly to the people.
Increasingly, also, the “peoples” claim a seat at
the table when issues of global importance are
discussed within the United Nations. The “global
conference” mechanism, for example, brought
thousands of environmentalists to Rio, and
activists for women’s rights flooded the conference
halls in Mexico, Nairobi, and Beijing. While
the action plans at these conferences were signed
by governments, their contents had de facto been
negotiated by a much broader range of stakeholders.
At the same time, this idealistic voice of the
organization and its supporters is often drowned
out by the hard-nosed Realpolitik of governments,
especially in the chambers of the Security
Council. This body’s inability to maintain international
peace and security is not just due to
overwhelming external forces or a lack of
resources: it is mostly caused by a lack of political
will. Conflict prevention is rarely on the agenda,
and the budget of the United Nations’
Department for Political Affairs (DPA)—which is
STUDENT VOICES FROM AROUND THE WORLD
It’s not hard to see why the theme for this semester’s issue is
“The Future of the United Nations.” The events of the past
year led many observers to question the UN’s credibility, its
relevance, and even its prospects for survival—but convinced
many others that the organization is more essential now than ever.
What does the “SIPA street” think about the UN’s role after the
Iraq war? We put the following questions to a group of students:
Do you think the United Nations is the most appropriate or
effective channel for resolving disputes like the one over Iraq’s
alleged WMD [weapons of mass destruction] program? Do you
think the U.S. decision to go to war with Iraq without UN
authorization will make the organization less effective or
relevant in the long term?
Isabelle Delalex (MIA ’05, International
Finance and Business—France)
Who knew in 1946 that the UN would
succeed in fostering sustainable peace
and cooperation between the victors
and defeated of World War II?
Ironically, the balance of power embedded
in the design of the Security
Council seemed to be an impediment
for them in solving conflicts in the
Muslim nations, left to wonder if their
interests were best served by the current
permanent voting members.
The U.S. decision to go to war with
Iraq without UN authorization has
undermined the organization’s relevance,
but more damaging has been
the UN’s failure to sanction Saddam
Hussein’s noncompliance with its disarmament
obligations under relevant resolutions
of the Security Council.
Aaron Greenberg (MIA ’04,
International Security Policy—
United States)
In the wake of the U.S.-led war in Iraq,
many rushed to say that the UN is in
crisis. Some added that it may prove
obsolete.
It is right to say the UN is in a crisis. It
is wrong to think that crisis marks the
end of the organization. The UN is
always either in a crunch or not far
from one. This earns it points for relevance:
the world is a collection of
sticky entanglements, and the big
ones—read Iraq—involve the United
States. In addition, by placing a high
premium on the UN with regard to Iraq
only months after dismissing it as
“irrelevant,” the U.S. confirmed
through action what it resisted in rhetoric.
This is not new, nor should it be
terribly shocking. The U.S. is constantly
struggling with its expectations and
fears of the organization. The UN, for
better or worse, is central to the ongoing
interaction of states, including (but
not limited to) an often-schizophrenic
U.S. Crisis will always be a large component
of international interaction.
Neorealists take note: a UN in crisis is
a UN that is very much alive.
Rachel Jupp (MPA ’04, International
Media and Communications—UK)
The UN was not designed to deliver the
planet to paradise but to save humanity
from hell. On this scale, it is doing a
relatively good job for an organization
so young and with such a radical mission:
to mediate a global rule of law
within a broadly democratic framework.
It remains an internationally respected
space within which to resolve disputes,
and the difficulties it confronts are a
function of global disagreement rather
than anything inherent within the system.
The UN failed to provide a solution
to the problem of Iraq’s potential
to threaten peace and was responsible
for a disastrous decade-long policy of
sanctions against the country. But this
was because members’ interests were
prioritized over international good governance.
The experience of Iraq gave
the UN global public support. This
popularity should provide the platform
to build an independent international
identity. If not, it will simply become
the plaything of the powerful and a target
for the dispossessed.
Jeffrey Max (MPA ’04, Policy
Analysis—United States)
The UN can and should be an effective
channel for resolving disputes such as
the conflict over Iraq and weapons of
mass destruction. Yet the U.S. decision
to initiate war with Iraq signals the
need for reform of the UN’s outdated
structure and decision-making process.
To remain a legitimate and effective
authority, the UN must recognize the
changing international political context
and change with it. The alternative—an
international political order loosely
based on the doctrine of preemption
and unilateral military action—is dangerous
and unstable.
4 SIPA NEWS
SIPA NEWS 5

esponsible for conflict prevention and which was
meant to support the Security Council—is laughably
small. DPA has no field presence of its own,
and recommendations by the recent “Brahimi”
blue ribbon panel to give DPA a limited intelligence
gathering capacity were scotched. Until a
crisis is full blown, the Security Council is likely
to ignore it.
Even many massive international crises have
come and gone while the Security Council played
dead: the genocidal conflicts in Cambodia,
Rwanda, and the Balkans come to mind. Vietnam
was never even on the Security Council’s agenda.
When the Security Council does act, it often does
so in a symbolic manner, saying all the right
things but withholding the resources needed to
address the problem. The humanitarian crisis in
the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where
some three million people died during the past
decade as its neighbors raped its resources and
fueled its internal strife, is a case in point. While
the Security Council obsessed about Iraq, NGOs
and humanitarian organizations frantically tried
to call attention to the plight of Africa’s Great
Lakes region. The small mission that eventually
was created to stem the tide of violence will not
nearly have the capacity to stabilize the peace
process.
In fact, most peacekeeping missions of the last
decade have not only come too late—they have
often also been poorly funded and poorly
designed. While they normally include the cost
of the military components and of the Secretariat
staff to coordinate “multidimensional” economic,
humanitarian, and political programs, the actual
cost of these programs is not covered by the
mandatory peacekeeping account but by voluntary
contributions. Time and again, a few likeminded
governments with voters who share the
United Nations’ “dream” have to bail out the rest
of the international community, which stands by
idly. The 1992–94 peacekeeping operation in
Mozambique, for example, had an annual budget
of some $300 million. But the 1994 elections
alone cost $85 million (paid by the EU), and voluntary
donor support during each year of the
peace process came to some $800 million.
Without this level of parallel funding, the peace
process would have collapsed. This pattern holds
true for all UN peace operations.
Which then is the “true” United Nations? And
which “face” of the United Nations will determine
its future? The technical, “harmonizing,” functions
of the United Nations, reflected in the work
of specialized agencies such as the International
Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) or the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), will
certainly continue. Here, idealism and pragmatism
are easily compatible. For years to come, the
World Health Organization will undoubtedly be
the key advocate for global health, and the Food
and Agriculture Organization will continue to
fight for food security. The International Labor
Organization or UNESCO are not about to fold,
either.
But how about the United Nations’ future as
guarantor of peace and security? Where is
Realpolitik taking it? Its track record is dismal. The
Security Council’s organizational structure
reflects a cozy world of colonial powers that has
vanished. The five major players of 1945 had
already dwindled to only two by the early 1970s,
as decolonization and internal strife brought
down the United Kingdom, France, and China;
the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union eliminated
Russia as a global power, leaving only the United
States standing. Thus, the Security Council
reflects a bygone world. Reform seems to be
required, but the current incumbents, whose veto
power is threatened, apparently prefer to go
down with all flags flying rather than voluntarily
recede into the gray mass of second tier states.
And even if reforms were possible, which cluster
of states could nowadays guarantee peace, as
threats increasingly come from ideological
groups, not from other states?
The Security Council may go the way of so
many antiquated institutions: quietly overtaken
by events, they live on in the shadows. The one
remaining superpower will continue to go its own
way. Regional institutions will come into their
own, and new security problems will be addressed
by players such as the European Union and the
African Union without ever reaching the United
Nations. Thus, humanitarian interventions,
peacekeeping, and peace enforcement will
become regionalized over time, as these newer
institutions develop common policies and common
muscle. The Security Council will then
become a venue for trivial pursuits.
The United Nations’ other key objective,
addressing the socioeconomic problems of the
developing countries, is also slowly moving out of
its reach. Official development aid is dwindling to
less than $50 billion annually, and each year the
United Nations development programs get a
smaller share of that shrinking pie, as the international
financial institutions, bilateral programs,
and emergency relief needs vie for the remaining
resources. At the same time, foreign direct investment
is growing by leaps and bounds, although
most of it goes to promising countries like India
and China. This leaves the United Nations as
agency of last resort for the chronically failing
states that are scorned by the private sector. In
fact, the United Nations’ best prospect is to specialize
in supporting the recovery of countries
emerging from conflict, and in bridging the reliefto-development
gap. However, to do this well, it
must be seen as impartial and independent, not
tied to the priorities of the Security Council.
Thus, in the long run the true survivors are the
“ugly ducklings” of the Charter: human rights,
human dignity, tolerance, nonviolent conflict resolution.
These are the stated goals of those “peoples”
whose humanistic vision gave the Charter its
credibility and permanency. These are also the
stated goals of many democracies that preceded
the United Nations, and they are values found in
all major religions. These are the goals that
inspire those many people who support the rights
based concept of a United Nations, who push
their parliaments to give generously to humanitarian
causes, and who support the hundreds of
NGOs that pursue programs inspired by these
values. Ultimately, in an age of globalization and
free flow of information, the cumulative power of
these people can cut across and trump the confines
of narrow national interests. They must win
the battle for the soul of the United Nations.
If only the United Nations can focus on these
idealistic goals, if it can keep an independent
voice, and if it can strengthen those funds and
programs that embody these ideals, it will have a
role for many years to come as the sole institution
that has the moral clout to bring people together
to build a common future.
Dirk Salomons is director of the Program on Humanitarian
Affairs and a lecturer in International Affairs at SIPA.
Nepeti Nicanor (PEPM ’04—Namibia)
The very nature of the UN decisionmaking
setup makes it an ineffective
channel for anything. In the UN, some
countries (and very few of them) are
more equal than others. That is a major
problem for the UN, and for anybody
who wants to adopt the culture of
democracy and human rights. Having
worked in Africa on raising awareness
and strengthening democracy and
human rights, I can tell you that the
setup of international organizations—
UN, World Bank, IMF, etc.—discredits
the work we were trying to do.
In the long run we need an effective,
democratic, and relevant institution to
ensure fair and lasting cooperation and
peace in the world. Maybe the UN is
not the one. If it is, it will have to drastically
change its structure to make it
credible.
Kalyani Ravishankar (EMPA ’04,
International Economic Policy and
Management—India)
When I hear critics mention the ineffectiveness
or the irrelevance of the
United Nations, I often feel that there
is a huge misunderstanding about the
very fundamental structure of the system.
Earlier this year, we saw how the
Security Council was divided over Iraq,
and how a member state decided to
overrule the Security Council resolution
and the Charter (which its forefathers
were instrumental in writing) and take
unilateral steps. The UN and its secretary-general
were criticized for this.
However, the secretary-general can
encourage and aid member states to
reach consensus, but he cannot force
consensus. When member states or
critics point fingers at the UN, they are
pointing fingers at themselves, as the
UN only reflects the actions and decisions
of its members. The UN can only
be as good and effective as its member
states allow it to be.
The future of the UN cannot be decided
by the Iraq crisis alone. The global problems
of today respect no borders, and as
Secretary-General Kofi Annan says, they
are problems without passports. Poverty,
terrorism, drug trafficking, illiteracy,
human rights violations, famine, contagious
diseases such as HIV/AIDS, degradation
of our environment, weapons of
mass destruction, peace and security
are all issues needing urgent attention.
While the UN has had its share of failure,
when all is said and done, the UN’s
successes are greater than its failures,
and its relevance and effectiveness
must be judged by its ability to meet
the overall goals and responsibilities it
has been entrusted with.
Simon Schropp (MIA ’04, International
Economic Policy—Germany)
The recent conflict within the UN and
especially within the UN Security
Council over Iraq’s alleged WMD program
has shown the full extent of the
dilemma the UN has always been faced
with. If there is one resolved party that
either is a permanent member of the
Security Council or enjoys full backing
of a permanent member, the UN’s
hands are tied. The Iraq issue was neither
new nor special in that sense.
What was unique was the blatant disregard
and neglect of the UN and all its
principles by the world’s oldest democracy.
America’s unilateral actions and
the breach between the coalition of the
willing and the UN Secretariat sets a
terrible precedent. This war was not
primarily about WMD or global terrorism,
but about distinct American
interests.
I feel that the UN has neither lost
face nor lost relevance just because it
couldn’t avoid a war by a resolved
nation. The UN will be indispensable
for credibly rebuilding Iraq and stabilizing
the region. For the entire world,
the UN will continue being a negotiation
forum and the Secretariat will
continue being a credible mediator in
conflicts.
Christina Schutz (MIA ’05, International
Economic Policy—United States)
Appropriate? Yes. The UN is a forum
for addressing questions concerning
the international public interest, such
as weapons of mass destruction and
other threats to peace. Since the international
public interest is every state’s
interest, every state should be and is
entitled to participate in discussions on
how to deal with international actors
threatening that public interest.
Effective? If a quick response is needed
and this can be achieved via the
Security Council, then yes, the UN may
well be effective. Nonetheless, if a single
veto-wielding state opposes
Security Council action, effectiveness
will be undermined. To change that,
you have to change the rules of the
game—i.e., the UN Charter.
6 SIPA NEWS SIPA NEWS 7

The UN and Its
UNIVERSITY
FOR PEACE
in Costa Rica
By J. Paul Martin
Nestled amid hilly coffee plantations
in the Central Valley of
Costa Rica, about 30 kilometers
southwest of the capital, San José, lies the
United Nations University for Peace
(UPeace). Founded twenty years ago but
recently completely restructured, this
small institution illustrates both the dreams
and the harsh day-to-day realities that
characterize the UN as a whole. I recently
spent a week there talking about human
rights issues with respect to corporations
in the developing world and on human
rights education and peace building.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, left, waters a tree he
planted at the University for Peace near Ciudad Colón.
On the side of dreams are the school’s twenty
permanent faculty (not all of them full-time) and
its sixty-five graduate students from all over the
world, the latter quite comparable to SIPA’s own
student population. Faculty, students, and staff are
transported daily from their homes in San José
and nearby towns and villages, reaching the rural
campus thanks to the university’s fleet of buses.
The students then pass the day studying how to
promote peace, human rights, sustainable development,
and ecological improvement, and how to
prevent and resolve conflicts. The university now
offers six master’s programs in these fields and is
planning to create similar programs in Africa and
Central Asia. The faculty members include former
international civil servants as well as academics.
English is the teaching language. The campus is
well connected to the Internet, making up for the
school’s still embryonic library. Rather than
through any major expansion of its resident student
population, UPeace plans to expand using
distance-learning technologies.
Most students and faculty come because they
believe in the importance of the UN’s role in the
modern world. They bring to their classes great
enthusiasm, eagerness to learn, and the hope of
finding a career that will enable them to contribute
significantly to positive social change. The
Center for Global Education at George Mason
University in Virginia has an institutional partnership
with UPeace, enabling George Mason and
other undergraduate students to spend a semester
abroad in Costa Rica and focus on international
peace studies.
Funding is among the most basic day-to-day
realities challenging the university and its administrators.
In addition to travel and living costs,
students pay a yearly tuition of $18,000. A few
full fellowships are available exclusively to students
from developing countries. Although it was
set up by the UN, the university receives no funding
and little in-kind support from its mother
institution. Thus, in the past year, Martin Lees,
the rector, has spent more time off campus than
on, in order to raise the funds needed to keep the
university solvent. His recent success means that
the university is financially secure for the next
three years.
Another major challenge to the university is
faculty recruitment. Although faculty members
are clearly very committed to the institution, one
has the sense that most are either at the beginning
or in the twilight of their careers. The resident
faculty teach the core courses in each field. In the
case of the human rights program, this means four
courses: a general course in international law; one
on the United Nations and other international
organizations; an introduction to human rights,
humanitarian law, and refugee law; and a course
on international criminal law. These count for 12
credits.
To supplement the core courses, the university
invites scholars from other parts of the world to
offer short courses, typically two weeks in length.
Columbia faculty members Peter Danchin (SIPA)
and Joseph Chuman (GSAS), for example, have
both taught these specialized short courses, one
on the modern challenges to the international
human rights system and the other on religion
and human rights. The human rights program is
linked with a number of human rights programs in
European, African, and Asian universities that also
supply visiting professors to teach other subjects.
The students like the sense of being in contact
with issues across the world through these visiting
faculty. To encourage in-depth study and provide
the opportunity to examine the interface between
different courses, as well as to ensure the 10 additional
credits needed for their degree, students are
required to prepare a final thesis.
On the level of day-to-day reality, I had the
feeling that the university is still a forgotten
stepchild of the UN, although Secretary-General
Kofi Annan strongly supports the university,
agreeing to become its honorary president and
visiting the campus last year. To me, a visitor, the
weakness of this relationship seemed like the saddest
aspect of the university, an example of its
unrealized potential. The school’s location is not
ideal, but it has redeeming qualities. It is a place
where scholars young and old can meet and
devote time, undistracted, to some of the
world’s—and the UN’s—most intractable problems,
as well as to refurbish the UN’s interpretation
of its own mandate.
When the UN was founded, European intellectuals
were among the most important actors.
UNESCO (the United Nations Educational,
Scientific, and Cultural Organization) was created
in the belief that the UN ought to bring in
intellectuals to address the roots of war in the
minds of men. Yet UNESCO has barely fulfilled
this mandate. The University for Peace offers a
new opportunity for idealism and intellectual
inquiry within the UN system, by bringing intellectuals
together with policymakers from a scholarly
world that now extends well beyond Europe.
Unfortunately, the UN no longer seeks to find
ways to convene and promote dialogue among
these intellectuals. Rather, it uses them as occasional
lecturers and project consultants. UPeace
seems to attract the very young and the senior
scholars because they are most able to adapt to
the university’s location. They have yet to form a
community of intellectuals with something to say
to the UN and the world.
The university can and must function in a
more effective way. Peace, the university’s primary
field of scholarly concern, is of major
importance to the UN and the world. Peace
research and teaching are being carried out elsewhere,
but UPeace offers the UN its own think
tank. The UN is a vast system with thousands of
employees working on the issues that make up the
curriculum at UPeace. Surely it would be possible
and beneficial for the UNDP (United Nations
Development Programme), UNICEF (United
Nations Children’s Fund), and many other UN
agencies, especially the Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights, to send, or
even require, one of their experts to teach for six
months each year at UPeace in Costa Rica. These
experts could not only teach the young students
but, as in a sabbatical, could revitalize their own
intellectual tools by teaching, reading, and writing
far from the daily pressures of their professional
lives. In turn, UPeace students ought to be
offered at least a three-month internship with UN
agencies after graduation. Even if they were not
employed later on by the UN, they would
become natural ambassadors for the UN in their
professional lives. Without such interactions with
the UN, I fear that the university will lack the
appeal necessary for long-term fund-raising and
stability. With closer linkages, though, the university
could provide the UN with modest but
sustained scholarly and youthful inputs.
J. Paul Martin is executive director of the Center for the
Study of Human Rights at Columbia University.
8 SIPA NEWS
SIPA NEWS 9

WORLD LEADERS
The Center for International Conflict Resolution,
School of International and Public Affairs and
Columbia University present
Reconstructing Afghanistan:
Challenges and Opportunities
AT COLUMBIA
A conference hosted by Senator George J. Mitchell,
Senior Fellow, Center for International Conflict
Resolution
During the United Nations
General Assembly this past
September, an unprecedented
number of world leaders visited
Columbia University and spoke
at SIPA.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai (center)
with (from left) Sen. George Mitchell,
Dean Lisa Anderson, Columbia
President Lee Bollinger, and Center for
International Conflict Resolution Director
Andrea Bartoli.
President Bollinger and Earth Institute
Director Jeffrey Sachs flank Ghanaian
President John Agyekum Kufuor following
his speech in Low Rotunda.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi
addressed U.S. foreign policy in the
Middle East during his Sept. 29 visit to
SIPA.
Dean Anderson presents the “Distinguished
Service Award” to former
Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs
Anatoliy Zlenko.
Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolaños
Geyer and the Nicaraguan First Lady
(center) with Dean Anderson and Institute
of Latin American Studies Director
Albert Fishlow.
President Bollinger and Dean Anderson
(center) pose with a delegation of
Southeastern European leaders who met
for a forum at Columbia.
President Bollinger greets Russian President
Vladimir Putin before Putin’s
speech to a Columbia audience.
President Karzai Gives
Keynote Address at
Afghanistan Conference
By Rachel Martin
The world came to SIPA this fall and so did
its security guards and its security guards’ security
guards. For more than a week, there were
special metal detectors in the hallways, large
well-dressed men, with cropped hair and earphones,
lurking in corners, and the occasional
bomb-sniffing hound making his way around
the fishbowl. Although security is tight whenever
high-ranking leaders visit the school, there
was no doubt that most of the security precautions
this year were for one man—the interim
president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai.
President Karzai was the keynote speaker at
the conference, “Reconstructing Afghanistan:
Challenges and Opportunities” (see sidebar),
hosted by Senator George Mitchell, Senior
Fellow at the Center for International Conflict
Resolution. He addressed a group of roughly
400 Columbia students, alumni, faculty, and
New Yorkers who have lived or worked in
Afghanistan. He was here to build bridges
between Afghanistan and America, and, clad in
his signature Afghan-styled wool hat and cape
over top a tailored Western suit, he looked the
part. Karzai opened his talk with the story of a
girls’ school about 60 kilometers outside Kabul
that recently had been burned down by terrorists.
The day after the attack, he saw a photograph
in the newspapers of a handful of Afghan
girls, crouched in the dirt where the school
once stood, their heads buried in their school
books. Karzai said, “I was so happy and very
proud and I told myself, ‘Hell, Karzai, this
country is going to be built! If you have children
like that who are so determined that they
will sit there on the ground, on the earth, on
the mud—it’s the greatest sign for the future of
our country.’”
Hamid Karzai was elected by the Loya
Jirga, or Grand National Council of
Afghanistan, to lead the transitional government
in Afghanistan immediately after the fall
of the Taliban. Karzai is now on the campaign
trail, trying to bolster support to win the elections
scheduled to take place in Afghanistan in
June 2004. At the same time, he’s trying to raise
more money and manpower from the international
community to address Afghanistan’s
most serious problems: security, education,
health care, shutting down the opium business,
and building up sustainable trade exports.
President Karzai was quick to point out the
positive growth in Afghanistan, like the new
currency system and the agricultural surpluses.
However, when he was asked to address more
controversial topics like journalistic freedoms
and women’s rights, he reiterated that the road
to development and democracy in Afghanistan
would require patience, vigilance, and international
support.
“Afghanistan will need many years to recover
from all its ills. Afghanistan has begun a good
start in the economic recovery, although it will
take many years in order to be able to stand on
its own feet, to feed itself, to defend itself, to
educate itself, and until we reach that time, we
will need the assistance of the world community—from
governments to universities.”
Rachel Martin, MIA ’04, is doing an independent concentration
in Media and Democracy.
Thursday, September 25, 2003
Altschul Auditorium
International Affairs Building, 4th Floor
420 West 118th Street, New York, NY
1:00 p.m.
Keynote Address
President Hamid Karzai, Transitional Islamic
State of Afghanistan
Introduction by President Lee Bollinger,
Columbia University and Dean Lisa Anderson,
School of International and Public Affairs
2:30–4:00 p.m.
Responding to Challenges: Afghanistan
in Perspective
A discussion of the political economy of international
reconstruction assistance in Afghanistan
Dr. Barnett R. Rubin, Director of Studies and Senior
Fellow, Center on International Cooperation, New
York University
Sadako Ogata, Chair, Tokyo Conference on Afghan
Reconstruction and former United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees
Dr. M. Ishaq Nadiri, Jay Gould Professor of
Economics, New York University and Adviser to
Transitional Afghan Government
Ambassador William B. Taylor, Afghanistan
Coordinator, U.S. Department of State
Senator George J. Mitchell, Moderator and
Discussant
4:00–4:30 p.m.
Slide Presentation on Afghan Reconstruction
Dr. Frederic Levrat, Professor of Architecture,
Columbia University
4:30–6:00 p.m.
Capturing Opportunities: Afghanistan in Transition
A discussion of the emerging Afghan state and
its place in South and Central Asia
Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan
Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi, United Nations
Secretary-General’s Special Representative for
Afghanistan
Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. Special Presidential
Envoy for Afghanistan
Ambassador Peter Tomsen, Former U.S. Special
Envoy to the Mujahideen
Senator George J. Mitchell, Moderator and
Discussant
6:00 p.m.
Reception
Co-Sponsored by Piper Rudnic LLP
10 SIPA NEWS
SIPA NEWS 11

Foreign Minister of
Ukraine Receives
Distinguished
Statesman Award
By Marisa Robertson-Textor
The “Distinguished Statesman
Award” has not been given out very
often by SIPA and only once before
to a Ukrainian statesman, namely,
President Leonid Kuchma. On September
25, Dean Anderson presented
the award to Former Minister of
Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Anatoliy
Zlenko. Other recipients have been
Russian Foreign Minister Andrei
Kozyrev, Kazakhstani President
Nursultan Nazarbaev, and Norwegian
Foreign Minister Johan Jorgen
Holst, who negotiated the Oslo
peace accords on the Middle East.
Mr. Zlenko was nominated for
the award by Columbia history professor
Mark von Hagen, who noted
that Zlenko’s “personal contribution
to Ukraine’s foreign relations at several
points in the past years has been
of crucial moment for the success of
the newly independent state.”
In his acceptance speech, Zlenko
emphasized that he considers the
word “statesman”—a man who
devotes his life to fulfilling the aspirations
of his country—the highest
Ukrainian independence
was
not the climax of
history. It was not
a goal in itself, but
an instrument to
be used rationally
and effectively.
calling to which any politician may
aspire. He therefore accepted the
award not only in his own name, but
in that of independent Ukraine,
before offering an analysis of the
challenges facing that state following
the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991.
“Ukrainian independence was not
the climax of history. It was not a
goal in itself, but an instrument to be
used rationally and effectively,”
Zlenko said. The country’s geographic
position, on the breakpoint
between two giant geopolitical powers,
has required just such a rational
and effective foreign policy, one
capable of delicately balancing
European integration (and perhaps
eventual EU membership) with a
strategic partnership with Moscow.
Such a strategy, while not always
easy to maintain, is in Ukraine’s economic
and political interests, all the
more so in that Europe will never
embrace a Ukraine that is hostile to
Russia. While Russian recognition of
Ukraine as a nation rather than simply
an important territory has come
slowly, Zlenko believes that this
transition has now been made.
As for its relations with the
United States, Zlenko noted that,
while the transatlantic relationship
has been turbulent in recent years, he
believes that hard work on both sides
will restore mutual trust. Washington
has nothing to gain from losing an
important post-Soviet ally, and
Ukraine has nothing to gain from
ignoring the United States.
Zlenko was careful not to overlook
the roadblocks his country faces
on its path toward democratization
and marketization, but ultimately his
outlook is a positive one: “I have not
yet lost faith in the future of
Ukraine.”
Marisa Robertson-Textor, MIA ’04, is concentrating
in Human Rights.
Southeast European
Leaders Forum
Convenes at
Columbia
By Bojana Zezelj
This September, a number of foreign
leaders, in town for the UN General
Assembly, paid a visit to Columbia
University. The series of high profile
events started on the 24th with the
Southeast European Forum, organized
by the Harriman Institute, the
East Central European Center, and
SIPA, and took place in the elegant
Rotunda of Low Library.
The foreign ministers of Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Greece, Romania,
Slovenia, and Serbia and Montenegro
appeared together to talk about
the latest developments in what was
until recently one of the most troubled
regions of the world. Today,
however, all of these countries
(including Albania, Croatia, and
Macedonia, whose representatives
were also invited but were unable to
attend) have democratically elected
governments and liberalized economies.
The praise for such important
achievements and the cause for optimism
they give is what President
Bollinger, who moderated the discussion,
emphasized in his introduction.
Nevertheless, when commenting on
the European Union’s commitment,
stated at the Thessaloniki summit last
June, to bring the Balkans “back to
Europe,” the ministers also revealed
how much social and political conditions
still vary across the region.
Greece has been an EU member
since 1981, and Slovenia is set to join
next year, but for the rest, like the
poorer and politically less stable
Serbia and Montenegro, membership
remains a promise that might take a
long time to materialize.
The challenges some of these
This is the first
time in almost the
entire history of
the Balkans that
the region has
come close to
achieving longterm
peace and
stability.
countries face, which went largely
unmentioned at the gathering,
include the legacies of brutal ethnic
conflicts and the still largely unfinished
post-Communist transition.
Although Minister Ivanic called
Bosnia and Herzegovina “a success,”
one should not forget that his country
is run with the help of a UN
administrator and patrolled by international
forces while its feeble economy
is propped up by foreign aid.
The unresolved status of Kosovo,
which continues to fuel ethnic tensions
and bloody skirmishes, is the
largest obstacle to regional security.
But the strongly optimistic tone
of the gathering, repeated in Dean
Anderson’s closing remarks, is not
entirely unjustified. This is the first
time in almost the entire history of
the Balkans that the region has come
close to achieving long-term peace
and stability. Despite old problems
and new challenges, these states continue
to consolidate their young
democracies and to practice a free
market economy.
All the speakers agreed that the
prospect of EU membership is so
important because it has been the
unifying theme of many dissonant
political voices and continues to
stimulate difficult but necessary
social and economic reforms. Balkan
countries have also been trying to
tackle certain issues—border control,
illegal immigration, economic
exchange, relaxation of visa regimes,
reconciliation—by engaging in
stronger regional cooperation. They
may well prove to themselves over
time that there is much they can
accomplish on their own and without
the help of their wealthier neighbors.
However, as they continue to pin
most of their hopes for a better future
on their “return to Europe,” so should
Europe make sure to show the
resolve and political will to keep the
promise.
Bojana Zezelj, MIA ’04, is concentrating in
International Media and Communications.
Nicaraguan President
Speaks at Columbia
By Jeff Rigsby
Nicaraguan President Enrique
Bolaños Geyer addressed the
Columbia community on September
23 as part of the University-sponsored
World Leaders Forum. Bolaños
made a strong pitch for continued
international assistance to his country,
stating that “the new Nicaragua
under my leadership” deserves support
for its efforts at political and
economic reform.
Bolaños argued that Latin
America receives less academic attention
than other regions of the world,
with Central America suffering particular
neglect. Except in a few specialized
classes, he claimed, students
at Columbia hear little about the
region, and much of what they do
hear is negative. It’s true that not all
the news out of Nicaragua has been
encouraging: former president
Arnoldo Aleman Lacayo was
detained on fraud and embezzlement
charges in August. And following the
collapse of world coffee prices,
Nicaragua remains one of the poorest
countries in the Western Hemisphere,
with a per capita income of roughly
$700 per year.
Yet Bolaños, who served as
Aleman’s vice president but later
broke with him to run for the presidency
on an anticorruption platform,
says recent history shows some positive
trends as well. The civil war of
the 1980s is long over, and ex-president
Daniel Ortega, leader of the
left-wing Sandinista movement, “is
now a very quiet deputy in the
National Assembly” after losing three
presidential elections in a row.
Inflation has fallen to single digits,
and the government has reached a
three-year agreement with the
International Monetary Fund. In
addition, Managua has led a regional
effort to negotiate a free-trade agreement
between Central America and
the United States, which is due to be
signed by the beginning of next year.
Bolaños outlined his government’s
plan for promoting “growth, equality,
and governance,” which aims to control
corruption by limiting the arbitrary
power of state officials and by
reforming the judicial system. On the
economic front, he noted that his
administration has worked with
Michael Porter of the Harvard
Institute of International Development
to devise a “national competitiveness
program,” which will seek
to foster nontraditional export
opportunities such as fish farming,
specialty coffee, and tourism.
According to Bolaños, Porter has
described himself as “frankly amazed”
by Nicaragua’s progress under the
current government.
The president also emphasized
that Nicaragua remains a reliable ally
of the United States in the war on
terror and has even contributed a
small number of medical and mineclearing
personnel to work with
Spanish forces in Iraq. Quoting with
evident approval a report from the
U.S. Senate’s Appropriations
Committee, which concluded that
“President Enrique Bolaños of
Nicaragua deserves strong support”
and called for additional USAID
funding for the country, Bolaños
described foreign aid for his government
as “bridge financing” that would
lead to self-sustaining growth in the
longer term. After listing the many
Nicaraguan cabinet members and
ambassadors who hold graduate
degrees from U.S. universities, he
noted that three members of the
country’s foreign service are in fact
Columbia graduates.
Jeff Rigsby, MIA ’04, SIPA News coeditor,
is doing an independent concentration in
Central Asian Studies.
Iranian Minister
Addresses SIPA
Audience
By Ali Ezzatyar
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal
Kharrazi spoke at SIPA on
September 29, arguing that the
United States needs to take a new
approach in its foreign policy in the
Middle East.
In a 35-minute speech, Kharrazi
steered clear of the debate over Iran’s
nuclear program, the most pressing
issue in its relations with the international
community. Instead, he
focused on the history of U.S. intervention
in Iran and elsewhere in the
Middle East, claiming that it played a
detrimental role in political developments
in the region. Kharrazi made
note of the 1953 coup d’état, planned
and executed in large part by the
CIA, which ousted a democratically
elected prime minister and replaced
him with the second Pahlavi shah.
He argued that the U.S. habit of
Bolaños argued
that Latin
America receives
less academic
attention than
other regions of
the world, with
Central America
suffering particular
neglect.
12 SIPA NEWS
SIPA NEWS 13

Turning to
Iraq, Kharrazi
acknowledged
that Iranians were
certainly relieved
to see Saddam
Hussein gone, but
added that the
unilateral U.S.
pursuit of the
war was unjust
and had helped
cause the current
postwar disorder.
serving its own interests at the
expense of others had damaged its
image in Iran and was ultimately a
primary motivating force for the
1979 Islamic Revolution. “The
United States’s flawed policy of intervention,
with little regard to the sensitivities
of the Muslim people, has
been particular to my country,” said
Kharrazi.
Turning to Iraq, Kharrazi acknowledged
that Iranians were certainly
relieved to see Saddam Hussein gone,
but added that the unilateral U.S.
pursuit of the war was unjust and had
helped cause the current postwar disorder.
After duly noting that the United
States had at one time supported
and trained Osama bin Laden and his
associates, Kharrazi also suggested
that the United States was once
again retreating from Afghanistan
too soon, leaving the important task
of reconstruction unfinished.
The foreign minister was joined
at the podium by Gary Sick, executive
director of Gulf 2000, senior
research scholar, and former acting
director of SIPA’s Middle East
Institute, who asked the first question
following Kharrazi’s speech. Sick
noted that events such as the hostage
crisis had their own effects on U.S.
foreign policy and suggested that
realities like this could become a
point of understanding between the
United States and Iran if a rapprochement
is to take place between
the two countries. Kharrazi responded
by noting that the United States
was the more powerful of the two
nations, and that there was no parallel
between the hostage crisis and the
1953 coup.
Students followed up with questions
about the Iranian nuclear program,
to which the foreign minister
did not respond in detail, and about
Iran’s domestic and foreign policies.
Ali Ezzatyar, MIA ’04, is concentrating in
International Security Policy.
President of Ghana
Discusses National
Economy
By Hamdiya Ismaila
As a Ghanaian, I was honored to
hear President John Agyekum Kufuor
speak on “Current Reforms in Ghana”
at Columbia. He was in the country
to attend the opening session of the
UN General Assembly and spoke in
the Low Rotunda on September 25.
He started by discussing some
critical issues in West African stability
in general but focused more on
Ghana’s political and economic
progress since he took office in
January 2001. He expressed optimism
that the country could achieve
middle income status by the next
century.
The president outlined some of
the problems encountered by his new
administration: deteriorating terms of
trade, the falling price of the country’s
main export commodities (cocoa and
gold), and the rise in oil prices, the
country’s main import commodity.
He said these two developments left
the country and its international
reserves in a major crisis.
On the domestic front, inflation
rose to 42 percent, while the borrowing
rate in banks hovered around 50
percent. The excessive borrowing of
the government in the domestic market,
coupled with all the above, also
worsened the standard of living. He
said his administration’s first decision
was to join the World Bank’s Heavily
Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative
in order to free resources to
enable the government to gain a
foothold.
Additionally, his government is
focusing on five priority areas: (1)
rehabilitation of the infrastructure
(ICT policy); (2) modernization of
agriculture based on improved rural
development (to diversify agriculture
and add value through processing);
(3) enhancement in the provision of
social services such as education and
health delivery (education and
health policies, malaria and HIV/
AIDS prevention); (4) promotion of
good governance (public sector
reforms, decentralization, and civil
society participation); and (5) promotion
of the private sector as an
engine of economic growth (establishment
of a special ministry for private
sector development, entrepreneurial
skill training, access to credit
and markets).
President Kufuor indicated that
over the past two years Ghana’s fiscal
and monetary management and credit
rating have improved, inflation has
been significantly reduced from 42 to
Ghana’s foreign
policy of good
neighborliness has
contributed to
what peace these
countries know.
13 percent, and the bank’s borrowing
rate has fallen to 24 percent from 50
percent in 2001.
On the regional level, the president
discussed the situations in Sierra
Leone, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, and
Liberia. He said that the rise in civil
wars in these countries brought about
the collapse of their economies,
refugee problems, proliferation of
small arms, and general insecurity in
the subregion.
He argued that the pursuit of
Ghana’s foreign policy of good
neighborliness has contributed to
what peace these countries know.
Hamdiya Ismaila, MPA ’04, is concentrating
in Finance, Economic Policy, and Development.
Putin Fields
Questions, Creates
Controversy
By Marisa Robertson-Textor
In President Bollinger’s words, it
was a “momentous encounter.”
Certainly it was a dramatic one. On
September 25, under the hawk-eyed
gaze of rooftop snipers, select members
of the Columbia community,
including many SIPA faculty and students,
filed slowly into Low Rotunda
to hear Russian President Vladimir
Putin address the University.
Following a short speech in which
he encouraged young American
scholars of Russian studies to widen
their horizons beyond the highly
politicized Cold War legacies of
Sovietology, the president opened
the floor to questions, juggling a
seemingly inexhaustible arsenal of
statistics on questions ranging from
the global AIDS crisis to the reconstruction
of Iraq to the intricacies of
Russian slang. Putin’s performance—
part homespun wisdom, part worldly
erudition—was all the more striking
against the current American
political backdrop, which tends to
emphasize sound bites and slogans
over substantive answers to complex
questions.
The sheer complexity of Russian
political life today was well reflected
in this extended question-andanswer
session. Few Russia watchers
would take issue with the claim that
President Putin’s policies prioritize
economic and political security over
democratic freedoms. During his
tenure in office, he has sought to
centralize state power through a
wide variety of means, from much
needed legislative and judicial
reform to controversial crackdowns
on independent media outlets.
More surprising than the nature
of the president’s priorities was the
Putin said that
Russia has not
historically possessed
freedom of
the press, and
that perhaps it
should not today.
candor with which he revealed them
to the Columbia audience. In
response to Barnard Political Science
Professor Kimberly Marten, who
asked the president whether he considered
freedom of speech and press
to be alive and well, Putin said that
Russia has not historically possessed
freedom of the press, and that perhaps
it should not today. He illustrated
this claim by describing the
behavior of journalists during the
Nord-Ost crisis of October 2002,
when a band of Chechen freedom
fighters took the audience of a
Moscow theater hostage for several
days. Putin accused some journalists
of threatening the security service’s
hostage rescue operation by paying
off policemen and climbing on the
roof in search of insider information:
a quest for profits that threatened
human lives. He also alluded
obliquely to the role of Russia’s oligarchs
in funding media outlets, saying
that, “When funding for media
comes out of two or three bags,
that’s not freedom of the press—
that’s corporate interests.”
Controversial? Certainly. But the
liveliest moment of the afternoon
was yet to come: a skirmish with
Columbia History Professor Mark
von Hagen that was covered extensively
by Russian media the following
day. Von Hagen, in a long
address in Russian, recalled his own
student days in Leningrad in the
1970s, comparing the suspicion and
surveillance of that era to the heady
sense of freedom that earmarked the
early years of post-Soviet Russia
under Putin’s predecessor, Boris
Yeltsin. Citing, among other issues,
the recent uproar over Vtsiom—a
state-owned but historically autonomous
national polling agency
recently brought under tighter state
control in what many experts consider
a governmental ploy to discourage
unfavorable presidential ratings
and negative polls on such
issues as the on-going conflict in
Chechnya—von Hagen aired his
concern that the “bad old days”
might be returning.
When he finished speaking, von
Hagen attempted to return to his
seat—but was called back by the
president. “Hold on a second,” said
Putin. “Let’s have some discussion
here. What’s your name again?”
“Mark,” replied von Hagen. “Mark,”
said the president, rolling the name
over his tongue slowly before proceeding
to attack von Hagen’s claims
with an almost menacing vigor.
The verdict on Russia’s transformation
to a liberal democracy is
not yet in, but following President
Putin’s speech at Columbia, one
thing is abundantly clear: “He’s not
afraid of anything,” said Michael
Capone, MIA ’01.
14 SIPA NEWS
SIPA NEWS 15

The Other Side of Rio
I’m careening through tight curves and heavy traffic on a poorly paved street in Rio de Janeiro
on a motorcycle at such a fast clip, I’m worried I’ll be returning to America in a body bag
instead of a coach-class airline seat. The “motor-taxi” driver doesn’t have an extra helmet. As
we make a steady ascent through the broken asphalt, winding through hairpin turns, we swerve
mere inches from cars and dart so close to the lumbering buses, I choke on their dry, acrid
exhaust fumes. By Celeste Tarricone
16 SIPA NEWS

When we finally make it to the top of the mountainous
neighborhood, and I catch my breath, the
treacherous ride becomes worth it. Below is a gorgeous
vista of the vanilla-colored beaches, churning
ocean, and jagged, mist-encrusted mountains
that embrace the landscape of Rio, earning it the
title of Brazil’s Cidade Maravilhosa, or Marvelous
City. I snap pictures and marvel at the clash of
urban and natural beauty.
Then the lovely images vanish from my mind as
I turn around and face a sprawling mass of dilapidated
buildings spilling down the other side of the
peak, with trails of garbage snaking through them.
Luis, our tour guide, instructs our small group to
stop taking pictures because we’re fifty paces from
a drug dealer, who eyes us warily as he fingers the
crackling walkie-talkie slung around his neck.
The fabulous view isn’t the centerpiece of this
tourist jaunt. We’re on a favela tour, a trip through
one of Rio’s slums, where the main attraction is
poverty.
Favelas, as they’re called in Portuguese, began
cropping up on the outskirts of Rio about half a
century ago, as migrants from Brazil’s poor interior,
mainly the northeast, flooded the city in search
of work and a better life. Unable to afford to live in
the city’s established neighborhoods, they literally
headed for the hills, building precarious houses
from a hodge-podge of construction materials in
the uninhabited mountains that rimmed the residential
areas.
Because of their location, favela residents have
some of the best views in the city—better than the
wealthy populace—but that’s about the only luxury
they enjoy. Today, it is estimated that about 600
to 700 favelas house about 20 percent of Rio’s
population, but the transient and unstable nature
of the neighborhoods makes it difficult to get an
exact count.
Currently, most of the residents don’t live in
deep, abject poverty, but their houses are still precariously
constructed, and favelas only recently
began to get basic infrastructure services such as
water and electricity. The main road in a given
favela may be paved and lined with businesses
such as hardware stores, groceries, and even an
Internet café. On all sides, though, people mostly
traverse a narrow, confusing warren of dirt paths
littered with piles of trash and pools of stagnant,
dirty water, and suffocated by clumps of tangled,
exposed electrical wires. If you peek inside some
of the houses, you may see color televisions or
stereos, but, mostly, residents are still poor, and
many will never be able to afford to move out.
Aside from their high-altitude location, favelas
look much like many other Latin American urban
slums. Yet Brazilians and foreigners alike have
long had a fascination with them that you don’t see
elsewhere in the region. A decade ago, an enterprising
tour guide named Marcelo Armstrong
decided to offer visitors an opportunity to satiate
their curiosity. Eager to demonstrate that favelas
weren’t strictly dens of drugs, violence, crime, and
LUIS, OUR TOUR GUIDE, INSTRUCTS OUR SMALL GROUP TO STOP TAKING PICTURES
BECAUSE WE’RE FIFTY PACES FROM A DRUG DEALER, WHO EYES US WARILY
Above: Tour guide Luis with two boys who have
just gotten out of school for the day. Right: Aerial
view of Rocinha Favela, a large slum on the hills
behind Copacabana, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
AS HE FINGERS THE CRACKLING WALKIE-TALKIE SLUNG AROUND HIS NECK.
decrepitude, he began offering tours designed to
educate people about how favelas function as economic
and social units, raise awareness about the
poverty and problems residents face, and demonstrate
that there’s more to Rio than the beaches,
bars, nightclubs, and beautiful views.
“They’re part of Brazilian society, and you
don’t get to see that if you go just to the top of the
Christ statue and the Sugar Loaf Mountain,” he
said, referring to two of the city’s most popular
tourist attractions.
The response was far greater than Armstrong,
or most people working in tourism in Rio, would
have predicted. Riotur, the city’s tourism authority,
says favela tours are among the most popular
tourist activities and one of the fastest growing
tourism sectors, although the agency does not
keep exact data on favela tours’ development.
Now, a bevy of tour guides besides Armstrong
take several small groups a day on roughly twohour
trips that feature what are basically ordinary
sights, such as houses, local restaurants, butcher
shops, and houseware stands—except that they’re
in a slum. Nearly all of the tours take place in
Rocinha, Rio’s largest favela, with a population of
about 200,000.
The burgeoning popularity is due, in part, to the
commercial success around the world of the
Brazilian film City of God, a harsh, stomach-turning
depiction chronicling three decades of drug culture
and extreme violence in a Rio slum by the same
name. (Many descriptions of the movie incorrectly
referred to City of God as a favela, but, technically,
it isn’t. It’s a housing project that was established
by the city to try to help people break out of the
poverty cycle of favelas that, obviously, failed.)
Favelas also have been an incubator for the
genre of “funky” music, similar to gangsta rap in
the United States, which is steadily gaining admirers.
A sort of favela chic has developed around
funky music culture, with young Brazilians and foreign
backpackers listening to the lyrics, which
often tout drug violence, murder, and mistreatment
of women, and emulating, or trying to sneak
into, the notorious bailes funky, or funk dances,
that feature sexual party games and neighborhood
drug dealers waving their semiautomatic weapons
as they bop to the rhythm of the throbbing music.
As we make our way down the mountain,
through the back alleys and narrow dirt roads
carved among the tightly crammed together houses
of Rocinha, we cross paths with several more
drug dealers, although I only see them brandishing
walkie-talkies, not guns. As we walk around, people
often smile at us and say hello; some of the
children even stop and look at us curiously and
then pose when various members of the tour group
ask to take their picture. I never feel unsafe. It’s
unlikely that anyone would risk the bad publicity
and security crackdown that would result from
hurting a foreign tourist.
While living in Rio, I met numerous travelers
and students studying abroad who had participated
in favela tours and raved about them, or were
eager to take one—but I was skeptical. How did
the guides keep the trips from making a spectacle
of poverty? How did they mitigate the stark contrast
between the tourists, mostly wealthy and
white, and the residents, mostly neither of those?
And was it ethical to go into those neighborhoods
and derive entertainment of sorts out of peering
into people’s lives, without giving anything back?
After taking two such tours, I’m still a skeptic.
The reality is, most of the tour guides don’t put
money back into the community. Armstrong, whose
tours include both Rocinha and a smaller favela
named Vila Lagoas, has started a community center
for children in the latter, funded by money he
makes from the tours, and is developing a project
in the former. Other tour guides may pay individual
home- or business owners a sort of honorarium to
allow visitors to enter their domains as part of the
“going native” experience, but they contribute little
else to the neighborhood.
The participants, mostly liberal, well-intentioned
backpackers, do seem eager to challenge
their perceptions about favelas, but their reactions
also suggest an undercurrent of voyeurism, a slight
thrill in crossing socioeconomic lines, and a desire
to assuage guilt. The reaction of so many of them
was, “See, it’s not so bad?” And, “Isn’t it amazing
the way they’ve built these cute little houses all on
their own?”
As someone who studies economic and political
development, however, it did seem pretty bad
to me. By making these neighborhoods a tourist
event, favela tours essentially reinforce the notion
of the residents as the “Other” and further reinforce
the divide between the haves and have-nots
in Rio, and the fact that favela residents are on the
outside looking in. They don’t really bridge gaps,
because, while the tourists can cross back and
forth between the favela and the rest of Rio, the
favela dwellers can’t readily do the same.
Celeste Tarricone, MIA ’04, is concentrating in
Economic and Political Development.
18 SIPA NEWS SIPA NEWS 19

AFGHAN
JOURNALISM 101
By Rachel Martin
We’re sitting in on an important meeting. Afghan journalists
from all the major media outlets are here: the
reporters for the State broadcaster, Radio Television
Afghanistan, along with the local stringers for international
news outlets like the BBC and Voice of
America and for the local newspaper—about 20 local
Jalalabad reporters altogether. They are all young men, dressed in the traditional
garb of the provinces: long pajama-type shirts over loose pants. Even though
mandatory facial hair was eliminated from Afghan society along with the Taliban,
nearly all the men have beards, as is typical outside Kabul. The reporters squeeze
in next to one another on the worn velvet couches that line the perimeter of the
hot and sticky administrative office. I take a seat with my Afghan colleague in the
corner and self-consciously adjust the scarf covering my head. We all sip our tea,
wipe the sweat from our foreheads, and wait for the meeting to begin.
A reporter for Jalalabad Radio and Television
Afghanistan works in a dimly lit production studio.
SIPA NEWS 21

Afghan radio personalities Jamila Restin (left) and Farida Helleh read the news on the “Good Morning
Afghanistan” program in Kabul. The hour-long radio show, a mixture of news, interviews, and feature
packages, differs from traditional programs that focus on government propaganda and Islamic teachings.
The reporters have been gathered here at the
Bureau of Information in the eastern city of
Jalalabad to discuss a recent editorial in a Kabul
newspaper, which accused reporters in the
provinces of breaching journalistic ethics. The
editorial claimed that journalists in Jalalabad and
Kandahar take bribes from government officials
and maintain inappropriate personal relationships
with senior military officers, compromising
the news they write and broadcast.
After discussing the article and its implications
for half an hour or so, the self-proclaimed leader of
the group offers a draft letter, challenging the
author of the editorial to come up with concrete
examples of journalistic corruption. The group
agrees to send the response, and each man signs
his name as they pass the handwritten letter
around the room. The young men are visibly upset
by the accusations: they wax on about how their
reputations are being undermined and their honor
as journalists is being debased. I lean over and ask
my colleague Barry Salaam why no one seems to
want to refute the actual charges of nepotism and
bribery. “Because it’s true,” he replies, “and they
have no idea how to begin to deal with it.”
The lines of journalistic ethics are blurred in
Afghanistan, as they are in many developing
countries and postconflict situations. Strong government
influence over the media makes it difficult
for reporters to get more than one side of a
story, and the roots of nepotism run as deep as
the history of Afghan conflicts. But just as blurry,
undefined, and unprotected are the rights that
protect journalists and guarantee freedom of the
press. There are indeed Afghan journalists who
cross the line by accepting gifts from officials in
exchange for favorable coverage or who allow
their personal relationships with politicians and
military leaders to influence their news judgment.
But it has become clear to me during my
time here that there are just as many, if not more,
cases in which journalists are threatened and
coerced to the point where they become nothing
more than mouthpieces for a local warlord or
official.
I have been working in Afghanistan as a consultant
for a Danish nongovernmental organization
that specializes in building up local media in
postconflict situations. I was hired to go out into
the provinces and train local radio reporters. This
was to be Journalism 101: everything from how
to use a minidisc recorder to how to conduct a
fair and balanced interview. But the ethical part
of the training was proving a bit challenging.
How do you teach someone about news judgment
when the only things on the radio for five
years under the Taliban were propaganda and
prayers? How do you teach someone how to put
together a balanced news story when questioning
the government or its work can mean getting
fired—or getting killed?
My partner in these training workshops is a
young Afghan man, Barry Salaam. Four years ago
under the Taliban, Salaam was selling goods from
a wooden cart in the streets of Kabul to support
his mother and four siblings. Now, at the age of
26, he is the managing editor of the country’s
most popular radio news program and one of the
most influential voices in Afghanistan’s emerging
free press.
Salaam and I had traveled to Mazar-e-Sharif,
Herat, and Jalalabad to conduct a series of threeday
reporting workshops. With each trip, it
became more and more clear that outside Kabul,
journalism is anything but balanced and the press
anything but free. We interviewed reporters,
news directors, and editors who cited myriad
examples of manipulation and intimidation of
journalists by government officials. An estimated
90 percent of the news broadcast or printed in
the provinces comes directly from government
sources. Often, the local government office will
send over a tape of an interview or a so-called
“news story” and instruct a broadcaster to run it
unedited, with no questions asked. There are several
documented cases of Afghan journalists who
have been victimized for challenging such constraints
on the press. A report released by Human
Rights Watch in June 2003 cites numerous
instances in which journalists around the country
have been harassed, arrested, and threatened
with death by politicians, police officers, and
army officials.
Many of these problems are illustrated vividly
in Jalalabad, where journalists like Kolistan
Haleb struggle with the notion of balanced,
accurate, and authentic journalism, and with the
political and economic realities that constrain it.
Haleb has been a reporter and news editor for
the state radio station in Jalalabad for more than
20 years. Sitting on a white plastic lawn chair in
his office, he wipes the dirt from the top of two
warm cans of Coca-Cola before handing one
each to Barry and me. We have just returned from
the reporters’ meeting across town, and we are
anxious to ask this seasoned Afghan journalist
what he thinks about the country’s fragile free
press.
“We are trapped,” he says with sad, knowing
eyes. “I know what a free press looks like, and
Afghanistan is a long way away from that.” He
recounts the story of a military commander
who showed up at his newsroom, demanding
that the station rebroadcast
a rather favorable
interview with him. The
piece had already aired
once, but the commander
ordered the news director
to air the story three more times over the
course of the day. When the editor refused, the
commander threatened the entire news staff
and their families. The governor of Jalalabad
eventually dismissed the commander as a result
of his behavior, but Haleb says the story exemplifies
the anarchic nature of the provinces,
which often leaves Afghan journalists caught in
the crossfire.
National leaders say they are making every
effort to protect freedom of speech. Afghanistan’s
Deputy Minister of Information and Culture,
Abdul Mubarez, is quick to name the dozens of
newspapers that have sprung up in Kabul since
the fall of the Taliban. He proudly takes credit
for helping pave the way for the country’s first
independent daily radio news program, produced
solely by local journalists, as well as the first private
commercial radio station, which hit the airwaves
last spring. Although he admits there have
been some problems with warlords in the
provinces harassing journalists, Mubarez says
freedom of speech is central to the country’s new
draft constitution. “The freedom of press is the
guarantee of the right of the people,” he says.
“This freedom will guarantee the right of all the
people of Afghanistan for all the sons and daughters
of Afghanistan.”
On a recent visit to Columbia, President
Hamid Karzai echoed much of the same rhetoric.
Although he admitted that it is much easier to
proclaim rights than it is to guarantee them, he
said it will take a stronger central government to
ensure that freedom of the press is adequately
protected.
“People can go and threaten journalists: people
in government positions, people outside of
the government. But considering the condition
of Afghanistan and the years of anarchy there,
the violations so far of the freedom of the press
have been negligible. If you ask me if I am happy
with the free press today and with the protection
of the free press today—yes, I am happy. I am not
Top: Kolistan Haleb, senior editor for Jalalabad
Radio and Television Afghanistan (center), with
Barry Salaam (right). Bottom: state broadcast station
in Mazar-e-Sharif.
complaining,” said Karzai.
But people like Haleb are not so satisfied.
The day is coming to a close for the 60-yearold
reporter. It’s almost eight o’clock: time for
him to begin the three-hour drive home to his
village where his wife, children, and grandchildren
wait for him to eat dinner. Before he leaves,
he asks us if we have any other questions. Barry
and I are supposed to conduct a training session
the next day for his reporters, and we’re feeling
apprehensive. After our conversations with
Haleb and other reporters earlier in the day
about ethics and the constraints on Afghan journalists,
we’re both beginning to feel a quiet wave
of futility wash over us—a futility neither of us
wants to admit. We ask Haleb if he thinks it’s
I lean over and ask . . . why no one seems to want to refute
the actual charges of nepotism and bribery.
“Because it’s true,” he replies,
“and they have no idea how to begin to deal with it.”
worthwhile to talk about things like balance and
bias. Should we stick to less controversial topics,
like how to hold a microphone or how to use
sound effects? Haleb leans forward in the white
plastic chair, removes his black-tinted glasses,
and smiles. “A little over two years ago, even talking
about the idea of a free press could land you
in a Taliban jail,” he says. “Things are slowly
changing here, and we must push that change
forward. It is never good to be kept in the dark,
to be kept blind. We must always learn more, and
then when the window opens and the opportunity
comes—we will be ready.”
22 SIPA NEWS
SIPA NEWS 23

The Chechen
Dilemma
By Marisa Robertson-Textor
It was ten years ago this June that I first set foot on Russian soil. Over the past decade,
I have sung in a Siberian karaoke bar to a standing ovation, shepherded a former U.S.
senator around the Kremlin, and taught English to the mentally ill. With each new
experience, I sought to steep myself a little further in the culture of what would eventually
become my second homeland.
Russian soldiers look out from
a truck as they cross the
Chechen-Ingush border 27
December 1999 on their way
to Chechnya. Chechen fighters
repelled Russian attempts to
push into the center of Grozny
as rebel President Aslan
Maskhadov vowed to defend
the capital to the last man.
But until this past summer there was one crucial
aspect of life in post-Soviet Russia that I avoided like
the plague: the ongoing military conflict in Chechnya.
In the early days, this was easy enough to do. From the
moment Chechnya declared its independence from the
newly founded Russian Federation in 1991, the conflict
has cast a pall over the entire country. That said,
at first it was just one of many political, social, and economic
upheavals wrought by the collapse of the Soviet
Union. With few exceptions, those not directly affected
by the conflict were able to ignore it. As casualties
mounted, this became more difficult. And yet while
Chechnya has been an integral part of the new Russian
Zeitgeist, over a decade later it remains one of the
least-analyzed issues of the post-Soviet transition.
The dilemma Chechnya represents—to its own population,
the Russian Federation, and the international
community—is not a simple one. It is not simple, first
of all, because Russia—a former empire encompassing
89 provinces, 11 time zones, and scores of minority languages
and ethnic groups—is a far from simple place.
In Russia, as anyone who has ever spent an evening
sitting around a kitchen table there will tell you, every
statement can be refuted; every argument has a counterargument.
Depending on whom you talk to, the
source of the conflict in Chechnya is Islamic fundamentalism,
Russian imperialism, Chechen militarism,
or ancient ethnic hatreds. In fact, it is a combination of
all of the above. Until one actually takes the plunge,
working to resolve the Chechen conflict seems so complex—and
hopeless—that the best response seems to
be none at all.
The roots of the current military conflict run deep.
In 1859, following decades of fighting, the region
SIPA NEWS 25

Top, left to right: Refugees rally
against the war in Chechnya; a woman
distributes bread as residents of
Grozny line up for humanitarian aid
sent by the Emergency Ministry; a
Chechen freedom fighter stands on a
street in front of his guerrilla companions;
a Chechen woman casts her ballot
at a polling station in the village of
Alpatovo, about 100km from Grozny;
a mother mourns the loss of her son.
Bottom: An Orthodox priest walks in
front of a coffin carried by comrades
during the funeral service of Russian
paratroopers killed in Chechnya that
took place in their native city of Pskov.
known today as Chechnya was annexed to Tsarist
Russia. Following the October Revolution of
1917, Bolsheviks gained and lost the territory
several times before eventually securing it as part
of the new Soviet state. Following the German
invasion of Southern Russia in 1943, the entire
Chechen population, together with a handful of
other ethnic groups designated as “enemy peoples,”
was deported to Central Asia as part of
Stalin’s campaign to discourage Nazi collaboration.
It is estimated that half the Chechen population
perished during the deportation. Chechens
only began to be repatriated to the North
Caucasus in 1956.
Just prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union
in December 1991, Chechnya declared its independence
under the leadership of Soviet military
hero Dzhokar Dudayev. In December 1994, thenpresident
Boris Yeltsin ordered a military intervention
into the region to reestablish control over what
had quickly become a de facto independent state.
Despite a cease-fire in July 1995, fighting between
Russian troops and Chechen separatists continued
until the signing of a peace treaty in August 1996.
The withdrawal of Russian troops from the region
saw a steady rise in crime, including ransom kidnappings
of Chechen, Russian, and foreign civilians,
with the factional Chechen government largely
unable to maintain control over the region.
The Russian military returned to Chechnya in
September 1999 following a Chechen incursion
into the neighboring republic of Dagestan and a
series of apartment bombings in central Russian
cities widely blamed on Chechen rebels. The fighting
continues to this day, with both sides routinely
violating the rights of the civilian population.
Russian troops continue to conduct large-scale
and targeted operations during which they detain
men, often arbitrarily, while searching for rebel
fighters hiding among the civil population.
Extrajudicial executions are not uncommon during
such operations.
The legal aid organization for which I worked
this summer, the Chechnya Justice Project, is a
groundbreaking initiative that utilizes international
legal institutions to address such human rights violations.
It helps individual victims of abuses at the
hands of Russian authorities file cases with the
European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. A
civil court that allows for individual petitioning
against governments, the European Court of Human
Rights, holds jurisdiction over all member countries
of the Council of Europe. The Russian Federation
acceded to the Council of Europe in 1997.
The Chechnya Justice Project is the brainchild of
human rights activist Diederik Lohman, who, while
serving as the director of the Moscow office of
Human Rights Watch in 2000, made numerous
missions to Ingushetia, the province bordering
Chechnya to which many refugees had fled as a
result of the conflict. “In interviewing Chechen victims
of human rights abuses, it became clear that
one of the important issues was accountability,”
says Lohman. “There were many incidents where
there was strong evidence of wrongdoing by Russian
soldiers, but no one in Russia was paying attention.”
By tracking victims of human rights abuses
over time, Lohman discovered a patent unwillingness
on the part of Russian authorities to identify
and question eyewitnesses to the abuses and take
steps to secure material evidence of the crimes.
“The thought kept gnawing at me that a lot of
these cases were perfect for the European Court,”
says Lohman. While at home in the Netherlands in
the summer of 2001, he set out to secure small
grants that would allow for the founding of an independent
organization to take these cases to the
European Court of Human Rights. The Chechnya
Justice Project—a joint Dutch-Russian organization
staffed largely by Russian citizens—was born.
To call the Chechnya Justice Project a growth
industry is no exaggeration: during the period of
January 2000–November 2002 alone, the Office
of the Special Representative of the President of
the Russian Federation on Human Rights and
Freedoms in the Chechen Republic received 1,568
appeals regarding kidnappings and another 1,085
appeals regarding other crimes. The overwhelming
majority of these appeals cited the Russian federal
forces as the perpetrators.
One of the more curious aspects of the conflict
is widespread ignorance within Russia of the atrocities
that form the basis of the Chechnya Justice
Project’s work. One explanation for this phenomenon
is fatigue, pure and simple: after almost a
decade of warfare, those Russians not directly implicated
simply lack the energy to care about a conflict
that waxes and wanes but never seems to end. This
attitude was brought home to me over the course of
the summer. With a few notable exceptions, my
Moscow friends listened patiently to stories about
my work but remained unmoved by the ongoing
abuses against Chechen civilians and unconvinced
that such abuses required legal redress.
Experts attribute this minimal public opposition
to the second war to recent governmental
crackdowns on independent media, as well as
restricted access to the territory of Chechnya for
journalists and human rights monitors alike. In this
information vacuum, the majority of Russians are
disproportionately aware of crimes committed by
Chechen rebels, among them an ever-increasing
number of attacks on civilians in Russian cities far
removed from the center of the conflict. In particular,
the recent emergence of a number of female
suicide bombers has had pundits discussing the
“Palestinization” of the conflict, a term suggesting
an ever-strengthening cycle of violence that neither
side has the political will to resolve.
A greater degree of accountability and transparency
on the part of the Russian Federation Simple and logical as this plan sounds, many
would do much to ease this cycle of violence. experts on the conflict are skeptical as to whether
Currently, the Russian government’s doors remain the Russian government possesses the political
closed to such key international monitoring bodies will to implement it. Aaron Rhodes, executive
as the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and the director of the International Helsinki Federation,
UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, considers the constitutional referendum held in
or Arbitrary Executions.
Chechnya this past spring—which President Putin
That the international community has eased off referred to in his Columbia address as a ”great
pressure on Russia in recent years is a product of success”—as “one of the most corrupt, illegal,
the new global environment. “The events of 9/11 Potemkin village-type frauds that has taken place
made it much more difficult for the U.S. to push in the entire post-Soviet period.”
Depending on whom you talk to, the source of the
conflict in Chechnya is Islamic fundamentalism, Russian
imperialism, Chechen militarism, or ancient ethnic
hatreds. In fact, it is a combination of all of the above.
Russia on Chechnya,” says Maureen Greenwood, Unfortunately, this pattern looks to continue.
advocacy director for Europe and the Middle East On October 5, Chechnya held republican presidential
elections, with the Kremlin’s candidate,
at Amnesty International. Russia’s claims that
Chechen freedom fighters are funded by international
radical Islamic organizations had rendered cent of the vote—a figure many experts find less
Akhmad Kadyrov, sweeping an estimated 80 per-
the issue largely untouchable.
than credible, given the general climate of violence
The palpable reluctance of the United States and intimidation in the region and the withdrawal
and other Western democracies to pressure Russia of all viable competitors in the race.
on Chechnya is matched by the current Russian Dismal as the current outlook is, it remains my
leadership’s refusal to submit to any such pressure.
During his September 25 speech at ian populations—together with international lead-
sincere hope that the Chechen and Russian civil-
Columbia University, President Vladimir Putin ers, institutions, and activists—may yet exert pressure
on the Russian authorities to bring the current
referred obliquely to the Chechen conflict as a
“serious domestic political problem.” In the president’s
words, normal life in the region is in the 25 address, President Putin declared that the
cycle of violence to a halt. During his September
process of being restored. Once a proper governmental
infrastructure is in place, Putin said, the security, and restoration of normal life. Let us hold
Chechen people both want and deserve peace,
region will enjoy a measure of autonomy from the him to his words.
federal government.
26 SIPA NEWS
SIPA NEWS 27

THE AMAZON SCHOOL:
PROMOTING HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE ENVIRONMENT
By Ama Marston
28 SIPA NEWS
Huaorani Indians protest in front of the Superior Court in the
Amazonian town of Lago Agrio at the start of a landmark trial, where
indigenous rainforest peoples are seeking to force ChevronTexaco to
clean up the environmental contamination left behind from Texaco's
oil drilling operations in the Ecuadorean Amazon.
The man in the feathered headdress
seems slightly out of place standing
before the group of students in an
institutional-looking classroom. The bright
yellow and red macaw feathers draw attention
to his dark angular features and identify
him as a Shuar leader. He has journeyed, like
the other participants, from deep in the jungle
to participate in the Amazon School, a
three-month program designed to teach community
leaders from the Amazon Basin about
human rights and environmental issues. This
training is one of the few human rights based
approaches to examining the destruction
caused by extractive industries, particularly
transnational oil companies.
“The dream of the school is to form an
extended community of indigenous people
and the environmental movement in the
North and the South that together can promote
change, change that addresses
human rights, social justice, and environmental
issues,” says Paulina Garzon, cofounder
of the Amazon School and of the Center
for Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
(CDES).

The school was founded, following decades
of environmental abuse by Texaco, the leading
oil company in Ecuador, to address the increasing
violation of indigenous and peasant communities’
basic rights both in Ecuador and throughout the
Amazon Basin. “Texaco has inadvertently been
the number one recruiter for the pro-human
rights and anti-oil movement in the Amazon
Region,” says Kenny Bruno, cofounder of the
school and program director for EarthRights
International, the U.S.-based NGO that is
responsible for the school, along with CDES.
“Those who have seen the abusive practices of
the company are so appalled that they have been
driven to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Between 1972 and 1990, Texaco had free rein
to open new territory in the Ecuadorean Amazon,
invading indigenous communities’ lands. During
this time, the company discharged 4.3 million
gallons of toxic waste daily into the environment.
Harvard medical studies have revealed extremely
high levels of carcinogens in the water supplies as
a result, causing elevated rates of cancer and
Top: Siro Chumpi, a Shuar student from Ecuador, can be identified as a community leader by his
macaw feather headdress. Right, top: Ecuadorean Indians march to the Superior Court of Justice in the
Amazonian town of Lago Agrio. Right, center: Students work in groups to write letters to the president
of Peru to express concerns about the proposed Camisea gas-line project. Right, bottom: Students work
together to prepare view-finders for a documentary photography course.
The people’s peaceful resistance was met with violent military repression,
in one case killing three small children. Left with little recourse,
seventeen U’wa communities collectively decided to commit suicide if
the drilling went ahead.
other illnesses in the 30,000 people living closest
to Texaco’s operations. The complaints against
the company, which have now been conglomerated
into an international court case, are indicative
of the impact of the oil industry in the
Amazon and embody much of what the students
at the school are either confronting in their own
communities or are doggedly working to avoid.
This year’s class is the largest and most diverse
since the school began in 2000, representing
nine different indigenous groups from five countries
in the Amazon Basin—Ecuador, Peru,
Bolivia, Venezuela, and Colombia. The students
have come on foot, in canoes, or bush-planes
from deep in the jungle before taking buses and
planes to reach the school, which is on the outskirts
of the Ecuadorean capital of Quito.
Although they share the Amazon Basin as a
common home, the students have unique cultural
identities, different languages, and varying levels
of leadership experience. Diversity provides
the students with opportunities to learn from one
another and create a network of support within
the Amazon. “I came to learn from the other students,”
says Arturo Rotarbaria, director of the
Association of the U’wa (Asouwa) in Colombia.
“I hope we will find solidarity and be able to
work together, because the problems in
Colombia are the same as here in Ecuador and
much of Latin America.”
While each student has his or her own experience
to share, Arturo’s presence is particularly
important because of the U’wa community’s victory
against the California-based oil company,
Occidental (Oxy). According to Rotarbaria, in
1992 Oxy entered the area, accompanied by military
force. The Colombian government had
given Oxy the right to begin exploration without
consulting the communities.
“When they arrived at the Asouwa office to
tell us of the [oil] exploration, the contracts had
already been signed,” he explains. The people’s
peaceful resistance was met with violent military
repression, in one case killing three small children.
Left with little recourse, seventeen U’wa
communities collectively decided to commit suicide
if the drilling went ahead. “We didn’t want
to die at the hands of the armed forces. We
would rather kill ourselves,” said Rotarbaria. The
extremity of the situation quickly drew international
attention. By May 2002, the project
became such a public relations nightmare that
Oxy was forced to withdraw.
This victory has been an important one not
only for the U’wa communities, but also for the
entire indigenous movement in the Amazon, particularly
for groups currently in the earlier stages
of resistance to the multinational corporations.
For the past five years a consortium of
ChevronTexaco (USA) and CGC (Argentina)
has attempted to begin oil exploration in block
23, a concession granted by the Ecuadorean government,
which is mostly comprised of the community
of Sarayacu’s ancestral land. Despite the
community’s rejection of the project, the company
has made repeated attempts to bribe leaders in
an effort to divide the community. Women have
played a particularly important role in the resistance,
organizing the community and confronting
the armed forces with peaceful protests.
Nonetheless, company and government repression
have intensified to the point that the Inter-
American Commission on Human Rights has
ordered the Ecuadorean government to take
urgent measures to protect the lives and safety of
the community leaders. Still, the government
defiantly backs the companies and insists that
Sarayacu accept the project or risk further military
action.
The people of Sarayacu have not forgotten
the experience of the U’wa community. “We have
unanimously decided that we won’t allow CGC
to enter our lands,” explains Hernan Malaver
Santi, a leader-in-training from Sarayacu and one
of the youngest students at the school. “We have
seen from our friends in the Northeastern jungle
[of Ecuador] that the oil companies bring problems.
They contaminate the air and water and
totally destroy the forest. They operate in corrupt
ways.”
While the students’ communities such as
Sarayacu and those of the U’wa are at different
stages in their struggles, the David and Goliath
task of confronting the multinational companies is
a common theme. There is no way to address these
issues without looking at the root causes, particularly
poverty, foreign debt, and special economic
interests that are driving forces behind many
of the concessions given to the transnationals.
During the second week of class, Patricio
Pazmiño, director of CDES, asks, “Can the
actions of a small community in the jungle effect
the decisions of a large multinational corporation
with branches around the world?” The majority
of the students initially answer “no.” Despite the
fact that communities such as the U’wa provide
an encouraging example, this reaction is indicative
of the weight they feel in confronting such
large interests and complex problems.
Nonetheless, one of the students boldly breaks
from the crowd after a long pause and says that
he thinks it can be done, despite the fact that it
is difficult, which spurs further discussion.
Yet it is one thing to discuss and quite another
to act. During the third week of school,
Kruger Pacaya, a Shipibo community leader from
Peru, receives a message that an activist from a
community neighboring his own has been killed
while defending the forest against loggers. It is a
reminder that being an advocate for one’s community
in the Amazon is a life-or-death matter
on many levels.
The toll that these weighty issues take on students
becomes apparent at the end of the fourth
week. Just before the students are excused for the
weekend, Garzon, calls one last meeting to thank
the students for a hard week of work and
announce a surprise.
Juan Rodriguez Fuentes, a Piraos community
leader from Colombia and one of the most outspoken
members of the group, has prepared a
poem for everyone, “The Fury of the Amazon.”
He begins:
I remember that I was a poor and laborious peasant
With Indian blood that boils in the veins
He laments the absence of his ancestors and
those who have abandoned the struggle for their
community’s rights. The students listen with tired
faces, their eyes glazed over. But as Juan begins
the last stanza, the group is lifted from their
exhaustion.
A consolation for my heart,
The Amazon School
Navigating through valleys of tears
I came across the Shuar, Achuar, and Kichwa
Huaranis, Chiquitanos, and Shipibos
Wayuu, U’wa, and Piaroas,
They are brothers of my race
The path of life
That which marks destiny
To you my friends
I wish you happiness
For the Amazon jungle
I leave my inspiration
For the oil companies only my damnation.
The group applauds loudly. There is no doubt
that the remaining two months of the course will
present greater challenges than the students have
expected. But somehow they seem revitalized by a
reminder of their diverse cultural identities and
strengthened by the thought that the school has
brought them together to learn from one another
and support each other in their struggles. Despite
the numerous challenges the students face, they
have found unity in their conviction to defend
their communities and their common home, the
culturally and biologically diverse Amazon jungle.
Ama Marston, MIA ’04, is concentrating in Economic and
Political Development and International Media and
Communications.
30 SIPA NEWS
SIPA NEWS 31

A MARATHON A DAY:
AN IRANIAN’S QUEST BECOMES SOURCE OF GLOBAL INSPIRATION
“New York. My dream!”
gasps Reza Baluchi, overwhelmed by emotion,
to one of his numerous supporters on
the cell phone. “I made it! I made it!” he says,
his voice shaking as he starts sobbing.
It’s September 11, 2003, and the last day of
a seven-year running and cycling endeavor
in the name of peace that has taken the 31-
year-old Iranian-born Baluchi across a record
49,700 miles through 55 countries.
The sight of this small man with wiry arms,
sturdy thighs, and a face drowned in tears is
incongruous. But his appearance is understandable,
given the incredible nature of his achievement.
Baluchi began the U.S. leg of his trip on
May 11, when he left Los Angeles, running an
average of 31 miles a day—a distance in excess of
a marathon run a day—in order to make it on
time to New York and pay homage to the victims
of the World Trade Center on the second
anniversary of the attacks. Along the way,
Baluchi won the hearts of hundreds of supporters
from all walks of life, with many of them turning
out to support him in this moment of triumph.
Born in 1972 in a small agricultural village in
the north of Iran, Baluchi took up running to alleviate
boredom. “There was not much to do back
home,” he says. “I liked to run. I would run from
my house to school and then run back in the
afternoon.” When he was nine, he ran away from
home, much farther this time, until he eventually
reached his aunt’s house in the capital, Tehran.
There, he began working as an apprentice in a
mechanic’s shop, dropping out of school after
By Ladane Nasseri
five years of elementary education. As a teenager,
Baluchi took up cycling as part of a team.
What initially inspired Baluchi to undertake
this global journey toward the United States is
not immediately apparent. Certainly he was dissatisfied
with the strict living conditions in the
Islamic Republic of Iran and seduced, as many
underprivileged males, by the alluring image of
Western salvation. “I am the son of agriculturists
and I don’t have much education,” he explains,
“but I biked. That’s what I did best.” To Baluchi,
it only seemed natural to apply what he consid-
ered his prominent talent as a means to reach his
aspiration. Pumped by the physical challenge of
his journey and driven by the motivation to
“show what an Iranian can do,” he left the country
in 1996 with $400 in his pocket.
But drifting through various cultures and
experiencing different encounters was an incredible
eye- and mind-opener. Touched by the generosity
of those who crossed his path, Baluchi
believed he should do something to help in
return. Using an Iranian expression, he explains:
“You see, when a hand washes the other hand,
the latter turns and cleans the face.”
Baluchi’s perspective became enlarged, and so
did the nature of his statement. He began adopting
the self-assigned role of facilitator between
nations and cultures following the September 11
tragedy, when he decided that he was a messenger
of peace between all races and religions. “For
the anniversary of September 11,” he claimed, “I
will deliver my message of hope at Ground Zero,
the eye of the world.”
Baluchi’s expedition across Europe, Asia,
Australia, Latin America, and, finally North
America was fraught with difficulties. He suffered
from hunger on many occasions, slept with
his bike on roadsides, and washed in rivers. He
caught malaria in Zimbabwe, was hit by a car in
South Africa, and had a severe intestinal disease
in the Amazon basin. The boat he was on to
Panama almost capsized. He cried many times,
out of disappointment, pain, and fear of not
being able to make it still farther.
Sometimes the problems he encountered
were less personal in nature but equally critical to
achieving his goal. “I would just not be given the
visa,” says Baluchi. “What can you do with an
Iranian passport? So I had to change plans and
cycle all the way back. I would cry and cry but I
would pedal and pedal, sometimes up to 180
miles a day.”
Baluchi believes that his nationality also hindered
his chances by preventing him from being
sponsored. “If I had been European, I would have
been sponsored. I would have made it in a year!”
he says.
Baluchi ran into even bigger problems in the
United States. To the U.S. immigration patrol
that discovered him near the border with Mexico
in November 2002, he was just another illegal
Middle Eastern immigrant. He was taken to the
Florence Immigration and Naturalization
Services detention facility in Arizona, where he
was held for four months.
But his fate was to be different from other
Middle Eastern male immigrants in the United
States. As a youth in Iran, Baluchi had been
arrested and punished for “crimes” that included
wearing a Michael Jackson tee-shirt; carrying a
banned prerevolutionary movie; and eating during
Ramadan, the sacred Muslim period of fasting.
These run-ins with Iranian authorities lent
credibility to Baluchi’s appeal, allowing his
lawyer to prevent his deportation from the
United States.
Support from the people in Arizona also contributed
to his release. Following an article about
him in the Arizona Republic, a support group, the
Arizona Alliance for Peaceful Justice, launched
the “Free Reza” campaign. Friends and supporters
addressed countless letters to immigration officials
appealing on behalf of Baluchi. Immigration
Judge LaMonte Freercks conceded and granted
Baluchi political asylum, even handing him a box
of chocolate as a token of his support.
Free to resume his mission, Baluchi announced
that he would go to California and, this time, run
across the nation toward New York. “Running is
more difficult,” he believes, “and my message of
peace will be that much stronger.”
Baluchi’s story could have been just about
immigration, but his global journey, thanks to his
faith and infinite willpower, embraced an
extraordinary social and political dimension. His
optimistic outlook on the world and contagious
idealism soothed the hidden grievances of people
he met on his route. His universal message
spurred many to offer him food, shelter, odd
jobs, and all types of random support (such as
free consultations by a dentist and a cardiologist).
His disarming naiveté inspired others to
adopt his hopes for a better future.
“Reza looks Middle Eastern, sounds Middle
Eastern, and certainly says that he is Middle
Baluchi paying respects at the Sept. 11 memorial in Shanksville, Pa. (left); Sept. 11, 2003: the final
leg—crossing the George Washington Bridge (center); Baluchi carrying the 13 pairs of shoes he went
through during his cross-country run.
Eastern,” according to Nathaniel Batchelder, an
Oklahoma Peace House activist. “And he conveys
the desire to connect with us. He personifies
the wish we all have for peace.” In Oklahoma
City, Baluchi visited the national memorial of the
1995 bombing attack and attended a reception
held by Code Pink, a peace organization.
Batchelder describes Baluchi’s story as one of
faith in humanity.
In Tennessee, Baluchi was perceived as a positive
role model for Iranian-American kids struggling
to straddle the wide culture gap between
Iran and their new home. “Our generation has
been the silent majority in this society,” explains
Abbas Yavari, the 44-year-old president of the
Iranian Association of Middle Tennessee. “But
Reza is accomplishing something that shows our
children they can get more involved in the
American society, that they too can do something
special.”
Twenty-three-year-old Iranian-American
Neemah Esmailpour, who traveled alongside
Baluchi between Arkansas and New York, says,
“Baluchi has figured something that a lot of people
out there have not: You can do anything if
you put your mind to it.”
On this morning of September 11, 2003,
Baluchi finally ran across the George
Washington Bridge, holding a large American
flag, followed by several of his fans. His request
to access Ground Zero’s site was not accepted;
instead, he ended his journey further downtown
at Battery Park. Surrounded by dozens of admirers,
Baluchi is exhausted but triumphant. His yellow
bike, his only possession, lies next to one of
the park’s statues. Against its wheels is one of his
many signs. It reads: “War is not the answer.”
Ladane Nasseri, MIA ’04, is concentrating in International
Media and Communications.
32 SIPA NEWS
SIPA NEWS 33

INSIDE
SIPA
INSIDE
SIPA
Mary Robinson Delivers Silver Lecture by Katja Salsbäck
Ambassador Richard Holbrooke Gives First Donald and Vera
Blinken Annual Lecture by Volker Berghahn
Mary Robinson, the former president of
Ireland who one year ago completed her
term as UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights, conveyed a clear and forceful message
at SIPA: an ethical globalization is only possible
if we focus on economic and social rights.
Standing tall behind the podium, Robinson
delivered this year’s Gabriel Silver Memorial
Lecture on October 28 with the elegant combination
of authority and lightness that comes from
years in public office. She let serious words of
commitment and concern blend with jokes and
self-deprecating humor.
In her speech, entitled “Ethical Globalization:
Connecting Human Rights, Human Development,
and Human Security,” she told the audience
that globalization today did not adequately
address the concerns of people in poor countries.
Robinson said that she would like to see more
integrated policies at the national and international
level, and that an economically connected
world must also be connected by values. “Human
rights can be the rules of the road for an ethical
globalization,” said Robinson.
Today, the former high commissioner heads
an NGO, the Ethical Globalization Initiative. As
an independent advocate, she makes use of her
name recognition to promote human rights standards
in fields such as international trade,
HIV/AIDS, and migration.
Poverty is a main obstacle to achieving ethical
globalization and human rights for all,
according to Robinson. Therefore, we must turn
our attention to economic and social rights.
She reminded the audience that the founders
of the UN had envisioned an indivisible body of
rights. “Human rights means all human rights—
economic, social, and cultural as well as civil and
political,” Robinson said emphatically.
She criticized the United States for neglecting
economic and social rights. “In this country,
people have to realize that among the most
important rights are the rights to nutrition and
water,” she said.
Robinson spoke with the same conviction and
determination that may have driven her when, at
age 25, she became a senator and Ireland’s
youngest law professor at Trinity College in
Dublin. In 1990, she was the first woman to be
elected Ireland’s president. Seven years later Kofi
Annan, on the lookout for “a superstar” to fill the
post of High Commissioner for Human Rights,
offered the job to Robinson.
As high commissioner, she was admired for
her integrity and courage. She openly criticized
U.S. military action in Afghanistan and the
prison camp in Guantánamo Bay. Her criticism of
the United States allegedly led Washington to
block the renewal of her term in 2002.
Although Robinson today shares concerns
about the emergence of global actors, such as
multinational companies, which are difficult to
hold responsible for human rights violations, she
remains convinced that human rights are invaluable
tools in promoting global justice. “On the
international level human rights are not vague
words or wooly concepts, but a system of holding
governments accountable,” she said.
Katja Salsbäck, MIA ’04, is concentrating in International
Media and Communications.
On April 30, 2003, the Institute for the Study
of Europe (ISE) held its first Donald and
Vera Blinken Annual Lecture, endowed by
the co-chair of the ISE’s International Advisory
board and his wife. The speaker was Ambassador
Richard Holbrooke, who was introduced by Fritz
Stern, University professor emeritus at Columbia
and former special adviser to the speaker while
he was U.S. ambassador to Germany in the
1990s.
Ambassador Holbrooke spoke about recent
developments in the European-American relationship.
He began his remarks by focusing on
the dramatic change that had occurred in this
relationship between the time of the Al Qaeda
attacks on New York and Washington on
September 11, 2001, and the spring of 2003.
Inquiring into the reasons for this change, he
argued that there had been various problems
before “9/11” that had been exacerbated by the
blunt style of diplomacy of the incoming Bush
administration. He mentioned as examples the
outright rejection of two important international
treaties relating to climate change, on the one
hand, and to the International Criminal Court in
The Hague, on the other. The attacks on New
York and Washington, he continued, provided
fresh opportunities to foster transatlantic relations
when the Europeans, in a strong show of
support, offered to join the effort to destroy the
Taliban regime as well as Al Qaeda and to reconstruct
Afghanistan. But the U.S. administration,
instead of following the cooperative policy
adopted during the Bosnian crisis, decided to go
it alone. Only belatedly did the White House
and the Pentagon recognize its “colossal” error
and bring in other nations to stabilize the country.
Then, Holbrooke continued, came the decision
to wage war on Iraq, which, in light of the
horrendous crimes committed by Saddam
Hussein, he supported in principle. But again he
was critical of the way America’s allies had been
treated in the time preceding the invasion. To be
sure, the Europeans also had to bear their share
of the blame for the “train wreck” that resulted.
Still, he felt that the main
responsibility for the crisis
had to be borne by
Washington. Thus, President
Bush should never
have pushed for a second
resolution of the UN
Security Council. It was
this insistence that proved
so divisive to European-
American relations and,
no less importantly, seriously
weakened the United
Nations.
Referring to Robert
Kagan’s recent book, Of
Paradise and Power: America
and Europe in the New World
Order, Holbrooke ended by denying that Americans
and Europeans lived on different planets, on
Mars and Venus. The enemy was not Europe, but
Al Qaeda and—he added—major humanitarian
crises such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic. None of
these crises could be solved by the United States
alone but required close trans-Atlantic cooperation.
The task for Washington was therefore to
show leadership that would bring other nations
in rather than divide them. The United States
could not run the world on its own and hope to
recreate the international system unilaterally. If
the maxim of cooperation and skillful diplomacy
had been observed, many of the problems that
had arisen over the previous months could have
been avoided.
Following his remarks, Holbrooke answered a
number of questions from the large audience on
the relations of the United States with Russia,
France, and Germany and ended with comments
on the Cyprus question, in which he has long
taken a special interest.
Volker Berghahn is director of the Institute for the Study of
Europe and Seth Low Professor of History.
Ambassador Richard Holbrooke (left) talks
with James Cunningham, Deputy United States
Representative to the United Nations, after
delivering the Blinken lecture.
34 SIPA NEWS
SIPA NEWS 35

INSIDE
SIPA
INSIDE
SIPA
Picker Center News: The Southeast Asia Fellows Program
by Susan Grove and Katrin Wilde
Meeting the Southeast Asia fellows last year
left me impressed by their dedication, the
depth of their understanding of issues,
their experience, and by their lighthearted openness
to questions. Speaking with them about education,
homelessness, and poverty was an invigorating
experience, an encounter that revealed
new angles of development problems and infused
my studies with energy. The stimulus they provided
deepened my interest in the region and led
me to intern in the Lao PDR this summer. While
I was there, a single phone call kicked off a gathering
of five past and future fellows, whose
excitement provided a glimpse of the significance
that this program of network building and
training in development management held for
them and the strength of the bond they shared.
The Southeast Asia Fellows program was
designed to train development professionals in
Southeast Asia, including national staff members
of NGOs, international organizations, and other
groups concerned with participatory sustainable
development in the region. The program, sponsored
jointly by the School of International and
Public Affairs, School for International Training
(SIT), and the Global Partnership—a consortium
of some of the world’s leading development training
centers—selects fellows annually from
Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam,
and China’s Yunnan Province.
Directed by Associate Dean Robin Lewis and
presented under the auspices of the Picker
Center, the program brings fellows to SIPA in
October, following an orientation in the
Philippines and a four-week training session at
SIT in Brattleboro, Vermont. After an intensive
three weeks serving as a co-coordinator for the
New York portion (of a two-month stay in the
United States), my first impressions of the fellows
and of the program have only deepened.
For the nine 2003 fellows, we arranged a
schedule consisting of meetings with organizations
in New York and classes on topics such as conflict
resolution, media and advocacy, and proposal and
grant writing. One of the fellows, a primary health
care program officer working on integrated rural
development in Laos, stated, “I thought media and
advocacy should be delegated to a specialist, but
now I am aware how everyone in the organization
can be involved, and I think this is useful also for
our society.” A project assistant working on health
and nutrition education in rural areas in Myanmar
evaluated the program by writing, “I now have
wider thinking about project management and a
better understanding of how to develop a project
proposal to make it attractive to donors.”
In addition to classes, the fellows had meetings
at UN offices (UNICEF, UNIFEM) and local
NGOs, such as the Fund for Reconciliation and
Development and Human Rights Watch, that are
working on human rights and development in
Southeast Asia. These experiences gave the fellows
the opportunity to make contacts and build
a network both within the group around the
region, and a wide range of actors of global civil
society. On the last day, one of the fellows, a
credit officer working on income-generation
with poor women in Vietnam, remarked, “The
biggest thing I gained here was a good network.”
Before leaving to return home, the fellows
were already thinking about how they might
apply what they learned during the course of the
program in their professional lives. A program
officer building NGO capacity in Cambodia
remarked, “I now have concrete ideas to develop
a capacity building assessment for my partner
NGOs. I can teach and share many things I
learned with them, such as monitoring and evaluation.”
A Burmese refugee working to provide
health and education to displaced persons wrote,
“I want to make a plan for healthy development
in our region, in Asia. I received many good
resources here for working on policy issues.”
A human resources manager working toward
issues of environmental conservation in Yunnan,
China, summed up the program by commenting,
“The result of our time here reflects extra
achievements—it reminds me of a dish I ate last
night, a mixture of everything.”
Susan Grove, MIA ’04, is concentrating in Economic and
Political Development. Katrin Wilde, MIA ’04, is concentrating
in Human Rights.
Dean’s Trip Builds SIPA Ties to Middle Eastern Schools
by Jeff Rigsby
Dean Lisa Anderson with Yalman Onaran, MIA ’93, Journalism ’92,
president of the Columbia University Alumni Association of Turkey.
SIPA Dean Lisa Anderson made a monthlong
tour of four Middle Eastern countries
this summer, which combined alumni outreach
and development goals with an effort to
spread the SIPA model to some of the region’s
top universities. The dean believes Columbia’s
approach to training professionals in international
public policy might help shape similar academic
programs in the Middle East.
According to the United Nations, such initiatives
are badly needed. Last year’s widely cited
Arab Development Report, prepared on behalf of
the UN by a team of prominent intellectuals
from the region, argued that flawed educational
systems posed a major obstacle to human development—and
a newly released sequel says the
situation is getting worse.
SIPA’s enrollment of Middle Eastern students
has never been as large as it might be, in
Anderson’s estimation, and she is concerned that
post-9/11 visa restrictions will discourage applications.
But both SIPA and other Columbia
schools have plenty of graduates in the Middle
East, and one segment of Anderson’s tour was
designed to help nurture their old school ties.
“We’ve lost track of a lot of alumni” in the
region, the dean observes—but some of the missing
grads no doubt turned up at an alumni reception
held in Istanbul, organized by Anderson and
SIPA Director of Alumni Relations Rodrick Dial
on behalf of the entire
Columbia community. The
reception, one of the first
events connected with the
University’s 250th anniversary,
drew attendees from
throughout Turkey.
But the dean, a North
Africa specialist by training,
had other business in the
region as well. The trip,
which also took her to Tunis,
Beirut, and Cairo, was aimed
partly at “getting a sense of
how these places where I
have worked for the last 25
years were faring”—and much of the feedback she
received was less than encouraging. “The concern
[within] the region was obviously the invasion of
Iraq,” says Anderson, who describes the dominant
Arab response to the war as one of “absolute astonishment,
frustration, shock.”
Anderson stresses that most of her Arab
friends and colleagues are Western-educated professionals,
few of whom share the more radical
sentiments sometimes associated with the region.
Even so, she says, “there’s a sense that the [Bush]
administration has swung the pendulum very,
very far” in its dealings with the Middle East. For
the moment, most people in the Arab world have
no trouble distinguishing between the current
administration and U.S. society as a whole, but
“it’s an open question how well that distinction
will be retained over time,” the dean notes.
That distinction may be crucial to one of the
projects Anderson pursued this summer. SIPA
hopes to develop joint-degree programs with
three English-speaking, American-style universities
in the region: American University in Cairo
(AUC), American University in Beirut (AUB),
and Lebanese-American University (LAU).
Faculty and administrators at all three schools
were intrigued by the prospect of developing
public policy curricula at least partly modeled on
the SIPA program—something already accomplished
at the London School of Economics and
France’s Sciences Po, both of which offer dual
degrees with SIPA.
Though none of the Arab schools now offers
a degree in public policy, the crucial building
blocks are already in place, Anderson says: “They
have political science, they have economics;
AUC has a good business school that teaches
management and a strong human rights program;
AUB has environmental studies; LAU offers conflict
resolution.” All that’s needed, she believes, is
to transfer the structure of Columbia’s program—
essentially, a core curriculum with a set of concentration
options—to schools that already provide
the necessary range of courses.
Such programs could offer professional training
to Arabs who are unlikely to study in the
United States, and such institutional collaboration
would make it easier to recruit Arab graduate
students to Morningside Heights. “If we had
a dual-degree program with these schools, we’d
have a pipeline” that would allow SIPA students
to complete part of their coursework in Egypt or
Lebanon, says Anderson.
Still, academic cooperation can raise delicate
political questions. “There is the element of concern
that what we’re doing here is a sort of cultural
or intellectual imperialism,” says the dean.
And she adds bluntly that such views are largely
accurate: “This is an American way of thinking
about public policy education, but these are
schools accredited in the U.S.” Moreover, echoing
the authors of the Arab Development
Reports, Anderson argues that a “head-in-thesand”
approach to international affairs—illustrated
by the Syrian government’s position that it
“opposes globalization”—will do much less to
advance the interests of the region than an
informed engagement with Western norms and
institutions.
36 SIPA NEWS
SIPA NEWS 37

INSIDE
SIPA
INSIDE
SIPA
Faculty Profile: Andrea Bubula
by Jaffer Machano
Andrea Bubula is a lecturer in economics at
SIPA. He is also the author and editor of
numerous academic research papers in his
field. His work centers primarily on the applied
econometrics of international monetary affairs. In
conjunction with Inci Otker-Robe of the IMF,
Bubula wrote a research publication that classifies
exchange rate regimes since 1990 from all over
the world. The study, titled “The Evolution of
Exchange Rate Regimes Since 1990: Evidence
from de Facto Policies,” focuses mainly on the difference
between theory and practice of the regimes.
He is currently working on extending this
study to measure the links between exchange rate
regimes and the likelihood of a currency crisis.
Despite his expertise, Bubula has not always
led an academic life. In fact, given his unique
background, one may be surprised that he even
chose a career in economics and academia.
While a college student Bubula also worked as a
police officer and pentathlon athlete. Similar to a
triathlon in its demands, a pentathlon requires
athletes to compete in horseback riding, swimming,
shooting, running, and fencing. Bubula
made the Italian national team. After eight years
of serious competition, he was disappointed to
learn that he was not going to make the team for
the Olympics. Discouraged, he left the sport and
began his Ph.D. studies in economics at
Columbia.
Bubula has always enjoyed the study of economics.
He says that it is “fun,” and he “enjoys
continually learning about how people make private
economic decisions and how governments
make policy decisions.” Not only does his charismatic,
joyful personality make it easy to believe
him, but also student reviews of his class consistently
attest to his love of learning and teaching.
As a matter of fact, one of the outstanding characteristics
of Professor Bubula is how much students
enjoy his class, “Economic Analysis for
International Affairs.”
“Economic Analysis for International Affairs”
is a required class for both International
Economic Policy (IEP) and International Finance
and Business (IFB) students.
It is well known
that one of the highlights
of SIPA’s MIA
program is that students
come away with
excellent economic
skills. However, many
students enter this two-year program with very
little background in economics. With so little
time to cover so much, Bubula has established an
extremely effective and popular online discussion
board. Students find that this discussion board
helps them compensate for their limited background
and meet the rigorous demands of the
program. Bubula spends a great deal of time on
the discussion board answering each student’s
questions in detail. This makes him a favorite
topic of discussion during “happy hours.”
Being such a popular professor is a demanding
job. Coupled with his research interests, the
quantity of work does take a toll on him. Though
he learned to manage his time being an athlete, a
police officer, and a student at the same time, he
acknowledges that the life of an academic is
much more demanding. Teaching four classes a
week and answering students’ questions through
the bulletin board forces him to work long into
the night.
According to Bubula, one of the main challenges
SIPA students face is that it takes a while
to see “the big picture” of their education at
Columbia. His advice for students is to “hang in
there” and everything will come together in the
second semester, when they start to use and
apply the skills they are learning. In the meantime,
he urges students to take time to enjoy the
city. So how does he recommend they take
advantage of the city? Well, as an Italian, he of
course recommends a nice Italian meal. His best
bet? Max Soha at 123rd and Amsterdam. “It’s
inexpensive and authentic,” says Bubula.
Jaffer Machano, MIA ’05, is concentrating in International
Economic Policy.
Faculty Profile: Michael Doyle
by Christine Weydig
Michael Doyle, prominent international
relations scholar and adviser
to the United Nations, joined the
Columbia faculty this fall as Harold Brown
Professor of Law and International Affairs.
His dual appointment at the School of Law
and the School of International and Public
Affairs is a unique arrangement that maximizes
his expertise in both arenas to the
benefit of a wide range of students.
Doyle, previously professor of politics
and international affairs at Princeton
University, cited Columbia’s interdisciplinary
environment as a reason he chose Columbia
over the many other high-profile universities
who were seeking to recruit him. “SIPA has
always had a broad understanding of what
you need to know to be a good practitioner
of public service,” he said. SIPA and the Law
School each exhibit strengths in areas of
interest to him, such as human rights and
international law. The administrations of
both schools were enthusiastic about the
dual appointment, and their coordinated
efforts and geographic proximity to one
another also influenced his decision.
For the past two years, Doyle has served
as the assistant secretary-general and special
adviser to United Nations Secretary-
General Kofi Annan. Doyle focused on
strategic planning and outreach to the
international private sector and intends to
continue consulting for the UN while at
Columbia. He will soon present a report
commissioned by the secretary-general.
“The project aims to establish a Global
Commission on International Migration
that will bring former ministers together to
discuss globally beneficial processes for
handling migration,“ Doyle explains.
Another important project Doyle has
undertaken is the formation of a Global
Colloquium of University Presidents. This
enterprise will consider the changing role of
academic institutions in the global environment
and how students are being prepared
for leadership and
service—a dialogue
from which
SIPA students are
sure to benefit enormously.
The UN
secretary-general
would convene
the annual conference, and Columbia
University is the proposed site for the
Colloquium’s inaugural meeting.
While the Colloquium project will
increase Columbia’s global outreach on an
institutional level, Professor Doyle encourages
vigorous exchange among students as
well. He expresses his appreciation for the
pervasive volunteerism of the SIPA community
and credits the school with attracting
service-oriented people. He believes that “a
critical component in the academic setting
is policy discussion and discourse to share
ideas in a way that produces light, not heat.”
What students in Professor Doyle’s current
“Peacemaking/Peacekeeping” class seem
to value most is how he augments lectures
with anecdotes from his experience in the
field. Doyle has much to share in this
respect, considering his distinguished history
in positions that include director of the
Center of International Studies of Princeton
University, chairman of the Editorial Board
and the Committee of Editors of World
Politics, vice president and senior fellow of
the International Peace Academy, and member
of the External Research Advisory
Committee of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees and the Advisory
Committee of the Lessons-Learned
Unit of the Department of Peace-Keeping
Operations (UN). He is still a member of
the Council on Foreign Relations and was
elected fellow of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences in 2001.
Christine Weydig, MIA ’05, is concentrating in
International Media and Communications.
SIPA Gets a Face-Lift
OCS has a new home—and it’s
designed to impress.
by Saira Stewart
“ As we are the Office of Career Services (OCS), I think
it imperative we project a certain image as we try to
market the students of this school and the degree
programs,” says OCS Director Meg Heenahan.
The $750,000 relocation was an attempt to show
recruiters that SIPA is a professional school, adds Associate
Dean Patrick Bohan.
Its former layout—an awkward amalgam of rooms on
the fourteenth floor—just wasn’t “functional,” says
Heenahan. Whenever a recruiter visited the school, she
and her staff had to scramble to find an appropriate interview
space. The new fourth-floor office, located on the
east side of the atrium, has its own reception area and
conference room.
“This is something we would have liked to have done
years ago,” says Bohan, adding that the project was postponed
for lack of funding. Fortunately, SIPA isn’t footing
the entire bill. Partial funding was made available as a
result of another relocation effort, says Bohan, that of the
new Environmental Science and Policy program.
OCS’s move is just one in a handful of recent renovation
projects at SIPA. The roster of changes include a
refurbished cyber-café on the sixth floor, a new cluster of
leather chairs in the fourth-floor lobby and a group study
area in Lehman Library. Room 409, formerly a seminar
room, has been transformed into a computer lab.
So what do SIPA students think of the changes?
While most call the OCS arrangement a “big improvement,”
the sixth-floor lounge gets mixed reviews.
Some students miss the relaxed informality of the old
student facilities. “There was something very communal
about the old fourth-floor lounge,” says Cheyne Munk,
MIA ’04. “Now it’s neither here nor there.”
Nabeeha Mujeeb Kazi, MIA ’04, says she uses the
lounge for “socializing and coffee purchasing purposes”
but doesn’t stay long. “The area’s set-up is not all that
comfortable for lounging or even working, for that matter.”
But other students welcome the change. Marisa
Robertson-Textor, MIA ’04, praises the “open plan” and
“convenience” of the new sixth-floor arrangement. “It’s
easier to sneak food over to the computers,” she adds.
Saira Stewart, MIA ’05, is concentrating in International
Media and Communications.
38 SIPA NEWS
SIPA NEWS 39

LETTER TO THE EDITOR SIPA INSIDE SIPA
The Real Iraq Mystery
In 1983, when I took Robert Jervis’s course on
national security policy, I and many other
SIPA students found Jervis to be a brilliant and
unconventional thinker on difficult topics relating
to war and peace.
I was disappointed, therefore, to find that
Jervis in his short article, “The Credibility of U.S.
Threats against Iraq” (SIPA News, June 2003),
seemed wedded to conventional ways of perceiving
the then-impending war on Iraq.
Jervis asks the question, “Why didn’t Iraq disarm
in the face of credible U.S. threats and disproportionate
U.S. power?” But Jervis then
accepts at face value claims that Iraq had not in
fact disarmed—the position of the Bush administration.
But the evidence back in March—and
certainly the evidence available since the U.S.-
British victory—indicates that as far as weapons
of mass destruction go, Saddam had in fact substantially
disarmed. In addition, Iraq was weak,
hemmed in by sanctions and inspections. In
effect, containment was working very well.
The question must also be asked, “If Saddam
had WMDs, why didn’t he use them when U.S.
forces approached Baghdad?” Was he saving
them for a more serious occasion?
I would encourage Professor Jervis to turn his
probing mind to what I believe is the truly puzzling
question: Why did the Bush administration
feel impelled to attack Iraq? Was the main motivation
oil? Israeli security? Or perhaps a petty
desire to finish off a task left undone by the first
President Bush?
Bob Guldin
MIA ’85, Harriman Institute
Takoma Park, Md.
Robert Jervis responds:
Iagree with Mr. Guldin that Saddam’s behavior
is puzzling, and I am distressed that so few
people have noted this because it has important
policy implications as well as being intellectually
intriguing.
The extent of my surprise is indicated by the
fact that when I wrote my comment, which was
before the war started, it hardly occurred to me
that Saddam might not have WMD in the form
of chemical if not biological weapons: other
countries in the region had them, not only the
CIA but the intelligence services of countries
that opposed the war thought he had them, he
had expelled the inspectors, and it did not seem
to make much sense for Saddam to fail to show
that he had disarmed when doing so could have
led to the lifting of the sanctions as well as to his
staying in power. Indeed, the only person I know
who seriously doubted that Saddam had chemical
weapons was my colleague Warner Schilling.
I don’t think the rest of us were foolish, but obviously
we were wrong. Because I believe the Bush
administration was wrong as well, however, I do not
think that the questions Mr. Guldin gives in his last
paragraph point us in the right direction. That is,
while the administration both distorted the intelligence
and consciously exaggerated it, my sense is
that everyone in Washington believed that Saddam
did have chemical if not biological weapons. This
means that the question is not, “Why did the Bush
administration invade even though it knew that Iraq
had no WMD?” In this context it isn’t even, “Why
were we all so wrong?” Although the latter question
indeed does call for thorough investigation, the
central puzzle is, “Why did Saddam not make clear
that he didn’t have WMD, and indeed do things
like expel the inspectors and withhold a full
accounting of the WMD materials, and so lead the
world to think that he did have these weapons,
which in turn led to his being overthrown?”
Some possible explanations are that the sanctions
were actually good for Saddam, enabling
him to blame the West for all of Iraq’s problems
and providing great opportunities for him to benefit
from corruption. But this would not explain
why he continued to pretend when the cost of
doing so was sacrificing his power. More likely,
he believed (probably correctly) that Bush’s real
objective was regime change, that nothing he
could do would prevent the U.S. from invading,
and that the only ray of hope was to deter the
U.S. through the bluff that he had WMD.
But I don’t think that anyone fully understands
Saddam’s behavior; I know that I don’t.
And this question is crucial for policy as well as
theory. During the Cold War our policy was built
around the ability to deter an adversary that we
could not defeat. This was uncomfortable
because it meant that the U.S. could not physically
protect itself, but it was not intellectually
hard to grasp once we understood the concepts
of mutual second-strike capability and deterrence
via the threat of punishment. What we have seen
with post–Cold War adversaries is quite different
and harder to interpret. We were able to defeat
Saddam but not bend him to our wishes without
using violence. This was not only unfortunate in
being unnecessarily wasteful and destructive, but
also is puzzling. The case is not unique but is
paralleled by the first Gulf War, our intervention
in Kosovo, the invasion of Panama, and arguably
the operation in Haiti, in which we had to put
planes in the air before Cedras agreed to leave.
Given American capabilities and, in all but perhaps
the Panama and Haiti cases, previous U.S.
behavior, the adversary should have known that if
it did not give in, the U.S. would successfully use
force to gain what was in dispute. These cases are
not only of academic interest, although they are
that. They are important for policy because there
is every reason to believe that these situations will
recur. It is therefore vital that the American government
understand what went wrong. How did
our adversaries see the situation? How did they
interpret our signals? How did they expect these
encounters to unfold? Why, in the end, did they
not comply? Why did Milosovic first stand firm
and then back down when he did? Since the U.S.
government has access to many of the people who
could begin to answer these questions, some
progress should be possible, even if definitive
answers are not. Those of you in the government
may be interested to know that I have been unable
to convince officials that this should be done.
Maybe some of you can do better.
Addendum: Apparently the interrogations of
Tariq Aziz and others is yielding as least some
results: see Steve Coll, “Hussein Was Sure of Own
Survival,” Washington Post, November 3, 2003.
SAVE THE DATE: Thursday March 4, 2004
Human Rights, Human Security and Human Development:
Precepts and Principles for Humanitarian Action
This SIPA conference intends to address the question of how the rapid
evolution of thought and practice in the fields of human rights, human
security, and human development affects humanitarian action.
For further information and to be added to the conference mailing list,
please contact Jess Horan at jph123@columbia.edu.
SAVE THE DATE: Tuesday March 9, 2004
SIPA Fourth Annual Global Leadership Awards Dinner
The Plaza Hotel, New York City
Honoring
The Honorable Felix Rohatyn
Former United States Ambassador to France
Former Chairman, Municipal Assistance Corporation
Henrique de Campos Meirelles
Governor of the Central Bank of Brazil
Citizens Budget Commission
For further information, please call 212-854-7271 or contact Yun Won
Cho at cy2117@columbia.edu.
CORRECTION
In the June 2003 article “SIPA’s Picker Center
Teams up with the New York Fire Department,” we did not properly credit the
Institute for Not-for-Profit Management (INM) at the Columbia Business School
for its role in the management training program with the New York Fire
Department. The program is a full collaboration between the INM and the Picker
Center at SIPA.
40 SIPA NEWS
SIPA NEWS 41

DEVELOPMENT NEWS
SIPA
DONOR LIST
SIPA
SIPA’s New Director of Development: Yun Won Cho
By Jiffer Bourguignon
While some SIPA students fret over
postgraduation options, Yun Won
Cho, SIPA’s new director of development,
radiates confidence. “I am very enthusiastic
about SIPA’s future,” she says.
“I want to let the world know what a fantastic
institution SIPA is,” adds Cho. “To do that,
we will need to raise the reputation of the
school hand in hand with raising money. This in
turn will benefit all SIPA students
and alumni. A SIPA
degree might be worth more
in the future than it is
already worth now.”
Cho, who assumed her
new position on August 1,
brings a great deal of fundraising
expertise with her.
Previously the director of major gifts at the Asia
Society, Cho plans to draw on her varied fundraising
experience in her new position. She
hopes to reach out to all alumni, interested
friends, corporations, and foundations. Cho
wants to work closely with various departments
within the University and all the constituents in
the SIPA sphere. By identifying best practices,
she hopes to raise the bar for SIPA’s development
efforts.
“Our fund-raising efforts will take on different
forms—annual funds, campaigns for major
initiatives, and events. I will be working very
closely with the SIPA Advisory Board in order to
reach out to a broad range of donors. I also look
forward to developing working relationships
with various centers and regional institutes.”
Another element essential to successful
fund-raising endeavors is a sizable interest portfolio.
“In order to attract significant resources,
you have to believe in the mission of your
organization,” says Cho. “Raising funds to create
more student scholarships is one of many
very important causes. I am particularly
impressed with the students at SIPA. They are
smart, motivated, and they really care about
making a difference. There is so much talent in
this building.”
After completing her undergraduate studies
at Yale, Cho went on to earn a master’s degree
in history from UCLA. Following several years
with the Brooklyn Children’s Museum and the
Asia Society, her transition to SIPA has been a
natural one.
“Yun comes to us with experience in both
I am excited by the opportunity to
work for a school with such a unique
mission in the grander context of
Columbia University.
New York–based and international fund-raising.
She is smart, savvy, and sophisticated at what
she does—a perfect addition to the SIPA community—and
I am delighted to have her with
us,” says SIPA Dean Lisa Anderson.
“I am excited by the opportunity to work for
a school with such a unique mission in the
grander context of Columbia University,” Cho
says. Given Cho’s obvious enthusiasm for SIPA,
she should have no problems.
Jiffer Bourguignon, MIA ’04, SIPA News coeditor, is
concentrating in Economic and Political Development and
Human Rights.
Listed below are the 321 individuals and organizations who contributed a total
of $250 or more to SIPA between July 1, 2002, and June 30, 2003. Not listed
are the 701 donors who gave below $250, to whom we are very grateful.
“C” followed by year = graduate with certificate from a regional institute
“IF” followed by year = graduate of the International Fellows Program
“MIA” followed by year = graduate with a Master in International Affairs
“MPA” followed by year = graduate with a Master in Public Administration
$1,000,000 or more
The Freeman Foundation
$500,000–$999,999
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Foundation for the Center for
Energy, Marine Transportation, and
Public Policy
Arnold A. Saltzman
Ukrainian Studies Fund, Inc.
$250,000–$499,999
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
National Philanthropic Trust
Smith Richardson Foundation, Inc.
Mohamed Y. Zahid
Waleed Y. Zahid
$100,000–$249,999
Anonymous
The Ford Foundation
The German Marshall Fund of the
United States
The William and Flora Hewlett
Foundation
Olayan Charitable Trust
Toyota Motor Corporation
The World Bank
$50,000–$99,999
Anonymous
Citigroup Foundation
Citigroup Global Markets
International Women’s Health
Coalition
The John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation
Open Society Institute
Jack Rudin
Bernard and Anne Spitzer Charitable
Trust
Eliot Spitzer
Verizon
Verizon Foundation
Lan Yang, MIA ’96 and
Bruno Z. Wu
$25,000–$49,999
Banco Bradesco S.A.—New York
Branch
Banco Itau, S.A.
The Donald M. and Vera Blinken
Foundation, Inc.
The Clark Foundation
Mary W. Harriman Foundation
Heritage Foundation of First Security
A. Michael Hoffman, IF ’69, MIA ’73
The Korea Foundation
James Leitner, MIA ’77 and Sandra
Leitner, MIA ’76
Lucio A. Noto
Juan A. Sabater
Jeffrey L. Schmidt, IF ’79, C ’79
Shevchenko Scientific Society, Inc.
Unibanco—Uniao de Bancos
Brasileiros S.A.
$10,000–$24,999
Mina Schricker Atabai
Donald M. Blinken
James L. Broadhead, Esq., IF ’63
China Bazaar
Thomas Cholnoky
Compton Foundation, Inc.
Francis Costello
Credit Industriel et Commercial
Ramzi A. Dalloul
Richard A. Debs
Edward Elson
The Elson Foundation, Inc.
Exxon Mobil Education Foundation
Mahshid Farahmand
Barbara Joelson Fife
The Helen Clay Frick Foundation
James Harmon
The Joelson Foundation
Walid H. Kattan
Said T. Khoury
Robert I. Kopech, MIA ’77
Merrill Lynch & Company, Inc.
Royal Norwegian Consulate General
Saudi Arabian Oil Company
Joan Schneeweiss
James D. Seymour, C ’61
Hossein Siahatghar
Joan E. Spero, MIA ’68
Malcolm J. Stewart, IF ’78, MIA ’79
Permanent Mission of Switzerland to
the United Nations
Kathryn E. Wilbur
$5,000–$9,999
Serge Bellanger
Peter A. Berton, C ’56
Centennial Foundation
Dar Al Handasah Consultants
Dragomir Nicolitch Charitable Trust
Ella M. Foshay
Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver &
Jacobson
FWA of New York Educational Fund
Genesis Ten
Health Insurance Plan of Greater
New York
Investcorp
James E. Jordan, MIA ’71
Harley L. Lippman, MIA ’79
Gregory McLaughlin
Kathleen H. Mortimer
Mina Nikou
Vahid F. Noshirvani
Poten & Partners, Inc.
Julie Lynn Rasmussen, IF ’90, MIA ’90
Marie C. Rhone
Kamal A. Shair
Claire C. Shipman, MIA ’94
Charlie Shirvani
Tahereh H. Shirvani
Abdul Majeed Shoman
Anne Strickland Squadron
The Steiro Foundation
Charles A. Stockley
Trace Foundation
Geraldine Wang
$2,500–$4,999
ACT-1 Personnel Services
Atlantic Advisors, LLC
The Howard Bayne Fund
Judith Meyers Brown, IF ’71
Chris Casciato
Robert Meade Chilstrom, C ’73, MIA
’69
Gregory R. Dalton, IF ’94, MIA ’94
The Dalton-Choi Family Trust
Pierre J. de Vegh
First Data Corporation
Elise D. Frick
Dr. Susan Aurelia Gitelson, MIA ’66
Joan Helpern
The JKW Foundation
Donna Karan
The Karan-Weiss Foundation
Brian C. Lippey, IF ’78, MIA ’78
Peter Neill Marber, MIA ’87
William J. McSherry
Meyers Charitable Family Fund
Arturo C. Porzecanski
Marc Tabah, MIA ’87
Toyota Motor North America, Inc.
John C. Whitehead
Alexander E. Zagoreos, MIA ’64
$1,000–$2,499
Lisa Anderson, C ’76
Robin L. Berry, MIA ‘78
The Bobolink Foundation
Kim Christopher Bradley, MIA ’83
Marcia Beth Burkey, MIA ’88
Cathay Financial LLC
Charles E. Cheever III
John William Dickey, MIA ’92
Patrick J. Donaghy
Anthony Donn, M.D.
Eastern Star Consulting, Inc.
Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift
Fund
Douglas John Fink, MIA ’83
Harold P. Freeman, M.D.
Barbara J. Gallagher, MIA ’85
GDP Associates, Inc.
International Committee of
Journalism, Inc.
Bernard Joei
Lila J. Kalinich, M.D.
Anisa Kamadoli, MIA ’98
Victor Alan Kovner, Esq.
Luba Labunka
Loida N. Lewis
J. Bruce Llewellyn
T. Dixon Long
Claudette M. Mayer, IF ’76, MIA ’76
Gertrude G. Michelson
Erna C. Neuman De Vegvar
Laszlo Papp, M.D.
Gordon Parks
Wendy J. Paulson
Barbara Paumgarten
Percy Parker Phillips, MIA ’97
Giandomenico Picco
Rational Games, Inc.
James Jerard Richard, MIA ’98
Blanka A. Rosenstiel
The Rosenstiel Foundation
Alan W. Rottenberg
Howard J. Rubenstein
Katherine L. Rudin
Charles C. Rumsey Jr.
Mary A. H. Rumsey Foundation
Frank Savage
The Shoreland Foundation
Charles E. Sigety
Springcreek Foundation—Dividend
Alfred C. Stepan, III, IF ’65
Lulu Chow Wang
Dennis Weatherstone
Wilford Welch
Steven Mark Zausner, IF ’91, MIA ’91
$500–999
Wilder K. Abbott, MIA ’61
Brooke Astor
Maureen R. Berman, MIA ’73
Laszlo Birinyi
Patrick F. Bohan
Bernard Charles
Michael B. Clark
Miriam Cohen
Stephen F. Cohen, C ’69
Anne Cannon Cowles, MIA ’89
John R. Creelman, C ’53
Russell M. Dallen
Connie J. Dickerson
Connie K. Duckworth
Osborn Elliott
Kashiyo C. Enokido, MIA ’78
Rosanne Farkas
Charlotte and Joseph Gardner
42 SIPA NEWS
SIPA NEWS 43

DONOR LIST SIPA DONOR LIST SIPA
Foundation, Inc.
Joseph H. Gardner
Radmila Gorup
John A. Grammer Jr., MIA ’63
John D. Greenwald, Esq., IF ’71
Gustav Heningburg Associates, Inc.
Edgar C. Harrell, C ’72
Paula S. Harrell
Neal H. Harwood, MIA ’61
Elizabeth Helpern
Donald L. Holley, Esq., MIA ’59
International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers
Jewish Communal Fund of New York
Kadrovach-Duckworth Family
Foundation
Ann F. Kaplan
George A. Kellner, Esq.
Peter B. Kellner
Nemir Kirdar
Susan S. Kuczmarski, IF ’74, MIA ’75
Thomas Dale Kuczmarski, IF ’75,
MIA ’75
Francine LeFrak and Rick Friedberg
Margaret Fine Levy, C ’87
Lieutenants Benevolent Association
Amy Kay Lipton, MIA ’88
David J. Lund, MIA ’81
Kati Marton
Stanislaw A. Milewski
Sergio Millerman
Near East Foundation
Tully C. Patrowicz, M.D.
Barbara Helen Reguero Barbaria,
MIA ’86
Harland A. Riker Jr.
Richard C. Robarts, IF ’61, MIA ’62
Andrew Romay
Irwin J. Schulman
Edward Silverman
The Slater Foundation
Jacqueline R. Slater, IF ’76, MIA ’77
Christopher William Smart, C ’89
Marcy Syms
Christos John Thomas, MIA ’90
Katrina Vanden Heuvel
Katalin Voros
Desa V. Wakeman
Alex Wallua
Gavin Conrad Wellington, MPA ’95
Jayne S. Werner
$250–499
Daniel Charles Altman, MIA ’96
Loreen Arbus Productions, Inc.
Samuel C. Brisbane
Roscoe C. Brown Jr.
Sonia Virginie Bujas, C ’92, MIA ’92
Jonathan A. Chanis
Jean M. Chin, M.D.
Gina Eichner Cinali, IF ’95, MIA ’88
Irene Borecky Coffman, MIA ’82
Richard Wayne Coffman
Daffy’s Clothing
Istvan A. Deak
Richard Albert Dikeman, MPA ’99
Jutta E. Dorscher-Kim, MIA ’87
Charles F. Dunbar, MIA ’61
Jennifer Ann Durst, MIA ’99
Roberta M. Edge, MPA ’79
Paul J. Elston
Charles H. Epps, M.D.
Robert Esnard
Mitchell B. Feldman, MIA ’77
Aurelius Fernandez, MIA ’59
Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift
Fund
David H. Finnie
Louise R. Firestone, MIA ’79
H.R.H. Princess Firyal
Ivy Lindstrom Fredericks, MIA ’98
Lesley M. Friedman
G & G Educational Foundation
Elizabeth B. Glans, MPA ’93
Francis Greenburger
Ian Andrew Held, IF ’95, MIA ’95
Douglas R. Hunter, MIA ’73
Edward V. K. Jaycox
Edward Van K. Jaycox Jr., C ’64,
MIA ’64
Jewish Communal Fund
Austin Denis Johnston, MIA ’89
Mildred Robbins Leet
Steven I. Levine
Jo Loi
Doneg Paul McDonough, MPA ’92
Harriet R. Michel
Amy L. Miller, MIA ’82
Deborah Lynn Mitchell-Nagpal,
MPA ’92
Edgar Nathan III
Thomas F. O'Connor Jr., MIA ’76
Mary Agnes O'Donnell, MIA ’95
Richard B. Palmer, MIA ’55
Peter J. Pettibone
Pilates Center of New York
Bruce Rabb, Esq.
Maidad Rabina, MIA ’73
Steve Radakovich
Julie Ratner
Carol Lind Rattray, MIA ’80
Robert D. Reischauer, MIA ’66
Brian B. Rigney, MIA ’00
William A. Root, C ’48, MIA ’48
Ernst J. Schrader, MIA ’65
Robert R. Shaw
Brigid Sheehan, MPA ’03
Matthew M. Stevenson, IF ’78, MIA
’78
Padraic Joseph Sweeney, MIA ’89
Gardner Taylor
Sharyn Menegus Taylor, MIA ’85
Alan & Peggy Tishman Foundation,
Inc.
James H. Tully Jr.
Irene May Wong, MPA ’93
Betty B. Wu
Mischa Alessandro Zabotin, MIA ’89
Donors $100–$249
Laura Ruth Abel, Esq., MIA ’02
Berdine I. Abler, MIA ’76
Maria Marcos Adler, MIA ’01
William W. Alfeld, MIA ’51
Patrice L. Allen-Gifford, MIA ’81
Andrew E. Alpine, Esq., MIA ’68
Maria Rocio Alvarez, MPA ’02
Austin Chinegwu Amalu, MIA ’81
Wesmond Carl Andrews, MIA ’98
Paul Anir
Morten Arntzen, IF ’79, MIA ’79
James M. Arrowsmith
Meltem Aslan, MIA ’95
Isabelle Jacqueline Aussourd, MIA ’02
Vlado Babic
Endred Balazs
Gaurav Bansal, MIA ’01
Gordon N. Bardos
Arlene Renee Barilec, MIA ’84
Eniko M. Basa
Julie A. Beglin, MPA ’97
Matthew A. Berg, MIA ’98
Thomas Lynch Bindley, MPA ’03
David Lawrence Birnbaum, MIA ’98
Melanie June Bixby, MIA ’91
Kenneth Lawrence Blacklow, MPA
’93
Thomas H. Boast, MIA ’72
Bollyky Associates, Inc.
Ounaida Bongo
Sergio Humerto Boniche, MPA ’02
David Daniel Boyle, MPA ’98
Gabriella S. Buescher, MIA ’00
Gordon Marshall Burck, MIA ’86
Marta Eugenia Cabrera, C ’85, MIA
’86
Nicholas J. Cacciola
Mark Brock Carmichael, MIA ’01
Mary W. Carpenter, MIA ’51
Michael Tatu Castlen, MPA ’93
Rafael Cervantes, MIA ’01
Amy Blagg Chao, MIA ’99
Elisa A. Charters, MIA ’02
Carlyle Nixon Chaudruc, MIA ’98
Chih Yang Chen
Dale Christensen Jr., MIA ’71
Eugene Ciszewski
Mary L. Clement
Glenn L. Colville, MIA ’75
Community Resource Exchange
Scott Terence Contino, MIA ’90
Charles D. Cook, Esq., MIA ’50
Karina Copen, C ‘04
Richard W. Cortright Jr., MIA ’82
Daniel Joseph Costello, MPA ’01
Dustin Craven, MIA ’93
Caroline Cruise, MIA ’99
Ruth C. Curtis, MIA ’71
Theodore Albert D’Afflisio, MIA ’71
Philip A. Dabice, MIA ’77
Karl I. Danga, IF ’71 MIA ’72
Jeffrey M. Davis, MIA ‘80
Edward N. De Lia, MIA ’87
Jean de Passe
Eugene de Thassy
Christine T. DeArmas, MIA ’82
Carolyn P. Dewing-Hommes, MIA
’86
Eric C. Dinsdale, MIA ’01
Stephen D. Docter, MIA ’60
Simon Parish Dodge, MIA ’90
Michael John Dotterer, MPA ’86
Erin M. Doyle, C ’01 MIA ’01
Ruth I. Dreessen, MIA ‘80
Hilary Dunst, MIA ’93
Elisabeth Magill Eaves, MIA ’99
Martin Edwards
Michele Douglas Eleta
Diego Eleta Quelquejeu
Anne Underwood Enslow, IF ’78, C
’79 MIA ’79
Mahmoud I. Essaid
Barbara K. Feinstein, MIA ’77
George R. Ferguson, C ’81, MIA ’81
Robert Mark Finkel, MIA ’88
Laura Ellen Forlano, MIA ’01
Amy Esther Friedman, MIA ’92
Howard R. Friedner, MIA ’82
Kirsten Alysum Frivold
Stephen Gerard Fromhart, MIA ‘98
Kathryn Lynne Furano, MPA ‘90
Doniel Michael Furst, MIA ‘99
Peter Gacs
Ryszard Gajewski
Sharon Gleason
Richard Patrick Goh
Ronit Golan, MIA ‘01
Ira E. Goldberg, MIA ‘75
Jared Lloyd Green, C ’99 MIA ’99
Onur Gur
Henry J. Gwiazda
Jean D. Hamilton
Katherine Olivia Hardy, MIA ‘97
Asher A. Harris, MIA ‘83
Jonathan Harris, C ‘59 MIA ‘59
Gary Edward Hayes, C ’81 MIA ’81
Priscilla Belle Hayner, IF ’93 MIA ’93
John Heller, MIA ’00
Gustav Heningburg
Ann Henstrand-Garay, MIA ’88
Patricia Hewitt-Christensen, MIA ’71
Michael Anthony Hillmeyer, IF ’96
MIA ’97
Steven Arthur Hirsch, MPA ’85
Peter Alexander Hofmann, MIA ’86
George Franz Hollendorfer, MIA ’01
James Peter Holtje, MIA ’90
Jessica Page Horan, MPA ’02
Richard C. Hottelet
Katherine Hale Hovde, MIA ’89
William G. Hu, MIA ’85
Alicia Nicole Hughes, MPA ’01
Nick Humen
Nancy Roosevelt Ireland, MPA ’79
Nicole Mavis Isaac, C ‘06
Paul Jabber
Kathryn Marie Jackson, MIA ’88
Kenneth Terry Jackson
John M. Antonio James, MIA ’00
Eva Cristina Jedruch
Stanislaw Jedrysek
Horace P. Jen, MIA ’93
Weirong Jin, MIA ’93
David A. G. Johnson Jr., IF ’75 MIA
’76
Peter H. Juviler, C ’54
Sharon Kahn-Bernstein, MPA ’97
Claudia Sarah Kalb, MIA ’92
Daniel B. Kaplan, MPA ’82
Henry Edward Kaplan, MIA ’86
Rhona Malton Kaplan, MPA ’82
Kathleen Marie Karich, MPA ’90
Allen H. Kassof
Robert Harry Keeler, MPA ‘02
Alexander S. Keenan, MIA ‘89
Allan R. Kessler, MIA ’82
Thomas H. Kim, MPA ’97
Nancy K. Kintner-Meyer, MIA ’89
Stephen H. Klitzman
Lidia Kopernik
Andrzej Korbonski
Janina Kowalczuk
Artur J. Kowalski
Ivan Kristoffy
Regina Krzych
William Patrick Kugeman, MPA ’01
Walter Kuskowski
Bruce Edward Kutz, MIA ’89
Thomas Richard Lansner, MIA ’91
Peter Leon George Laurens, MIA ’01
Andre D. Lehmann, C ’73, MIA ’73
Burton Levin, MIA ’54
Nadine Netter Levy, MIA ’70
John H. Lichtblau
Catherine L. Liesman
Francis X. Liesman II
Edith R. Lim, C ’74
Mary Dickey Lindsay
John Lister
Joseph C. Logudic, MIA ’02
Sonal Loomba
Judy V. Lum
Ralph Luna
Bremley Lyngdoh, MIA ’02
Z. Ming Ma
Laurie Macaulay
Alex Machaskee
Gerard Joseph Maguire, MIA ’02
Edward E. Malefakis
Donald W. Maley Jr., MIA ’79
Jennifer Rebecca Malkin, MIA ’96
Sanford Malter
Angelo M. Mancino
Michael C. Manganiello, MPA ’01
Lisa Minda Markowitz, C ’88,
MIA ’88
Raul Kazimierz Martynek, MIA ’93
Robert Thomas Maruca Jr., MPA ’96
Dobrosav Matiasevic
Walter J. Matt Jr., IF ’63
Donald James Matthewson Jr., MPA ’01
Eugenia McGill, MIA ’00
Maria Lorna K. Mesina-Husain
Scott B. Meyer
MGS & RRS Charitable Trust
John Micgiel, MIA ’77
Zoran Milkovich
Kenneth Miller
Hadassah Brooks Morgan
Libby A. Moroff
Walter J. Morris
Donald E. Morse
Edward L. Morse
Kin W. Moy, MIA ’90
Deborah Lynn Musinger, MIA ’96
Robert O. Myhr, MIA ’62
Frances E. Nathan
Malina Nealis
The New York Community Trust
Richard T. Newman, MIA ’51
Walter R. Nolan
Bradley S. Norton, MPA ’02
Dorota Agata Nowak, C ’99, MIA ’99
Kenneth E. Nyirady
Bernadette O’Connell
Mary Joel O’Connell, MIA ’00
Amber Elana Oliver, MIA ’02
Leslie Thomas Ordeman, MIA ’99
Charles D. Paolillo, MIA ’61
Carol Shin Won Park, MPA ’00
Peter Pastor
Iara Peng
Anita O. J. Peters, MIA ’84
Nis Adolph Petersen, MIA ’54
Sarah Diane Peterson, MIA ’01
Elizabeth M. Phillips, MIA ’79
Polish Veterans of World War II—
S.P.K Inc.
Frank C. Popp Jr., MIA ’02
Susan Kaufman Purcell, C ’65
K. Steve Rasiej
Jeremy Neal Reiskin, MIA ’87
Scott Andrew Richman, MIA ’91
Linda C. Rocha
Susan Rockefeller, MPA ’98
Kathryn Ann Rosenblum, MIA ’86
Maureen M. Ryan, MPA ’94
Leila Saeidi
Carol R. Saivetz, C ’71, MIA ’71
Mark Edward Sajbel, MIA ’82
Judith Salwen, MPA ’92
Diego D. Samaniego, MPA ’02
Fernando S. Sanchez, MIA ’90
Jason A. Sander, MPA ’01
Charles Alfred Santangelo, MPA ’83
Angela Marie Sapp, C ’03, MIA ’03
Manabu Sasaki, MIA ’01
Carl E. Schorske
David Porter Searby, MIA ’88
Robert Seidman
Katherine J. Sekowski
Mervyn W. Adams Seldon, C ’64
Albert L. Seligmann, MIA ’49
Frank G. Serafin
Jean-Francois Seznec, MIA ’73
Beth Shair Goyer, MIA ’94
Donna Sharp, MPA ’01
Samuel B. Sharp, MPA ’99
Emy Shayo, MIA ’99
Juanita Shell, Ph.D.
Sandra Silverman
Robert Silvers
Shadawn Nicole Smith, MPA ’02
Raissa M. Smorol
Julia Ellen Snyder, MIA ’98
Vitaly V. Sobolevski, MIA ’01
Juan A. Somavia, MIA ’98
Suzanne Alexandra Spears, Esq.,
MIA ’02
Susannah R. Spodek, MIA ’97
Sally J. Staley, MIA ’80
Eva Christine Steinhaus, MIA ’01
Elizabeth Stern, MIA ’89
Emanuel Stern, MPA ’90
Bosiljka Stevanovic
Kristine Mary Sudano, MPA ’02
George Swierbutowicz
John Temple Swing
Emilia Szymanski
Joanna A. Tan, MIA ’95
Nickolas John Themelis
Jean Toche
Violet Todorovich
M. Tomaszewski, M.D.
John Christopher Traylor, MPA ’89
David James Tsui, MPA ’01
Yuko Usami, MIA ’77
Frederic Joseph Vagnini, II, MIA ’89
Louise O. Vasvari
Patrick Vatel, MPA ’98
James C. Veneau, MIA ’96
Gabor P. Vermes
Karine Vorperian, C ’01, MIA ’01
Ivan Vujacic
George M. Vujnovich
Louis A. Wagner
Hans Herbert Wahl, MIA ’95
Laurence Furrey Wallace, MIA ’02
Piotr Wandycz
Joy C. Wang, MPA ’01
Alicia Deborah Weinstein, MPA ’01
Barbara Wierzbianski
Edwin A. Wiggers Jr., IF ’67, C ’70,
MIA ’67
Stephanie Beth Wolk Lawrence,
MPA ’93
Ivan Bodis Wollner
Esther Wong, MIA ’01
Brian J. Woods, MPA ’02
Dana Ying-Hui Wu, MPA ’92
Robert H. Wynn
Kazmier Wysocki
Cynthia Drucilla Yoon, MIA ’97
Anna Frajlich Zajac
Lila Azam Zanganeh
Philip E. Zegarelli, IF ’76, MIA ’76
David Chapin Zehner, MIA ’02
Chenke Zhou, MIA ’01
Zora Zimmerman
Janet Zinberg
Sidney Zirlin
Listed below are the 29 corporations
whose matching gift programs
supported the work of SIPA
because a graduate or friend affiliated
with the company made a gift to
the School.
Akzo Nobel Inc.
AOL Time Warner Foundation, Inc.
AT&T Foundation
Bank of America Foundation
The Bank of New York
The Bechtel Foundation
Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation
EAI Corporation
Exxon Mobil Foundation
Fannie Mae Foundation
First Data Corporation
The Ford Foundation
Goldman, Sachs & Company
IBM International Foundation
The J.P. Morgan Chase Foundation
KPMG Foundation
Mellon Financial Corporation
Foundation
Merrill Lynch & Co. Foundation, Inc.
Metropolitan Life Foundation
Moody’s Corporation
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter
Foundation
National City Bank
New York Life Foundation
Newsweek, Inc.
Organon, Inc.
The William Penn Foundation
Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc.
The Washington Post Company
Wells Fargo Foundation
44 SIPA NEWS
SIPA NEWS 45

CLASS NOTES SIPA CLASS NOTES SIPA
Class Notes Compiled by Jeff Rigsby
1964
John A. Pecoul, IF
japecoul@yahoo.com
John A. Pecoul taught political
science at Xavier
University of Louisiana
from 1967 to 1978 and
served at the University for
all but eight years of his
career. Pecoul, who retired
in July 2003, returned to
the political science department
in 2000 on a part-time
basis. Since 2000, he has
worked as special assistant
to the president, with
responsibility for special
projects. Pecoul served as a
development officer from
1986 to 2000; he became
acting vice president for
development in 1997 and
vice president for institutional
advancement in
1998. With more than a
decade of experience in city
government, he was the
first executive director of
the Human Relations
Committee of the City of
New Orleans (1969–1971),
which mobilized community
support for the city’s first
civil rights law since the
post–Civil War reconstruction,
and served on the staff
of Mayor Moon Landrieu
during that time. He also
served on the staff of
Mayor Ernest N. Morial
(1978–1986), becoming
special assistant to Mayor
Morial in 1980.
Robert Pons, MIA
Robert is currently deputy
chief of mission at the U.S.
Embassy in Brunei
Darussalam. He arrived in
the Sultanate in October
2002 as the Embassy’s
chargé d’affaires, a position
he held for more than two
months while awaiting the
arrival of the U.S. ambassador.
In that position, he
helped prepare for the
Sultan of Brunei’s reception
by President Bush at the
Oval Office in December
2002.
1972
Rose Ganguzza, MIA
roseganguzza@aol.com
Rose is president of
Hollywood/NYC
Productions, a New York
City production company
involved in film, television,
and entertainment marketing.
She created and produced
New York at the Movies,
an award-winning documentary
for the A&E channel
hosted by Meryl Streep.
Her company is now in preproduction
on two feature
films and a miniseries. Rose
also serves on the Mayor’s
Advisory Board and teaches
graduate film students at
New York University’s Tisch
School of the Arts.
1974
Pamela Houghtaling, MIA
Phoughtaling@aol.com
Pamela is currently on a
ten-month assignment with
the Office of Defense
Research and Engineering
at the Pentagon, after being
awarded a 2003–2004 U.S.
Department of Commerce
Science and Technology
Fellowship. For the past
three years, she has been
working for the National
Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) in
Gaithersburg, Maryland,
first as a public affairs specialist
and later as marketing
manager for NIST’s
Information Technology
Laboratory.
1975
Cliff May, MIA
cliff@defenddemocracy.org
Cliff is president of the
Foundation for the Defense
of Democracies, a think
tank created immediately
after the September 11
attacks on the United States
and focusing on issues related
to terrorism. A veteran
reporter, foreign correspondent,
and editor, Cliff has
covered stories for the New
York Times and other publications
from more than two
dozen countries, including
China, Iran, Russia,
Pakistan, Sudan, Ethiopia,
Uzbekistan, and Northern
Ireland. While at the Times,
he established the newspaper’s
West Africa bureau
and served as editor of the
Sunday Magazine. He currently
writes a nationally
syndicated column for
Scripps Howard News
Service and is a regular contributor
to National Review
Online. From 1997 to 2001,
Cliff served as director of
communications for the
Republican National
Committee. After leaving
the RNC, he was named
senior managing director in
the Washington office of
public relations firm BSMG
Worldwide.
1980
David Cooper, MIA
shoshndavid@yahoo.com
David’s two poetry collections,
Glued to the Sky and
JFK: Lines of Fire, have been
published as e-books by
PulpBits.com, an e-publisher
based in Burlington,
Vermont. His poems and
translations have appeared,
or are forthcoming, in
numerous publications,
including The Literary Review,
The Spoon River Poetry Review,
and Feminist Studies.
1985
Deborah Scroggins, MIA
deblane@msn.com
Deborah was awarded this
year’s Ron Ridenhour Book
Prize for her 2002 book,
Emma’s War: An Aid Worker,
Radical Islam, and the Politics of
Oil—A True Story of Love and
Death in the Sudan. Deborah’s
book, which grew out of
her experience covering the
Sudanese civil war for the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
tells the story of Emma
McCune, a British aid
worker in the Sudan who
met and married a local
warlord. The Ron
Ridenhour Book Prize is
offered jointly by the
Nation Institute and the
Fertel Foundation. Randy
Fertel, president of the
Fertel Foundation, comments:
“In Emma’s War,
Deborah Scroggins helps us
understand a brutal civil
war that went on for a
decade or more, largely
beneath our radar.” Emma’s
War is being adapted as a
film for 20th Century Fox,
starring Nicole Kidman as
Emma McCune. Deborah
currently lives in Atlanta,
her hometown, with her
husband and two daughters.
1986
Pancho Kinney, MIA
Francis.Kinney@dhs.gov
Pancho is deputy director
of the Office of
International Affairs for the
Department of Homeland
Security.
1988
Stephen Gaull, MIA
sgaull@aegiscapitalcorporation.com
Stephen is executive vice
president of Aegis Capital
Corporation, a merchant
bank that develops projects
and provides investment
capital for industries related
to trade and transportation
security in developing
countries. After completing
his appointment as an executive
fellow at the U.S.
Export-Import Bank in
2002, he traveled around
the world for seven months
with his wife, Karina, whom
he married in May 2003.
Dilip S. Samarasinghe, MIA
dilips@boi.lk
Dilip is media director of
the Board of Investment of
Sri Lanka, the government
agency responsible for promoting
foreign investment
in the country. He is also a
visiting lecturer in international
affairs at the
Bandaranaike Centre for
International Studies in
Colombo. In 2003 he was
appointed to an official
committee established to
study and formulate strategies
for developing international
business opportunities
in Sri Lanka.
1990
Randal Ponder, MIA
randall@randallponder.com
Randall is a manager in the
corporate finance division
of Pfizer Inc. He is currently
working on a third edition
of his 1998 book, The
Leader’s Guide: 15 Essential
Skills. Randall and his wife
Linda recently celebrated
the first birthday of their
first child, Eric Randall. Eric
was born on his father’s
birthday and has just started
to walk.
Harry Sullivan, MIA
harry_sullivan@yahoo.com
Harry became chief of the
Economic Unit at the U.S.
Consulate General in Hong
Kong in July. He is currently
doing research on the
city’s economy, particularly
its finance and transportation
sectors.
1993
Gordon Whiting, IF,
Columbia Business
School, ’94
In June 2002, Gordon was
nominated by President
George W. Bush to be a
board member of the
Federal Retirement Thrift
Investment Board and was
confirmed by the U.S.
Senate to that position in
November 2002. The
Federal Retirement Thrift
Investment Board, which
oversees the retirement
accounts of most federal
employees and military personnel,
has more than three
million participants and
more than $300 billion in
assets.
1994
Elizabeth Rose Daly, MPA
Lizdaly@worldnet.att.net
In April 2003, Liz became
the director of the Division
of International Business,
New York City
Commission for the United
Nations, Consular Corps
and Protocol. The division’s
primary objectives are to
attract international business
and investment to New
York City and to increase
opportunities for existing
international businesses.
The division’s International
Business Calendar is located
on its Web site at:
www.nyc.gov/international.
Hiro Ugaya, MIA
ugaya@da2.so-net.ne.jp
Hiro recently took early
retirement from Asahi
Newspapers after “17 years
of slavery” and plans to
work as a freelance journalist
for the next year or two.
He is currently working on
two book projects on
Japanese pop music.
Caroline Yu, MPA
carolinejyu@hotmail.com
Caroline is public relations
manager for Adaptec, Inc.,
a technology company
based in Milpitas,
California. In August she
and her husband, Amarind
Tan, celebrated the first
birthday of their son Dylan
Matthew Tan.
1996
Thomas D. Zweifel
tdz@swissconsultinggroup.com
Thomas, who teaches leadership
and intercultural
competencies at SIPA, has
published two new books.
Communicate or Die
(SelectBooks, 2003)
explores the highest-leverage
but least understood
vehicle leaders can use to
get results: speaking and
listening. “Listening is hard
to trace, “ says Thomas,
who is CEO of Swiss
Consulting Group. “But
when managers upgrade
their listening competencies,
their results expand
exponentially.” The other
book, Culture Clash
(SelectBooks, 2003), helps
leaders meet their business
objectives when working
with or in other cultures.
“Leaders would do well to
heed Zweifel’s advice,”
writes Publishers Weekly: “He
reminds them of the high
cost of mistakes when cultures
clash (they can run
into billions of dollars, as
the cases of Coca-Cola,
DaimlerChrysler and others
illustrate).”
1997
Katherine Meters Abbadi,
MIA
kmabbadi@hotmail.com
Katherine left the State
Department in May and
moved to Ramallah on the
West Bank. In July she married
Majed Abbadi, a
Palestinian human rights
activist, in a traditional ceremony
in his natal village
near Jenin. She worked for
one month for the United
Nations Office for the
Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs in
Jerusalem and is currently a
field worker for the Public
Campaign Against Torture
in Israel. She also teaches
English for America-
Mideast Educational and
Training Services
(AMIDEAST).
Adam Lovinger, MIA
Adam.Lovinger@cliffordchance.com
Our apologies to Adam, whose
note was incorrectly included
with the Class of 1973 in the last
issue of SIPA News.
Adam is an attorney at
Clifford Chance US LLP.
He specializes in international
project finance with a
focus on development projects,
representing multilateral
development agencies
such as the IFC and IDB
and U.S. government agencies
such as the Export-
Import Bank and the
Overseas Private
Investment Corporation.
Adam is married to Jessica
Lang. Their son, Elliot
Joseph, was born in June.
Susannah Spodek, MIA
sspodek@att.net
Susie gave birth to her first
child, Asher David Spodek
Turner, in July.
46 SIPA NEWS
SIPA NEWS 47

CLASS NOTES
SIPA
1998
Kury Cobham, MIA
kuryc264@aol.com
Kury is currently working
with USAID’s Office of
Transition Initiatives in the
Democratic Republic of the
Congo, where she has been
based for nearly two years.
Rebecca Morris Kuhar, MPA
rmk3474@yahoo.com
Rebecca currently works for
Ambac Financial Group,
where she specializes in
underwriting not-for-profit
health care deals. She and
Robert Kuhar were married
in June and recently bought
a condominium in Manhattan’s
financial district.
Yaya Moussa, MPA
ymoussa@imf.org
Yaya, who lives in Potomac,
Maryland, recently began
working for the
International Monetary
Fund in Washington, D.C.
1999
Karina Paladin, MIA
Karina.paladin@ubs.com
Karina is a financial adviser
with UBS Wealth
Management. She has volunteered
as a career/internship
counselor for SIPA students
and alumni. Her son,
Ricky, who recently celebrated
his bar mitzvah, is an
eighth grade student at a
yeshiva in Manhattan.
2000
Ina Kota, MIA
Ina made her operatic debut
in Rome this July, singing
the role of Papagena in a
production of Mozart’s
Magic Flute by the Orchestra
Sinfonica del New
Operafestival di Roma.
After graduating from SIPA,
Ina joined the New York
office of McKinsey &
Company, where she
worked for the Global
Strategy Practice. She was
responsible for providing
client service teams with
analysis and recommendations
related to corporate
finance and strategy, strategic
planning, and macroeconomics
across a variety of
industries. During this time,
her “singing hobby” drew
attention from leading opera
professionals and aficionados,
who encouraged her to
switch to a career as a professional
singer.
Candice Workman Nonas,
MPA
candicenonas@yahoo.com
Candice is associate director
for Credit in the
Americas at Westdeutsche
Landsbank, a German bank
with offices in midtown
Manhattan.
2002
Ogniana Ivanova, MIA
oivanova@fordham.edu
Oggie married Rajpuram
Sriram (Columbia Business
School ’03) in July.
Nori Katagiri, MIA
yaponorry@hotmail.com
Nori recently moved to
Philadelphia, where she will
be entering a doctoral program
at the University of
Pennsylvania. She expects
to spend the next four or
five years studying international
relations, with a focus
on security and military
affairs in Japan and elsewhere
in East Asia. After
graduating from SIPA, Nori
spent a year in Washington,
where she worked for various
think tanks, including
the Heritage Foundation
and the Brookings
Institution.
Paliporn Ladpli, MIA
Paliporn@yahoo.com,
pl313@columbia.edu
Paliporn would enjoy meeting
up with SIPA friends on
the West Coast. She recently
purchased a new home
near West Hollywood and
started a new job with a
boutique public relations
firm. She is busy planning
for her wedding in Thailand
next summer; anyone who
wishes to attend, or just
wants to say “hi,” should
send her an e-mail message.
Mony Liquard, MIA
mony_liquard@hotmail.com
Mony is taking six months
off to spend more time with
her daughter Lana Isabelle
Liquard, who was born in
September 2002.
Marty Weiss, MIA
mw695@yahoo.com
Marty is an analyst in international
trade and finance
for the Congressional
Research Service in
Washington, D.C.
2003
Ana Escrogima, MIA
aae2002@columbia.edu
Ana is spending ten months
in Tunis for advanced
Arabic training, in preparation
for a two-year tour of
duty in Damascus with the
State Department.
Ishwara Glassman, MIA
ikg3@columbia.edu
Ishwara spent part of the
summer in San Diego and is
now working with the New
Jersey office of McKinsey &
Company. She lives on the
Upper West Side.
Jingdong Hua, EMPA
jhua@adb.org
Jingdong and his family
recently relocated from
New York City to Manila,
where he is assistant treasurer
and head of risk management
for the Asian
Development Bank.
Raissa Smorol, MPA
rms251@columbia.edu
Raissa recently joined
Nonprofit Innovations Inc.,
a consulting firm specializing
in start-up nonprofits,
as a project manager. She
lives in Morningside
Heights.
SIPA News is published bi-annually by SIPA’s Office of External Relations.
Managing Editor: JoAnn Crawford
Editors: Jiffer Bourguignon, Jeff Rigsby
Contributing writers: Volker Berghahn, Ali Ezzatyar, Susan Grove, Hamdiya Ismaila, Edward
C. Luck, Jaffer Machano, Ama Marston, J. Paul Martin, Rachel Martin, Ladane Nasseri,
Marisa Robertson-Textor, Dirk Salomons, Katja Salsbäck, Saira Stewart, Celeste Tarricone,
Christine Weydig, Katrin Wilde, Bojana Zezelj
Contributing photographers: Neemah Aaron (32, 33), Eileen Barosso (10 Kufuor, SE European
delegation, Putin), © Lou Dematteis/ Reuters Newsmedia Inc./CORBIS (31 top), Michael
Dames (10 Zlenko, Bolaños, 34), Rodrick Dial (37), Kent Gilbert/AP Photo (8), Kevin Hallinan
(35), © Adlan Hasanov/Reuters Newsmedia Inc./CORBIS (25 protesters), Clark Jones (10
Karzai, Kharrazi), Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters Newsmedia Inc./CORBIS (25, Orthodox priest;
27 woman voting), Ama Marston (30, 31—center, bottom) Rachel Martin (20, 23),
© Stephanie Maze/CORBIS (19), Jeff Rigsby (38, 39, 42), Stringer/Reuters Newsmedia
Inc./CORBIS (28), © David Turnley/CORBIS (27 woman mourning), UN/DPI—UNE536 (2)
Artwork from 30 Articles of Human Rights (4, 6, 7): © Octavio Roth
Cover Photo: Leif Skoogfors/CORBIS
Design and Production: Office of University Publications
School of International and Public Affairs
Dean: Lisa Anderson
Associate Deans: Robin Lewis, Patrick Bohan, and Rob Garris
Office of External Relations:
JoAnn Crawford, Director of Publications and Special Events
Rodrick Dial, Director of Alumni Relations
Columbia University
420 W. 118th St.
New York, NY 10027
MIA Program: 212-854-8690
MPA Program: 212-254-2167
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Fax: 212-854-8660
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/sipa
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