Why International? Center Directors Provide Some Answers

Transcription

1 Why International? Center Directors Provide Some Answers Getting to the heart of the matter If you ask an expert why the U.S. needs continuing, concerted effort to expand its international awareness, you will likely get one or more of three answers: (1) to assure the strategic importance of the U.S. in the world, (2) to assure the security of U.S. citizens, and (3) to assure a more sustainable global economy. These three goals are undeniably important, but they are often not the reason that experts become internationalists in the first place. Centers that have developed through the federal Title VI program have been the catalyst for international awareness at IU for half a century. The directors of these centers play key roles in the univer- 16 IU INTERNATIONAL Performing African music at the IU World s Fare

2 Utility workers, fi refighters, soldiers, pilots,... are working heroically in "hellish conditions" to save their countryman at great risk to themselves. I am disappointed we have not heard more about them and that I don't know their names. Toe Presidfflt of the Brilisb F"~ Sffli<es Amicialian presm!ing the Orda ofglllmuy 10!he Commmier ofw.chrmobylf"e Jwadr. M,._;c., Lmrm ~-.mito- for bm-av. Sometimes words are not enough. The Kuttner Quartet at the IU Jacobs School of Music played two movements of Mendelssohn s Fourth String Quartet at the March 30 teach-in and benefit event. sity s internationalization. We put the question of Why International? to them. Their answers ranged from how they became internationalists to what concerns they have about international affairs today. While the three goals above fill the headlines about international issues, the directors get to the heart of the matter. You can have it all Samuel Obeng directs the African Studies program. He remembers the moment he became an internationalist. My father s house in Accra had lots of visitors from the Peace Corps, from Europe, as well as from Africa. Most of these visitors spoke two or three languages. There were different languages for religion, for politics, and for the courtroom. It was hard not to notice the importance of languages in a world with so many. But there We don t know our own language until we have learned another language, and we don t know our own culture until we have studied another. was one event that sealed my interest. We had a visitor from Burkina Faso. She spent a long time cooking a meal. I was seven or eight at the time. I asked her, Can I have food? She replied, You can have it all. I then ate a lot of the food. When my mother saw this, she slapped me. I protested that I had been told I could have it all. She replied that what the visitor meant was that I couldn t have any. From that early age, I became interested in the subtleties of language expression in different cultures. things that are different from what we expect Heidi Ross co-directs the East Asian Studies Center, a cooperative effort with the University of Illinois Urbana. She came to international through art. I grew up in a small Indiana town. I liked IU INTERNATIONAL 17

3 Russian Christmas celebration with Ded Moroz, the Russian equivalent of Santa Claus art, particularly Chinese art its calligraphy, its black and white renderings, its landscapes. I would gravitate towards these in museums. When I went to college, I intended to major in environmental studies. Because the university had a good East Asian studies department, I took Introduction to Chinese Society. That sparked an interest in the country as well as the art. That led to intensive study of Chinese during the summer. I eventually taught in a women s college in Taiwan. Art was a good place to begin as an internationalist because both are ways of encountering difference. Chinese art was appealing partly because it was different. It made me think how landscape and people can be depicted in unexpected ways. Knowledge comes from being confronted with things that are different from what we expect. 18 IU INTERNATIONAL An unwelcome discovery For Maria Bucur, director of the Russian and East European Institute, becoming an internationalist was probably inevitable. Born in Romania, a country at the intersection of disparate languages and cultures, Maria came to the U.S. at the age of 17 when her father defected. As a student at Georgetown University, she was surprised to discover herself to be a Romanian nationalist. For complicated reasons, it was not a welcome discovery. What is it that makes someone a nationalist? she worried. At the time, the Romanian government was involved in human rights violations towards their Hungarian population, and Bucur was active in her protests against the Romanian government. Being a nationalist means being unwilling to assume a position of responsibility in the world; being from a place means being only for that place, Bucur says. I worked for the next three years against nationalist impulses that prevent people from being autonomous human beings, from being fully aware of how connected you are to the world beyond your culture. The rejection of nationalism wasn t a rejection of Romania for Bucur. That country is still close to the center of her research interests, but it was the stimulus for understanding better the need to balance nationalism with the connectedness that underlies the global perspective. we don t know our own culture until we ve studied another Christopher Atwood is interim director of the Center for Lan-

4 guages of the Central Asian Region (CeLCAR). For him, comparison leads to connection. Studying another part of the world helps us remember what we have forgotten. Something so seemingly small as the value Afghanis attach to writing their script beautifully and correctly reminds us that similar values lay in our past and with just a little effort to remember, we can feel their power. I don t think any one culture has everything. We have to be open to what is out there, and we begin to understand the world by finding things in ourselves that are analogous to the things we encounter in other worlds. We don t know our own language until we have learned another language, and we don t know our own culture until we have studied another. With a new app designed by CeLCAR, you can practice your Afghan script while on the road. breaking down a wall and putting in a window Feisal Istrabadi directs the new Center for the Study of the Middle East. For him, too, connectedness and language have been central to his work as an internationalist, both as an ambassador of Iraq to the U.N. and as a university mentor. It has been the mission of universities from the time the first universities were created to promote understanding between cultures. In the U.S., there is so much misunderstanding of the Middle East, and in the Middle East, so much misunderstanding of the U.S. It is easy for cultures to caricature one another when they don t understand. Area studies centers promote the culture and language of a region and so come very close to what university education is all about. They counter the unfortunate utilitarian angst in universities today that results in conclusions like Arabs already speak English, so why learn Arabic? But every time you learn a language, you are breaking down a wall and putting in a window. It is one of the finest ways to share our common humanity. languages open up treasures Ambassador Feisal Istrabadi Edward Lazzerini directs the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center. He also stresses the value of language learning. His journey towards international studies began when he was eight and his parents purchased a huge book. It was the biggest book I had ever seen, Lazzerini relates. I don t recall exactly what it was, but it contained vast quantities IU INTERNATIONAL 19

5 The Bridges Program of the Center for the Study of Global Change brings instruction in Arabic, Chinese, and other less commonly taught languages to elementary school children. of information mythology, ancient history, and details of parts of the world I knew nothing about. I would lie on the living room floor with the book and take notes on 3x5 cards. I didn t think there was anything unusual about this until my third-grade teacher asked me about it. It was then that I realized how interested I was in things that were not a part of my immediate world. By high school, he was petitioning (successfully) to violate school rules and take two languages at once. He became a language major in college, and as he became more proficient in French, German, Russian, and Chinese, he understood that languages open up treasures; it gives you a way to the intellectual heart of a culture. Thus, the language major became a historian and in the spirit of seeking out what scholars in the West knew least about, he began to study the vast area hidden away (at that time) mostly within the borders of the U.S.S.R. The U.S. does not provide many opportunities to study Central Asia, Lazzerini says. If a place like IU doesn t offer the expertise in the cultures of Central Asia, it will be hard for students to discover their uniqueness. For that discovery, there is no place better than IU; there is nothing 20 IU INTERNATIONAL

6 like IU s program anywhere else in the world. finally hooked Deborah Hutton is associate director of the Center for the Study of Global Change. She remembers family influence. I grew up in a Canadian family that was very interested in international travel. There was wonderful family lore about my grandfather who had run away to sea. Traveling family members brought me dolls from around the world. After I finished my bachelor s degree, I spent 10 months journeying around Europe. I returned to teach high school history and geography. But what finally hooked me into an international perspective was a graduate course on the global perspectives in education. supporting popular democratic forces Bradley Levinson is the outgoing chair of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He emphasizes the need not to avoid the pressures in the world today. Among the big problems yet to be solved in Latin America is the establishment of democracy. Democratic institutions in Latin America are fragile, and the corresponding political culture is still under construction. Violence and corruption are rampant; there is limited citizen participation, and deepening inequalities of power and wealth threaten democracy s promise. Indigenous and Afrodescended groups have not yet received the full rights and recognition accorded to them by regional constitutions. We in the United States can help solve these problems by unequivocally supporting popular democratic forces. Tibet. White Tara. Ink and color on cotton. Part of an exhibition of Tibetan art sponsored by the Inner Asian and Uralic Center at the IU Art Museum. You look like my father Kevin Jaques directs the Islamic Studies Program. His international interest was fired by the problem of communicating the diversity of the Muslim world to students and citizens of the U.S., of finding ways to counteract the othering of the Muslim world and to overcome the tendency to take on a monolithic vision of Islam. Jaques tells the story of a soldier in an IU training program designed in part by the Islamic Studies Center. The soldier had had significant experience in Iraq and was trying to understand a relationship he had IU INTERNATIONAL 21

7 made with an Iraqi officer. The U.S. soldier remarked casually one day to the Iraqi officer, You look like my father. Jaques explains, The officer may have been flattered by the soldier s seeing his father in him, and the Iraqi saw the comment as an overture to establish a more personal relationship. At first, the soldier was baffled by the change in the officer and did not know what was expected as a result. The soldier was advised to bring gifts small things, cigarettes, American candy. The result was that the Iraqi officer took the soldier under his wing, and he found doors opening everywhere. Contacts and communication with Iraqi peers suddenly became much easier. That soldier will be one of the last American soldiers to leave Iraq, but he will have re-imagined the Islamic world and will leave with a better understanding of a culture that puts personal relations before abstract concepts. Making and flying kites in styles from around the world is an annual family event promoted by the Islamic Studies Program and the IU Mathers Museum. Websites for Area and International Studies Centers at IU Bloomington African Studies Program Center for International Business Education and Research Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center for the Study of Global Change Center for the Study of the Middle East East Asian Studies Center Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center Islamic Studies Program Russian and East European Institute 22 IU INTERNATIONAL