Activist Prendergast Highlights Human Rights Issues in Africa

John Prendergast, SIS/MA '90, is the human rights activism equivalent of a rock star. The co-founder of the Enough Project, a nonprofit affiliated with the Center for American Progress dedicated to ending genocide and crimes against humanity in Africa, works with A-list celebrities like George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Don Cheadle. He doesn't wear a tie. And he makes things happen. Read more.

MORE HEADLINES - 4/9/2013

Activist Prendergast Highlights Human Rights Issues in Africa (cont.)
Professor Recalls Kennedy's Landmark 1963 Commencement Address
Global Environmental Politics Student Wins Fulbright to India
Model U.N. Team Receives Awards in New York
Photo of the Week

Activist Prendergast Highlights Human Rights Issues in Africa (cont.)

Prendergast discussed current issues in Africa with Dean James Goldgeier on April 1 as part of the Dean's Discussion series. Prendergast's long list of accomplishments in the continent include supporting education initiatives in Darfur, rape prevention in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and satellite imagery analysis to deter war between Sudan and South Sudan.

After receiving his master's degree in 1990, Prendergast has been involved in just about every major humanitarian and political concern in Africa. During the discussion, Prendergast answered questions about the value of non-governmental organizations and their work in Africa; positive developments in places like Sudan/South Sudan and conflict minerals and procurement policies.

Part of the solution, Prendergast explained, is openness about a company's supply chain.

"We're inching forward to create a level of transparency for companies manufacturing and selling products," Prendergast said.

For as long as he can remember, Prendergast has been an activist.

In the 1980s, he boycotted companies that had dealings with the South African Apartheid government. He supported divestment from South Africa and stood in solidarity with South Africans fighting for the dismantling of their country's racist policies.

Since then, Prendergast has participated in numerous efforts to promote human rights and conflict resolution in Africa. He helped broker peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2000. He worked to achieve nationhood for South Sudan. Lately, he's been promoting responsible mineral mining in places like the DRC.

Prendergast has been an active alumnus on the American University campus. In 2009, he delivered the SIS Commencement speech, and in 2012 SIS awarded him its Alumnus of the Year honor. He is also the recipient of an honorary Doctor of International Affairs degree from AU.

"We're very proud John is an alumnus, and we're grateful for the work he does, particularly in Africa," Goldgeier said.

Prendergast regularly pens opinion pieces for publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Foreign Policy, among others. He's a sought-after speaker who was once a guest on "The Colbert Report," where host Stephen Colbert grilled Prendergast on the origin of the South Sudanese flag.

Over the years, Prendergast has also been able to marshal support from celebrities like actors Ryan Gosling, Julianne Mooreand L.A. Lakers star Derek Fisher. He told the crowd Monday that celebrities are key to building a successful international human rights campaign. Harnessing social media, multimedia and student activism were also critical, he said.

"That's how a movement starts," Prendergast said.

Before the discussion ended, Prendergast imparted some valuable advice to the students in the crowd. It was advice he had clearly followed.

"If you are committed to things you care about," he said, "you have no idea how many doors will open to you."

Professor Recalls Kennedy's Landmark 1963 Commencement Address

Professor Surjit Mansingh was enjoying her work as a political officer at the Embassy of India in the early 1960s when an invitation to AU's 1963 commencement made her a witness to one of the most important events of the era - President John F. Kennedy's landmark "A Strategy of Peace" address.

Little could Mansingh - or anyone - have predicted the worldwide impact of Kennedy's speech, which advocated an end to the Cold War and outlined the development of what became the Limited Test Ban Treaty - two revolutionary ideas for the time.

Mansingh, who had been gravitating toward academia, was invited to the historic event through her friendship with SIS professor Charles Heimsath, who later became her husband.

"The speech hit me for two reasons," Mansingh said. "One was, of course, President Kennedy. There was such an atmosphere of excitement in those years and a great hope of change. But the other reason was that he sounded just like Prime Minister [Jawaharlal] Nehru."

Mansingh had been in attendance during Nehru's state visit to Washington in 1961, during which he encouraged both the relaxation of Cold War tensions and nuclear disarmament.

"These issues that Nehru had discussed with JFK in 1961 were two constant themes, whether he was in Moscow, Washington, Belgrade or India's Parliament," she said. "He was really passionate about it."

Kennedy was just as driven, and these were precisely the topics of his speech at AU in June 1963, which was later named by Time magazine as one of the top ten commencement speeches of all time.

"He made AU the forum for this major new announcement," she said. "It was very fulfilling."

As the impact of Kennedy's speech became clear to Mansingh, she was almost out of her seat from excitement, she said.

"The moment he stopped speaking, I ran to my car and dashed back to the Embassy," she recalled. "I went straight to my boss and told him what I had just heard."

Together, Mansingh and her supervisor drafted a cable to New Delhi to share the news. India later became the first country to sign the Limited Test Ban Treaty after the "Original Parties": the U.S., United Kingdom and the Soviet Union.

Kennedy's wasn't the only speech in store for her that summer. In August, she watched Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial at the March on Washington.

"It was a very exciting summer," she said. "It was a great time to be here; it really was."

Global Environmental Politics Student Wins Fulbright to India

Adam Jadhav, SIS/MA '14, combed through reports in the Fishery Survey of India's library in Mumbai.

Adam Jadhav, SIS/MA '14, has been awarded a Fulbright grant to study social capital among fisher communities in India.

Jadhav intends to conduct a large-sample survey of fishing communities in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. He will examine sources of social capital and political organization within the fishing community and believes that a better understanding of fisher social relations, norms, institutions and imaginations will offer avenues for more sustainable and equitable fisheries governance.

Jadhav spent the summer of 2012 in southern India, working for Greenpeace on an ocean conservation mapping project. He also conducted research with the Dakshin Foundation, a non-profit, non-governmental organization advocating conservation and natural resource management, focusing on mechanized fisheries, collective action and community governance in and around Mangalore. Research from both projects - including hours of interviews with fishers, policy makers, activists and academics and thousands of pages of quantitative data - helped lay the foundation for his Fulbright proposal.

"I was in Mangalore, where everyone competes against each other, no one has an incentive to fish less, no one can organize, there's no property regime, it's a free-for-all, and the community has lost all control," Jadhav said. "Yet when it came to organizing resistance against an ill-conceived and arbitrary state regulation on engine sizes, the fishers cooperated quickly and decisively to pull political strings."

He added, "There's obviously some social capital and collective interest still at work in the fishery, so I'm not sure the 'Tragedy of the Commons' exists, but I see underestimated potential for collective action."

The SIS-housed Journal of International Service recently published Jadhav's examination of India's semi-free trade regime and its implications for environmental and social sustainability.

"I've had a lot of opportunities at AU and been influenced by a lot of good people," Jadhav said. "Professors have pointed the way, but also let me run. I wouldn't have won this Fulbright without that simultaneous guidance and free rein."

The Fulbright scholarship funds at least nine months of research. Jadhav expects to start in August 2013 and hopes to publish policy and academic work based on his research.

Model U.N. Team Receives Awards in New York

Members of the AU Model U.N. team pose in the General Assembly chamber of the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

American University recently sent 11 undergraduates to New York to participate in the Change the World Model U.N., an annual competition hosted by Diplomatici Associazione, an Italian non-governmental organization dedicated to the training of future diplomats. Universities from Europe, Latin America and the United States sent delegations to compete in a simulation of the United Nations from March 13-15.

The AU team received multiple awards. Jon McCreary, SIS/BA '15, who represented the United Kingdom, won the award for Best Delegate in the Security Council. In the General Assembly, David Chaykowski, SPA/BA '16, Essarayoss Mean, SIS/BA '16, and Jeremiah Landin, SIS/BA '16, all won honorable mentions.

Other members of the team were Mary Ann Aabye, SIS/BA '13; Sarah Castellanos, SIS/BA '16; Kenna Cole, KSB/BA '16; Helene Combes, SIS/BA '15; Talita Franco, SIS/BA '16; Serena Genes-Peralta, SIS/BA '15,and Memoona Khan, KSB/BA '16.

Photo of the Week

Dean James Goldgeier and Dean Jeffrey Rutenbeck of AU's School of Communication discussed Stanley Kubrick's film "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" on March 26 as part of the event series commemorating the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's AU commencement speech. Rutenbeck spoke of the film's relevance to communications, while Goldgeier focused on the nuclear policy and diplomacy tactics exposed in the film.

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Class Notes

We invite readers to send comments to SISComm@american.edu. Please include your graduation year and degree.

Colleen O'Connor, SIS/BA/WCL/JD '94, '01, has been named the managing director in the income tax and accounting group at LPMG LLP.

Maureen Donaghy, SIS/MA '03, published her newest book, Civil Society and Participatory Governance: Municipal Councils and Social Housing Programs in Brazil.

Alaina Dyne, SIS/MA '12, received the 2013-2014 Fulbright-Garcia Robles Award. She will travel to Mexico City in January 2014 to conduct research on Central American youth migrants transiting the city.

Priya Dixit, SIS/PhD and Jacob Stump, SIS/PhD, returned to SIS March 26 to discuss their latest book, Critical Terrorism Studies: A Look at Methods. Dixit is an associate professor at Virginia Tech, and Stump serves as an associate professor at Shepherd University (W. Va.)

Getting to Know You - Jachele Velez

Title: Undergraduate Recruitment and Retention Coordinator

Job Duties: I'm advising transfer students, both from other universities and colleges and internally from other programs into SIS, meeting prospective students and organizing SIS Freshman Day and Preview Days. I also will advise our BA/MA students in SIS and help with fall Orientation.

Tenure at SIS: 4 weeks!

The best part of working at SIS: People smile at you when you walk around the building. It's one of those little things with a big impact.

First job: I worked in my local health department and helped with marriage and dog licenses. They have more in common than you would think.

Hobbies: I've played piano since I was six, so I sneak away to Katzen Arts Center practice rooms after and before work. I also have a deep, not so very dark secret - I compete in the Miss America Organization. I'll be competing for Miss D.C. this June, so if you see me sneaking a pastry at the Davenport Lounge, you have my permission to take it from me for my own good.

I'm reading: I am a crazy reader. I just finished Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg in three days. Now I'm on to Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses.

Favorite book: Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, thanks to Columbia University's core curriculum.

Favorite D.C. hangout: Kramerbooks and its Afterwords Café (are you seeing the trend here?) I also love 14th Street's scene.

Favorite dish: Busboys and Poets' banana white chocolate bread pudding with coconut ice cream.

Next vacation: This fall, I'm heading to New Orleans for a weekend with a pit stop in Baton Rouge for a Louisiana State University football game with my family.

Getting Ink

Professor Pek Koon Heng: Interviewed in "U.S., S. Korea Ready to Counter N. Korean Aggression," Voice of America, April 3.

Professor David Bosco: Interviewed in "Analyst Questions ICC's Intense Focus on Africa," Voice of America, April 3.

Professor Gordon Adams: Interviewed in "Pentagon's Budget Fears Fall on Media's Deaf Ears," The Washington Times, March 31.

Professor Hillary Mann Leverett: Opinion piece, "Obama and America's 'Imperial Temptation' in the Middle East" (with Flynt Leverett), Al Jazeera, March 30.

Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies Professor Akbar Ahmed: Interviewed in "Pakistani Calls Drone Policy 'Wrong War With Wrong Methods Against the Wrong Enemy,' " The National Press Club, March 29.

Professor Susan Benesch: Opinion piece, "The Kenyan Elections: Peace Happened," The Huffington Post, March 21.

Professor Michelle Egan: Opinion piece, "From U.S. - EU FTA to TTIP: Promises and Pitfalls," Transworld, March 20.

To see more SIS media appearances, please visit our SIS in the Media page.

Intellectual Contributions

Professor Carl LeVan and School of Public Affairs Professor Todd Eisenstadt received an Andrew Mellon Seminar Grant from the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) to organize a seminar on "The Gap from Parchment to Practice: Ambivalent Effects of Constitutions in Democratizing Countries" on May 28 and 29 in SIS, preceding the LASA annual meeting in Washington, D.C. The seminar is receiving additional support from an SIS Dean's Collaborative Research Award, which will help Eisenstadt, LeVan and Professor Robert Albro co-edit a book exploring the mixed effects of constitutional change on democracy and other performance indicators. This is Eisenstadt and LeVan's second Mellon grant, following $206,000 they received for an American Political Science Association Africa Workshop at the University of Nairobi in 2011 in collaboration with two Africa-based scholars.

In addition, LeVan has received a $36,000 grant from the National Endowment for Democracy to co-organize a conference in Nigeria with Professor Joseph Oleyinka Fashagba on "African State Legislatures: Subnational Politics and National Power." LeVan will also carry out field research in Nigeria for the resulting collaborative publication with the help of a 2013-14 Faculty Research Travel Award.

Professor Simon Nicholson will publish a book chapter, "The Promises and Perils of Geoengineering," in Worldwatch Institute's State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?

Professor Judith Shapiro spoke March 27 at Arizona State University's Center for Asian Research symposium "Water in Asia" on China's environmental activism.

Professor Michael Miklaucic (with Jacqueline Brewer) edited Convergence: Illicit Networks and National Security in the Age of Globalization (National Defense University Press, 2013).

Professor Garrett Graddy's piece, "Regarding Biocultural Heritage: In Situ Political Ecology of Agricultural Biodiversity in the Peruvian Andes," was recently published in Agriculture & Human Values.

Professor Clarence Lusane's 2011 book, The Black History of the White House, was reviewed in "The Retriever Weekly," the University of Maryland Baltimore County's student newspaper.

Professor Michelle Egan published "Compliance in the Single Market" (with Helena Guimarães) in Business and Politics, volume 14, January 2013.

Professor Eve Bratman discussed the similarities between Washington, D.C., third world nations and former imperial colonies at the April 1 event "D.C.: The Last Colony," sponsored by the SIS Undergraduate Council and the AU group Students for D.C. Statehood.

Professor Amitav Acharya will receive a grant from the One Earth Future Foundation for a fall workshop, "Why Govern? The Strategic, Functional and Normative Imperatives of Global Governance." In addition to the workshop, he plans to produce an edited volume and/or special issue of a leading academic journal and a policy report.

Professor Hillary Mann Leverett's book, Going to Tehran, was reviewed by Patricia DeGennaro of the World Policy Institute for The Huffington Post. Gennaro wrote, "If I were [President Obama's] National Security Advisor, helping to lead the way to 'all options,' I'd be reading Hillary Mann and Flynt Leverett's book Going to Tehran with vigor while insisting that the President and his entire staff do the same so we all can avoid another war."

Professor Anthony Wanis-St. John recently published a chapter, "Indigenous Peacebuilding," in Routledge Handbook of Peacebuilding.

Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies Ambassador Akbar Ahmed appeared at the National Press Club March 28 to discuss "Drones and America's War on Terror: A War on Tribal Islam?" The Brookings Institution posted excerpts of Ahmed's March visit online.

Events

American University will honor the late SIS Dean William Olson at a memorial service at the Kay Spiritual Life Center from 2:30 - 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 10. A reception will follow in the SIS Abramson Family Founders Room. Learn more about the service, which is free and open to the public, on the Alumni Association website.

Professors affiliated with the Arab Studies Program in the College of Arts and Sciences explore recent works about Islam through the lens of their scholarship in the series "Take Muslim Journeys." On Thursday, April 11 at 5:30 p.m., Professor Martyn Oliver will discuss Acts of Faith. The event is free and open to the public. Lebanese food from Shemali's will be served, and the event will take place in the Training and Events room on the first floor of the AU library.

Executive Director of Food and Water Watch Wenonah Hauter will speak on "Reforming the Foodopoly" Friday, April 12 at 5:30 p.m. in the Mary Graydon Center room 200. The event, which is free and open to the public, will include a lecture, reception and book signing.

Etel Solingen, Chancellor's Professor of political science at the University of California Irvine, will discuss "Dominoes and Firewalls: The Politics of Transnational Diffusion" as part of the International Relations Research Theory Workshop on Tuesday, April 16, from 11:45 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. in the SIS Abramson Family Founders Room. The event, sponsored by the International Politics program, is free and open to the public.

Professor Simon Nicholson will speak at "How to Get to a One-Planet Way of Life - Or Get Through the Collapse if We Can't," a forum on sustainability on Wednesday, April 17 in the Butler Board Room from 2:30 p.m. - 4 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

The SIS Film Series will debut Thursday, April 18 with a film from the Irish Embassy, "Men of Arlington," in the SIS Abramson Family Founders Room. Refreshments will be served at 6 p.m., and the film will begin at 6:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public; please RSVP here.

Renowned architect, sustainability visionary and author William McDonough will speak Monday, April 22 from 11 a.m. - 12 p.m. in the SIS Abramson Family Founders Room. McDonough's books will be sold, and a book signing will be held in the Atrium. The event is free and open to the public.

Professor Jeff Colgan will launch his book, Petro-Aggression: When Oil Causes War on Monday, April 22 in the SIS Abramson Family Founders Room from 12:30p.m. - 2 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. Guests are invited to arrive at noon for lunch outside of the Founders Room prior to the launch.

The Global Environmental Politics program will sponsor a panel, "Working Downtown: Careers in Environmental Politics," Tuesday, April 23 from 9 a.m. - 10:20 a.m. in the SIS Abramson Family Founders Room. Panelists will include SIS students and alumni. The event is free and open to the public.

Professor Carl LeVan's Contemporary Africa class will host a fundraiser Wednesday, April 24 at Busboys and Poets (14th and V Streets NW) to benefit a Maasai community from Kenya. Cultural ambassador Chief Joseph Ole Tipanko will discuss the developmental challenges facing his community and how the Maasai Good Salvage Outreach Organization (MAGSA) is taking creative initiatives to address them. The event is open to the public, and a $20 donation is suggested. Learn more about the event on Facebook.

As part of the series of AU events commemorating the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's commencement address, Dean James Goldgeier will host a Dean's Discussion with Thomas Schelling, recipient of the 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Thursday, April 25 at 3:30 p.m. in the SIS Abramson Family Founders Room. The event is free and open to the public, but RSVP is required.

SIS Commencement will be held Sunday, May 12 at 1 p.m. in Bender Arena. While the event is open to ticket holders only, it will be streamed live on the AU website.

ALUMNI NEWS

Have you moved or changed jobs? Read more.

GETTING TO KNOW YOU -
JACHELE VELEZ

Title: Undergraduate Recruitment and Retention Coordinator