...courtesy of Foreign Policy - apparently the PJD is trying to score political points dissing Elton John? Morocco can't feel the love tonight - Passport blog
To his credit, my Moroccan teacher did use "mithli" when telling dirty jokes in class...
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Welcome to wherever you are
Arriving in Kabul yesterday afternoon, Afreen and I met Attaullah, the friend of a friend who took us from the airport to our guesthouse. That evening, we got cell phones and SIM cards, but soon succumbed to exhaustion, partly fueled by three room changes in a matter of hours (one was not actually a double, in the second the A/C unit blew the fuse even if all the lights were off, but the third finally worked out beautifully).
This morning, however, we set out with a driver to see some of the city I'll be calling home for the next couple of months. Fawad took us down Flower Street (as implied, it's lined with florists and strangely-adorned Corollas), then to the neighborhood of Murad Kahne to see the restorations done by the Turquoise Mountain Foundation. We wandered out to Kabul University, walked its campus with more trees than buildings, and even found the policy research center.
Traffic was predictably anarchic, but while the city displays poverty and division (concrete walls and barbed wire surround not only the government ministries and UN properties, but also private residences of any level of luxury), the violence I'd read so much about feels remote amid the chaos of ordinary life nonetheless.
Stopping in to ogle the Serena hotel over lunch, the usual surrealities found in walled-off luxury struck me walking across a marble lobby full of men wearing Kevlar. The gift shop offerings of traditional rugs interspersed with weavings of tanks and grenades provided comic relief from the fantasy world, and we soon wandered back out for another brief errand before collapsing back into the walled guesthouse garden to review Dari phrasebooks in preparation for the first day of work.
(image courtesy of Afreen; click to see her full collection)
This morning, however, we set out with a driver to see some of the city I'll be calling home for the next couple of months. Fawad took us down Flower Street (as implied, it's lined with florists and strangely-adorned Corollas), then to the neighborhood of Murad Kahne to see the restorations done by the Turquoise Mountain Foundation. We wandered out to Kabul University, walked its campus with more trees than buildings, and even found the policy research center.
(Afreen and her camera, immediately popular in the market)
Traffic was predictably anarchic, but while the city displays poverty and division (concrete walls and barbed wire surround not only the government ministries and UN properties, but also private residences of any level of luxury), the violence I'd read so much about feels remote amid the chaos of ordinary life nonetheless.
(for sale at the Serena hotel)
Stopping in to ogle the Serena hotel over lunch, the usual surrealities found in walled-off luxury struck me walking across a marble lobby full of men wearing Kevlar. The gift shop offerings of traditional rugs interspersed with weavings of tanks and grenades provided comic relief from the fantasy world, and we soon wandered back out for another brief errand before collapsing back into the walled guesthouse garden to review Dari phrasebooks in preparation for the first day of work.
(A view from our room; photos of the rose garden to follow)
Thursday, May 27, 2010
In memoriam E.J.S.
I grew up with three sets of de facto grandparents: my dad's parents; my mom's mother, father, and later stepmother; and Jack and Julie. Family friends, they had no grandchildren and so made a habit of adopting and spoiling a mishmash of neighbor children and colleagues' kids. My sister Pam and I had the good fortune of falling into this family during our prime spoiling years - Julie cooked generous italian dinners, while we taught her to rollerblade. Jack spun endless yarns, shaping my lifelong love of a story well-told, and I'd like to believe we gave him valuable raw material in our silly younger years.
I remember long nights of conversation and card games, though after moving away from home I saw them less and less. Returning from Morocco, however, one of my first acts of culinary diplomacy was a full feast of couscous and pastilla aimed squarely at winning Julie's gourmet seal of approval.
Calling home in March, I found out that Jack was in poor health, though diagnostic tests had not yet returned. Dad asked if I wanted to try and stop home before leaving for the summer, though by the time I finished the academic year and made the trip, Jack was disoriented, hospice visits had begun, and Julie had banned visitors from disturbing the quiet. It was with great sadness but no surprise, then, when Pam called on Monday with news of his death.
Still, Jack was very much an adventurer and a master storyteller, and I'd have hoped to return to Missouri with tales to make him proud. I suppose I still do hope for this, and so in some sense this summer's posts remain dedicated to him.
I remember long nights of conversation and card games, though after moving away from home I saw them less and less. Returning from Morocco, however, one of my first acts of culinary diplomacy was a full feast of couscous and pastilla aimed squarely at winning Julie's gourmet seal of approval.
Calling home in March, I found out that Jack was in poor health, though diagnostic tests had not yet returned. Dad asked if I wanted to try and stop home before leaving for the summer, though by the time I finished the academic year and made the trip, Jack was disoriented, hospice visits had begun, and Julie had banned visitors from disturbing the quiet. It was with great sadness but no surprise, then, when Pam called on Monday with news of his death.
Still, Jack was very much an adventurer and a master storyteller, and I'd have hoped to return to Missouri with tales to make him proud. I suppose I still do hope for this, and so in some sense this summer's posts remain dedicated to him.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
What do I hear when I say I hear the call of the road?
The most recent stamp on my passport is July 13, 2007 - returning from Fez via Paris, processed at Washington Dulles just before George arrived to pick me up. George himself had arrived the previous day from a year in Masan, South Korea, and so we spent the weekend catching up with one another and our host David before going our respective ways once again.
At the time, I expected to return to Morocco that fall. I had accepted a teaching contract with Amideast, to begin after Eid, and was home only to check in, recharge, and repack for another year in a place I loved. Instead, an unexpected call from New York took me to the UN, and then a welcome letter from Cambridge invited me to the Kennedy School, and suddenly three years had passed in which I traveled little but hardly noticed, given the pace of a full and happy quotidian existence.
Nonetheless, I'm hardly one to sit still, and so the summer break brought the promise of another escape to somewhere new. When the opportunity to participate in the Afghan parliamentary campaign season arose, I broke the news to my parents that I planned to take an internship in Kabul and then shared the cost of Rosetta Stone farsi with a friend, herself Bamiyan-bound. In all truth, the details remain undefined - I will be with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, but I have no plan of work; I have a room in a guesthouse for the first week, but no summer-long housing. I will be depending on an abundant hospitality already outpouring in full force for some weeks now in the form of emailed introductions to what seems like half the international community in Kabul.
And so a new adventure begins once over, and I find myself wondering in a quiet moment after the initial rush of boarding a transcontinental flight whence this impulse always to pick up and depart.
At the time, I expected to return to Morocco that fall. I had accepted a teaching contract with Amideast, to begin after Eid, and was home only to check in, recharge, and repack for another year in a place I loved. Instead, an unexpected call from New York took me to the UN, and then a welcome letter from Cambridge invited me to the Kennedy School, and suddenly three years had passed in which I traveled little but hardly noticed, given the pace of a full and happy quotidian existence.
Nonetheless, I'm hardly one to sit still, and so the summer break brought the promise of another escape to somewhere new. When the opportunity to participate in the Afghan parliamentary campaign season arose, I broke the news to my parents that I planned to take an internship in Kabul and then shared the cost of Rosetta Stone farsi with a friend, herself Bamiyan-bound. In all truth, the details remain undefined - I will be with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, but I have no plan of work; I have a room in a guesthouse for the first week, but no summer-long housing. I will be depending on an abundant hospitality already outpouring in full force for some weeks now in the form of emailed introductions to what seems like half the international community in Kabul.
And so a new adventure begins once over, and I find myself wondering in a quiet moment after the initial rush of boarding a transcontinental flight whence this impulse always to pick up and depart.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Postscript
A sad follow-up to the old Morocco blogging: the Journal Hebdo, a plucky newsweekly Scarlett made me start reading, has closed, finally losing a defamation case against the king to the tune of being bankrupted by the government. Funny how bad things happen to investigative journalism in some parts of the world...
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Mass Av, Rainy Day
SAIS morning sessions
Deans' Panel
Student question - "What is the difference between Russian and 'Political Russian'?"
Dean Einhorn - "When you go into a restaurant, you can order ballistic missiles."
Serious answer - language courses have different practical emphasis to polish vocab, etc.
Some core classes can be audited (just pass exam for requirement), frees up elective credits.
If you want academic freedom, go with IR - it's broadest, so your core requirements are very flexible.
Bonnie Wilson, on financial aid: "...but I don't think we've ever let anyone starve *pause* to death..."
Determined students can take up to 2 classes elsewhere in Hopkins. The Business school is also in DC, as are some elements of the A&S grad program, so these are more convenient than the Baltimore schools.
Faculty Panel
Mandelbaum
"why SAIS?"
four kinds of skills - concentration (am for policy, for example), language, economics (some w ill end up in econ fields, all will become familiar with the language), and analytical thinking.
three differences with others in APSIA -
faculty (some self-praise...): lack of undergrads, minimal PhDs - complete focus on MA candidates, experience of faculty in government, private sector, etc.
location: DC ("in international affairs, the most important city in the world")
students: relationships form here/networks get started/SAIS Mafia, community of peers, "SAIS students are nice people."
Wedgewood
"I came in 2001 and wasn't sure I was going to stay, but I found it so delicious I decided to stick around"
We study history, culture, language as well as rational choice and economic assets - a more holistic view than other peer schools. Not about speaking only to other specialists, but one that can translate policy into English.
That conceit, that you can't be an intelligent person if you speak to the public - that's for journalists and tradesmen - that doesn't exist here.
Int'l student body brings contextual immediacy & richness to current affairs and academic topics.
Your temptation will be abstinence, to focus on your classes in the midst of the bouillabaise of seminars and internships.
"Tim Geithner learned his economics here. Be prayerful; we'll hope it was good."
Puns Putin with the French "putain," keeps slipping in French and German.
"Even those of us who are liberal internationalists acknowedge state power," realistic focus.
I think I love this woman.
Jones (Bologna faculty)
Well, I wandered into Bologna on my way to law school, and then I never made it to law school.
SAIS is where you really discover what an international career looks like (since only the children of diplomats ever really grow up knowing it)
The SAIS Mafia - "we imported it from Italy." Discussion of network power, "if you spend a year in Bologna, you will leave with a place to crash in pretty much any city in Europe, and many in Latin America and other places - we have 40 different countries represented."
We're not an academic institution in the stodgy, traditional sense. "Now my mom reads the stuff I write, unlike the stuff I wrote when I was a proper academic. I can bring my students into my research. For example, let's say the international economy melted down over the summer... my class focused their papers on different aspects of this and we're putting it together as a book."
Fukuyama
"I didn't realize I wrote poetry, Ruth."
"It always happens that I'll be in some country and finish my presentation and sit down at dinner and have the American ambassador or the project head sit down to tell me 'I went to SAIS.'" Story of one prof running into Chinese colonel SAIS grad at a meeting with Chinese defense ministry.
~250 events per academic year - vitality of intellectual life here. Upcoming 2-day conference on impact of economic crisis on ideas about development - where will the new consensus be? Keynotes: Larry Summers & Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
Lists all the walkable think-tanks and institutions (Carnegie is across the street), "It is true the Council on Foriegn Relations moved closer to GW, but you can't win them all."
If you're just an economist or just a political scientist, you just can't get your mind around these current issues.
Sobol
Spent nearly 30 years at the NY Fed, came to SAIS in 2006.
Emerging markets specialization - what happens when you want to end up in the financial sector in an area where emerging markets are a central question? (we hope these sorts of jobs will catch up to us soon...)
Most do regional concentrations - 2 courses from the concentration on markets, 2 of the econ credits go to emerging-market-specific classes.
2 years go very, very quickly. You really need to plan your courses carefully, especially to do economic specializations.
Krishna
Why Economics?
Because when you're standing in an unemployment line, you'll at least know how you got there.
Seriously, the discourse of International Relations is more and more a discussion of international economics, or at least questions in which economics runs strongly. Economic theory is the grammar that you need in order to conduct these conversations.
Why Economics at SAIS?
Very policy-oriented. Multi-tiered structure including specialized courses at essentially a PhD level for those who already have the background. 50 courses in various economic topics - plenty of customization available.
For those of you who have not had a lot of economics before coming to SAIS, we have a very special welcome for you...
I am often tempted to quit my job here and come back as a student.
Student-prof relationships? Research involvement?
Fukuyama - there are quite a lot of opportunities. Everybody in my program has a research assistant or two. I hire a number of my own students. In each program, we have positions for round-table coordinators, who work very closely with faculty in selecting speakers.
Wedgewood - it depends a little on how forward you are - demand your airtime. The beauty of this place is that we're already here (not flying in) and pepole are around and available. We all have our offices right here.
Jones - two student-run journals as excellent opportunities for learning writing and production.
Capstone?
Oral exams are our tradition - no real thesis or workshop required. However, you can craft your own area of expertise, delve deeply into one specific class or work out a project to do a thesis-like exercise for credit and find an adviser. If you want to develop that area of expertise, it'll be possible - just not part of our core.
Deans' Panel
Student question - "What is the difference between Russian and 'Political Russian'?"
Dean Einhorn - "When you go into a restaurant, you can order ballistic missiles."
Serious answer - language courses have different practical emphasis to polish vocab, etc.
Some core classes can be audited (just pass exam for requirement), frees up elective credits.
If you want academic freedom, go with IR - it's broadest, so your core requirements are very flexible.
Bonnie Wilson, on financial aid: "...but I don't think we've ever let anyone starve *pause* to death..."
Determined students can take up to 2 classes elsewhere in Hopkins. The Business school is also in DC, as are some elements of the A&S grad program, so these are more convenient than the Baltimore schools.
Faculty Panel
Mandelbaum
"why SAIS?"
four kinds of skills - concentration (am for policy, for example), language, economics (some w ill end up in econ fields, all will become familiar with the language), and analytical thinking.
three differences with others in APSIA -
faculty (some self-praise...): lack of undergrads, minimal PhDs - complete focus on MA candidates, experience of faculty in government, private sector, etc.
location: DC ("in international affairs, the most important city in the world")
students: relationships form here/networks get started/SAIS Mafia, community of peers, "SAIS students are nice people."
Wedgewood
"I came in 2001 and wasn't sure I was going to stay, but I found it so delicious I decided to stick around"
We study history, culture, language as well as rational choice and economic assets - a more holistic view than other peer schools. Not about speaking only to other specialists, but one that can translate policy into English.
That conceit, that you can't be an intelligent person if you speak to the public - that's for journalists and tradesmen - that doesn't exist here.
Int'l student body brings contextual immediacy & richness to current affairs and academic topics.
Your temptation will be abstinence, to focus on your classes in the midst of the bouillabaise of seminars and internships.
"Tim Geithner learned his economics here. Be prayerful; we'll hope it was good."
Puns Putin with the French "putain," keeps slipping in French and German.
"Even those of us who are liberal internationalists acknowedge state power," realistic focus.
I think I love this woman.
Jones (Bologna faculty)
Well, I wandered into Bologna on my way to law school, and then I never made it to law school.
SAIS is where you really discover what an international career looks like (since only the children of diplomats ever really grow up knowing it)
The SAIS Mafia - "we imported it from Italy." Discussion of network power, "if you spend a year in Bologna, you will leave with a place to crash in pretty much any city in Europe, and many in Latin America and other places - we have 40 different countries represented."
We're not an academic institution in the stodgy, traditional sense. "Now my mom reads the stuff I write, unlike the stuff I wrote when I was a proper academic. I can bring my students into my research. For example, let's say the international economy melted down over the summer... my class focused their papers on different aspects of this and we're putting it together as a book."
Fukuyama
"I didn't realize I wrote poetry, Ruth."
"It always happens that I'll be in some country and finish my presentation and sit down at dinner and have the American ambassador or the project head sit down to tell me 'I went to SAIS.'" Story of one prof running into Chinese colonel SAIS grad at a meeting with Chinese defense ministry.
~250 events per academic year - vitality of intellectual life here. Upcoming 2-day conference on impact of economic crisis on ideas about development - where will the new consensus be? Keynotes: Larry Summers & Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
Lists all the walkable think-tanks and institutions (Carnegie is across the street), "It is true the Council on Foriegn Relations moved closer to GW, but you can't win them all."
If you're just an economist or just a political scientist, you just can't get your mind around these current issues.
Sobol
Spent nearly 30 years at the NY Fed, came to SAIS in 2006.
Emerging markets specialization - what happens when you want to end up in the financial sector in an area where emerging markets are a central question? (we hope these sorts of jobs will catch up to us soon...)
Most do regional concentrations - 2 courses from the concentration on markets, 2 of the econ credits go to emerging-market-specific classes.
2 years go very, very quickly. You really need to plan your courses carefully, especially to do economic specializations.
Krishna
Why Economics?
Because when you're standing in an unemployment line, you'll at least know how you got there.
Seriously, the discourse of International Relations is more and more a discussion of international economics, or at least questions in which economics runs strongly. Economic theory is the grammar that you need in order to conduct these conversations.
Why Economics at SAIS?
Very policy-oriented. Multi-tiered structure including specialized courses at essentially a PhD level for those who already have the background. 50 courses in various economic topics - plenty of customization available.
For those of you who have not had a lot of economics before coming to SAIS, we have a very special welcome for you...
I am often tempted to quit my job here and come back as a student.
Student-prof relationships? Research involvement?
Fukuyama - there are quite a lot of opportunities. Everybody in my program has a research assistant or two. I hire a number of my own students. In each program, we have positions for round-table coordinators, who work very closely with faculty in selecting speakers.
Wedgewood - it depends a little on how forward you are - demand your airtime. The beauty of this place is that we're already here (not flying in) and pepole are around and available. We all have our offices right here.
Jones - two student-run journals as excellent opportunities for learning writing and production.
Capstone?
Oral exams are our tradition - no real thesis or workshop required. However, you can craft your own area of expertise, delve deeply into one specific class or work out a project to do a thesis-like exercise for credit and find an adviser. If you want to develop that area of expertise, it'll be possible - just not part of our core.
Fletcher Sketches
Cross-registering: 4 course limit on classes outside Fletcher (both elsewhere at Tufts and at other universities)
Most audit language classes instead of using these units
Thesis process
Some do it as a class paper, some do it independently, some use the summer internship for data/research/writing - graduation requirement, but length, format & style vary greatly. Many are posted online.
Michael Klein - Int'l Macroecon
Half-semester courses, modular courses
In two years you don't have the time to cover everything you'd like
Empirical Topics in Globalization - "economics for smarties"
2 or 3 econ tracks - courses for students who focus on econ & courses for students who don't yet know they want to focus on econ. Quant methods, quant reasoning
Leila Fawaz - Modern (18th-19th cent) Middle Eastern history
currently working on social history of Mideast around WWI
Diplomacy field "practices interdisciplinarity" - history, politics, environment, communications
Success is about perserverance - get to know faculty, we're available, but it's on you to take advantage.
Joel Trachtman - Int'l Law
Inderdisciplinarity! the only way for int'l lawyers to understand their field.
Seminar w/Drezner on Int'l law & int'l relations to understand legal rules via social science.
Fields in Int'l law: public, business & econ law, int'l orgs, human rights
Dan Drezner - int'l politics
"I tried working in the real world; it didn't really take. It's so nice here."
Economic power in global governance (sovereign wealth funds, macroecon of balance of wealth questions, future of global governance are his interests right now)
Security, Int'l Political Economy, Comparative politics - three major areas offered here.
"We start with Thucydides. We read ALL of Thucydidies. It's a small course..."
Workloads?
200-250 pages/week, one long paper or a series of policy memos depending on the course - Drezner
100 pages/week, exam or exam & paper - Trachtman
200 pages/week "skimming is part of the art" - Fawaz
20 pages, but you'll need to go line-by-line - articles, textbooks - Klein
Student involvement in research centers?
Yes, as admin assts, minor writing, also research - get in there and ask lots of questions.
How to get involved in research?
Stalking profs is a good idea. It varies from prof to prof - do they have research funds? Is the student interested in publishing, and where? Very much a question of fit.
MALD thesis definitely forms a close research relationship & offers opportunity for this.
These things often stem from coursework first. Remember that research assistantships and TA offers also come from the undergrad college here.
I also sat in on Political Economy of Development, which was working on a case study on Mauritania; Classics of IR, which discussed The Great Transformation; and Counterterrorism, where the session focused on Af-Pak. I'd have registered for all three.
Most audit language classes instead of using these units
Thesis process
Some do it as a class paper, some do it independently, some use the summer internship for data/research/writing - graduation requirement, but length, format & style vary greatly. Many are posted online.
Michael Klein - Int'l Macroecon
Half-semester courses, modular courses
In two years you don't have the time to cover everything you'd like
Empirical Topics in Globalization - "economics for smarties"
2 or 3 econ tracks - courses for students who focus on econ & courses for students who don't yet know they want to focus on econ. Quant methods, quant reasoning
Leila Fawaz - Modern (18th-19th cent) Middle Eastern history
currently working on social history of Mideast around WWI
Diplomacy field "practices interdisciplinarity" - history, politics, environment, communications
Success is about perserverance - get to know faculty, we're available, but it's on you to take advantage.
Joel Trachtman - Int'l Law
Inderdisciplinarity! the only way for int'l lawyers to understand their field.
Seminar w/Drezner on Int'l law & int'l relations to understand legal rules via social science.
Fields in Int'l law: public, business & econ law, int'l orgs, human rights
Dan Drezner - int'l politics
"I tried working in the real world; it didn't really take. It's so nice here."
Economic power in global governance (sovereign wealth funds, macroecon of balance of wealth questions, future of global governance are his interests right now)
Security, Int'l Political Economy, Comparative politics - three major areas offered here.
"We start with Thucydides. We read ALL of Thucydidies. It's a small course..."
Workloads?
200-250 pages/week, one long paper or a series of policy memos depending on the course - Drezner
100 pages/week, exam or exam & paper - Trachtman
200 pages/week "skimming is part of the art" - Fawaz
20 pages, but you'll need to go line-by-line - articles, textbooks - Klein
Student involvement in research centers?
Yes, as admin assts, minor writing, also research - get in there and ask lots of questions.
How to get involved in research?
Stalking profs is a good idea. It varies from prof to prof - do they have research funds? Is the student interested in publishing, and where? Very much a question of fit.
MALD thesis definitely forms a close research relationship & offers opportunity for this.
These things often stem from coursework first. Remember that research assistantships and TA offers also come from the undergrad college here.
I also sat in on Political Economy of Development, which was working on a case study on Mauritania; Classics of IR, which discussed The Great Transformation; and Counterterrorism, where the session focused on Af-Pak. I'd have registered for all three.
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