Author: robinkhan

Faith Caldwell, ESIA BA ’71, was a college sophomore in Pennsylvania studying to be a foreign service officer, but had always wanted to come to Washington. When two friends told her they were attending the George Washington University in the fall, one as a transfer and the other as a graduate student, they asked, “Why don’t you come with us?”

So she did.

“I went down with them on a visit trip and turned right around and applied,” says the former Elliott School Board of Advisors member. GW accepted all of her credits, so Caldwell came in as a junior.

“The School of International Affairs was very small at that time,” she recalls. “It was strictly a two-year program for juniors and seniors, and I just dropped right in. The classes were engaging, the students were all very single-minded, and I made friends in the dorm. It was just a great, great transfer experience.”

After graduation, Caldwell married and spent a year with her husband in West Berlin. They then moved to upstate New York, and Caldwell earned a master’s degree in public administration with a specialization in judicial administration from NYU. While in the program, she landed an internship with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. “I look back on that now, and it turned my career around.”

Caldwell’s experience had such a profound effect on her life that she established the Caldwell Endowment for Study Abroad at her alma mater. Funded by a bequest intention in her will, the gift will provide funding for students to defray costs of internships and study abroad experiences.

In addition to establishing this endowment, Caldwell offers generous and ongoing support to GW’s Knowledge in Action Career Internship Fund (KACIF). She designates these annual gifts to Elliott School students. 

“I want to be able to support the students,” she says, “so when I found the Knowledge in Action Fund to support internships, I was really pleased because that’s right where I want to be. It’s not hard for me to make those gifts because I know they’re supporting a great cause.” 

The study abroad focus is especially important for Elliott School students, as Caldwell explains.

“If we’re going to be international relations specialists, I think we need to be able to see the world from a different perspective,” Caldwell says. “And the only way we can do that is by going somewhere else. Whether it’s for a short term or a semester or a year abroad, that exposure to a different lifestyle, a different perspective, a different view of the U.S., is so important, because it helps us balance our viewpoint of the world.”

On March 16th, when President LeBlanc announced GW would extend the virtual learning period through the end of the spring semester and cancel all on-campus events for the rest of the academic year, it seemed the Elliott School’s vibrant events scene would have to go on hiatus. 

Indeed, 17 live events between March 16 and April 4 were cancelled or postponed. 

Then, as students and faculty transitioned to an exclusively online learning platform, so too did the Elliott School’s signature events.

Like our fellow universities around the world, we leveraged the internet to offer programs on a broad range of topics  — from The End of Authority: Politics in a Post-Truth Age with Ray Suarez to Promoting Ethics and Leadership in International Organizations with Jorge Dajani, the Chief Ethics Officer of the World Bank Group. 

While these programs offered perspective on continuing global themes, we also zeroed in on the many ways the pandemic is affecting people and organizations around the world. Through the Elliott Experts Weigh In series, our faculty and alumni offered insight into such topics as the European response, financial markets in crisis, transatlantic relations, and the global economic system. And the Elliott School Diversity and Inclusion team ran several webinars, including Anti-Asian Racism and Strategies for Inclusion and Microaggressions: Toxic Rain in Educational Institutions, to name just a few. 

We recorded many of these programs, and you can view them via the Elliott School’s YouTube channel. While we hope to soon return to live programming, for now, it’s nice to know you can still experience opportunities to hear expert opinions from the comfort of home.

 

 

For the third year in a row, a small group of Elliott School graduate students participated in the cross-cultural Kakehashi Project, traveling to Kyoto and Tokyo to enhance their understanding of contemporary and ancient Japanese culture.

The Kakehashi Project is a government-funded, grassroots exchange program that brings groups of Americans to Japan for engaging, focused, and customized experiences. In Japanese, the word Kakehashi means bridges — in this case, bridges between cultures constructed with the hope of building bridges to a better tomorrow. 

Several themes stood out to the seven students who participated in the week-long trip to Tokyo, Kyoto, and the countryside in Shiga Prefecture, where students participated in a two-day homestay with local farming families. Notable visits included stops at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and at a reception with GW alumni living and working in Tokyo. 

In Kyoto, students visited the Fushimi Inari Shrine and the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Kinkaku-ji Temple. Here, the blend of modernity and tradition resonated with Michael Choi (MA candidate, Asian Studies), who noted the ancient temples mixed among the skyscrapers: “Kyoto captured the essence of traditional Japanese culture while developing as a modern city.”

Judy Ly (MA candidate, International Affairs) pointed to family values as her most indelible memory: “My stay with the host family was one of the best memories of the trip. I experienced the traditional Japanese daily life. I saw the family dynamic and respected how close and loving everyone was to each other….My host family’s hospitality, openness, and generosity humbled me greatly.”

Another student, Niles Rodgers (MA candidate, Asian Studies), has been deeply influenced by Japanese culture he experienced while growing up and wanted to see how his anime-influenced conceptionsstacked up against reality: “My trip to Japan allowed me to finally see, from a first-person perspective and without a digital screen or anime characters running wild, what I had been missing out on….Not only was it a unique experience, but it reinforced my desire to learn more about the country’s history, culture, and customs.”

Food was the gateway to Japanese culture for Kayla Escobar (MA candidate, Global Communication). She says, “most of the food on this trip spoke to me and gave me a beautiful memory… there was a sense of hospitality with every restaurant, vendor, and meal, which made it all the more special. The time and effort that I felt my homestay family put into creating each meal…there was genuine interest and hope that you enjoy your food.” Her own hope is that future Kakehashi participants get to experience similar aspects of what makes Japan a special place —  as well as a chance to expand their palates. 

When Patricia Scangas graduated from GW’s Elliott School in 1972, she little suspected how – or when – she would have the opportunity to work in global affairs. Her family was traditional, especially her father, and expected her to settle down close by.

Fast forward to 2004, when Scangas and her husband, Matthew, set off on what became a 10-year journey – part travel, part diplomatic mission, part legal drama. Scangas takes the reader along with her in her debut novel, The Case of Emil Diesel, under the pen name, Patricia Menton. We caught up with Scangas last month, and she brought us up to date on her book, which, she says, took her full circle to the study of global affairs.

What is this book about?

It’s about actual events in East Germany – where my husband was born and spent his early childhood. His father had an amazing collection of antique art objects from around the world. In the midst of the Cold War, when the East German government badly needed cash, officials confiscated private art collections, on the pretense of collecting taxes and sold the art to the West. This is what happened to my husband’s father – Emil Diesel in the book. He died in 1975, shortly after the government seized his collection.

Then what happened?

For a long time nothing happened. Then in 2004, a family member sent us a book about victims of art theft, including my husband’s father. We set off to look for and reclaim parts of the stolen collection. We had no idea of the challenges we would encounter along the way. 

Does the story have a happy ending?

Read the book – it is all there.

When you began this journey, did you plan to write a book about it?

Yes and no. Ever since the 1990s, I have felt a strong urge to write. During our many trips to East Germany, in museums and courtrooms, I took notes on everything that happened. Things finally came together when I heard about a class at our local community college called “From First Word to First Draft.” I jumped in and decided I would write the book – as fiction, based on these real-life events and characters.

How long did it take you?

Twelve weeks. I just sat down at the computer and began to write. 

Wow! That’s fast. 

It was all there in my notes. I did do some additional research.

How about publication?

I sent the manuscript to probably 50 agents. When I did get a reply, it was usually “make these changes and send it to us again.” I rewrote the story so many times that I started to feel as if I was losing the thread. Finally, I found Xlibris, and it turned out they were wonderful in the editing process. They’ve helped with publicity and gave me good ad coverage in the book review section of the Sunday New York Times. Still, I spend most of my time promoting my book.  

How do you feel about this?

It’s okay! The important thing is that I had a chance to tell this story. I realize, too, that I ended up using my Elliott School education after all.

What’s next for you?

Pitching the book to Hollywood producers, working on a romance novel I’ve begun, and possibly writing a sequel to Emil Diesel to bring the story up to the present. It was an incredible journey, and it’s not over yet.

In January, 2015, two gunmen carried out a terrorist attack on the French satire weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris, killing 12 people and injuring 11 others. Among the injured was journalist Philippe Lançon, who, three years later, released a memoir about his experiences with recovery. The English translation, Disturbance: Surviving Charlie Hebdo, was released late 2019.

On January 24, 2020, Lançon discussed his memoir with professor of French Abdourahman Waberi in the Marvin Center Amphitheater. The discussion mirrored the content of his book, as Lançon chose not to linger on the two minutes of terror, but on the year of recovery, reckoning, and rediscovery that followed. He explained the philosophies and literature he appealed to for guidance, and effortlessly wove quotes from Proust, Shakespeare, and Kafka into his narrative.

The discussion occurred entirely in French, with an English translation transmitted through earpieces to the audience, like we were privy to a casual conversation between two authors. Lançon and Waberi held nothing back, freely flowing between any topic they found interesting, from Lançon’s personal experiences to his philosophy on journalism and the struggles of translation (which was ironically relevant to the event). Ultimately, the discussions were a view into Lançon’s mind, and paired well with the philosophy of his memoir.

The event was part of Lançon’s book tour on the East Coast of the United States. The program was sponsored by the Columbian College of Arts & Sciences, the GW Department of Romance, German, and Slavic Languages and Literatures, the GW Department of History, the Elliott School of International Affairs, and the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies.

The author also spoke in depth to the Washington Post about his new book and experience. Washington Post Philippe Lançon

 

Enjoy this video reviewing some highlights of the past year! And from all of us here at the Elliott School of International Affairs, we wish everyone a happy, healthy 2020!