April 17, 2003
CHID program brings cultural impacts, conflicts to life for students
Studying in another country is usually touted as a way to gain an understanding of a different culture. But Jim Clowes believes that studying abroad can also be a way to better understand one’s own culture. In fact, traveling to a deeply divided society such as Northern Ireland or South Africa can illuminate the conflicts back home.
That’s why the Comparative History of Ideas Program (CHID) — of which Clowes is associate director — offers students a chance to travel as part of a program called Memory, Identity, Conflict and Dialogue.
“I want to help students see how local and global interact and how dynamics in one culture are reflected and informative of our own culture,” Clowes says.
He’ll be discussing the program during a talk entitled Creating Dialogue in Deeply Divided Societies. It’s slated for 5:30–8:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 23 in the Walker Ames Room, Kane. The event is sponsored by the Jackson School of International Studies.
CHID (in collaboration with the international studies program) has offered international study for its students since 1995, beginning with an emphasis on memory and identity because all CHID programs look at identity formation. Early sites included Rome, Prague and Berlin, each with a different theme suited to the site.
“Then in doing this I began to see fracture lines in all these communities,” Clowes says. “So it seemed fitting to do a comparative study of conflict and dialogue approaches globally and connect to those things locally.”
He advertised to students across campus for sophomores and met with them in small seminars for the following year. Programs were then held in Northern Ireland, South Africa and Cyprus. Since then, programs have continued in those areas and expanded to other countries as well.
The format of the programs includes a relevant class. In Belfast, for example, the class was in the history of the Irish conflict. Invited speakers and workshops are also included. Students spend the rest of the time in what the program calls engaged community learning — in other words, working at sites that intersect with their interests.
Casey Clevenger, for example, learned about women’s political organizations in all three places. In Northern Ireland she worked with the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition; in South Africa it was the African National Congress’ Women’s League. And in Cyprus, where there was no formal women’s organization, she interviewed women on both sides of the area’s conflict.
“What I liked about it was the chance to participate on a day-to-day basis,” Clevenger says. “In South Africa, for example, I was out of the city and away from the other students in our group. I got to see face to face the effects of racial differences and language barriers.”
Theron Stevenson, a CHID graduate who currently works for the program, had a similar experience. While working in a community center in Northern Ireland, he interacted with 12-year-olds who considered it entertainment to go to riots.
“There just wasn’t much happening in their lives and they were surrounded by violence,” Stevenson says. “They were pretty nihilistic.”
Sean Murphy, meanwhile, studied restorative justice during the trip because it was an academic interest of his. But by the time he came home, he’d decided to attend law school because “I saw the way law has a direct impact on people’s lives.”
“The power of engaged community learning,” Clowes says, “is that it puts you on equal footing with the people. You can have meaningful dialogue — not just a type of voyeurism. The goal is to integrate in such a way that there can be dialogue between the American and the people there.”
The students in the program aren’t the only ones doing the learning. Clowes first conceived of viewing conflicts in one’s own country through the lens of another because of his own experiences, including his look at South Africa’s approach to multicultural education.
“In the U.S. we’ve historically used legal protections for set ethnic groups — affirmative action, definitions of culture in precise terms,” Clowes says. “When I went over to South Africa and started talking in multicultural terms, the people said we don’t want that because that’s vestiges of apartheid. What it does is it freezes people into certain conceptions and their own self talk limits how they can proceed within that.”
For Clowes, who has been involved with multicultural education for many years, that was a new take on things. “I think the U.S. tends to be frozen in legal dialogue and hasn’t gotten to the stage of creating the mechanisms to allow people to see how their lives intersect with others,” he says. “We have to break free or at least realize the limitations of the legal approach to solving identity tensions.”
Clowes has been frustrated that he’s been unable to offer formal follow-up for students who have participated in the Memory, Identity, Conflict and Dialogue program, but the program is essentially self-sustaining. Lack of funding rarely stops Clowes when he believes in something, however. Right now he’s involved in creating “Global Connections Clubs” in rural high schools, a program that will send UW students who have traveled abroad out to the high schools as interns. It will be their job to start discussions about global issues and to facilitate dialogue between the school and schools in other countries.
As a person who grew up in a rural community and had his eyes opened in a post-high school odyssey through Europe and the Middle East, Clowes is particularly passionate about this project. “It’s too easy for urbanites to dismiss rural people as uninformed,” he says, “but they have no resources for seeing the world in a different way. So it’s our responsibility, those of us who have these resources, to create structures to give them that opportunity.”
Registration is required for Clowes’ April 23 program. For further information, call 206-543-4800.
