VOL. 9/4 (ISSUE 34) - February, 2000
In this issue:
Transregional Learning: Cape Town, The Balkans, New YorkFor the second year in a row, January for us at TCDS was marked by intensive work at our Cape Town Democracy & Diversity Institute, this time during one of the hottest summers in that part of Africa. Fifty-two young scholars from 21 countries and four continents grappled with the challenges facing democracy at the beginning of the new millennium. The intensive program of seminars organized in cooperation with Cape Town University and led by a multinational faculty was complemented by a series of evening discussions, guest lectures, field trips, and a concluding conference on the state of democracy in the region. There is more about the institute inside the Bulletin, but for now I would like to thank my colleagues – the extraordinary faculty team of Adigun Agbaje, Jeff Goldfarb, Shireen Hassim, Will Milberg, David Plotke, and Mary Simons – for their dedication, generosity, and friendship. Thanks also to our transregional cohort, whom we miss already. See you soon on the e-mail! In the meantime, please see a highlight of this issue, Alex Boraine’s contribution on South Africa’s negotiated transitions to democracy, presented last Fall at the Graduate Faculty.
As you may know, TCDS has been conducting a set of activities in Kosova and in Serbia. Delina Fico, who coordinates the project from the TCDS offices in New York, provides an update on the project in this issue of the Bulletin. There are other Balkans-related items in the Bulletin as well: a piece by Vesna Kesic on the recent Croatian elections; an open letter signed by two distinguished intellectuals from Poland, both of whom we have hosted at the New School in the past and who are widely recognized for their moral authority – Dr. Marek Edelman, cardiologist and a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and Jacek Kuron, educator and a leader in the 1970s’ Committee in Defense of the Workers (KOR). Their letter protests the imprisonment of Dr. Flora Brovina, a poet, physician, and president of the League of Albanian Women in Kosova, who was recently sentenced in Serbia to 12 years in prison. Dr. Brovina was convicted in the District Court in the city of Nis on December 9, 1999, of "terrorism," the key accusation being that the hospital of which Dr. Brovina was the head had been giving medical treatment to members of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The court disregarded Dr. Brovina’s explanation that it was a civilian hospital for Albanian women and children, working under the auspices of the international humanitarian organization Human Peace, and that she herself, having a history of cardiac problems, was not at the hospital during the NATO intervention, but at home sick and unable to speak. –Elzbieta Matynia
Negotiated Transitions: The Case of South Africa’s Round Table, by Alex Boraine
This is a transcript of Dr. Boraine’s presentation at the conference on the Round Tables hosted by TCDS last September.
In 1910 the first South African constitution was promulgated and it characterized white hegemony as fundamentally democratic, thus excluding the vast majority of the population. Equally, it was structurally racist because the exclusion of the majority was on the basis of skin color. And it was this policy which informed the treatment of the vast majority of the people in this country from the cradle to the grave. The Population Registration Act determined your destiny from the very moment you were born. Who you were registered as determined your life chances and even, quite literally, when you died, you had to be buried in segregated graveyards.
The African National Congress (ANC) was established in 1912, and from the very beginning resisted this situation which placed all but white people as third class citizens with no rights whatsoever. But their resistance for a very long time was remarkably reasonable. They wrote long papers and pleaded for their delegation be heard by the South African government, the British government, even British royalty.
But in the 1950s, all this changed very radically. Towards the end of the 1950s, one saw many demonstrations taking place – what were called defiance campaigns – with hundreds and thousands of people protesting. Of course, this immediately resulted in further laws restricting black South Africans. The ever-increasing escalation of resistance on the one hand met with stiffer repression on the other, and led to the infamous Sharpville massacre in 1960, when many peacefully protesting blacks were shot and killed, mainly shot in the back as it turned out.
The government's action was very swift. It banned almost every major political party. It held major trials which sentenced Mandela and his colleagues – at least 27 years of imprisonment for Mandela and many others. Many went into exile in fear of imprisonment and death, and many went underground. Yet, in those turbulent 1960s, many of us thought that it would be perhaps three or four years of tough struggle and then we would win, the National Party would be overthrown and a new period of democracy would be ushered in.
But we underestimated the resilience of the South African government, which was determined at all costs to maintain the privileged position. It used every means at its disposal, and described the resistance as a total onslaught on civilization, on Christianity, on decency. Anyone who dared to oppose apartheid was seen as a communist, no matter who they were, because this was the bogey. And in this the government was greatly assisted by the United States and many other Western countries who could only see this Red Danger.
At the same time, the South African government wanted to give the impression to the outside world that they were a democracy. And so it was: a limited form of democracy, in that all whites over the age of 18 had the vote, with certain councils set aside for so-called mixed race people, colored people, Asian people, and black South Africans – all of whom formed about 80% of the population. But, as the resistance mounted and the so-called armed struggle began to take effect, laws became more and more vicious and the actions of the security forces could only be described as state violence. Particularly in the 1980s, one saw the assassination gangs wreaking havoc not only in southern South Africa but also across the borders in Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania, where many from the resistance were in camps.
But by the 1980s, the South African economy was under siege. The huge cost of separating people was becoming increasingly impossible to bear. At the same time, developments in Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and Latin America were becoming known by people inside South Africa and by people in exile, since the ANC had representatives in most of the capitals of the world, including Moscow, Budapest, Prague, East Berlin, and warsaw. And of course, what they were aware of were the shifts that were taking place; shifts from authoritarianism to democracy. They were also aware of the different models of transition that were being created. That, I suppose, is why the South African model is an amalgam of many models. I don’t think one can say that we simply followed one particular model. We were lucky in this sense, since we were able to learn from the lessons and the mistakes of many other countries who were undergoing similar transitions. By contrast, late 1980s South Africa was a country under a state of emergency, where thousands of people were in jail and it was almost impossible to move in any direction, with the government itself feeling the stresses and strains of the economy, with this resistance which was growing all the time and would never go away, and with mounting criticism from the international community.
It is also important to bear in mind that South Africa was part of the Commonwealth of Nations, in which there were many black representatives who put enormous pressure on the British government, and on Margaret Thatcher in particular. She was, of course, very sympathetic to the South African government and not very enamored of the ANC at all. This played a very interesting role, I think, in that Thatcher could put pressure on the South African government by saying, "You’ve got to give me something to work with. I’ve got to go to the Commonwealth meetings and they are going to take tougher and tougher measures against your country. You must do something." In a way, it was not a bad thing that she had the confidence of people like Botha and the white community in general. So they began to look at what they could do without giving up power entirely. Once you start on that kind of slippery slope, there is only one way to go other than some kind of bloodbath. And all that, of course, was hanging in the balance in the late 1980s.
Thus, there were changes from within the government itself. In the mid-80s, privatthe discussions with Mandela in prison were begun which, I think, were meant to drive a wedge between Mandela and the ANC in exile, who were very suspicious of these discussions and unsure whether Mandela could win that extremely difficult battle of negotiating as a prisoner with a powerful government. But I think people underestimated the remarkable wisdom and ability of Mandela. Simultaneously, others of us tried to reach out to those in exile who couldn’t come back because they were painted into a corner by our own propaganda machine. What the actions of those of us who were free enough to go out to them achieved was that it suddenly gave the ANC a human face. We came back and described our fellow South Africans, not as monsters but as people who demanded fundamental human rights. At the time, we didn't know that the government was actually meeting with Mandela, because they criticized us, warned us, and threatened us with imprisonment and all the rest, unless we stopped meeting with the terrorists outside. Meanwhile, they were meeting with the so-called chief terrorist inside, but I suppose that’s the way these things go. It was actually the change of leadership when de Klerk took over from the sick, older Botha that I think made a significant difference. And on Feb 2, 1990, de Klerk, to the astonishment of almost everyone (people who say they could see it coming are lying. Most of us were totally shocked), announced that he was going to release political prisoners including Mandela, and lift the ban and restriction orders on the ANC, the Pan-African Congress, and the South African Communist Party. We couldn't believe they would really do it, but he did it all with one stroke of the pen. This, I think, accelerated the progress enormously. Those who had been pleading for negotiation politics both inside and outside South Africa suddenly saw this as a new possibility.
I can’t begin to tell you what it was like watching people who were regarded as monsters by 99% of the white community in charge, being feted aat airports and protected by the security police whose one job a couple of weeks before had been to kill them. This was only one of the small, remarkable changes taking place in the South Africa of the 1990s.
The South African negotiation was not in a small room, it was in a stadium, because the process was democratic from its very inception. Over 20 political parties and any number of groupings including labor unions, business associations, women’s groups, churches... you name it, they had observer status and were part and parcel of this, round after round. But everybody knew that the chief negotiators were the government on the one hand and the ANC on the other.
How do we account for de Klerk taking this unbelievable step? Was it just a change of heart? I don’t really think so. I think the collapse of communism played a major part because suddenly he could then say to white South Africans, "really and truly, you’ve got nothing to worry about. I know we’ve said they are all communists and I know they were seen as a threat but that’s over now. The Berlin wall is down. The communist parties are out of it. Democracy is flourishing and we must become part of that." Secondly, with remarkable insensitivity and lack of skill for a not stupid man, de Klerk actually believed that he could get massive black support for his national party – a blindness which is quite remarkable when you think of what they had inflicted on so many for so long. But that he believed that, and believed that he was going to be a real player, was clear from a number of statements he made and from some of the initiatives and interventions that I don’t have space to describe here.
The negotiations started with very small meetings in Cape Town. The second round was perhaps even more significant, in which you had the Pretoria Minute, which led to Mandela almost unilaterally declaring the suspension of the armed struggle. Please note – suspension of the struggle – not the doing away of it because deep distrust remained amongst tthe overwhelming majority of blacks towards the white power bloc. The negotiations were interrupted on a number of occasions because of violence; violence between the Inkatha Freedom Party and the ANC, but sparked by the security police as a third force deliberately trying to foment trouble and to move the so-called moderate middle-of-the-road blacks towards the National Party and the government.
But despite all of that, despite the fact that Council for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) was actually suspended and the parties walked off and criticized each other and said, "No, no. We will have to find another way," there was always someone to bring them back. And in the main, one has to say that the humanity and wisdom of Mandela and the pragmatism of de Klerk probably triumphed over these two warring factions. Almost inevitably in 1993, an agreement was reached on the basis of an interim constitution which, I think I can say with due modesty, is probably one of the finest, most democratic, most liberal constitutions the world has ever seen. And we were able to create that because we had learned so much from so many who had gone before us.
And so a date was set, against great odds. On April 24, 1994, for the very first time in the history of our country, everybody above a certain age was able to vote. It sounds like such a little thing. I wish you could have seen the drama that led up to it, the fear. I had whites coming and knocking at my door asking to stay in my home for the duration of the elections because I was seen as some kind of friend of the black people and they probably wouldn't come, take my house, and kill us. So great had been the propaganda leading up to those elections, there were even people taking canned goods and water into caves because they thought there was going to be some kind of bloodbath.
It was probably one of the most peaceful elections ever seen with millions of people who had never voted in their lives before, many of whom were illiterate. The result is well-knoown. The ANC achieved 62% of the vote, the National Party around 20%, the Inkatha Freedom Party around 10% and a whole host of lesser parties got the rest.
Compromises made by the ANC were crucial to the negotiations. They could make them, I think, because they spoke from a position of strength, as they knew very soon that they were going to win and so were willing and ready to make them. Yet a few of these compromises we are paying for today. There are penalties attached to negotiation politics. There can be no doubt about that. But I still have no doubt that it was the right thing to do. I’m thinking in particular about the compromise made regarding a small, innocent article – introduced by a prominent white Communist by the name of Joe Slovo, one of the people most hated by the South African government – talking about sunset clauses and suggesting a five-year period during which there would be a coalition government. A forced coalition in other words, not one they had to take. I mean, the ANC could have run the country on their own with 62% of the popular vote. How many governments in the world get that kind of support? But it was indeed laid down in the interim constitution; parties that received 5% and more would become part of the governing cabinet within the parliament.
A second major compromise was to leave the civil service untouched. That meant a civil service that included the military, the police. So, at Nelson Mandela’s inauguration as the first democratically elected president, he was flanked by a white general from the military and a white general of the South African police.
A great number of changes have taken place since then. The constituent assembly, which was democratically elected, hammered out a final constitution, part of which called for a constitutional court. This means that the legislature no longer has the final say, but that the constitutional court, made up of a number of very eminent judges, makes final decisions. So we are today a constitutional democracy. Let me end by saying that there were many times when many of us thought that the negotiations would end in disaster. One of the unique things that arose out of the negotiations was the question of how to deal with the past, how to deal with human rights violations that had taken place in the past, and what do to do about the victims: hundreds and thousands, millions of them, mostly black. Do you disregard that entirely, do you draw a thick line, do you simply say "Just forget the past?" That became a major stumbling block in the negotiations. High ranking military figures – like General Viljoer of the Freedom Front and General Malan – were saying that without some form of amnesty as part of the interim constitution, the military would make a peaceful election impossible, which was not an idle threat. So some form of amnesty had to be introduced, and the final clause, at three o’clock in the morning, was devised.There is a great deal of unfinished business. In particular, we have political freedom and political liberation but economic justice is the new revolution which still has to happen in South Africa. The commitment is there, the means are not. Many hundreds and thousands and millions of people still live in desperate poverty. The white minority still controls the higher levels of the economy and therefore most of the power. A great deal still has to happen, but it will probably take generations.
Alex Boraine, vice-chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission South Africa, was teaching at NYU Law School at the time of this conference.
Croatia Has Voted: What now?, by Vesna KesicThe recent parliamentary and presidential elections in Croatia – in December 1999 and January 2000 respectively– have thoroughly changed the Croatian political landscape. The populist nationalist HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union), which came to power in 1990 under the leadership of the late President Franjo Tudjman, and led the country through the break up of Yugoslavia, the war in Croatia and Bosnia, and the wild and predatory privatization scheme that caused almost complete economic and social chaos, is finally out of power! A coalition of the two strongest opposition parties – the Social Democrats and the Liberals – won more than 50% of the seats in Parliament. Further, an alliance with representatives from the second strongest coalition, a mixture of six center and center left parties, gives this new parliament the two-thirds majority necessary to make some essential constitutional changes. As the leading slogan of the winning coalitions indicates – "Never again will one strong man rule Croatia!" – changing the so-called presidential system of rule that gave Tudjman almost unlimited authority, will be the priority.
However, given that this "Never again" slogan was one of the few distinctly articulated programs of the elections, it would be premature to optimistically conclude that Croatia is suddenly far less nationalistic than it was some two years ago (during the previous elections), or that overnight it will become a social or liberal democracy. Rather, what motivated most Croatian voters was their exasperation with the rigidity, arrogance, and operetta-like personal style of Tudjman's government, and with persistent economic impoverishment. Indeed, voters view both the national and personal economic hardship of the past decade as a direct result of the personal alliance between the political and economic elites that emerged in the post-break up period. As strange as it may sound, the former subjects of socialism – at least in the Yugoslav case – are still very sensitive to questions of economic and social justice, at least in a primordial sense. In line with these expectations, the new government began its mandate by authorizing the arrests of several tycoons and financial managers. All of them, including one former minister, were in one or another way tied in with Tudjman’s regime. Moreover, the new government announced the revision of the privatization proceedings, and promised to annul all its illegal outcomes – whatever that might mean. Finally, it is advocating a 40% cut to the salaries of the state’s highest officials, and a reduction in the presidential fleet of cars, airplanes, and the like.
But the Social Democrats and the Liberals did put other things on the agenda too; some before the elections, and some only after the elections were won. These new items included human and minority rights, media diversification and freedom, better cooperation with the Hague Tribunal, facilitation of the return of 300,000 Serb refugees, and greater regional cooperation. However, as many of these are mainly at the request of the "international community" (chiefly the European Union and the U.S.), some cynical observers have already noted that Croatia is on its way to becoming the "little darling" of the international community. Madeline Albright's short but meaningful visit to Zagreb immediately after the parliamentary elections, and the expeditious opening of a few new EU offices there, reinforces this appraisal of the situation. The other question that concerned observers are fond of considering these days is whether the changes in Croatia will influence "the region" as a whole. By that, they usually have in mind the hope that Serbia/Yugoslavia will follow Croatia’s example. But this is a tricky question, and the answers might be better informed by astrology than by sober political reasoning. The paths of these two countries and their peoples, although inseparable in the broader historical and political context and in their common tragedy of war, at this precise moment seem to be very distant and unconcerned with each other. Indeed, any pressure from the international community – besides on questions of returnees, citizenship rights and the opening of borders for a free flow of people – might have a counterproductive effect, just as it did in 1990 and 1991, right after the process of the disintegration of the former country had begun.
Where Bosnia and Herzegovina are concerned, things are rather different. The first political pilgrimage of the new minister of foreign affairs, Tonino Picula, was not to Vienna or Brussels, but to Sarajevo, which is a very good sign. Further, the new government underlined its recognition of Bosnian sovereignty and its full detachment from Tudjman's politics of persistent destabilization of Bosnia and Herzegovina through Bosnian Croats. The new parliament will probably enact legislation very soon to disenfranchise Bosnian Croats from voting in Croatian elections. Indeed, these developments could be the major national and regional accomplishments of the new Croatian political configuration, since stabilization of Bosnia is still just as crucial for the future of the region as that of Serbia and Kosovo.
Vesna Kesic is a Liberal Studies student at the Graduate Faculty, a TCDS associate, a journalist, and peace and women's rights activist from Croatia.
Connecting the Unconnected and Supporting the Isolated Ones
TCDS in Kosova and Serbia: Towards an Architecture of Peace, by Delina FicoVjosa, Yll and Dritan are leaning over a mock-up cover for the first issue of The Forum, a new magazine they plan to publish. It is meant to be a forum where young people can share their ideas; an alternative to the mainstream printed media they dislike because of the partisan politics that drives the reporting. All three have taken a one-year leave of absence from their universities: they want to participate in the major changes taking place in Kosova. But it is not easy. The Forum’s cover page, a collage of photographs of car license plates in Kosova, is revealing. Some plates bear the UN logo, some the logos of international NGOs, some are from Albania, some are old Yugoslav plates, a few bear the initials of Kosova, and some cars have no plates at all. This is just one sign of the confusion that has prevailed since the United Nations administration took over governance of the former Serbian province in June.
The winter has been difficult, with power shortages, hundreds of people still without shelter, not enough police and no judicial system in place to address rising crime. UN agencies and international NGOs have introduced programs that aim at both reconstructing the devastated infrastructure and re-establishing the structures of governance in the province. But Kosovar leaders complain that the international governing force is not capitalizing on the human energy and resources that already exist in Kosova. The expansion of the Kosova Transitional Council was an important attempt to address that problem.
But deeper and wider actions are needed to empower the Albanian population which for the previous ten years had been de facto expelled from all decision-making positions and most public jobs.
The new project of TCDS – Towards an Architecture of Peace – was launched in July 1999. It tries to address both the need of an open-minded generation of young Kosovars to define their space within the efforts to re-build the province, and the need for the Kosovar NGO community and academia to connected with a larger world of ideas and institutions. With the help of a grant by the Ford Foundation, TCDS is supporting several initiatives in the region. There are nine major components of this project in Kosova and Serbia, as described below.
Kosova
Academic Collaboration: Working with the Department of Philosophy and Sociology at Prishtina University, TCDS has arranged visiting lectures and curriculum workshops conducted by senior professors in Political Science (David Plotke) and Sociology (Mustafa Emirbayer). The project also provides books and journals for the University library. Finally, to support junior faculty development, TCDS invited two young scholars to participate in the Democracy & Diversity Institutes in both Cape Town and Cracow.
Democracy Seminars: In partnership with one of the leading Kosovar NGOs, Kosova Action for Civic Initiative (KACI),TCDS is organizing Democracy Seminars, a series of public discussions on issues of democratic development. Sessions were opened by Adam Michnik, to be followed by Jan Urban (Czech Republic), Jonathan Schell (U.S.), Shlomo Avineri (Israel), Charles Taylor (Canada) and Fatos Lubonja (Albania).
Youth Theater Project: In an effort to use theater as a means of healing and empowerment, TCDS is supporting a project that brings 20 young Kosovars affected by the war, to use dramaturgical means to express their life experiences.
Women’s Initiatives: To help address the needs of Kosovar women in a society that relies on women’s energies to survive, but in general denies them power in the public sphere, TCDS is working with newly established Kosovar women’s groups to organize leadership training programs.
Urban Planning Symposium: To stimulate and support the involvement of local designers, planners and architects, TCDS is sponsoring an exhibition and symposium on urban planning in Prishtina.Serbia
Democracy Seminars: Extending TCDS’s tradition of working with progressive Serbian intellectuals, we are currently assisting the Belgrade Circle as they conduct a series of democracy seminars in several cities in Serbia.
Gender Studies Initiative: TCDS is providing support for several new courses to be offered by the Women’s Studies Center (WSC) in Belgrade. As part of the effort to connect Serbian scholars with the larger academic community, TCDS brought two representatives from WSC to the Democracy & Diversity Institute in Cape Town where they attended seminars and established ties with colleagues from Southern Africa, the U.S., and Eastern Europe.
Academic Freedom Initiatives: TCDS is working with Serbian groups in the NGO community and academia who are struggling to preserve academic freedom and independent thinking. We are sponsoring a special issue of the Belgrade Circle Journal, entitled "In Defense of the University." Further, with TCDS’s assistance, the Alternative Academic Educational Network is developing a year-long graduate course on transitions to democracy.
Media Training: TCDS is supporting initiatives by Radio B2-92 and the Yugoslav Committee for Human Rights to organize media training for NGOs in a number of cities in Serbia. The aim is to equip NGO activists with media skills, and to create an opportunity for the independent media to engage in a dialogue with the NGOs.As part of our growing commitment to the Balkans, TCDS has also organized a series of discussions in New York on the region with journalists, human rights researchers, and political analysts.We feel this project has begun a challenging and exciting series of activities that we hope will contribute to the burgeoning of more open and democratic societies in Kosova and Serbia.
Democracy & Diversity A to Z:
TCDS in Cape Town, January 2000, by Timo LyyraIn the dead of our winter, fifty-two junior faculty, researchers, civil society activists, and NGO professionals from Albania to Zimbabwe convened at TCDS’s second annual Democracy & Diversity Institute for an intensive two weeks of graduate study under the austral midsummer sun of South Africa. Like its long-standing sister institute in Cracow, Poland, the Cape Town Institute offers a selection of four advanced seminar courses on democracy and democratization, each one equivalent to a semester-length graduate course in the U.S. and co-taught by faculty from the New School and regional universities. The courses are complemented by evening sessions with guest presentations that link the daytime study to political practice, policy, and social history more locally, and by a concluding conference that draws together the different perspectives of the specialized seminars to focus on key problems facing the host region. This year, the guest speakers included Stephen Gelb, senior economist with the Office of the President of South Africa; Amina Mama, a leading academic feminist in Africa; Sipho Maseko, a talented representative of a new generation of South African political scientists; Lucy Muyoyeta, director of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa; Ken Owen, a well-known writer and a provocative political commentator; Frederick Van Zyl Slabbert, a public intellectual and the leader of the apartheid-era parliamentary opposition; and Ahmedi Vawda, director of Community Services of the City of Cape Town. The field trips giving texture to the curriculum included a social history tour with community activists to townships surrounding the city of Cape Town and a political history tour to the notorious high-security prison of Robben Island.
The Institute took full advantage of its social surroundings. South Africa’s extraordinary political transformation, complex patterns of social stratification, and rapid cultural and economic developments invited an ongoing extracurricular colloquy that made up a program of its own. In addition to the inspiration offered by the stirring landscape of mountains and the sea, by the fantastical fauna of penguins, zebras, baboons, and ostriches, great rewards were discovered in the way Cape Town itself is food for thought so pertinent to the Institute’s thematic focus.
But the main accomplishment of the program was not merely the new knowledge acquired through instruction and informal discussions, however well these may have succeeded in exemplifying the subtle movement through theory and practice to more contemporary and controversial issues. For most, of even greater importance were the perspectival shifts and the novel ways of posing questions provoked by the interaction of the different experiences and bodies of knowledge coming into play in the diverse group of participants – that is, the insights into new perspectives with which to think and to think about. Through this confrontation of experiences, it was possible to realize, first, that we come from different countries but our understanding of issues is very much alike, and, then, that it was in the first place the new ways of thinking about what seems to be a global perception that represented the most valuable lessons of the Institute. And, as summed up by one participant, this was precisely what made the Institute one of the most valuable learning experiences I have participated in.
Yet, cognitive transformations seldom matter without motivational reinforcements. Even if the Institute prompted and sharpened questions that I never thought of and succeeded in opening my eyes on a reality that I knew nothing about before, without an inner component with personal repercussions its outcomes could not go beyond those of a standard academic exchange program or a conventional conference. In Cape Town, the conjunction of issues and experiences yielded near-tangible results that speak of just this effect: The exposure has been eye-opening and this experience has given me more energy to go out there and to try to find solutions for the problems our society is facing were verbal testimonies to this impact, made all the more lasting by the deep feelings that treasure the friendships we developed here.
Thus, while aiming for immediate results and providing a unique opportunity to establish professional contacts, the Institute looks further into the future as well. The perspectives and experiences exchanged, and the friendships made, will be an enduring part of my learning processes, was the shared sense at departure; and TCDS, through its follow-up programs such as the innovative Transregional Learning Networks approach, will aim at enhancing exactly such long-term processes that will show how the Institute could be seen as ‘diversity and democracy’ in practice – for a new generation of world citizens. The process that began in Cape Town is continued through TCDS’s electronic networks and institutional links, designed to develop and maintain the new collegial ties and building on the foundation of friendships formed during the fleeting period of the Institute. In addition to the webs of communication that unite the alumni of this and the previous Democracy & Diversity Institutes in a virtual community of global reach, TCDS will offer study opportunities for a select group of Institute participants that will bring them also physically to the New School University.
Timo Lyyra is Program Coordinator of TCDS. Quotations from student evaluations of the Institute appear in Italics.
Sentenced for HealingDoctor Flora Brovina, a pediatrician, was sentenced to 12 years in prison, according to the press. Her only crime was to have been treating children of Albanian refugees during the war.
Upon receiving a diploma, every physician takes the Hippocratic Oath, which states that a medical doctor has the duty to treat people regardless of their nationality, race, gender, religious beliefs, or ideals. Punishment for treating Albanian children constitutes a violation of the moral principles that govern all civilized societies. This sentence is not only a blow against Flora Brovina but against all physicians as well.
For this reason we strongly protest this course of action and demand that the sentence be immediately revoked, and that doctor Flora Brovina be freed from prison and exonerated.
Marek Edelman Jacek Kuron
We are asking you to support this appeal, and to send personal letters demanding the release of Dr. Flora Brovina to Petar Jojic, Minister of Justice of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, e-mail: petar.jojic@gov.yu
TCDS New Social Science Training Fellowships 1999 , By Hana CervinkovaDuring the Fall 1999 semester, TCDS hosted twelve junior scholars from diverse international and disciplinary backgrounds as part of a new program called New Social Science Training. The program was designed as a follow-up initiative to TCDS’s Democracy & Diversity Institutes in Cracow and Cape Town: an intensive intellectual forum where the participants discuss their own projects with colleagues from other parts of the world and other disciplines. The fellowship thus offered an opportunity to further build on the experiences, ideas, and contacts developed at these institutes. Martin Plot’s comment on the program captures both the spirit and the intention of the program: [One] is used to interacting in forums that are highly homogeneous in terms of cultural backgrounds, theoretical fashions, and even prejudices about the standards that must inform criticism. Quite the contrary, the TCDS experience confronted us...with the fact of a diversity of cultural backgrounds, theoretical perspectives, and standards for such diversity. However, the experience was not just one of confrontation of differences, it was also one of finding correlations.... It is a great contribution to realize that the work that springs from an effort to understand a single polity...can also be meaningful for a broad variety of cultural and political worlds.
The cross-disciplinary discussions took place in a variety of settings: First, in three thematic groups, which met weekly and focused on the individual projects. These working-group meetings proved to be particularly useful in enabling Fellows to gain new perspectives on their work from colleagues engaged in issues that were similar but set in different localities and historical periods. A second venue of discussion was provided by the TCDS Work-in-Progress seminar series. In each of the seven seminars, Fellows presented preliminary papers, received comments from a faculty advisor and benefited from the general group discussion. Finally, the fellowship program was concluded by a conference during which the Fellows presented their final work to the broader New School community. Again, distinguished faculty offered their insights and expertise as commentators. TCDS and the Fellows are grateful for the contributions by Professors Andrew Arato, Richard Bernstein, Jose Casanova, Jeffrey Goldfarb, Courtney Jung, William Milberg, and Vera Zolberg.
The final conference was an exciting conclusion of the program; in the course of the presentation, it became clear that the final papers reflected the influence of the working-group discussions. For example, the papers by Wale Adebanwi and Djordje Djordjevic, while focusing on quite distant parts of the world – Nigeria and Yugoslavia – revealed the authors’ shared concern with the role of dissenting voices within these societies in transition; in the conclusions to their papers, both Fellows identify pluralistic political culture as a key condition for democracy in their respective countries. Similarly, as Agnieszka Chmielewska put it, [During the program] it became very clear that, despite a certain diversity of individual projects, we had quite similar concerns. We discovered that behind the several particular cases tackled by group members, there were shared problems of a more universal scope.
At a time when many fields in the social sciences increasingly turn their attention to the examination of transnational and globalizing processes, the work of our twelve Fellows was a reminder that such processes are best examined by analyzing their sources and effects in local settings. The results of such examinations then lend themselves to transregional comparisons and analyses which, while grounded in local realities, nevertheless show strong connections to larger world processes. Hana Cervinkova is Coordinator of the TCDS Fellowship Program.
New Social Science Research Program:
- Public Sphere and Political Culture/Nationality-Ethnicity-Gender
Wale Adebanwi, Political Science, University of Ibadan, Ibadan; "Rethinking Dissent: Public Intellectuals, Civic Space and Democratic Consolidation in Nigeria"
Abu Bakarr Bah, Sociology, Graduate Faculty; "Reconciling Ethnic and National Identity in Divided Societies: The Nigerian Dilemma"
Agnieszka Chmielewska, Sociology, Graduate School for Social Research, Warsaw; "Nationalism, the State, the Public Sphere and the Arts: Polish "State-Supporting" Artistic Ideology in the Inter-War Period [1918-1939]"
Djordje Djordjevic, Philosophy, Graduate Faculty; "Understanding After Kosovo: Ethnic Conflict and Political Responsibility"
Martin Plot, Sociology, Graduate Faculty; "Counting Noses in an Uncertain Places: Political Kitsch and Public Judgment in Argentine Politics"
- Civil Society and Social Change
Steeve Coupeau, Political Science, Graduate Faculty; "Strategies for Local Autonomy and Democratic Governance: The Case of Haiti"
Kristine Jones, Political Science, Graduate Faculty; "New Terrain of Struggle: The Decline of Cape Town Civics in Democratic South Africa"
Iulia Shevchenko, Political Science, European University, St. Petersburg, and Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Moscow; "Centripetal or Centrifugal? Party Development and the Electoral Mobilization of Social Networks in Russia’s Institutional Context"
Chris Sibanyoni, Political Science, Human Science Research Council, Pretoria; "The Consolidation of Democracy in South Africa"
- Democratization, Political Justice, and Economic Equality
Reynaldo Ortega, Political Science, El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico City; "Comparing Types of Transitions: Spain and Mexico"
Anna Paretskaya, Sociology, Graduate Faculty; "Constitution-Writing Process in Russia and Brazil: The Role of the State in Shaping Federal Systems"
Diego Sanchez, Economics, Graduate Faculty; "The Role of the State in Structural Change: An Institutional Approach"
TCDS will publish the final papers in its Working Paper Series this spring. To request copies of specific papers, please email cervih01@newschool.edu or contact TCDS.
Lectures• Thu, April 27: John Glenn of the European Studies Department at New York University spoke on Eastward Enlargement of the European Union.
• Fri, April 7: Screening of the film Garage Olimpo, by Argentine-Italian director Marco Bechis, about the "desaparecidos" who survived Argentina’s clandestine concentration camps.
• Wed, March 8: Peter Huncik, Director of the Sandor Marai Foundation in Bratislava, discussed his Tension Anticipation System: Ways to Measure and Foresee Ethnic Conflict.
• Tue, February 29: TCDS and the Center for European Studies of New York University presented Ivo Banac, Durfee Professor of History at Yale University who delivered two talks: The Northwest: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and The Southwest: Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Macedonia.
• Fri, December 17: TCDS held the concluding conference of the 1999 New Social Science Training Program. Please see the article in this issue for details.
• Tue, December 14: Fron Nazi, journalist and director of the Prishtina Office at the East West Management Institute, spoke on Kosovo – Gone Wrong? High Expectations or Lack of Vision for Development and Reconstruction.
• Fri, December 10: Timed to coincide with Human Rights Day, TCDS hosted a conference entitled Human Rights in Slovakia: The Roma Community Then and Now. It was jointly organized by the Dean of New School University’s Graduate Faculty and the Slovak Ambassador to the United States. Speakers included: Ingrid Antalova, President of Milan Simecka Foundation; Ann Marie Grocholski, Assistant to the Executive Director and Program Officer at the Project on Ethnic Relations, and an expert on Roma issues in Central and Eastern Europe; Peter Huncik, President of the Sandor Marai Foundation; Jana Kviecinska, human rights expert at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister for Minorities; Michal Vasecka, sociologist from the Bratislava-based Institute of Public Affairs; and Martin Butora, Slovak Ambassador to the United States.
• Thu, December 9: Alexander Etkin, professor of cultural studies at the University of St.Petersburg and visiting professor at New York University, gave a presentation on Sex, Sects, Texts: The Russian Passion of Sacher-Masoch.
• Mon, November 29: Hungarian scholar Andras Bozoki gave a talk on Regime Change and Elite Change: Are These Parallel Processes? The Case Of Hungary.
• Mon, November 22: Raphael de Kadt, director of the Politics Programme at the University of Natal in South Africa, presented The Institutional Dimensions of Economic Growth: Political Rights, Civil Liberties and Instability – South Africa.
• Wed, November 10: Political scientist Ognyan Minchev, from the University of Sofia, spoke on Security & Reconstruction of South Eastern Europe in the Aftermath of the Kosovo Crisis.
Summer 2000TCDS is getting ready for the 9th Democracy & Diversity Institute in Cracow, Poland, which will take place from July 11-July 29th, 2000. Doctoral students and junior faculty from the region interested in taking part should contact our Program Coordinator Timo Lyyra lyyra@newschool.edu.