By Lindsay Kline
The United Nations is an ineffective institution failing to meet its mandate to ““maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations and promote social progress, better living standards and human rights.” In an increasingly globalized world, the U.N. is finding itself irrelevant due to numerous failures and discrepancies within the institution itself. While the rest of the world continues to move forward into the 21st century, the U.N. is being left behind due to dated mandates and methods of dealing with conflict. Reformation is needed to essentially recreate the institution established to police the world so that their resources and mandate can find relevance in the post 9/11 world we inhabit.
After the Cold War, the United Nations gained recognition from the international community that gave it precedence in dealings of war and peace. But much has changed since the early 1990’s: we are now in need of an institution that will intervene in intrastate conflicts rather than conflicts between states. The events in countries such as Rwanda, Darfur, the Congo and Somalia exemplify how the UN had failed to maintain peace and securityin countries dealing with internal conflicts such as genocide. Chapter eight of the charter addresses regional arrangements and takes a non-partisan position in dealing with conflict within countries. Given the nature of conflicts prevalent today, this aspect of the charter should be amended to allow intervention. Otherwise, the international community will continually find itself saying “Never Again!”
An examination of more recent conflicts such as in Georgia in 2008 provides evidence that U.N. mandates have become outdated in their ability to problem solve. The United Nations Observer Mission over Georgia (UNOMIG) was dissolved in 2009 due to the Security Council refusing to adopt an extending mandate in the region. As stated by Alexander Lomaia, the Georgian representative to the U.N, “the Russian Federation’s rejection of the mission was not an isolated act, but part of a larger strategy…to roll back the international presence in Georgia.” The U.N. peacekeeping forces left Georgia on June 15, 2009 in a state of hostility. Conflict remains between the South Ossetia and Georgian-Abkhaz regions that have led to a deteriorating ceasefire, hundreds of displaced people and a “precarious situation” as stated by the U.N.’s department of Public Information.
There’s also the problem of membership within the UN. The Security Council has five permanent members with ten rotating members; all are responsible for ensuring the prompt action of the UN by means of delegating authority to the General Assembly. There are problems that come with this: the permanent five members are the post-Cold War super powers that would not settle for anything less than a special status. Why does this status need to continue into 2010 when there are other superpowers entering the world stage such as Brazil, China and India? Furthermore, the veto power given to the permanent five directly contradicts the goal of equality that the U.N. strives for. The situation presented by the power of the veto causes conflict between the U.N. and great powers, as well as between the great powers themselves. For example, the United States and Soviet Union veto showdown in the Cold War left both countries using their veto power just for the sake of having it, thus, leading to a time where no progress was made.
Issues regarding U.N. membership and its effectiveness have materialized into measures being taken by the institution itself to reform. In 2008, Ban Ki-Moon stated, “Every day we are reminded of the need for a strengthened United Nations…I am determined to breathe new life and inject renewed confidence into a strengthened United Nations firmly anchored in the twenty-first century, and which is effective, efficient, coherent and accountable.” While progress has been made in terms of U.N. transparency and the revamping of finances there are problems all over the world requiring attention. For this reason, the UN remains an ineffective institution unable to address issues of today due to the irrelevance of its very mandate. The glimmer of hope, however, is that they are not ignorant of their inability to make a difference, thus providing the global community with optimism that reformation will once again make them a relevant institution able to make a difference in the 21st century.
Saturday, 23 October 2010
The United Nations: Still Necessary
By Megan Stanley and Kyle Richardson, QMUN Committee Members
The establishment of the United Nations following World War II marked a new chapter in human history. Mindful of the failures of the League of Nations, the United Nations was constructed to be a more efficient and effective body for maintaining world peace and security. This mandate became essential as the ensuing Cold War carved up the world into two ideologically opposed camps, increasing the likelihood of global conflict. In this uneasy and hostile climate, the U.N. emerged to protect the lives of all who would be sacrificed in another World War. With the resources at its disposal and the constrictions of its mandate, the U.N. as an institution has been successful in its goal to maintain peace and prevent large scale conflict.
The U.N. has developed over time to better answer the short and long term demands of maintaining peace and security. Short term missions require that hostile elements are neutralized and peaceful institutions are restored relatively quickly. UNTAC in Cambodia executed this type of operation. The U.N. sent a force of approximately 22,000 to disarm and neutralize the factions vying for power in a civil war. The operation concluded when free and fair elections were held and a new government set in place, inaugurating a new era of stability. In contrast, long term peacekeeping requires more preventative measures to be taken. U.N. refugee and humanitarian aid is donated to regions where poverty and resource scarcity put populations abandoned by their government at risk of conflict. In Chad, 320,000 refugees have escaped militant persecution in the Sudan by fleeing to UN refugee camps. Moreover, the U.N. actively works to resettle refugees in other countries such as the United States. Long term solutions are not always easily achieved as the U.N. must obey the respect for national sovereignty laid out in the charter. In these types of situations, the U.N. is only mandated to assist civilian populations upon an official request for assistance.
Mitigating conflict does not always require direct intervention. The maintenance of peace and security between global superpowers during the Cold War required debate instead of military force. During the Cuban Missile Crisis when military action appeared likely, American and Soviet ambassadors fought for the affirmation of the U.N. and its member states “in the court of world opinion.” This represented the first time in the post Cold War era where debate rather than combat was used to gain legitimacy. That legitimacy was reaffirmed when the U.S. asked the global community in a general assembly to support its declaration of war against Iraq. As these instances show, a U.N. resolution has become synonymous with the approval of the international community. This encourages nations to seek consent before taking unilateral action, making military action less likely.
Critiques are typically based on inappropriate expectations of the U.N. as an international organization. The U.N has long been criticized for its inadequate responses to highly publicized conflicts. However, the perceived failings of the U.N. are not failings of the institution, but rather the failings of member states to agree on an effective solution. The U.N works on consensus building and adheres to the realities of geopolitics rather than unilateral action. Furthermore, the financial resources allocated to the U.N amount approximately to fifteen to twenty billion dollars annually. In comparison to the funds spent by individual nations on waging war, the task of preventing global conflict is vastly underfunded. Therefore, with its mandate and limited finances, expectations of the United Nations to supersede the member states it represents are unrealistic.
The United Nations has and continues to work as an organization dedicated to maintaining peace and security. It is continuously challenged by certain member states and financial restrictions, but has been successful on a number of levels. The U.N has adopted effective short and long term means of conflict prevention and resolution. It is an organization that constantly seeks to provide the best solutions to a wide variety of regional and global conflicts. Our understanding of the United Nations must incorporate the scope of its mandate and the limitations of its resources.
The establishment of the United Nations following World War II marked a new chapter in human history. Mindful of the failures of the League of Nations, the United Nations was constructed to be a more efficient and effective body for maintaining world peace and security. This mandate became essential as the ensuing Cold War carved up the world into two ideologically opposed camps, increasing the likelihood of global conflict. In this uneasy and hostile climate, the U.N. emerged to protect the lives of all who would be sacrificed in another World War. With the resources at its disposal and the constrictions of its mandate, the U.N. as an institution has been successful in its goal to maintain peace and prevent large scale conflict.
The U.N. has developed over time to better answer the short and long term demands of maintaining peace and security. Short term missions require that hostile elements are neutralized and peaceful institutions are restored relatively quickly. UNTAC in Cambodia executed this type of operation. The U.N. sent a force of approximately 22,000 to disarm and neutralize the factions vying for power in a civil war. The operation concluded when free and fair elections were held and a new government set in place, inaugurating a new era of stability. In contrast, long term peacekeeping requires more preventative measures to be taken. U.N. refugee and humanitarian aid is donated to regions where poverty and resource scarcity put populations abandoned by their government at risk of conflict. In Chad, 320,000 refugees have escaped militant persecution in the Sudan by fleeing to UN refugee camps. Moreover, the U.N. actively works to resettle refugees in other countries such as the United States. Long term solutions are not always easily achieved as the U.N. must obey the respect for national sovereignty laid out in the charter. In these types of situations, the U.N. is only mandated to assist civilian populations upon an official request for assistance.
Mitigating conflict does not always require direct intervention. The maintenance of peace and security between global superpowers during the Cold War required debate instead of military force. During the Cuban Missile Crisis when military action appeared likely, American and Soviet ambassadors fought for the affirmation of the U.N. and its member states “in the court of world opinion.” This represented the first time in the post Cold War era where debate rather than combat was used to gain legitimacy. That legitimacy was reaffirmed when the U.S. asked the global community in a general assembly to support its declaration of war against Iraq. As these instances show, a U.N. resolution has become synonymous with the approval of the international community. This encourages nations to seek consent before taking unilateral action, making military action less likely.
Critiques are typically based on inappropriate expectations of the U.N. as an international organization. The U.N has long been criticized for its inadequate responses to highly publicized conflicts. However, the perceived failings of the U.N. are not failings of the institution, but rather the failings of member states to agree on an effective solution. The U.N works on consensus building and adheres to the realities of geopolitics rather than unilateral action. Furthermore, the financial resources allocated to the U.N amount approximately to fifteen to twenty billion dollars annually. In comparison to the funds spent by individual nations on waging war, the task of preventing global conflict is vastly underfunded. Therefore, with its mandate and limited finances, expectations of the United Nations to supersede the member states it represents are unrealistic.
The United Nations has and continues to work as an organization dedicated to maintaining peace and security. It is continuously challenged by certain member states and financial restrictions, but has been successful on a number of levels. The U.N has adopted effective short and long term means of conflict prevention and resolution. It is an organization that constantly seeks to provide the best solutions to a wide variety of regional and global conflicts. Our understanding of the United Nations must incorporate the scope of its mandate and the limitations of its resources.
Will That be Cash, Debit or OHIP?
By Adrian Tsang and Karan Bami, Members of Mac for Medicare
As university students, we have relatively easy accessibility to the basic services in our community. If we get sick, it is a simply a matter of booking an appointment at the campus health centre, or walking into the emergency room at the hospital. However, the current debate surrounding the Canadian healthcare system could change this situation. With numerous advocates for health care privatization or a dual public-private system, we could be facing a significant shift in the healthcare field. In fact, many argue privatization has already arrived in Ontario with several private clinics operating in the GTA.
One such organization is the Medcan Clinic in downtown Toronto. With over twenty-five thousand square feet of space in the heart of downtown’s financial district, Medcan is one of the largest private clinics in the country. It focuses mainly on preventative medicine with services in travel medicine, genetics, optometry, dermatology, cardiovascular risk assessment, nutrition consulting, endoscopy, sports medicine, and fitness consultation. The catch is that almost all the services provided by Medcan are funded out of the client’s own pocket. Perhaps you’ve paid for travel vaccinations or have had a physiotherapy appointment billed to your private insurance; you may be thinking that many of these services aren’t covered by the healthcare system anyways. And you’re right. The fact that these services are not covered under the Canada Health Act creates a legal loophole that Medcan uses as a front to cover up the fact that they demand extra-billing on medically necessary services. The Canada Health Act stipulates that all “medically necessary” treatments and services must be publicly funded. To get around this, private clinics such as Medcan offer non-medically necessary treatments and use membership fees to generate their revenue. Those who can afford the $2900 annual fee are given exclusive access to not only these services that are non-medically necessary but to medically necessary services as well, which in essence violates the Canada Health Act. Those who go to the clinic for medically necessary services are only those who can afford the membership fee, and their care is being provided on the basis of the financial ability rather than their medical need. This is not only unfair, but seemingly illegal in Canada.
These clinics often tread a fine line, arguably crossing the barrier between public and private healthcare. For example, during the H1N1 flu epidemic, Medcan ordered and obtained 3000 vaccines. Instead of these vaccines being administered to those with the greatest need, they were given to individuals with memberships to Medcan while the news was scattered with reports of shortages to treat children and the elderly. Those with money used their wallets to jump the queue and obtain vaccinations in a healthcare system that is supposed to be need-based.
So what exactly does this mean to us as students? We cannot and should not take our accessibility to health services for granted. Until the recent H1N1 outbreak Medcan has quietly offered two-tiered health services, removed from the public eye and protected through loopholes in the legislation. Medcan represents an intrusion of private for-profit healthcare threatening the need-based and publicly funded system already in place. Today, clinics like Medcan offer primary services like physician care but if this activity remains unchecked it can only spearhead those looking for cash-grabs in our hospital and emergency care services. Preferred access will never and cannot be equal access. It is hard enough to have to sit through lengthy waits to find a family doctor but what about a heart surgeon? With patient prioritization being based on ability to pay, many of us will be left behind.
As university students, we have relatively easy accessibility to the basic services in our community. If we get sick, it is a simply a matter of booking an appointment at the campus health centre, or walking into the emergency room at the hospital. However, the current debate surrounding the Canadian healthcare system could change this situation. With numerous advocates for health care privatization or a dual public-private system, we could be facing a significant shift in the healthcare field. In fact, many argue privatization has already arrived in Ontario with several private clinics operating in the GTA.
One such organization is the Medcan Clinic in downtown Toronto. With over twenty-five thousand square feet of space in the heart of downtown’s financial district, Medcan is one of the largest private clinics in the country. It focuses mainly on preventative medicine with services in travel medicine, genetics, optometry, dermatology, cardiovascular risk assessment, nutrition consulting, endoscopy, sports medicine, and fitness consultation. The catch is that almost all the services provided by Medcan are funded out of the client’s own pocket. Perhaps you’ve paid for travel vaccinations or have had a physiotherapy appointment billed to your private insurance; you may be thinking that many of these services aren’t covered by the healthcare system anyways. And you’re right. The fact that these services are not covered under the Canada Health Act creates a legal loophole that Medcan uses as a front to cover up the fact that they demand extra-billing on medically necessary services. The Canada Health Act stipulates that all “medically necessary” treatments and services must be publicly funded. To get around this, private clinics such as Medcan offer non-medically necessary treatments and use membership fees to generate their revenue. Those who can afford the $2900 annual fee are given exclusive access to not only these services that are non-medically necessary but to medically necessary services as well, which in essence violates the Canada Health Act. Those who go to the clinic for medically necessary services are only those who can afford the membership fee, and their care is being provided on the basis of the financial ability rather than their medical need. This is not only unfair, but seemingly illegal in Canada.
These clinics often tread a fine line, arguably crossing the barrier between public and private healthcare. For example, during the H1N1 flu epidemic, Medcan ordered and obtained 3000 vaccines. Instead of these vaccines being administered to those with the greatest need, they were given to individuals with memberships to Medcan while the news was scattered with reports of shortages to treat children and the elderly. Those with money used their wallets to jump the queue and obtain vaccinations in a healthcare system that is supposed to be need-based.
So what exactly does this mean to us as students? We cannot and should not take our accessibility to health services for granted. Until the recent H1N1 outbreak Medcan has quietly offered two-tiered health services, removed from the public eye and protected through loopholes in the legislation. Medcan represents an intrusion of private for-profit healthcare threatening the need-based and publicly funded system already in place. Today, clinics like Medcan offer primary services like physician care but if this activity remains unchecked it can only spearhead those looking for cash-grabs in our hospital and emergency care services. Preferred access will never and cannot be equal access. It is hard enough to have to sit through lengthy waits to find a family doctor but what about a heart surgeon? With patient prioritization being based on ability to pay, many of us will be left behind.
Rural Doctors in India: An Effective Solution?
Sheiry Dhillon
There is a new medical degree on the Indian market and it has a rather specific target. The traditional five-and-a-half-year Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) program may no longer be the sole option for pursuing a career in medicine–a new degree, specifically for rural Indian doctors, is in the process of being introduced. The Medical Council of India is initiating an innovative "Rural MBBS" degree, one that can be completed in a mere 4 years in comparison to the norm stated above. Qualified doctors however, will be required to practice solely in rural areas for 10 years before considering the option of practicing in an urban centre. Is this a step forward in decreasing the rural-urban gap that defines the Indian Public Healthcare system? Or is this merely a half-concerted effort leading to inadequate physicians lacking training and preparation?
India's current doctor patient ratio sits at a measly 6:100,000 in comparison to the 1:1,000 doctor patient ratio suggested by the WHO. This highlights the current deficiency in doctors faced by the country. India's doctor shortage is further exacerbated by the fact that Indian trained doctors are choosing to practice abroad. It is therefore no surprise that this lack of doctors has hit the rural healthcare sector the hardest. Many doctors that are produced by the healthcare system simply prefer to practice privately in the urban centre, where the high-class and a lavish lifestyle are easily accessible.
In order to tackle this massive shortage in doctors and the rural-urban gap that exists across health services, the government has introduced the Rural MBBS degree. Doctors will not only practice in rural areas, but they will practice in the area they are specifically from. This creates a sense of familiarity, relevance, and sensitivity for the practicing doctor. It is no longer simply an 'outsider,' or city trained doctor practicing in a rural setting- it is someone who is close to the issues and is trained in an environment that specifically addresses rural health. Finally, a major advantage of the program is the career opportunity it provides those from a traditionally lower socioeconomic status to enter a field that may not necessarily have been an option before. It is equating the playing field for people across the country who wish to become physicians.
Critics on the other hand believe that doctors will be inadequately prepared and lack the appropriate knowledge to practice. How exactly can two different degrees, one having 1.5 years of additional knowledge be held in equivalence? The doctors of the Rural MBBS will not have the knowledge base and will be undermining the rigorous and much longer process that traditional students experience. Moreover, critics believe that this may attract the wrong crowd of physicians. This may essentially be considered a 'backdoor entrance,' into medical school where students are looking for an easy out and a shorter time period in school for the equivalent title of a doctor.
The Rural MBBS degree may in fact be a step forward in narrowing the rural urban gap that plagues the world of healthcare in India, but will it really be effective? Like many other programs being implemented in the rapidly growing nation, it seems like time will reveal the answer.
There is a new medical degree on the Indian market and it has a rather specific target. The traditional five-and-a-half-year Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) program may no longer be the sole option for pursuing a career in medicine–a new degree, specifically for rural Indian doctors, is in the process of being introduced. The Medical Council of India is initiating an innovative "Rural MBBS" degree, one that can be completed in a mere 4 years in comparison to the norm stated above. Qualified doctors however, will be required to practice solely in rural areas for 10 years before considering the option of practicing in an urban centre. Is this a step forward in decreasing the rural-urban gap that defines the Indian Public Healthcare system? Or is this merely a half-concerted effort leading to inadequate physicians lacking training and preparation?
India's current doctor patient ratio sits at a measly 6:100,000 in comparison to the 1:1,000 doctor patient ratio suggested by the WHO. This highlights the current deficiency in doctors faced by the country. India's doctor shortage is further exacerbated by the fact that Indian trained doctors are choosing to practice abroad. It is therefore no surprise that this lack of doctors has hit the rural healthcare sector the hardest. Many doctors that are produced by the healthcare system simply prefer to practice privately in the urban centre, where the high-class and a lavish lifestyle are easily accessible.
In order to tackle this massive shortage in doctors and the rural-urban gap that exists across health services, the government has introduced the Rural MBBS degree. Doctors will not only practice in rural areas, but they will practice in the area they are specifically from. This creates a sense of familiarity, relevance, and sensitivity for the practicing doctor. It is no longer simply an 'outsider,' or city trained doctor practicing in a rural setting- it is someone who is close to the issues and is trained in an environment that specifically addresses rural health. Finally, a major advantage of the program is the career opportunity it provides those from a traditionally lower socioeconomic status to enter a field that may not necessarily have been an option before. It is equating the playing field for people across the country who wish to become physicians.
Critics on the other hand believe that doctors will be inadequately prepared and lack the appropriate knowledge to practice. How exactly can two different degrees, one having 1.5 years of additional knowledge be held in equivalence? The doctors of the Rural MBBS will not have the knowledge base and will be undermining the rigorous and much longer process that traditional students experience. Moreover, critics believe that this may attract the wrong crowd of physicians. This may essentially be considered a 'backdoor entrance,' into medical school where students are looking for an easy out and a shorter time period in school for the equivalent title of a doctor.
The Rural MBBS degree may in fact be a step forward in narrowing the rural urban gap that plagues the world of healthcare in India, but will it really be effective? Like many other programs being implemented in the rapidly growing nation, it seems like time will reveal the answer.
Do NGO's Accomplish Anything?
By Matt Turnbull
There are thousands of NGOs licensed in Canada, many of which profess philanthropic intentions. However, certain organizations such as Greenpeace and PETA have attracted media attention and criticism for their controversial methods. Although we can all agree that protecting the environment and preventing animal abuse are admirable goals, does this negative press do more harm than help for these organizations’ causes? Does the stereotyped representation of activists from these groups as “tree-huggers” and radicals damage the message they are trying to send? And who is more at fault: the mass media for their part in creating this negative image, or the groups and activists themselves for the approach they choose to take?
Some attention-grabbing stunts (or awareness-raising events, depending on your side of the fence) can be outright illegal. The recent Kingsnorth case is an excellent example. In October 2007, six Greenpeace activists in the UK climbed a coal station smokestack and wrote “Gordon” on the side, causing almost US$50,000 in property damage; however, in the ensuing court case, they were acquitted on the grounds that they were preventing greater damage which would result from coal pollution and climate change. This decision is intriguing but also sets a dangerous precedent, as it could be used by other activist groups to justify criminal and damaging actions. To what extent can we allow criminal actions to escape punishment because they serve the environment?
There’s a long list of incidents involving Greenpeace that have generated PR backlash. For example, in August 2006 Greenpeace released a “Guide to Greener Electronics”, which was quickly slagged by several groups for their dubious research and rating methodology. In another incident, in a 2006 press release prepared in response to the U.S. government’s nuclear policy, a line was accidentally left in stating “In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]." Greenpeace also came under fire for its treatment of the Chernobyl disaster when it claimed in a 2006 report that up to 90,000 may die in the long term from radiation, a significant increase from the 4,000 estimated in 2005 by the UN; the Chernobyl Forum and several prominent scientists all spoke against Greenpeace’s allegations, explaining that it’s very difficult to disentangle deaths due to Chernobyl’s influence from other causes.
Sometimes, environmental activism has caused environmental damage: in 2005, the Rainbow Warrior II, a Greenpeace vessel, accidentally ran into the Tubbataha reef in the Phillipines while trying to inspect the reef for bleaching damage due to global warming. An estimated 100m2 of the reef was damaged in the accident and the organization was fined US$7,000. In other cases, it’s unwelcome: after the discovery of a potential oil source off the coast of Greenland, the Greenpeace ship Esperanzaentered into a standoff with the Danish navy in order to protect the region and prevent another disaster along the lines of the BP oil spill. However, the local reception has been frosty, as Greenpeace members discourage seal and whale trade and consumption which are integral parts of Greenland fishing culture; this latest embargo also blocks a massive infusion of investment into the local economy. Incidents like these are particularly thought-provoking: does activism harm more than it helps? Do controversial campaigns by environmental groups damage more than just their own image? Do these initiatives damage the very things they try to protect?
It’s true that over the course of their nearly 30-year history Greenpeace, and environmental organizations just like it (many of which it inspired), have greatly increased the profile of environmental issues in the public forum. In the world of environmental advocacy, it is a leviathan. Offices can be found in more than 40 countries and it boasts over 2.8 million members. Each office reports back to the headquarters in Amsterdam, but arranges its own events and initiatives. The organization has also been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize – twice. Greenpeace itself claims many victories: convincing several top companies to stop using palm oil, a May 2010 moratorium on logging across 28 million hectares of caribou habitat in Canada, an August 2009 change in policy by tissue company Kimberly-Clark after the five year Kleercut campaign, the March 2009 suspension of construction of a coal mine in Poland – the list is, frankly, immense. While I personally wonder about the ramifications of some of these claimed “victories,” I acknowledge that Greenpeace has had enormous direct and indirect influence on environmental policy and thinking worldwide.
But how aware are we of the successes NGOs have generated compared to the controversy? Do controversial incidents, whether intentional or mistakes, serve to spread the message of these organizations, or do they decrease their credibility and public interest in what they have to say? When we become aware of a major controversy, are we inclined to hear both sides of the argument, or only what confirms what we already believe? When these groups are publicized, does it encourage people to find out more about their causes and achievements, or to condemn activists?
There are thousands of NGOs licensed in Canada, many of which profess philanthropic intentions. However, certain organizations such as Greenpeace and PETA have attracted media attention and criticism for their controversial methods. Although we can all agree that protecting the environment and preventing animal abuse are admirable goals, does this negative press do more harm than help for these organizations’ causes? Does the stereotyped representation of activists from these groups as “tree-huggers” and radicals damage the message they are trying to send? And who is more at fault: the mass media for their part in creating this negative image, or the groups and activists themselves for the approach they choose to take?
Some attention-grabbing stunts (or awareness-raising events, depending on your side of the fence) can be outright illegal. The recent Kingsnorth case is an excellent example. In October 2007, six Greenpeace activists in the UK climbed a coal station smokestack and wrote “Gordon” on the side, causing almost US$50,000 in property damage; however, in the ensuing court case, they were acquitted on the grounds that they were preventing greater damage which would result from coal pollution and climate change. This decision is intriguing but also sets a dangerous precedent, as it could be used by other activist groups to justify criminal and damaging actions. To what extent can we allow criminal actions to escape punishment because they serve the environment?
There’s a long list of incidents involving Greenpeace that have generated PR backlash. For example, in August 2006 Greenpeace released a “Guide to Greener Electronics”, which was quickly slagged by several groups for their dubious research and rating methodology. In another incident, in a 2006 press release prepared in response to the U.S. government’s nuclear policy, a line was accidentally left in stating “In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]." Greenpeace also came under fire for its treatment of the Chernobyl disaster when it claimed in a 2006 report that up to 90,000 may die in the long term from radiation, a significant increase from the 4,000 estimated in 2005 by the UN; the Chernobyl Forum and several prominent scientists all spoke against Greenpeace’s allegations, explaining that it’s very difficult to disentangle deaths due to Chernobyl’s influence from other causes.
Sometimes, environmental activism has caused environmental damage: in 2005, the Rainbow Warrior II, a Greenpeace vessel, accidentally ran into the Tubbataha reef in the Phillipines while trying to inspect the reef for bleaching damage due to global warming. An estimated 100m2 of the reef was damaged in the accident and the organization was fined US$7,000. In other cases, it’s unwelcome: after the discovery of a potential oil source off the coast of Greenland, the Greenpeace ship Esperanzaentered into a standoff with the Danish navy in order to protect the region and prevent another disaster along the lines of the BP oil spill. However, the local reception has been frosty, as Greenpeace members discourage seal and whale trade and consumption which are integral parts of Greenland fishing culture; this latest embargo also blocks a massive infusion of investment into the local economy. Incidents like these are particularly thought-provoking: does activism harm more than it helps? Do controversial campaigns by environmental groups damage more than just their own image? Do these initiatives damage the very things they try to protect?
It’s true that over the course of their nearly 30-year history Greenpeace, and environmental organizations just like it (many of which it inspired), have greatly increased the profile of environmental issues in the public forum. In the world of environmental advocacy, it is a leviathan. Offices can be found in more than 40 countries and it boasts over 2.8 million members. Each office reports back to the headquarters in Amsterdam, but arranges its own events and initiatives. The organization has also been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize – twice. Greenpeace itself claims many victories: convincing several top companies to stop using palm oil, a May 2010 moratorium on logging across 28 million hectares of caribou habitat in Canada, an August 2009 change in policy by tissue company Kimberly-Clark after the five year Kleercut campaign, the March 2009 suspension of construction of a coal mine in Poland – the list is, frankly, immense. While I personally wonder about the ramifications of some of these claimed “victories,” I acknowledge that Greenpeace has had enormous direct and indirect influence on environmental policy and thinking worldwide.
But how aware are we of the successes NGOs have generated compared to the controversy? Do controversial incidents, whether intentional or mistakes, serve to spread the message of these organizations, or do they decrease their credibility and public interest in what they have to say? When we become aware of a major controversy, are we inclined to hear both sides of the argument, or only what confirms what we already believe? When these groups are publicized, does it encourage people to find out more about their causes and achievements, or to condemn activists?
The Social Construction of a University Degree
By Amanda Charbon
For future university students with aspirations towards studying in humanities, what types of questions do they ask when deciding among universities? Does the university have extracurriculars and a variety of clubs? What is their party-scene? What is their reputation? For some future students however, there aren’t questions about which professors are going to be teaching their first to fourth year classes, nor do they ask how much funding is given to the faculty they are applying to. University, for some humanities students, is just a means to an end and a degree-waving, parent-supported past time that includes research areas such as flip cup, beer pong, and ‘picking up’ at bars. Infamous quotes such as “Queen’s University students have long been the blondes of Canada’s university community: They seem to have more fun than everyone else,” made by the Globe and Mail, makes it difficult to pull away from the idealization of university as a party scene rather than an academic one.
Queen’s University religious studies professor Herb W. Basser wrote an article on the preservation and exclusivity of university for those who strive to be academics (in contrast to professionals). Basser asks, “Why should [students] waste their time in humanities courses that in the end give them no skills whatsoever except perhaps the skill of coasting through life thinking anything they do deserves a good grade and the skill of haggling for an extra mark or two”. Lack of skill is attributed to the manifestation of the social and economic value of a Bachelor’s Degree, which has produced a student body that strives for the mark and not the interaction of academic learning.
This mark-mongering attitude has been socially constructed as an acceptable form of learning. With our generation’s exceedingly short attention span, and the constant dependence on technology, interaction with professors is becoming limited. Walking into a first year classroom as a professor, you won’t see the faces of engaged and eager students – you’ll see the backs of laptop computers. Interaction is unrealistic in class sizes of 300 or more students, when universities pack students into tiny lecture halls, and spend the extra tuition building recreational facilities instead of giving the surplus to professors or faculties. If professors feel devalued or underpaid, and if students do not have the drive to make an effort to communicate from behind the security and anonymity of their laptops, engagement is lost. Instead of having an engaging discussion with their students, professors read off of PowerPoints and post the lectures on the internet, negating the purpose of a lecture. Take McGill for example with their taped lectures – what is the purpose of attending class when, at your own leisure, you can watch the taped version? With large numbers of students being accepted into Canadian universities, the quality of education is lacking and dynamic student-professor relationships are difficult. In an essay by professor Nicole M. Fortin from the University of British Columbia, she articulates this viewpoint by stating that “…limiting the expansion of college seats preserves institutional quality”. Keeping the university population small will produce edifying results not only with the students’ willingness to learn, but also the quality of teaching.
It is not surprising that, being a humanities student, I have witnessed a materialization of non-engagement. My class and I were assigned a book review to hand in to the professor. A student walked in, handed the professor his paper, and walked out of the classroom. The professor was, understandably, furious! He proceeded to say he felt “used” like a “quickie in the back of a car”. This comment resonated in the class: we realized we were here to actually learn and digest this information, not just get a mark in some class that we will never remember five years from now.
This begs the question, are universities commodified into pieces of paper that we can acquire after four years? Fortin believes so, as she argues that “In economics, the post-secondary enrollment decisions of high school graduates are seen as solutions to a simplified version of the human capital investment model,” meaning that attendance at a university is thought of by students in a rational-choice methodology: investment needs to guarantee an adequate return. What is problematic is that investment standards are declining, but the tangible return stays stagnant.
Our social environment has created a market for the demand and supply of degrees, designations, and letters after your name. Our society has made these designations mandatory for many jobs that previously did not require these levels of schooling. What is the point of attending university when the only return is stress, debt, and a piece of paper showing you handed assignments in on time, but yet no knowledge to show for it?
For future university students with aspirations towards studying in humanities, what types of questions do they ask when deciding among universities? Does the university have extracurriculars and a variety of clubs? What is their party-scene? What is their reputation? For some future students however, there aren’t questions about which professors are going to be teaching their first to fourth year classes, nor do they ask how much funding is given to the faculty they are applying to. University, for some humanities students, is just a means to an end and a degree-waving, parent-supported past time that includes research areas such as flip cup, beer pong, and ‘picking up’ at bars. Infamous quotes such as “Queen’s University students have long been the blondes of Canada’s university community: They seem to have more fun than everyone else,” made by the Globe and Mail, makes it difficult to pull away from the idealization of university as a party scene rather than an academic one.
Queen’s University religious studies professor Herb W. Basser wrote an article on the preservation and exclusivity of university for those who strive to be academics (in contrast to professionals). Basser asks, “Why should [students] waste their time in humanities courses that in the end give them no skills whatsoever except perhaps the skill of coasting through life thinking anything they do deserves a good grade and the skill of haggling for an extra mark or two”. Lack of skill is attributed to the manifestation of the social and economic value of a Bachelor’s Degree, which has produced a student body that strives for the mark and not the interaction of academic learning.
This mark-mongering attitude has been socially constructed as an acceptable form of learning. With our generation’s exceedingly short attention span, and the constant dependence on technology, interaction with professors is becoming limited. Walking into a first year classroom as a professor, you won’t see the faces of engaged and eager students – you’ll see the backs of laptop computers. Interaction is unrealistic in class sizes of 300 or more students, when universities pack students into tiny lecture halls, and spend the extra tuition building recreational facilities instead of giving the surplus to professors or faculties. If professors feel devalued or underpaid, and if students do not have the drive to make an effort to communicate from behind the security and anonymity of their laptops, engagement is lost. Instead of having an engaging discussion with their students, professors read off of PowerPoints and post the lectures on the internet, negating the purpose of a lecture. Take McGill for example with their taped lectures – what is the purpose of attending class when, at your own leisure, you can watch the taped version? With large numbers of students being accepted into Canadian universities, the quality of education is lacking and dynamic student-professor relationships are difficult. In an essay by professor Nicole M. Fortin from the University of British Columbia, she articulates this viewpoint by stating that “…limiting the expansion of college seats preserves institutional quality”. Keeping the university population small will produce edifying results not only with the students’ willingness to learn, but also the quality of teaching.
It is not surprising that, being a humanities student, I have witnessed a materialization of non-engagement. My class and I were assigned a book review to hand in to the professor. A student walked in, handed the professor his paper, and walked out of the classroom. The professor was, understandably, furious! He proceeded to say he felt “used” like a “quickie in the back of a car”. This comment resonated in the class: we realized we were here to actually learn and digest this information, not just get a mark in some class that we will never remember five years from now.
This begs the question, are universities commodified into pieces of paper that we can acquire after four years? Fortin believes so, as she argues that “In economics, the post-secondary enrollment decisions of high school graduates are seen as solutions to a simplified version of the human capital investment model,” meaning that attendance at a university is thought of by students in a rational-choice methodology: investment needs to guarantee an adequate return. What is problematic is that investment standards are declining, but the tangible return stays stagnant.
Our social environment has created a market for the demand and supply of degrees, designations, and letters after your name. Our society has made these designations mandatory for many jobs that previously did not require these levels of schooling. What is the point of attending university when the only return is stress, debt, and a piece of paper showing you handed assignments in on time, but yet no knowledge to show for it?
Interview: Dr. Jolly on Aids
Dr. Rosemary Jolly is a professor of upper year English at Queen’s University who has been recognized both in Canada and abroad for her research on HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa. She is currently the professor and executive member of the Southern African Research Center at Queen’s as well as the principal investigator on a Canadian Institutes of Health research program on gender based violence and the spread of HIV/AIDS in rural KawZulu/Natal. I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Jolly speak at a dinner in September2009 and was intrigued not only by her work and background but by the novel perspectives she offered on interdisciplinary humanities-based research on HIV/AIDS. Her discussion of dissident writing, state-sponsored torture, crisis counselling and sexual education clinics reflects the disparate ways in which individuals understand and relate to institutions, which are often imprinted with the values of their creators, creating a set of uniquely gendered, racialized or sexualized experiences.
She was kind enough to grant Inquire an interview, the transcript of which follows:
I: If you could begin by telling us a little bit about yourself, your work, background, education and experience.
Dr. J: I was born in South Africa and educated under the apartheid government. I did all of my schooling prior to tertiary education in South Africa. I sat with other white kids in classrooms where I think my largest class was fifteen and my smallest was two because only two of us did Latin. The point of that is far more money was spent on educating us as whites than any of the rest of the population and I was very aware of that as both of my parents worked with other populations: Indian populations in Durban, black populations of all kinds. My father’s a doctor, my mother worked in getting people’s English up to standards where they could undertake education in the tertiary system under apartheid as people of colour. So I was very aware of that discrepancy. In 1981, when I was between university and school, my family was harassed by the apartheid government to the extent that we had to leave the country. So we came to Saskatchewan and I did my undergraduate degree there and then I came to Toronto where I did a Master’s on the black South African short story because black writing was almost completely censored under the apartheid government, so no one could look at it within South Africa. Later I did a Ph.D on Afrikaner dissident writing. I always had a focus on violence and so I finally developed a career in which I dealt not only with fictional narratives but people’s narratives of violence. I worked with individuals who were victims of state-sponsored torture to understand their stories and when the AIDS epidemic blew into full force in the late 90s and early 2000s, I began to work with people with HIV/AIDS, with a special focus on issues of gender and race.
I: What incited your interest in the HIV/AIDS pandemic? How did you begin your work with them, coming as you did from an English background?
Dr. J: I had written on narratives of individuals who had been victims of various kinds of violence, including state-sponsored torture, which also included very gendered forms of violence: rape with objects, torturing of men’s testicles and various other forms of abuse. These are highly intimate stories; they’re not necessarily published but are collected orally and only under certain kinds of ethical conditions. You collect them in order to understand the real damage violence and loss caused under apartheid. So by the time the AIDS epidemic came along, I knew that I had a facility, interest and some experience in working with highly marginalized and vulnerable populations to understand what their experience was even if it was highly stigmatized. I had some sense of how to get people to talk in ways that benefitted them, first of all, but also benefitted us in terms of understanding where vulnerability lay and therefore how we could prevent such things from happening and how we could support victims of this nature. When the epidemic came along and the approach from the US and allied religious groups was abstain, be faithful and condomize, I had a very clear sense of how South African women of all races had very little control over the conditions under which they had sexual intercourse, if any at all. That struck me as an insane idea and I decided I needed to work with victims of gender abuse to understand how the epidemics of gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS were collaborating to make a nasty picture.
I: So what kind of work did you engage in upon going to South Africa and working with individuals there?
Dr. J: First of all, we went out there and quite nervously started to interview people because in those days (early 2000s) it wasn’t very common to interview people in the rural areas about gender-based violence. The project had a seed going back to 1998 but it was very hard to conceive of how we were going to get people to talk about these issues. We started working with women’s organizations and organizations working with AIDS orphans and many of the caregivers were almost dying to speak about their experiences to someone who was objective and was not part of the community. In fact, we were privileged in the sense we were inside outsiders: we had a lot of knowledge about South Africa, particularly about the part of Kwazulu-Natal we were working in, but we were also not next door neighbours who were going to gossip with anybody so that’s how we started getting stories. At the time we started getting stories, we realized that although the government advertised places where, for example, raped women could go for services, there were no actual services other than in Pietermaritzburg which for many people was several hours away. It was unethical to ask people for their stories without providing a service so we partnered with Rape Crisis Lifeline in Pietermaritzburg to start funding and find existent spaces to develop places for rape crisis and trauma counselling alongside doing our research.
I: What kind of stigmas did you find were endured by individuals within South Africa?
Dr. J: In the first place, I worked mostly with women and it was very clear to me that being a woman in and of itself is a kind of stigma in South Africa. That is to say that the levels of equality we have in Canada do not exist in South Africa at all. So when you talk about sexual reproduction, women’s bodies, anything intimate at all to do with women was very much a censored topic. Additionally, people who have been sexually violated are not helpless victims in this respect. They know if they talk about their victimization, through the mechanization of stigma, they will not be perceived as people who are control of their future destiny and require support to help them enact their wishes. Instead, they will be perceived as poor helpless victims who can never do anything for themselves every again or are perceived as having brought this upon themselves. This is a double stigma that is terrible. The third stigma, and of course all of these can affect a single individual simultaneously, is the stigma of HIV/AIDS. In the early days when we were working in SA, there were no effective anti-retrovirals. Secondly, when they started to come out in Canada in the form of AZT, they were not available through state sponsored programs in SA. So in effect it was a death sentence and diseases that bring death upon us have always been stigmatized. Sexually transmitted diseases in particular have always borne stigma, just as syphilis did in Europe prior to the development of arsenic salvarsan treatment and penicillin. So working with all those three stigmas together can be overwhelming not only for the victim survivor but for those who are attempting to prevent these things happening in the future and attempting to support those who have already been victimized.
I: What kind of support did you receive or conversely not receive from either the Canadian or South African government?
Dr. J: I did receive small support at the beginning from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research who were at that stage really trying to build a global health program and work towards funding interdisciplinary teams. CIHR had figured out that a health structure in which we separate all the specialists helped technically but didn’t really address the socio-economic and gendered conditions under which people got ill, the social determinants of health. I was fortunate in that I hit that particular wave. I have to say I think that wave is in danger in the CIHR at the moment. We are facing a difficult situation: we’re in poor economic times, and while in the past the CIHR stretched out its hand to social scientists and humanists, they now appear to be moving back to more bio-medical related funding and not focusing so much on the social determinants of health. The difficulty with that is there’s a diminished pool of money for those of us doing preventive work of the kind that my team and I are doing. I refer not just to global or interdisciplinary research, but to Canadian research that would look at the socio-economic determinants of health within Canada from a humanist and social scientist perspective which focuses on the human experience of disease and how we feel when stigmatized with a disease. There’s a good chance that’s going to slip off the plate and in these hard economic times they’ll be a swing back to the ideology of “all we have to do is keep the organism alive” wherein the quality of the organism’s life is not a matter of interest.
I: On the topic of interdisciplinary teams, could you speak to how those formulated, what areas the members were drawn from and how you feel the interdisciplinary setting has benefitted not only your research but the individuals you work with?
Dr. J: I’m very fortunate because I have a fabulous team that I work with now. But on my way to developing this team, there were a few things that became clear to me. First of all, in an interdisciplinary setting, you have to be prepared for the translation and commitment that goes towards making sure each discipline’s language is heard and understood and that their concerns are valued. After that, when real interaction takes place between these disciplines on intellectual and research levels, that commitment is huge. If anyone is looking for their quick publication or is putting career aspirations of a high academic profile ahead of that disciplinary commitment, it won’t work. It has huge rewards but it’s time-consuming and not everyone is cut out for it. In terms of the rewards, I now have a team that has hung in there. We explain things to each other – I am developing a beginning competency in statistics and I didn’t even do Grade 12 math. I now understand a lot more about the importance of biostatistics. I am encouraging the Ph. Ds who come from the sciences to teach me how to do them. On the other hand, I am able to offer forms of language, experience and cultural understanding to the scientists on the team. The two skill sets meet under the rubric of public health, which has always been highly interdisciplinary. My superb colleague in public health, Dr. Stevenson Fergus, is a truly gifted interdisciplinary scholar. I’m still somewhat of an oddball in that, as humanists still remain quite far behind in engaging with this kind of work. But humanists work with how people feel and express those feelings through language, whether it be bodily or textual. So that’s what I bring to the mix. And it’s very exciting because we have students who are not disabled by disciplinary divisions. They’re putting pieces together in ways that are amazing.
I: What advice would you give or information would you provide to students who are pursuing a more interdisciplinary field of study, especially who are interested in becoming involved in global issues like HIV/AIDS?
Dr. J: I would say two things. First, keep a profile of what it is that’s important to you. And at the same, what it is you want to be taught that will encourage you to think or learn in different ways. Stay loyal to what grabs your heart because that will see you through the fidelity and dedication that’s required to do interdisciplinary work. You really need to believe very hard in what you’re doing because it’s time consuming and you will have to battle departments and make cases for example, for certain courses to be taught or counted. And unless you keep reminding yourself of your commitment, that’s difficult to do. The second thing is to get a mentor or a set of mentors. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a professor. They’ll wonderful, because they have more power than undergraduate students, but speak to other students who you think are doing interesting work. With interdisciplinary studies, you cannot sit in a study and just develop an idea. You need to talk to others because the glue only comes when people from those disciplines are collaborative so get mentors and others around you who are interested in thinking outside those boundaries. Finally, no matter how brilliant someone is, don’t try to solicit them for interdisciplinary work if they have a disciplinary frame of mind. Never put them down if they’re embedded in their discipline and doing brilliant work – some people aren’t cut out for interdisciplinary studies. There are people doing great research in individual disciplines and if they’re comfortable and don’t want to move from there, then don’t force them.
I: I know that you mentioned in an interview with the Journal your hope that Queen’s would develop an African Studies department. What changes would you like to see in the university, not only to speak to your own research and interests, but in general terms, dealing with the school becoming more global?
Dr. J: I’d like to answer that question in two ways. The first one is through an experience and the second will be more direct. It must have been five or ten years ago: a young man took my seminar on South African literature which focuses on race and gender. He didn’t say very much and gave all the bodily signs of being angry during the first seminar. I though I’ll leave this, I just need to see how this develops. In the second term, he came to speak to me and said “I now see what you were doing. I felt very uncomfortable in your class for a long time and I still feel slightly uncomfortable. But I now know that you were making a space at Queen’s that was comfortable for people of colour, women and particularly women of colour and it took me a very long time to figure out that my discomfort was directly related to them being comfortable in your classroom”.
Dr J: And I think his comment speaks to a very real problem. Learning, true learning, is not a comfortable experience for any of us because you get tugged out of your frame of reference when you really learn something. When what is at stake are questions of identity like race and gender that relate to our bodies, how they function, our desires and the most intimate things that make us who we are, the stakes are very high. I would say that Queen’s has historically not attended to that inequity. There needs to be more places on campus where it is slightly more uncomfortable for people who come from dominant, white culture. And when I say white culture, I don’t only mean people who are white. There are a lot of upper middle class people who may not be white who can in a sense not feel and pretend they’re never going to feel the targets of racism because at Queen’s, you can hide in an upper middle class cocoon. It’s not directly connected to how a person looks. And so those are the things that we need to discuss and change. I think that VP Patrick Deane leaving is a loss in that regard because he had a strong sense of that need for change and it does require someone senior to not just talk the talk but walk the walk. We have a long history here at Queen’s of talking but not walking.
I: What advances would you like to see Queen’s make?
Dr. J: In terms of things that could concretely change, African Studies is always a bit of a debate because of those of us in the field, we know that talking about African studies is like talking about American studies – are we talking about Mexico, Canada, the US? So it’s this double-edged sword where you would like to have African studies to raise the profile but on the other hand, you’re in danger of allowing people to think Africa is an easily containable entity easily studied within a continental framework. We do need a framework that recognizes Queen’s historical strengths in African research. We have a very strong South African research center. David McDonald and the global development program have very strong roots in Africa, especially South Africa. It goes back to the 1940s at Queen’s, when Professor Arthur Keppel-Jones, an internationally recognised southern African historian, taught at Queen’s while escaping from looming apartheid in South Africa.. The difficulty with Queen’s is that when our strongest programs do not align with the provincial funding priorities of the day, they are not developed and supported to their full potential. We have strengths developed over decades, and sub-Saharan African studies is one of those. The faculty this strength has attracted to Queen’s are in history, global development studies, English, gender studies and environmental studies; they are superb teachers and researchers. . And we trained African graduate students in significant numbers, until the foreign fees waivers for international students were terminated. I think the other thing I would say is we need a more integrated strategy around racial and global equity and empowerment at Queen’s with regards to the curriculum. I think that, to use Judith Butler’s terms, race is a kind of unspeakable at Queen’s. It’s no good to say we’re going to undertake all these initiatives with the undergraduate population aimed at inclusivity, raising awareness about politicized issues and then have a curriculum that doesn’t support students in exploring these forms of inequity. Perhaps Principal Woolf’s academic plan will address how to integrate this need to attend to the curriculum. We need to support and highlight classes that address racial and class differentials, and grow those initiatives. Further, we need to talk across our divides in intimate, not posturing, spaces.
Interview conducted by Lauren Samson
She was kind enough to grant Inquire an interview, the transcript of which follows:
I: If you could begin by telling us a little bit about yourself, your work, background, education and experience.
Dr. J: I was born in South Africa and educated under the apartheid government. I did all of my schooling prior to tertiary education in South Africa. I sat with other white kids in classrooms where I think my largest class was fifteen and my smallest was two because only two of us did Latin. The point of that is far more money was spent on educating us as whites than any of the rest of the population and I was very aware of that as both of my parents worked with other populations: Indian populations in Durban, black populations of all kinds. My father’s a doctor, my mother worked in getting people’s English up to standards where they could undertake education in the tertiary system under apartheid as people of colour. So I was very aware of that discrepancy. In 1981, when I was between university and school, my family was harassed by the apartheid government to the extent that we had to leave the country. So we came to Saskatchewan and I did my undergraduate degree there and then I came to Toronto where I did a Master’s on the black South African short story because black writing was almost completely censored under the apartheid government, so no one could look at it within South Africa. Later I did a Ph.D on Afrikaner dissident writing. I always had a focus on violence and so I finally developed a career in which I dealt not only with fictional narratives but people’s narratives of violence. I worked with individuals who were victims of state-sponsored torture to understand their stories and when the AIDS epidemic blew into full force in the late 90s and early 2000s, I began to work with people with HIV/AIDS, with a special focus on issues of gender and race.
I: What incited your interest in the HIV/AIDS pandemic? How did you begin your work with them, coming as you did from an English background?
Dr. J: I had written on narratives of individuals who had been victims of various kinds of violence, including state-sponsored torture, which also included very gendered forms of violence: rape with objects, torturing of men’s testicles and various other forms of abuse. These are highly intimate stories; they’re not necessarily published but are collected orally and only under certain kinds of ethical conditions. You collect them in order to understand the real damage violence and loss caused under apartheid. So by the time the AIDS epidemic came along, I knew that I had a facility, interest and some experience in working with highly marginalized and vulnerable populations to understand what their experience was even if it was highly stigmatized. I had some sense of how to get people to talk in ways that benefitted them, first of all, but also benefitted us in terms of understanding where vulnerability lay and therefore how we could prevent such things from happening and how we could support victims of this nature. When the epidemic came along and the approach from the US and allied religious groups was abstain, be faithful and condomize, I had a very clear sense of how South African women of all races had very little control over the conditions under which they had sexual intercourse, if any at all. That struck me as an insane idea and I decided I needed to work with victims of gender abuse to understand how the epidemics of gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS were collaborating to make a nasty picture.
I: So what kind of work did you engage in upon going to South Africa and working with individuals there?
Dr. J: First of all, we went out there and quite nervously started to interview people because in those days (early 2000s) it wasn’t very common to interview people in the rural areas about gender-based violence. The project had a seed going back to 1998 but it was very hard to conceive of how we were going to get people to talk about these issues. We started working with women’s organizations and organizations working with AIDS orphans and many of the caregivers were almost dying to speak about their experiences to someone who was objective and was not part of the community. In fact, we were privileged in the sense we were inside outsiders: we had a lot of knowledge about South Africa, particularly about the part of Kwazulu-Natal we were working in, but we were also not next door neighbours who were going to gossip with anybody so that’s how we started getting stories. At the time we started getting stories, we realized that although the government advertised places where, for example, raped women could go for services, there were no actual services other than in Pietermaritzburg which for many people was several hours away. It was unethical to ask people for their stories without providing a service so we partnered with Rape Crisis Lifeline in Pietermaritzburg to start funding and find existent spaces to develop places for rape crisis and trauma counselling alongside doing our research.
I: What kind of stigmas did you find were endured by individuals within South Africa?
Dr. J: In the first place, I worked mostly with women and it was very clear to me that being a woman in and of itself is a kind of stigma in South Africa. That is to say that the levels of equality we have in Canada do not exist in South Africa at all. So when you talk about sexual reproduction, women’s bodies, anything intimate at all to do with women was very much a censored topic. Additionally, people who have been sexually violated are not helpless victims in this respect. They know if they talk about their victimization, through the mechanization of stigma, they will not be perceived as people who are control of their future destiny and require support to help them enact their wishes. Instead, they will be perceived as poor helpless victims who can never do anything for themselves every again or are perceived as having brought this upon themselves. This is a double stigma that is terrible. The third stigma, and of course all of these can affect a single individual simultaneously, is the stigma of HIV/AIDS. In the early days when we were working in SA, there were no effective anti-retrovirals. Secondly, when they started to come out in Canada in the form of AZT, they were not available through state sponsored programs in SA. So in effect it was a death sentence and diseases that bring death upon us have always been stigmatized. Sexually transmitted diseases in particular have always borne stigma, just as syphilis did in Europe prior to the development of arsenic salvarsan treatment and penicillin. So working with all those three stigmas together can be overwhelming not only for the victim survivor but for those who are attempting to prevent these things happening in the future and attempting to support those who have already been victimized.
I: What kind of support did you receive or conversely not receive from either the Canadian or South African government?
Dr. J: I did receive small support at the beginning from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research who were at that stage really trying to build a global health program and work towards funding interdisciplinary teams. CIHR had figured out that a health structure in which we separate all the specialists helped technically but didn’t really address the socio-economic and gendered conditions under which people got ill, the social determinants of health. I was fortunate in that I hit that particular wave. I have to say I think that wave is in danger in the CIHR at the moment. We are facing a difficult situation: we’re in poor economic times, and while in the past the CIHR stretched out its hand to social scientists and humanists, they now appear to be moving back to more bio-medical related funding and not focusing so much on the social determinants of health. The difficulty with that is there’s a diminished pool of money for those of us doing preventive work of the kind that my team and I are doing. I refer not just to global or interdisciplinary research, but to Canadian research that would look at the socio-economic determinants of health within Canada from a humanist and social scientist perspective which focuses on the human experience of disease and how we feel when stigmatized with a disease. There’s a good chance that’s going to slip off the plate and in these hard economic times they’ll be a swing back to the ideology of “all we have to do is keep the organism alive” wherein the quality of the organism’s life is not a matter of interest.
I: On the topic of interdisciplinary teams, could you speak to how those formulated, what areas the members were drawn from and how you feel the interdisciplinary setting has benefitted not only your research but the individuals you work with?
Dr. J: I’m very fortunate because I have a fabulous team that I work with now. But on my way to developing this team, there were a few things that became clear to me. First of all, in an interdisciplinary setting, you have to be prepared for the translation and commitment that goes towards making sure each discipline’s language is heard and understood and that their concerns are valued. After that, when real interaction takes place between these disciplines on intellectual and research levels, that commitment is huge. If anyone is looking for their quick publication or is putting career aspirations of a high academic profile ahead of that disciplinary commitment, it won’t work. It has huge rewards but it’s time-consuming and not everyone is cut out for it. In terms of the rewards, I now have a team that has hung in there. We explain things to each other – I am developing a beginning competency in statistics and I didn’t even do Grade 12 math. I now understand a lot more about the importance of biostatistics. I am encouraging the Ph. Ds who come from the sciences to teach me how to do them. On the other hand, I am able to offer forms of language, experience and cultural understanding to the scientists on the team. The two skill sets meet under the rubric of public health, which has always been highly interdisciplinary. My superb colleague in public health, Dr. Stevenson Fergus, is a truly gifted interdisciplinary scholar. I’m still somewhat of an oddball in that, as humanists still remain quite far behind in engaging with this kind of work. But humanists work with how people feel and express those feelings through language, whether it be bodily or textual. So that’s what I bring to the mix. And it’s very exciting because we have students who are not disabled by disciplinary divisions. They’re putting pieces together in ways that are amazing.
I: What advice would you give or information would you provide to students who are pursuing a more interdisciplinary field of study, especially who are interested in becoming involved in global issues like HIV/AIDS?
Dr. J: I would say two things. First, keep a profile of what it is that’s important to you. And at the same, what it is you want to be taught that will encourage you to think or learn in different ways. Stay loyal to what grabs your heart because that will see you through the fidelity and dedication that’s required to do interdisciplinary work. You really need to believe very hard in what you’re doing because it’s time consuming and you will have to battle departments and make cases for example, for certain courses to be taught or counted. And unless you keep reminding yourself of your commitment, that’s difficult to do. The second thing is to get a mentor or a set of mentors. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a professor. They’ll wonderful, because they have more power than undergraduate students, but speak to other students who you think are doing interesting work. With interdisciplinary studies, you cannot sit in a study and just develop an idea. You need to talk to others because the glue only comes when people from those disciplines are collaborative so get mentors and others around you who are interested in thinking outside those boundaries. Finally, no matter how brilliant someone is, don’t try to solicit them for interdisciplinary work if they have a disciplinary frame of mind. Never put them down if they’re embedded in their discipline and doing brilliant work – some people aren’t cut out for interdisciplinary studies. There are people doing great research in individual disciplines and if they’re comfortable and don’t want to move from there, then don’t force them.
I: I know that you mentioned in an interview with the Journal your hope that Queen’s would develop an African Studies department. What changes would you like to see in the university, not only to speak to your own research and interests, but in general terms, dealing with the school becoming more global?
Dr. J: I’d like to answer that question in two ways. The first one is through an experience and the second will be more direct. It must have been five or ten years ago: a young man took my seminar on South African literature which focuses on race and gender. He didn’t say very much and gave all the bodily signs of being angry during the first seminar. I though I’ll leave this, I just need to see how this develops. In the second term, he came to speak to me and said “I now see what you were doing. I felt very uncomfortable in your class for a long time and I still feel slightly uncomfortable. But I now know that you were making a space at Queen’s that was comfortable for people of colour, women and particularly women of colour and it took me a very long time to figure out that my discomfort was directly related to them being comfortable in your classroom”.
Dr J: And I think his comment speaks to a very real problem. Learning, true learning, is not a comfortable experience for any of us because you get tugged out of your frame of reference when you really learn something. When what is at stake are questions of identity like race and gender that relate to our bodies, how they function, our desires and the most intimate things that make us who we are, the stakes are very high. I would say that Queen’s has historically not attended to that inequity. There needs to be more places on campus where it is slightly more uncomfortable for people who come from dominant, white culture. And when I say white culture, I don’t only mean people who are white. There are a lot of upper middle class people who may not be white who can in a sense not feel and pretend they’re never going to feel the targets of racism because at Queen’s, you can hide in an upper middle class cocoon. It’s not directly connected to how a person looks. And so those are the things that we need to discuss and change. I think that VP Patrick Deane leaving is a loss in that regard because he had a strong sense of that need for change and it does require someone senior to not just talk the talk but walk the walk. We have a long history here at Queen’s of talking but not walking.
I: What advances would you like to see Queen’s make?
Dr. J: In terms of things that could concretely change, African Studies is always a bit of a debate because of those of us in the field, we know that talking about African studies is like talking about American studies – are we talking about Mexico, Canada, the US? So it’s this double-edged sword where you would like to have African studies to raise the profile but on the other hand, you’re in danger of allowing people to think Africa is an easily containable entity easily studied within a continental framework. We do need a framework that recognizes Queen’s historical strengths in African research. We have a very strong South African research center. David McDonald and the global development program have very strong roots in Africa, especially South Africa. It goes back to the 1940s at Queen’s, when Professor Arthur Keppel-Jones, an internationally recognised southern African historian, taught at Queen’s while escaping from looming apartheid in South Africa.. The difficulty with Queen’s is that when our strongest programs do not align with the provincial funding priorities of the day, they are not developed and supported to their full potential. We have strengths developed over decades, and sub-Saharan African studies is one of those. The faculty this strength has attracted to Queen’s are in history, global development studies, English, gender studies and environmental studies; they are superb teachers and researchers. . And we trained African graduate students in significant numbers, until the foreign fees waivers for international students were terminated. I think the other thing I would say is we need a more integrated strategy around racial and global equity and empowerment at Queen’s with regards to the curriculum. I think that, to use Judith Butler’s terms, race is a kind of unspeakable at Queen’s. It’s no good to say we’re going to undertake all these initiatives with the undergraduate population aimed at inclusivity, raising awareness about politicized issues and then have a curriculum that doesn’t support students in exploring these forms of inequity. Perhaps Principal Woolf’s academic plan will address how to integrate this need to attend to the curriculum. We need to support and highlight classes that address racial and class differentials, and grow those initiatives. Further, we need to talk across our divides in intimate, not posturing, spaces.
Interview conducted by Lauren Samson
Canadian Universities
By Siobhan Doria
Lately there has been extensive criticism concerning Canadian Universities, frosh week, and the legitimacy of a University degree in today’s society. Surrounded by incredible job loss, hiring freezes, and market and tuition inflation, one can see where the skepticism arises. However, I would like to address two main concerns with post secondary education, that is, the exclusivity and the extreme pressures placed upon students. While some may suggest post secondary education represents a piece of paper and the prolonging of entering the so-called real world, I would like to argue that for others education is way out and an opportunity to accomplish goals. For some, who strive to succeed and contribute to the enhancement of their education, it does matter. When professors do not show up for class or when courses are cut or crammed with students, or placed solely online, it does matter. In fact, simply referring to a University degree as a piece of paper demeans the academic, financial and mental adversity it took to achieve it.
This is not to suggest that our society does not demand degrees, rather with the inability to climb the working ladder, degrees are required for people to remain somewhat of a contender in this “cut throat” society. With that being said, academic scholarship is not deteriorating, academic financial resources are. With limited scholarships and financial support, students, parents, and professors are feeling the strain of further education. Universities in Canada are moving toward a point where they collect as much money or more from students in tuition and fees as they do from government grants, leaving students responsible for an increasing share of the cost of their education.
With professors reading off slides, overwhelmingly large class sizes, and the virtualization of subjects, there is a disconnect between teaching and learning. Students cannot help but feel restricted and insignificant within their degree as they struggle to receive not only valid advice but also assistance in improving. It seems to me that critics are looking in the wrong places. Instead of a generalization that blames students for being “entitled” and “partiers” maybe these critics should analyze a system that places so much pressure on students they mentally breakdown. A system that requires students to work and volunteer while acquiring flawless marks, in this system one bad essay, exam, lab or test has the potential to define a student for the rest of their career. Transcripts haunt us while applying for scholarships and further education, yet grading caps and a lack of continuity in marking offer little hope for some. With the overwhelming work and pressure it is no surprise students hand in work and then leave. Lets get honest; they are either going to the library to continue their work or going home to catch up on sleep.
Overall I believe education is only wasted on people who chose to ignore the privilege. The ability to interact with others is an important aspect of life and is something that should not be overshadowed. Nevertheless, formal education provides valuable skills that can prepare you for the rest of your life. Whether your life be successful or not, is not entirely dependent on a degree, rather the skills you have the opportunity to develop.
Lately there has been extensive criticism concerning Canadian Universities, frosh week, and the legitimacy of a University degree in today’s society. Surrounded by incredible job loss, hiring freezes, and market and tuition inflation, one can see where the skepticism arises. However, I would like to address two main concerns with post secondary education, that is, the exclusivity and the extreme pressures placed upon students. While some may suggest post secondary education represents a piece of paper and the prolonging of entering the so-called real world, I would like to argue that for others education is way out and an opportunity to accomplish goals. For some, who strive to succeed and contribute to the enhancement of their education, it does matter. When professors do not show up for class or when courses are cut or crammed with students, or placed solely online, it does matter. In fact, simply referring to a University degree as a piece of paper demeans the academic, financial and mental adversity it took to achieve it.
This is not to suggest that our society does not demand degrees, rather with the inability to climb the working ladder, degrees are required for people to remain somewhat of a contender in this “cut throat” society. With that being said, academic scholarship is not deteriorating, academic financial resources are. With limited scholarships and financial support, students, parents, and professors are feeling the strain of further education. Universities in Canada are moving toward a point where they collect as much money or more from students in tuition and fees as they do from government grants, leaving students responsible for an increasing share of the cost of their education.
With professors reading off slides, overwhelmingly large class sizes, and the virtualization of subjects, there is a disconnect between teaching and learning. Students cannot help but feel restricted and insignificant within their degree as they struggle to receive not only valid advice but also assistance in improving. It seems to me that critics are looking in the wrong places. Instead of a generalization that blames students for being “entitled” and “partiers” maybe these critics should analyze a system that places so much pressure on students they mentally breakdown. A system that requires students to work and volunteer while acquiring flawless marks, in this system one bad essay, exam, lab or test has the potential to define a student for the rest of their career. Transcripts haunt us while applying for scholarships and further education, yet grading caps and a lack of continuity in marking offer little hope for some. With the overwhelming work and pressure it is no surprise students hand in work and then leave. Lets get honest; they are either going to the library to continue their work or going home to catch up on sleep.
Overall I believe education is only wasted on people who chose to ignore the privilege. The ability to interact with others is an important aspect of life and is something that should not be overshadowed. Nevertheless, formal education provides valuable skills that can prepare you for the rest of your life. Whether your life be successful or not, is not entirely dependent on a degree, rather the skills you have the opportunity to develop.
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