“Sérgio” in Conversation / Commemorating Balkans Legacies January 8, 2011

Temporary grave marker, Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial Center

Evan at the Stari Most Bridge, Mostar

11th July Remembrance Ceremony, Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial Center

Statute of remembrance, Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial Center

Graffiti, Mostar

Samantha Power and Jamal Benomar in conversation with the audience at the UNA screening of “Sérgio”

Attached is a blog entry that I co-wrote with a professor and fellow student at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs in the fall of 2010.

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“Sérgio” in Conversation with the International Community: Reflections on Emerging 21st Century Pedagogies for the Global Affairs Curriculum By Colette Mazzucelli, Laura Cohen, and Evan Rosenstock

On July 30, 2010, Professor Colette Mazzucelli attended a screening of “Sérgio” organized at the Tribeca Grand Hotel by the United Nations Association (UNA)-New York Film Committee, which includes MSGA candidate in the Center for Global Affairs at New York University, Ms. Halina Hofmann. The experience a number of us in the MSGA Program share watching the film leads to reflections together on the ways in which the documentary may be integrated with other social networking tools in modern pedagogies to learn about transformations in our world today.

The evolution of new technologies, particularly mobile applications, offers the Academy unimagined possibilities in learning. The documentary “Sérgio” profiles the life and philosophy of a pioneer in his field, the late United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Sérgio Vieira de Mello. This is an uplifting story of how one person worked enthusiastically to make a difference in the world and of the 2003 bombing that took his life in the Canal Hotel, home to the United Nations Headquarters in Iraq and the United Nations Assistance Mission established there.

Sérgio is inspirational in its focus on one man’s choice to live a life in the service of justice and international humanitarian issues. The documentary encourages us to reflect on the importance of leadership in international relations, which is a factor often ignored by scholars focused on the systemic level, Waltz’s third image in Man, the State and War. In the age of social networks, individual choices are increasingly decisive as human agency directs the ways in which digitally networked technology (DNT) changes our lives and influences, constructively or destructively, the development of states.

As educators, we now have a much broader choice of resource materials to teach our courses in global and humanitarian affairs. The challenges we face in our world, the radicalization of youth, the oppression of women in fragile states, the transnational reach of terrorist networks, call for innovative thinking in pedagogical applications to bridge theory and practice. “Sérgio” provides insights into how a leading UN humanitarian civil servant lived to respond to the needs of human beings in conflict areas. It is also a testimony to the legacy of his actions, which can guide our academic initiatives and policy thinking today.

After the screening, the final question posed to the author of the book upon which the documentary is based, Samantha Power, Chasing the Flame: Sérgio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World, asked us to contemplate the relevance of his life in the face of crisis in Afghanistan. Sérgio’s life instructs by example as we consider his talks with the Khmer Rouge and the ways in which at present, as his UN colleague Jamal Benomar explained, Sérgio would have advocated Western engagement with the Taliban. Most importantly, this screening prompts us to consider how we may, as educators and citizens, integrate technology, including mobile phone learning, to reach areas previously excluded from globalization’s reach. Ours is a call today to act to address the humanitarian needs of the underserved as well as to understand the moral responsibilities of those who are served.

As we reflect on the initiatives we take, it is clear that technology is presently, and has been historically, a two-edged sword. The examples in history are striking if we think back, as Joshua Cooper Ramo does in The Age of the Unthinkable, on the experience of statesmen in World War I. The leaders of that era, monarchs and foreign ministers in Europe, were not used to the speed of information or to the quantity available as the telegraph replaced the letter. The technological change, and the pressure to take decisions that kept pace with the telegraph relay of information, confused their thinking and, more decisively, destroyed their judgment.¹ How does our education help us draw on the lessons of the early 20th century given how the speed of thought impacts our lives today?

We realize in the period since the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre that communication power, in the form of SMS, has evolved in crisis areas. As Goldstein and Rotich underline, SMS is a multi-directional tool unlike the hate-radio that incited mass violence in Rwanda. This is why in Kenya, the CEO of Safaricom, the largest mobile provider in country, could send text messages to counter initial voices of hate with texts urging calm and peace after the 2007 elections in that country. What are the implications of technologies that offer ordinary citizens the chance to make a difference in extraordinary ways: by their involvement with Ushahidi to bear witness reporting acts of mass atrocity; by taking the initiative to hear the voices of citizens most in need as a result of state abuses against civil society or natural disasters, which leave populations vulnerable to transnational security threats; and by learning together in the global classroom with those in areas where emergency crisis response is urgent. It is our experiences together in the classroom and in the field, which reveal what we can accomplish and what has yet to be learned.²

Ms. Laura Cohen, a MSGA candidate in the Center for Global Affairs at New York University, spent four weeks during July 2010 researching the Srebrenica genocide and its legacy on communities in Eastern Bosnia’s Podrinje/Drina Valley. Her experience reveals the importance of technology as a mechanism for education, which is readily apparent in Bosnia i Herzegovina (BiH). In a country divided into two entities and two governments–the Federation of BiH and Republika Srpska (RS)–plus a third territory–Brčko–administered by the international community’s Office of the High Representative–the provision of an ethnically inclusive educational system is by no means a reality. The Bosnian media, including its television, radio, and print outlets, remains dominated by an ethno-nationalist discourse that continues to foster ethnic separation and contradictory information about the 1992-95 war’s criminal masterminds, social devastation, and political aftereffects. This technological divide is underscored by the country’s fractured capital infrastructure, with each entity retaining its own water, electrical, telephony, medical, and educational systems.

Technology, in this respect, can help diminish the psychological blinders that Bosnian youth are continually subjected to given the vast emphasis on ethnically-segregated schools throughout the country. Whereas before the war, children from all ethnicities would socialize with each other during school and in their communities, this practice no longer takes place. The importance of education in post-conflict BiH has diminished greatly since school life was regularly interrupted for months at a time during the war and was not considered a priority when families were trying to remain intact and alive. Schools during the war were also used, in many locations, as sites of torture and massacres that were part and parcel of the ethnic cleansing campaigns to homogenize villages and towns throughout the Podrinje. The teaching of an ethno-biased history is actively creating an emotional and political divide amongst the current generation. Young people are learning about how the war affected members of their own ethnic group and not the country–or its people–as a whole. This distorted history emphasizes the nationalist rhetoric based upon mythologized ancient ethnic hatreds, victimization, revenge, and glory.

The use of technology to bridge the educational divide provides the opportunity for young Bosnians to access neutral historical facts and contemporary information otherwise unavailable. Access to digital information via mobile phones, the internet, games, and interactive applications, provide Bosnian youth the opportunity to connect with each other and to the rest of the world beyond the prejudiced information enthusiastically fed to them. Simply stated, technology enables young Bosnians to escape from the predominance of ethnic-bias and extremist views that dominate their post-war media and educational landscape. The use of Smart phones, You Tube, and Facebook, are just three examples of how Bosnian youth connect to the greater world around them without socially-enforced ethnic blinders. Given that secondary and tertiary educational avenues remain limited, segregated, and corrupted across the country, these interactive applications serve as way to connect young users to global politics, culture, and cosmopolitanism.

Towns, including Srebrenica, have had difficulty in rebuilding their technological infrastructure without massive investments of international financial aid and support. Nonetheless, local initiatives exist to supplement part of BiH’s educational vacuum. Efforts by native organizations, including the Sarajevo-based Youth Initiative for Human Rights (YIHR) and Udruženje Prijatelji Srebrenice (UPS, Friends of Srebrenica) are actively working to connect young people scattered, segregated, and isolated in their local villages. Their efforts focus on rebuilding civil society and ethnic reconciliation for youth of all ethnicities. For example, YIHR has mapped the timeline of the July 1995 Srebrenica genocide by creating an interactive and animated documentary program in an effort to teach young people about the facts and to counteract the widespread claims that this event did not take place.³ Meanwhile, UPS empowers the local youth population through education and media training, including the use of television, journalism, and creative expression as a means to foster economic development, civil society, and community cohesion.⁴ UPS’s programs include radio broadcasts, an annual short film festival, and a weekly video journal, all with the goal of connecting young people across the region.

Mr. Evan Rosenstock, also a MSGA candidate in the Center for Global Affairs, has observed that the primary issue regarding “bringing life” and increased understanding about the Balkans is simply a lack of knowledge and/or awareness about the conflict among younger generations under 30. For many who consider themselves fairly well-educated, who have attended elite undergraduate universities with access to numerous outlets for information-gathering, including Internet, TV, and the opportunities living in New York City, “the Balkans” is an unfamiliar region. Evan was accepted to participate in the Abraham’s Vision Fellowship program to study in the region this past summer. All of his peers are under 30. Most were unsure of what the Balkans is or where the region is located. As Evan tried to explain conflict there to them, many were able to recall bits and pieces of information surrounding the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. Yet, they were unaware that this part of the world is still a focus of popular attention. The spotlight in the US today is on Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, and Iran. The Balkans seems to have taken a back seat to more active, “sexy” conflicts. This is where we believe technology can make a qualitative difference in our experience of the world in which we live and learn.

Simple dissemination of information about the Balkan conflicts is one way in which technology can play a role. News websites, film documentaries, and current video footage are all ways in which the younger generations can become informed about this part of the world. We are bombarded with this type of information coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan – countries that are no doubt less accessible than those in the Balkans. There should be no reason why similar information cannot also reach us in the United States. In the global classroom, the award-winning documentary “No Man’s Land” can provide insights into the human tragedy of conflict in Bosnia i Herzegovina as well as the challenges to address the legacy of tensions there. Our challenge in pedagogy is to focus attention on the cycles of conflict that endure across generations in the Balkans. Although the US is fixated on Afghanistan and Iraq, in Albania, Russia, and Greece, the countries of the former Yugoslavia are still very much on the agenda. If American youths can connect with Russian or Greek youths (through technological means such as Facebook), or access news coming out of those countries through the Internet, they may more easily realize that conflict persists in the Balkans.

We acknowledge the potential of digitally networked technology to foster greater involvement by younger adults in the Balkans region. This awareness is greater than simply improving the human condition by abolishing barriers. The communications revolution places techniques and tools at the service of states or private actors, which are driven mainly by self-interest and ideology, and seldom by humanitarian imperatives.⁵ In the 21st century, the “Enlightenment” stereotype of globalization continues to provoke dissatisfaction and intra-state conflict as faith in traditions, feelings of humiliation, and the experience of injustice outweigh aspirations to increased living standards in many areas of the world. Technology is no panacea in the face of persistent conflict inside states, which traditional paradigms of international relations have yet to address.

As educators and students, we recognize that an important corollary to our engagement in region using new technologies, including the dissemination of film documentaries like “Sergio,” is to inform those outside the Balkans, who learn in the classroom without borders,⁶ about realities in the former Yugoslavia. Our evolving discussions in that classroom must stay focused on empowering individuals in region through our interaction with the learning programs Laura describes, which digitally networked technology unquestionably enables and supports.

Our concerns in global affairs education suggest that the relevance of new technologies is likely to be less in their applications to promote democracy or topple authoritarian regimes⁷ and more in their capacity, when utilized imaginatively, to create alternative pedagogies that interrupt existing colonial narratives.⁸ In so doing, our learning in what NYU President John Sexton has defined as the “global network university”⁹ may provide voice to groups traditionally marginalized in the analysis of transformations in our world today. This is one relatively unexplored aspect of the “new humanitarianism,”¹⁰ to which global affairs education with a focus on social justice may contribute.

Footnotes

1. Joshua Cooper Ramo, The Age of the Unthinkable, New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009, p. 106.

2. Colette Mazzucelli, “The ‘DNT-R2P Connection:’ Humanitarianism in the 21st Century?” Conversations on Diplomacy and Power Politics, June 25, 2010, http://www.diplomacyandpower.com/?p=742

3. See: http://tinyurl.com/2bjexvs. For more information, contact Ms. Alma Mašić, Head of Office, Youth Initiative for Human Rights; www.yihr.org; email: alma@yihr.org

4. See: http://www.prijateljisrebrenice.org/index.php?p=1. For more information, contact Ms. Dragana Jovanović, President, Udruženje “Prijatelji Srebrenice”, www.prijateljisrebrenice.org, email: dragana.j@prijateljisrebrenice.org

5. Stanley Hoffmann, “The Clash of Globalizations,” Foreign Affairs 81 4 (July/August 2002): 1-7 online, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/58044/stanley-hoffmann/clash-of-globalizations

6. Colette Mazzucelli and A. Nicholas Fargnoli, “Ethics and International Relations in Today’s Classrooms Without Borders,” Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, July 14, 2010, http://www.cceia.org/education/001/ethics/0004.html

7. Ian Bremmer, “Democracy in Cyberspace,” Foreign Affairs Volume 6 Number 89 (November/December 2010) 1-4 online, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66803/ian-bremmer/democracy-in-cyberspace

8. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Nationalism and the Imagination, Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2010.

9. John Sexton, “Technology and the University,” big think, June 27, 2008, http://bigthink.com/ideas/633

10. Feinstein International Center, Humanitarian Horizons, Medford, MA: Feinstein International Center, 2010, p. 44.

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Colette Mazzucelli has taught on graduate faculty, Center for Global Affairs at New York University, where she is Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor, since 2005. She is also Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Hofstra University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Dr. Mazzucelli teaches courses in comparative politics, international relations, EUrope in the 21st Century, ethnic conflicts, From the Mughals to Modernity: India’s Democracy and Its Discontents, and New Technologies in Emergencies and Conflicts: Mapping the Field of Information and Social Networks. She is particularly interested in the integration of mobile phone learning in the global affairs curriculum. Presently, she is a WFI Fellow at Citizens for Global Solutions. In addition, Dr. Mazzucelli participates as a member of the Board of Directors, Center for War/Peace Studies and the UN Chronicle Advisory Group at the United Nations. Her 2009-10 syllabi are featured in a Faculty Spotlight online in Foreign Affairs Classroom webpages. In 2010, she was profiled in the Council on Foreign Relations Educators Bulletin. As a member of the full-time faculty, Dr. Mazzucelli was cited as one of twelve recipients of the Monsignor Robert Sheeran Award 2006 for servant leadership and teaching excellence in the Seton Hall University community. She is the recipient of 11 national and international fellowships, including Bosch, Fulbright, Pi Gamma Mu, Rotary and Swiss Universities Grants. Her biography appears in Marquis Who’s Who in the World 2011 and Marquis Who’s Who in America 2011.

Laura Cohen is a part-time student at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs where she is pursuing a Master of Science in Human Rights. Her thesis focuses on the role of memorial sites as mechanisms for transitional justice and societal healing in post-conflict environments. In July 2010, she was one of 15 research fellows invited to participate in the first annual Summer Research University sponsored by the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial Center. As a part of the program and to commemorate the Srebrenica genocide, she participated in a three day, 110 KM peace march, Mars Mira, retracing the steps–in the opposite direction–of the 16,000 men and boys who attempted to flee into the forest during the Bosnian Serb Army’s siege of the enclave. Laura also completed a six month program internship with the International Coalition for Sites of Conscience in October 2010. In 2009, Laura was an international volunteer with the women’s rights organization, Promoting Human Rights and Education in Bangladesh, and a member of the NYU Alternative Breaks volunteer team at an orphanage in the Dominican Republic. Previously, she spent fourteen years in the advertising and entertainments businesses, including with Ogilvy and Mather and MTV: Music Television.

Evan, 28, is currently a Masters student at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs studying International Relations with a focus on the Nonprofit Sector. Prior to his graduate studies, he was living in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he co-founded and co-directed a small Jewish cultural project called Moishe House–Buenos Aires. He is the recipient of the “Charlie Award” – an annual recognition of excellence and vision in the international Jewish community, as well as an Abraham’s Vision fellow – an academic honor to travel to the Balkans to study ethnic conflict. Evan is a graduate of Emory University in Atlanta where he earned his BBA in Marketing, and spent a semester abroad studying at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He is writing his graduate thesis on the American Jewish identity and its relationship to Israel, and plans to soon become a professional in the international Jewish nonprofit sector. He is fluent in Spanish and enamored with all things Latino. Outside of the classroom, Evan enjoys running, engaging with foreigners, dancing salsa (poorly), and watching Coen Brothers movie marathons.

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