This article was originally printed as a staff editorial by the Iowa City Press-Citizen Editorial Board.
7/12/10
Organizers for the “One Community, One Book” program have announced their selection of the book they hope all Johnson County residents will read in 2010: “Gardens of Water” by Alan Drew. The novel tells the story of a devout Muslim family and an American Christian family in Turkey during and after a massive earthquake near Istanbul.
6/3/2010
The following are excerpts from a piece written by Meena Khandelwal, associate professor of anthropology at The University of Iowa. She spent three weeks over the winter break of 2009 teaching a course in India for the INdIA Winterim program.
6/2/2010
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan delivered this speech at a Council on Foreign Relations Meeting.
Deanna Fei’s first book, “A Thread of Sky,” has just been published but, already, it has left breathless readers exclaiming its beauty and complexity.
“A Thread of Sky is a lyrical journey through the heart of contemporary China, and the family of women who make the pilgrimage across these pages are as complicated, broad-ranging, and fascinating as the country itself. Deanna Fei is one to watch.”
-Ann Patchett
By Caroline Berg, The Daily Iowan.
3/29/2010
With more than 50 counts of treason against him and five attempts on his life, Zimbabwean farmer Philemon Matibe began writing. What was first a journal of experiential record for the political refugee became a thick book of his life and trials.
By Chrisopher Merrill* and Linda K. Kerber**
By Sarah Larson, The Daily Iowan
3/4/2010
You may not know her, but Joan Kjaer likely wants to know you.
The Iowa City resident is curious about others.
“I’ve just always, always been interested in meeting people,” said Kjaer, who has a warm, motherly air about her. “I’m just always interested in people and their stories. I just like meeting new people. It happens very rarely that I don’t feel some connection with someone.”
I was elated to see the 2009 University of Iowa International Day program include schools from the western Illinois area. The original idea of the International Day — as conceived by Paul Retish, then director of the International Education Office — was that it could benefit schools across Iowa and beyond.
We are having the wrong public debate about global warming — and we are running out of time to get it right. It’s important to discuss carbon caps and taxes or other mitigation strategies, but a good chunk of the population views these as restrictive and burdensome. We miss a larger and more affirmative point if we only have that discussion.
I had the opportunity recently to attend two events that are exemplary of the ways in which International Programs works to connect our campus and community in Iowa to the globe. The first, a lecture by Dr. Gebisa Ejeta, a native of Ethiopia and distinguished professor at Purdue University, was exemplary of the connections between human rights issues and agricultural science.
The other event—actually a full-blown conference, the Obermann Humanities Symposium (co-sponsored by International Programs)—highlighted a new breed of public scholar who champions engaged humanities research.
Whenever mentioning “1989”, people in the West instantly think about the protesting students in Tiananmen Square. In fact, although starting in Beijing and led by the students there, the democratic movement was a nation-wide event, drawing together people from all walks of life.
Twenty years on, I remember vividly every detail of that day when I organized a demonstration among the workers from my Nanjing factory in support of the movement. It was Sunday, May 28, a week before the crackdown in Beijing.
The Adirondack Mountains of northeastern New York are for me and my family a promised land. Geologically related to Canada’s Laurentian Mountains, but a few miles south of the mighty St. Lawrence River and west of Lake Champlain, North America’s sixth “great lake”, they are especially beautiful in the autumn when vibrant gold, orange, and red sugar maples meet claret oak and yellow beech and birch on dark evergreen mountainsides to stitch tapestries that feed the soul. My family first staked its slice of this “forever wild” heaven in the late Nineteenth Century, and has enjoyed and sought to protect it ever since, generation after generation. I now enjoy and protect it with my children and grandchildren, and believe they will do the same with their children and grandchildren.
On June 29, 2009, the Fulbright Association launched a statewide affiliate in Iowa, at a meeting of alumni hosted by the University of Iowa’s International Programs. Sally Mason, president of the University of Iowa, Downing Thomas, associate provost and dean of international programs, and Jane L. Anderson, Fulbright Association executive director, spoke to Fulbright alumni and friends from Ames, Bettendorf, Burlington, Des Moines, Fairfield, Hudson, Iowa City, North Liberty, Oxford, Waterloo, and Williamsburg.
In January, 2008, I traveled to Baghdad, together with representatives from 21 other Universities, at the invitation of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki. The purpose of my trip was to explore further the role that the University of Iowa’s International Programs might play in the prime minister’s newly announced educational initiative. With many of Iraq’s young professionals having fled the country, there is a pressing need to educate others to replace them, which would begin to stabilize the country’s economy and secure its future as a democratic society.
