Henderson Honored by Georgetown

Family, friends and colleagues filled Gaston Hall in April as Kaya Henderson (F’92, RCST; G’07) received a Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa from Georgetown University in recognition of her work as Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools. Henderson said she hopes to fill D.C. classrooms with the kind of caring, dedicated teachers she grew up with, many of whom attended the ceremony. “The piece of the world that Kaya has chosen to affect is fundamental to the strength, prog-ress and prosperity of our city, coun-try and our interconnected global society,” said Georgetown President John J. DeGioia. See the ceremony at sfs.georgetown.edu/kaya.

You have likely heard by now that in the latest survey of scholars reported by Foreign Policy, Georgetown’s international affairs

programs once again ranked first globally at the graduate level and fifth at the undergraduate level. I am grateful to our outstanding faculty and our talented and service-oriented alumni around the world who represent SFS so well, and I am cer-tainly proud to share the news. These rankings are, however, only one measurement of success, and I am equally pleased to note the achievements of some current students: a Rhodes for Stephanie Bryson (MAGES’13), a Truman for Joanna Foote (F’13, CULP) and the Beinecke Scholarship for Jonathan Askonas (F’13, IPOL), to name a few. The future looks bright.

With recognition comes a responsibility to innovate: to evolve and adapt so that our newest graduates emerge exceptionally prepared for the challenges they will face. The School is embracing the innovation imperative in a number of ways.

Curriculum. The new master’s programs in Global Human Development and Asian Studies will welcome their first students to the Hilltop this fall. The Asian Studies degree (asianstudies.georgetown.edu/ma) focuses on a region whose rise may largely define the 21st century. The Global Human Development degree (ghd.georgetown.edu) features a curriculum developed over the past year with courses such as Economics of Development: Poverty Alleviation and Human Development. One of its defining features is a required summer field project, to involve students working with aid agencies, consulting firms and other entities to design, implement or evaluate a development intervention in a developing country. At the undergraduate level, the successful implementation of the International Economics major at SFS-Qatar is an example of changing to meet the needs of students.

Undergraduate research. To the long-estab-lished Carroll Round conference on international

economics and interna-tional political economy, students this spring added the Walsh Exchange (walshex.org), a forum on international politics, security and regional studies. We also inaugurated the Mortara Undergraduate Research Fellows program (mortara.georgetown.edu/research/undergrad), in which a select group of the finest SFS students have the opportunity to partner with professors as research assistants and potential co-authors. Of course, enriching the undergraduate research experience will mean not only assigning major research projects to students, but also including in the curriculum content that illustrates the process of research and the value of well-done research.

Innovative pedagogy. With guidance from the SFS Board of Visitors, we continue to explore online education. Expansion into this area, if done correctly, can enhance the reputation and reach of the School and improve the student experience. Online certificates or mid-career programming might be right for SFS. Technology might play a more prominent role in classrooms on the Hilltop—perhaps in large introductory classes. There may be more and better ways to use the internet to connect students in Washington to their counterparts at SFS-Qatar. The possibilities are many.

These endeavors will need, and are worthy of, support. They are but a few of our new initiatives; for example, I hope to share even more with you in the fall about the establishment of an Institute for Women, Peace, Security and Development within SFS (see page 2). I encourage your input and deeply appreciate the leadership of SFS alumni in strengthening the School for its present and its future. Best wishes for a pleasant summer.

With warm regards,Carol Lancaster

Message from the Dean

G r e e t i n G s f r o m t H e H i l lt o p a n d s f si n t h e n e W s

Clinton Unveils Action Plan, Highlights SFS Initiative

Georgetown Again Tops International Affairs Rankings

High Student Achievement

Medals of Freedom for Albright, Karski

SFS-Q Students Contemplate Conflict Resolution in Cambodia

e d m U n d a . W a l s H s C H o o l o f f o r e i G n s e r V i C e | G e o r G e t o W n U n i V e r s i t Y

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Clinton Unveils Action Plan, Highlights SFS Initiative

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chose Georgetown University in December as the place to introduce the U.S. National Action Plan

on Women, Peace and Security. The plan focuses on involving women in preventing, responding to and resolving conflict. Clinton pointed to work that has begun at the School of Foreign Service to develop academic capacity in this area.

“For years, many of us have tried to show the world that women are not just victims of war, they are agents of peace,” Clinton told an audience of students, faculty and distinguished guests. The plan was the result of a U.N. resolution urging countries to design their own courses of action on these issues; President Obama signed an executive order the day of the speech directing that it be implemented.

In her remarks, Clinton lauded Georgetown’s new initiative aimed at developing an institute to support scholarship, research and outreach on women, peace, security and development. The initiative, led by Dean Lancaster, will look at the impact of conflict, state failure, humanitarian disasters and major political transitions on women and girls. It will also examine the role of women in peacemaking, post-conflict recovery, humanitarian relief and political transitions.

“There are a number of outstanding nongovernmental organizations focusing on the role of women, but there is limited research done in universities on women, conflict, political transitions and humanitarian emergencies,” Dean Lancaster said. Learn more at iwpsd.georgetown.edu.

Atifete Jahjaga, the president of the Republic of Kosovo, and Melanne Verveer, the United States ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues, were also in the audience. Verveer holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in languages and linguistics from Georgetown.

“This great university has such a long history of nurturing diplomats and peacemakers and at least one former president who still bleeds blue and gray,” Clinton noted. Former President Bill Clinton graduated from Georgetown with his BSFS degree in 1968. ■

Georgetown Again Tops International Affairs Rankings

Rankings published in the January/February 2012 issue of Foreign Policy once again identified Georgetown University as one of the

best places to study international affairs. Georgetown’s master’s programs ranked first worldwide and undergraduate programs ranked fifth in the Teaching, Research and International Policy (TRIP) survey of interna-tional relations scholars conducted by the College of William and Mary.

“We can be pleased and proud that our work in teaching and research has helped produce this high ranking once again,” Dean Lancaster said.

The Foreign Policy report cited the fact that SFS programs allow students to supplement coursework with mentorship from SFS’ interna-tional relations professionals and described a faculty “full of professionals who know all about the hard work of translating theory into policy.”

In a new, separate survey reported in the same issue, Georgetown placed second in the world in a list of institutions that train the best candidates for positions in the U.S. government. ■

Graduate Women learn at leadership Conference

Georgetown Women in International Affairs (GWIA) hosted its second women’s leadership conference on February 4. The conference aimed to help female graduate students prepare for their careers with insight and tools on leadership, personal branding and professionalism.

Ted Hoff (F’77)—vice president of human resources, global sales and sales incentives at IBM—helped to organize the event and brought colleagues Stacy Gorin, Leslie Salmond and Susan Turner. The team led sessions on personal branding, influence strategies, active listening and setting expectations. The conference culminated with a dinner featuring leaders who imparted their career experiences and wisdom in a congenial and open atmosphere over dinner. USAID assistant administrator Paige Alexander, Vital Voices vice president Cindy Dyer and IBM vice president Luanne Pavco spoke candidly about their lives and careers, offered advice and answered questions.

GWIA is an initiative spearheaded by Dean Lancaster to pro-vide graduate women of the School of Foreign Service the opportunity to further leadership development in international affairs. Learn more at sfs.georgetown.edu/gwia.

Cindy Dyer of Vital Voices offers advice to graduate women.

truman scholar points to faith

Joanna Foote (F’13, CULP) learned in March that she would be Georgetown’s 26th Truman Scholar. The junior has devoted much of her undergraduate life to helping immigrants.

Foote began volunteering with Casa Chirilagua during her fresh-man year. The organization supports an immigrant community in Alexandria, Va., where she tutors children. “I think the model of the organization I work with was ‘loving our neighbors as ourselves,’” Foote explained, “this idea of ‘these are my neighbors’ and then wanting to learn more of the deeper implications.”

The work with immigrants was so important to her that she took a leave of absence in 2011 to help out at a women’s shelter and a soup kitchen in Nogales, Mexico. She said her strong Christian faith helped her get through some difficult times there. “Whenever I describe Nogales, it’s waking up to a lot of desperation, a lot of chaos every single morning because I was serving deported

immigrants,” she said, adding that she learned about the depth of both suffering and hope.

Foote helped provide basic services in the Mexican border town, such as preparing food and listening to immigrants’ stories of crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. “For [undocumented immigrants], the border is such an important reality,” she said. “It’s something that they’ve crossed through and something they fear being deported back to.”

Foote also served as a research assistant for the Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) and a was participant in the Migrant Day Laborer Exchange Program overseen by the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor. She has also participated in the D.C. Schools Project and Intervarsity Christian Fellowship.

Foote, who is from Denver, will receive up to $30,000 in funding from the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation. She hopes to use the Truman Scholarship to earn a master’s degree in public policy and continue to conduct research and promote advocacy for immigrants.

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MAGES’ Bryson Wins Rhodes

Stephanie J. Bryson has finished up an eventful year at Georgetown. The

first-year Master of Arts in German and European Studies (MAGES) student is the recipient of a Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford University.

Bryson, who said she struggled through high school and considered becoming a professional surfer instead of going to college, graduated summa cum laude from California State University, Long Beach, and was the valedictorian. Having just begun her studies at Georgetown in the fall, she plans to defer the second year of her program while at Oxford.

Bryson applied with the intention of pursuing an M.Phil. in European politics and society in England, but said she may also consider an M.Phil. or a Ph.D. in politics and international relations instead. “It’s no surprise that I chose European politics and society,” Bryson said, “as that per-fectly matches up with my current path in the Georgetown MAGES program. My passion is the trans-Atlantic relationship, and I plan to use the Rhodes to study it further and from a different perspective.”

Of her professors at SFS, she says, “All of them do their part to uphold Georgetown’s stellar reputation.”

Prior to coming to Georgetown, she spent a year at Berlin’s Humboldt University. She interned at the U.S. Mission to the European Union in Brussels and worked for the Wounded Warrior Project and the Challenged Athletes Foundation.

Four other Georgetown students and alumni were finalists for the Rhodes, including John Gwin (F’12) of Beachwood, Ohio. Georgetown has produced 23 Rhodes scholars. ■

H i G H s t U d e n t a C H i e V e m e n t

Innovation in Russia Intrigues Askonas

Only 20 students nationwide receive the prestigious Beinecke

Scholarship. This year, one will carry the SFS banner: Jonathan Askonas (F’13, IPOL), who plans to study the history of innovation policy in Russia since the early days of the Cold War. Askonas said the scholarship will help him explore the intersection of three of his passions—technology, revolution and the former Soviet Union.

“Technological innovation has radi-cally altered our society over the past century, and government support of research has played a big part in that,” Askonas said. “I want to contribute to better, more robust government support of innovation, both here and abroad.”

Beinecke winners receive $4,000 before entering graduate school and an additional $30,000 while pursuing graduate studies. The com-petitive scholarship is awarded annually to juniors of “exceptional promise” to pursue a graduate course of study in the arts, humanities or social sciences.

John Glavin, the director of the Office of Fellowships, Awards and Research for Undergraduates, said Askonsas “possesses genuine kindness, warmth, generosity, discipline and keen intelligence. With Jon, inevi-tably thinking becomes acting, learning leads to doing,” Glavin added.

Askonas speaks Russian and French, serves on the SFS Academic Council and is a member of the Philodemic Society. “Continuing my education has always held great appeal to me,” Askonas said. “The more I learn, the more I wish to keep learning and exploring.” ■

Stephanie Bryson will study at Oxford in the fall.

Jon Askonas studied at St. Petersburg State University in Russia.

p r o G r a m H i G H l i G H t s

A current head of state and a former head of state were among visitors to the Hilltop during the Spring 2012 semester at Georgetown.

On February 2, the president of Georgia told an audience in Gaston Hall that his country has taken steps in the past 20 years to install a democratic, corruption-free society and catch up with Western ideals despite conflict with neighboring Russia.

“In the past [world leaders] thought corruption was cultural but they underestimated us,” said Mikheil Saakashvili, who won a presidential election in January 2004 after Georgia’s Rose Revolution questioned parliamentary elections the year before. “They thought it was very easy to manipulate our people into all kind of electoral promises … every election they underestimated [the Georgian people].”

Saakashvili said he thinks that the former Soviet republic could still have normal relations with Russia despite the 2008 conflict, when Russian and Georgian troops engaged each other near the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

“We are compatible with each of our neighbors—otherwise my small nation wouldn’t have survived in that environment,” he said. “If you listen to what [they’re saying in Russia], every major leader in

Speakers Include World LeadersMoscow right now says they want Georgia-type reform.”

Reforms, he noted, included firing the police force and recruiting new officers and shrinking bureaucracy. “The World Bank just issued a report praising Georgia as a model for successfully dealing with cor-ruption,” said CERES director Angela Stent. “President Saakashvili eloquently presented Georgia’s reform program and its accomplishments in introducing better governance to Georgia.”

BMW Center director Jeffrey Anderson added, “He certainly came across as someone committed to democracy, someone committed to process, someone committed to institutionalizing politics, so it doesn’t rely on one person or one party,” Anderson said.

The following week, the former president of Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo, visited Georgetown to receive the 30th annual Jit Trainor Award. The prize is given for distinction in the conduct of diplomacy by SFS’ Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD).

In a speech at the ceremony, Zedillo discussed the economic and political conflicts in today’s global governance issues as well as governmental roles in counteracting the problems that are caused by globalization. ■

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CLAS Hosts Key Conference

Georgetown University played host in March to a major two-day conference, “Making Latin America and the Caribbean a More

Equitable Society: Economic Growth, Education, and Corporate Social Responsibility.” With the support of the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Commerce Department, the university brought together leaders from all corners of the Western Hemisphere to share strategies and jointly design a roadmap to use economic development to aid in creating prosperity in the region.

Speakers at the event included vice president of the Dominican Republic Rafael Alburquerque, Organization of American States Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza and Undersecretary for the U.S. Department of Commerce Francisco Sanchez. The hundreds of par-ticipants included government officials, thought leaders from academic institutions, pioneers in the business community and representatives from civil society and international organizations. ■

attack iran? professors debate

Two Georgetown professors who disagree over whether the U.S. should engage in an armed strike against Iran went head-to-head in March during a debate sponsored by SFS’ Mortara Center for International Studies and Center for Security Studies (CSS).

The event was inspired by the opinions expressed by Matthew Kroenig, an assistant professor of government, in the January/February 2012 issue of Foreign Affairs in a piece entitled “Time to Attack in Iran” and a reply, “Not Time to Attack in Iran,” penned for the March/April issue by Security Studies Program (SSP) associate professor Colin Kahl.

“A nuclearized Iran is unacceptable,” Kroenig said at the forum. “This could result in an escalation and eventually a nuclear exchange.”

Kahl said that Kroenig “incorrectly characterizes the situation as grave and imminent” and dismissed his colleague’s notion that all other approaches have been exhausted, “leaving Washington with no other choice but to bomb Iran.”

Kroenig did acknowledge that a strike would carry downside risks, including Iranian military retaliation and spikes in global oil prices, but argued that a U.S. strike against Iran is “the least bad option.”

Kahl said his colleague’s theory “ignores the severe eco-nomic strain, isolation and technical challenges that Iran is experiencing” and how those challenges are “regime-crippling.” He said these pressures eventually would entice Tehran to “return to the negotiating table.”

The focus of a March forum was equity in Latin America.

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Madeleine Albright is the author of Prague Winter: A Story of Personal Remembrance and War, 1937–1948, in which she recounts events that shook her youth, from the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia to the onset of the Cold War.

Syafaatun Almirzanah is the author of When Mystic Masters Meet: Towards a New Matrix for Christian-Muslim Dialogue (Blue Dome Press), in which she examines the lives, teachings and legacies of two great medieval mystic masters—one Muslim, the other Christian.

Victor Cha is the author of The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (Ecco/HarperCollins), in which he sheds light on North Korea’s culture, economy and foreign policy and explores the possibilities of its uncertain future in the post-Kim Jong-il era.

Carl J. Dahlman is the author of The World Under Pressure: How China and India Are Influencing the Global Economy and Environment (Stanford University Press), in which he examines the speed of global power shifts through a framework that shows the interdependence between economic size, trade, finance, technology and the environment.

Michael David-Fox is the author of Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921–1941, in which he recounts Soviet efforts to sell the Bolshevik experiment to European and American intellectuals.

Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad is the author of Becoming American? The Forging of Arab and Muslim Identity in Pluralist America (Baylor University Press), in which she makes the case that American Muslim identity is as uniquely American as it is for any other race, nationality or religion.

Charles A. Kupchan is the author of No One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn (Oxford University Press), in which he argues that the world is headed for political and ideological diversity and that emerging powers will neither defer to the West’s lead nor converge toward the Western way.

Robert J. Lieber is the author of Power and Willpower in the American Future: Why the United States Is Not Destined to Decline, in which he argues that flexibility, adaptability and the capacity for course correction provide the United States with an enduring resilience.

Paul Pillar is the author of Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy (Columbia University Press), in which he confronts the myth that intelligence drives major national security decisions and urges insulating intelligence management from politicization.

John Tutino is the author of Mexico and Mexicans in the Making of the United States (University of Texas Press), in which he reviews how legacies grounded in colonial New Spain shaped both Mexico and the U.S. and how Mexican Americans have participated in North American ways of production, politics, society and culture.

Faculty Publicationssfs.georgetown.edu/research

A statue of Jan Karski can be found near the White-Gravenor Building.

Medals of Freedom for Albright, Karski

The Presidential Medal of Freedom has been presented to SFS Mortara Distinguished Professor of Diplomacy and former U.S.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Jan Karski, the late Georgetown professor and alumnus who risked his life to bring reports of the Holocaust to the free world, posthumously received the Medal of Freedom as well.

President Barack Obama made the latter announcement during an event at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “We must tell our children about how this evil was allowed to happen,” he said, “but let us also tell our children about the Righteous Among the Nations. Among them was Jan Karski.”

Karski was said to have traveled back and forth across Nazi-dominated Europe in the Polish Underground during the war, aided by his mastery of four languages and training as a diplomat. He was among the first to provide eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to American and British leaders.

Karski earned a doctorate from Georgetown in 1952 and taught for 40 years. He died in 2000. “Karski experienced such darkness,” said Robert L. Billingsley (F’68), who with other former students has been a force behind this and other honors in the late professor’s name. “But yet he spent his profession, which was nurtured by Georgetown, educating and enlightening youth to a message of freedom and responsibility in a free society.”

“It means a great deal to me to receive the medal along with one of my personal heroes and former colleagues, the late Jan Karski,” said Albright, who learned late in life that she had Jewish relatives who were killed in the Holocaust. “Like Karski, I have always worked to protect human rights here and abroad, and it is very rewarding to have that recognized by President Obama.”

Albright served as the country’s 64th Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001 under former President Bill Clinton. She worked to increase membership in NATO and helped lead the Alliance’s campaign against terror and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.

The Medal of Freedom is presented to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors. ■

■ Dennis Ross will join the faculty of the Program of Jewish Civilization (PJC) this fall. “We are thrilled to have a public servant of Ambassador Ross’s caliber return to the PJC where he will impart his vast knowledge to the next generation of diplomats, Foreign Service officers and Middle East policy ana-lysts,” said PJC director Jacques Berlinerblau. Ross facilitated the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty and worked for the George H. W. Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations. Ross served as a visiting professor in 2008 and as an adjunct in the PJC before that.

■ Two BSFS graduates have taken on new assignments as ambassadors. Piper A. W. Campbell (F’88, IPOL) becomes the U.S. ambassador to Mongolia. Campbell is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service and has served as Consul General at the U.S. Consulate in Basrah, Iraq since July 2011.

Richard Norland (F’77, IECO) becomes the U.S. ambassador to Georgia. Norland, also a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, has served as the International Affairs Advisor and Deputy Commandant at the National War College.

■ Georgetown has again been identified as among the Peace Corps’ top institutions of higher learning that provide volunteers for the organization. The university had 35 undergraduate alumni and six graduate alumni serving in the fall, ranking 10th among medium-sized colleges and universities. Since the organization’s establishment, 866 alumni have been volunteers. Peace Corps deputy director Carrie Hessler-Radelet joined Dean Lancaster, BSFS assistant dean Emily Zenick and Seth Luxenberg (MAAS’13) in March at Copley Hall for a panel discussion, “The Peace Corps: The Past 50 Years and the Next 50.”

■ True to Georgetown University’s spirit of service, students from the Master of Science in Foreign Service Program par-ticipated in a house construction project with Habitat for Humanity DC in February. Hoyas United in Graduate Service—headed by Alex Kelly (MSFS’13)—coordinated; Gisele Irola (MSFS’13) helped organize the participation of MSFS students, who helped seal the bottom floor and worked on the roofing structure. “It’s such a nice way to get away from the vortex of study-ing,” Irola said. “You get to be outside and are doing good for the community. We got to step away from our ivory tower of sorts and actually were able to do something that matters and makes an actual physical difference for someone in need.” ■

remembering Barbara stowasser

Just before this issue of SFS News went to press, we learned of the passing of Dr. Barbara Stowasser. She died May 13 in Washington, surrounded by friends and fam-ily. Professor Stowasser began teaching at Georgetown in 1966. She held the Sultanate of Oman Chair in Arabic and Islamic Literature at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, was a core member of the faculty of CCAS and served three times as director of the Center. Dr. Stowasser was a leading world scholar in studies of women in the Qur’an and hadith and a colleague of rare intellect, compassion and humor. Her expertise and influence will be sorely missed.

Wa l s H W i r e

More at » sfs.georgetown.edu

SFS-Q Students Contemplate Conflict Resolution in Cambodia

SFS-Qatar students, faculty and staff visited Cambodia for this year’s Zones of Conflict, Zones of Peace (ZCZP) learning trip. ZCZP

excursions provide students with real-life exposure to conflict zones and the methods and theories of conflict resolution that they have been examining in the classroom context in preceding months.

The scheduled activities began with a lesson at the Khmer School of Language. The same day, students were able to visit the National Museum and Royal Palace; in the evening, they strolled through the Night Market, a riverside attraction for both Cambodians and tourists.

The ZCZP group paid their respects at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. Formerly a high school in central Phnom Penh, it was con-verted into a center for interrogations and torture in which classrooms held up to fifty prisoners at a time. Now it serves as a memorial and warning to future generations.

A last highlight of the trip was a visit to the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), in which individuals personally responsible for Khmer Rouge atrocities are being tried. The ZCZP group was given a tour of the courts and met with the U.N. represen-tatives for both the prosecution and the defense, both of whom were very forthcoming, providing insights into the intricacies of trying war criminals 40 years after the fact. ■

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Advancing SFS

This past October, as you probably know, marked the beginning of the public phase of For Generations to Come: The Campaign for

Georgetown. Toward a $1.5 billion goal, Georgetown University has raised more than $840 million—excellent progress with more work to do.

The four campaign priorities are attracting the best students (that is, making Georgetown accessible regardless of a student’s finances); supporting faculty and academic excellence; enhancing student life and community experience; and facilitating transformative opportuni-ties. Our aims at the School of Foreign Service align naturally. They include endowing chairs and professor-ships, establishing a Faculty Excellence Fund and building our newest graduate programs in Asian Studies and Global Human Development.

Georgetown President John J. DeGioia has described this as a vision of broader and deeper institutional distinction, not for its own sake, but in service to our centuries-old mission to foster the creation and sharing of knowledge to the greater glory of God and the better-ment of humankind. I invite you to learn more about the campaign at campaign.georgetown.edu.

Even as the campaign progresses, support of the Dean’s Leadership Fund is vital. The flexibility of the fund from year to year is enabling the leadership of the School to respond to opportunities and needs that arise as we endeavor to provide an education of uncompromised quality.

Sincerely,Richard JacobsSenior Director of Development

PS — I hope that you have enjoyed this newsletter. As you think about the SFS stories that resonated with you and the impact that the School of Foreign Service has had on your life, I encourage you to use the response envelope for “benevolent purposes.” You may also visit sfs.georgetown.edu/giving. I may be reached at any time at rj224@georgetown.edu or 202/687-7088.

Border Immersion Trips Prove Meaningful for Jaimes

Alternative spring break trips are often described

by Georgetown students as highlights of their undergradu-ate career. For one SFS junior, a personal dimension has made his experiences intensely meaningful.

Zenen Jaimes (F’13, STIA), whose parents came to Arizona from Mexico through the so-called Kino Border, made his way to the same border during a visit sponsored by the Center for Social Justice, Research, Teaching and Service (CSJ). He and 10 other students sought to examine issues surrounding immigration.

“My family story began in Arizona when my parents crossed through the very same desert in order to start a new life in the United States,” said Jaimes, who helped lead the Kino Border Immersion Group. His father, Jose Zenen Jaimes, and his mother, Marilu Perez de Jaimes, first crossed the border in 1988 but went back and forth between Mexico and Arizona several times.

“My parents came when they were very young and my mom became pregnant with my older brother at the age of 19, so they [had] a lot of financial difficulty at first,” Zenen Jaimes said.

He participated in the same trip last year, but said helping to lead it this year was “a completely different experience. I learned a lot about the issues many ranchers and community members in the area face,” he said. “I especially learned about the concerns many residents have about drug smuggling.”

The group talked with members of the Jesuit-run Kino Border Initiative as well as the Sierra Club, local border patrol and law enforce-ment agents, local ranchers and faith-based communities. Participants toured a detention center and watched a criminal proceeding through Operation Streamline, a border enforcement program. The group stayed with families from San Miguel Cristo Rey High School, which serves many immigrant families in the area.

The other group leaders for the Kino Border trip were Rev. Kevin O’Brien, S.J., vice president for mission and ministry, and Lara Ericson, staff member in the Office of Campus Ministry, which co-sponsored the trip.

Like all the alternative spring break trips, the Kino Border Immersion experience is an opportunity for personal growth, connection and social justice, O’Brien said. “[It] is an outstanding example of some of our most fundamental values as a Jesuit university—including educating for justice and putting faith into action on behalf of the poor and marginalized,” O’Brien explained.

Jaimes wants to work in education advocacy after he graduates. “I hope to teach with the Cristo Rey Network in Texas or Arizona,” he said. “I am also thinking about applying to Teach for America. After this I hope to attend either graduate or law school.” ■

Zenen Jaimes (F’13, STIA) helped lead an alternative spring break trip to the border his parents crossed more than two decades ago.

The SFS Newsletter is published twice yearly in print and at sfs.georgetown.edu by the Dean’s Office at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. With questions, call 202/687-5113 or e-mail dbb29@georgetown.edu.

To give to SFS, visit sfs.georgetown.edu/giving

Executive Editor: Jennifer Windsor

Editor: Beau Boughamer

Writer: Jen Lennon

University Photographer: Phil Humnicky

Designer: MillerCox Design, Inc. Silver Spring, MD www.millercox.com

Additional contributions from the Georgetown University Office of Communications.

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