Spring 2016 Fletcher Magazine

For Alumni and Friends of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University Spring 2016

MagazineFletcher

GETTING TO LESSHow two Fletcher PhDs helped deliver

the Paris climate accord

CREDIT: TK

Envoy

GARDENS OF PLENTYWhen Linda Cole, F06, N06, set out to start a relief agency in Uganda, she went on a listening tour.

During her many years working for humanitarian aid and development organizations throughout Africa, Cole had seen projects fail to benefit the community because they were poorly planned. So as she was creating what would become the Community Action Fund for Women in Africa (CAFWA), she traveled all over northern Uganda to observe what the women in that war-torn region were already trying to do for them-selves. Then she figured out how she could assist them.

The obvious route was agriculture. Farming is the main livelihood in northern Uganda, but many women run out of food months before their crops of cassava, corn, millet or rice are ready to be harvested. CAFWA introduced them to the concept

of growing a sustainable kitchen garden in addition to their field crops. “Some of them have one garden they eat from and another for vegetables they sell at the market,” Cole says. Young girls have even started gardens to pay for their school fees.

CAFWA has also helped the women with microfinancing and adult learning centers that focus on literacy, math and business skills. The programs took a while to produce results. But Cole, who lives in California and travels to Uganda at least four times a year, says CAFWA plans to stick around.

“Aid is not reaching these women, because they are not seen as viable investments; they are basically too poor to help,” she says. “We disagree. There is a cycle of poverty, and if we don’t invest in these women, we are never going to break it.” —JULIE FLAHERTY

PHOTO: LISA FIELD

Contents SPRING 2016 VOLU M E 37, NO. 2

In Every Issue2 LETTERS

3 DEAN’S CORNER

4 DISPATCHES News from Around the Globe

19 CONNECT Keeping Up with the Fletcher Community25 CLUB NEWS

28 CLASS NOTES

56 IN MEMORIAM

59 DETAIL

9

Cover illustration by Brian Stauffer

4 BRAINPOWER ON THE BATTLEFIELDThe Marines might not be getting the brightest and the best, a study of officers’ intelligence test scores suggests. BY ROB PHELPS

6 THE AGE OF METALS Our demand for technology is making certain metals essential, though they remain largely unknown, says David S. Abraham, F03. A look at his new book’s more startling findings.

9 IN THE WINGSRoberta Jacobson, F86, A19P, is ready to be the next U.S. ambassador to Mexico—if Congress lets her. BY HEATHER STEPHENSON

12 2° OF SEPARATIONCOVER STORY Behind the scenes at the historic Paris climate conference, where a Fletcher alumnus and a Fletcher professor helped deliver the deal that just might save humanity from itself. BY HEATHER STEPHENSON

20 SOLVING SYRIAInternational diplomacy may be the key to settling the conflict and the wider humanitarian crisis it has caused. BY TAYLOR MCNEIL

Features

20

2 F L E T C H E R M A G A Z I N E | S P R I N G 2 0 1 6

Letters

VOLU M E 37, NO. 2 S P R I NG 2 016

Editor HEATHER [email protected]

Editor-in-Chief JOHN [email protected]

Design Director MARGOT [email protected]

Designer FAITH HRUBY

Editorial Advisors JAMES STAVRIDISDean, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy

KATE RYAN Senior Director, Development and Alumni Relations

LINDSEY KELLEY Assistant Director, Alumni Relations

Stay connected with Fletcher. School website: fletcher.tufts.edu Online community: tufts.force.com/connect/login LinkedIn: fletcher.tufts.edu/Alumni/LinkedIn

Fletcher Magazine is published twice annually by the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. The opinions expressed in this publication are the authors’ own and do not necessarily represent those of the Fletcher School.

Send correspondence to: Heather Stephenson, Editor, Fletcher Magazine, Tufts Publications, 80 George Street, Medford, MA 02155 or email [email protected].

© 2016 TRUSTEES OF TUFTS UNIVERSITY

Printed on 25% postconsumer waste recycled paper. Please recycle.

GETTING AROUND AFRICAI read with interest the article “Can Tech FixTraffic?” (Fall 2015) as well as the study to which it refers, “Navigating Nairobi: Digital Innovation in Urban Transport and Logistics in Kenya,” by two recent Fletcher graduates. It’s true, the traffic in Nairobi is horrendous, and people will do anything to find a way through or around it. Fortunately, Kenya has both deep tech expertise and a mo-bile-friendly culture, so it’s natural that so many apps and other digital tools have sprung up to help commuters and businesses cope. The study is a fascinating look at how cheap innovation can empower ordinary people to deal with seemingly unsolvable problems. Yet the challenges are also plain: East Africa’s transport network and service providers are simply inadequate to support the region’s surging growth, and most efforts to mod-ernize, whether through infrastructure or technolo-gy, fail to reach the urban poor, who mostly walk.

Yet there is reason to be optimistic. East African countries have clearly prioritized trans-port as a key enabler of economic growth. Kenya and Tanzania are investing many hundreds of millions of dollars in the ports of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam (the region’s key international gateways) as well as new ports at Lamu and Bagamoyo. Even greater sums are being invested in roads and railways, and all the region’s major airports are being upgraded. Urban transport is a priority as well. Dar just launched a bus rapid transit system, and a similar project is planned in Nairobi. Commuter rail systems are in develop-ment in Nairobi and Mombasa. Kampala has a groundbreaking policy on nonmotorized transport

(walking and cycling). In Nairobi, a new Nairobi Metropolitan Area Transport Authority is to align planning, development and implementation of all such initiatives, as well as the ever-growing needs of cars and trucks, of course.

My nonprofit company, TradeMark East Afri-ca, was created to help. We support sustainable and inclusive growth in the East African Com-munity (Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, plus EAC aspirant South Sudan) through improved transport, better trade information and communications technology systems, and stron-ger private-sector markets. Since 2010, we have helped the region achieve remarkable reductions in transport time through improvements at ports and border crossings and in customs systems. Increasingly, we are focused on more targeted re-sults within defined geographic regions, such as rural agribusiness clusters or urban growth poles. For example, one project will help rationalize truck traffic in western Mombasa near the port, benefiting both long-distance transporters and local industrial activity. This may well involve the same sort of customer-friendly digital innovation that my Fletcher colleagues have studied in Nairobi and at which Kenyans excel.GEORGE WOLF, F08

NAIROBI, KENYA

Fletcher Magazine welcomes your letters. Send them to Heather Stephenson, Editor,

Fletcher Magazine, Tufts Publications, 80 George Street, Medford, MA 02155 or email [email protected]. Letters are edited for length and clarity.

DOUBLE KUDOS. Nahid Bhadelia, J99, F04, M05(“Emergency Responder,” Spring 2015), is this year’s recipient of the annual Fletcher Women’s Leadership Award, established by the Fletcher Board of Advisors and the school administration to recognize outstand-ing women graduates who are making meaningful contributions in the private, public and NGO sectors. On April 2, Bhadelia, an epidemiologist who has participated in multiple medical tours to Sierra Leone to help combat Ebola, also received the Active Citizenship and Public Service Award from the Tufts University Alumni Association.

S P R I N G 2 0 1 6 | F L E T C H E R M A G A Z I N E 3PHOTOS: KELVIN MA

Dean’s Corner

JAMES STAVRIDIS, Dean

I WAS EXCITED to inaugurate our new on-site broadcast studio last fall by

recording an interview with my friend Ed Schumacher-Matos, F72, the multitalented journalist and academic. The new TV studio,

located in the back of Ginn Library, is a first for the Fletcher School. It

plays a big role in helping us achieve a central objective of our strategic plan: bolstering the school’s reputation by increasing research productivity and its impact on decision makers. Ed’s work to revital-ize the Edward R. Murrow Center of Public Diplomacy is helping with this goal, too, so it seemed fitting to talk with him there.

The new broadcast facility, made possible by a gift from Dr. Thomas Schmidheiny, H99, is a working studio through which our faculty can speak with jour-nalists, thought leaders and policymakers around the world, bringing the Fletcher School’s expertise to bear on the global challenges of the 21st century. Several faculty members already have been trained to use the studio for media interviews, and we are preparing other faculty to adopt this technology to amplify their voices on key issues.

The studio is just one tool to strengthen our research enterprise and more firmly establish Fletcher as the “go-to” place for solutions to some of the most pressing problems of our day.

We are promoting our research in other ways as well:

DEVELOPING RESEARCH CENTERS. We will support exist-ing centers and consider establishing new centers in areas such as cyber/digital security, global governance

and international economic policy. These centers provide fundraising and administrative support, in conjunction with new grant-writing and grants admin-istration help from the university’s Office of Research Administration, to create and sustain research oppor-tunities for faculty and students and to disseminate their work to decision makers and the wider public.

ENABLING MORE FACULTY MEMBERS TO CONDUCT

RESEARCH. The school has reduced the standard teach-ing load for tenure-stream faculty to free up time for research. We are also introducing new funding models for summer research support and providing other, nonmonetary incentives for research, such as an annual faculty research award. (I had the pleasure of present-ing the inaugural award to professor Leila Fawaz for her outstanding book, A Land of Aching Hearts, at con-vocation last fall.) We are also fostering collaborations with the other schools of Tufts in areas such as business innovation and public health.

IMPROVING THE WAYS WE PUBLICIZE RESEARCH. Building on the successful launch two years ago of a new web-page about faculty research (fletcher.tufts.edu/research), we are strengthening our efforts to promote faculty work and accomplishments through the website, cen-ters and other channels.

The good news is that our faculty members have, for a long time, made vital contributions to the global conversation. All we need to do is hand them the modern-day version of a megaphone so that they can contribute even more effectively to our public policy debates—through their books, articles, blogs, social media, and now, TV appearances from our new studio.

Sincerely,

RESEARCH THAT DRIVES PUBLIC POLICY


Dispatches

ILLUSTRATION: CHRIS GASH

fellow officer to be on the same page when it came to military preparedness.

That brief exchange and many oth-ers like it made Cancian curious—are Marine officers as smart as they need to be?

The ability to think critically and implement complex operations has never been more essential. That’s espe-cially true for the increasingly com-mon battlefield scenario that Marine General Charles Krulak calls a “three-block war”—one in which on “one block you’re conducting a peacekeeping mission, on a second you’re fighting against an insurgency, and on a third you’re fighting a conventional war, all within the same city,” says Cancian, who’s finishing his master’s degree at the Fletcher School.

Armed with data he obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request—46,000 scores that Marine

Brainpower on the Battlefield A Fletcher student and professor say the Marines might not be getting the best and brightest BY ROB PHELPS

AT THE END of a seven-month counterinsurgency operation in Afghanistan, U.S. Marine Lieutenant Matthew Cancian, F16, turned to a fellow officer and remarked, “Wow, that wasn’t anything like what the field manual described.” The fellow officer, a platoon commander, replied, “Oh, I haven’t read it. I don’t need a book to tell me what to do.”

That book, notes Cancian, was a well-regarded battlefield guide co-authored by General David Petraeus, and Cancian had hoped to discuss its relevance to their mission. At the very least, he expected his

S P R I N G 2 0 1 6 | F L E T C H E R M A G A Z I N E 5

N EW S FROM A ROU N D TH E GLOBE

PHOTO: IAN MACLELLAN, A12

C H A R A CT E R S K E T C H

PEACEABLECHANGENAME: Maria Stephan, F02, F05EXPERTISE: As a senior policyfellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, seeks to understand how nonvio-lent “people power” movements successfully challenge repressive systemsON CIVIL RESISTANCE DEVOLVING

INTO CIVIL WAR: Working withSyrian opposition activists during their unsuccessful uprising four years ago confirmed her belief that nonviolent organizing is more mar-athon than sprint. “The sustained movement-building model, guided by strategic planning, is where the longer term success lies.” LAURELS: Received the first Henry J. Leir Human Security Award last year from Fletcher’s Institute for Human Security. A book she co-au-

thored, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic

Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, earned the American Political Science Association’s award for the best political

science book for 2012.

RIGHT NOW: Investigatinghow outsiders can best support

nonviolent movementsGLASS HALF FULL: “I wouldn’t saylooking at the Arab Spring that we should wring our hands and say, ‘This all proves that people power doesn’t work, that it’s not relevant.’ No, there were successes and fail-ures…. It’s a work in progress.”

officers received from 1980 to 2014on an intelligence test known as the General Classification Test (GCT)—Cancian teamed up with Michael Klein, the William L. Clayton Professor of International Economic Affairs at Fletcher, to tease out any trends.

What they found was disturbing: Marine officers’ GCT scores had dropped nearly 10 percent over the past 35 years. Their study, “Military Officer Quality in the All-Volunteer Force,” was published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2015 and garnered attention from the media and the military.

THE ROLE OF A COLLEGE DEGREESince World War II, all Marine officershave taken the GCT, and the scores have proven a reliable predictor of success in officers’ training and careers, according to Cancian and Klein’s study. During that war, the Marines would not commission an officer with a GCT score below 120, a score well above the average for the population.

Now, admission to Officer Candidate School—the first step to being commissioned in the Marine Corps—no longer depends on GCT scores, but on other criteria, princi-pally whether a candidate has a college degree. The test continues to be used as an assessment tool, however. Cancian’s data revealed that 85 percent of new lieutenants scored 120 or higher in 1980, but only 59 percent exceeded that score in 2014. Those scoring above 150 decreased from 4.9 to 0.7 percent during the same period.

Cancian and Klein weighed their data against labor market conditions, such as the decrease in qualified people looking for work, and against the ethnic, racial and gender mix of incoming officers. They also looked at the size and composition of the pool

of potential officers. They found no significant links between lower test scores and the labor pool, the inclusion of women or the increase in diversity. In fact, the increase in the number of African-American officers was associ-ated with a rise in test scores from what they would have been otherwise.

Instead, they found a clear correla-tion between declining GCT scores and the country’s growing numbers of college graduates. “The idea is that the average college graduate in 1980 was smarter than the average person in the population,” says Cancian. “In the 1960s and ’70s, 16 to 17 percent of young Americans went to college. In the early 1980s, that started changing,” he notes. “Now about 30 percent of young Americans, ages 18 to 24, are in college.”

Or put another way, the average intelligence of today’s college student is closer to that of the average person in the population, and because a col-lege degree is now a key criterion for admission to Officer Candidate School, that translates into an overall decline in the intelligence of potential military officers, Cancian says.

The study contrasts that finding with another—an increase in intelligence among enlisted troops. “Even during the most try-ing years of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, around 60 percent of new recruits were deemed ‘high-quality,’ possess-ing a high school diploma and being above the average intelligence of the American population (compared to a low of 27.1 percent of new recruits deemed high-quality in 1977),” the study reports.

Cancian says he hopes the findings prompt the military to take action. “I hope the military will start a discussion about what qualities officers need.”


Dispatches

PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

The Age of MetalsHow our demand for technology is altering the planet

AS TECHNOLOGY HAS conquered the world, certain metals have become essential even while they remain largely unknown. Called rare metals because they are hard to mine efficiently, these materials are used for everything from phones and computer chips to rechargeable batteries and jewelry. They must be taken from the earth, of course, and the consequences for the planet, and many of the people who live on it, have been profound, according to David S. Abraham, F03. In a new book, The Elements of Power: Gadgets, Guns, and the Struggle for a Sustainable Future in the Rare Metal Age, Abraham chronicles the human and environmental cost of our unquenchable thirst for rare metals. Here, by the numbers, are a few of his more startling findings.

35Number of metals in a typical electric toothbrush, sourced from nations including China, Congo, Chile, Russia, Korea, Indonesia and Turkey.

21Average life, in months, of a

smartphone. In 2014, only

22 percent of Americans

recycled their old mobile

phone or tablet.

S P R I N G 2 0 1 6 | F L E T C H E R M A G A Z I N E 7ILLUSTRATION: CHRIS GASH

GOOD NEWS ON HUNGERThe age of mass starvation appears to be behind us. Calamitous fam-ines—those that cause more than 1 million deaths—have disappeared, and great famines, which kill more than 100,000 people, are in sharp decline, according to Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation and a research professor at the Fletcher School.

A century ago, the annual death toll from famines routinely topped 1 million, but since the year 2000 it has been at an all-time low, aver-aging 40,000 per year. The trend is all the more striking because the world’s population is more than four times larger than it was in 1900. In an essay in the 2015 Global Hunger Index report, de Waal explains that previous famines were caused by imperial conquest, totalitarian governments and genocide. Such famines are on the decline, he argues, because of human rights norms, increased prosperity, public health improvements, global information sharing and the end of the Cold War.

For all this progress, hundreds of thousands of people still live under the threat of mass starvation because of armed conflict or dictatorship and policies that slow the delivery of aid. “Politics, not food supplies, have caused mass starvation, and politics can eliminate it,” de Waal says. “First, we need to prevent and resolve the wars that cause food cri-ses. Second, we must send food aid where it is needed most, even when that means helping people living under a totalitarian dictator or in areas controlled by terrorist organizations.” —HEATHER STEPHENSON

3.6Tons of material required—includ-ing soil moved during mining, coal burned during processing and water used during production—to make one 3-gram platinum wedding band.

100 MILLIONCost, in dollars, for Mitsubishi to cleanup around a Malaysian processing plant it closed in 1992 following a legal fight. Locals claimed that a spike in rare diseases was related to radioactive waste left out in the open. The company denied responsibility.

1,0002006 price, in dollars, of a

kilogram of rhenium, which

is used in the construction of

jet engines. It takes one ton

of copper ore to produce

one ounce of the metal. The

price of rhenium jumped to

$11,000 in 2008.

1.75 1.8 2 2.1 2.2 2.8 3.2 4 4.7 5.5 6.5 7 (1900s) (1910s) (1920s) (1930s) (1940s) (1950s) (1960s) (1970s) (1980s) (1990s) (2000s) (2010s)

30

25

20

15

10

5

0

WORLD POPULATION IN BILLIONS

FAM

INE

RELA

TED

DEAT

HS


Dispatches

ILLUSTRATION: CHRIS GASH

LEVERAGING THE IRAN DEALNuclear agreement opens the door for positive change in the region

WILL THE IRAN nuclear agreement “advance the cause of peace and security in the Middle East,” as a group of nuclear scientists has declared, or will it be a “historic mistake for the world,” as decried by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?

The pact between Iran and six world powers, announced last summer, provoked strong reactions from those who saw it as the best way to prevent war and opponents who believed it would empower Iran and make the world a more danger-ous place. The agreement limited Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting a series of debilitating economic sanc-tions imposed by the United Nations, the United States and the European Union.

Rizwan Ladha, F12, a Ph.D. candidate at Fletcher who studies the proliferation of nuclear weapons, says the deal put in place “an inspections-and-monitoring regime unlike anything we’ve seen before” in previous arms control agree-ments. “Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency are armed with a full range of tools and technologies to determine if Iran is cheating… . The Iranians will not be able to sneak out of this deal.”

In January, the U.S. and European nations released roughly $100 billion of Iran’s frozen assets and lifted other sanctions after international inspectors concluded that the country had dismantled large sections of its nuclear

program. The United States also released seven Iranians as part of a prisoner swap in which Iran freed four Americans.

A few days earlier, Iran held 10 U.S. sailors overnight after their boats entered Iranian waters. The sailors’ quick release was hailed by the Obama administration as a sign of warmer relations between the two nations, but foes of the nuclear pact argued that the detention was illegal.

Opponents of the agreement say its restrictions are not strong enough and fear it gives Iran too much leeway to develop a nuclear weapon. The Obama administration argues that the safeguards are stringent, and if the proposal had been rejected, war would have been more likely.

The agreement was necessary to minimize Iran’s nuclear program and keep it under an international regime of inspections and sanctions, rather than allow Iran to develop a nuclear program unchecked, Ladha says. Now that the deal is being implemented, however, he says the United States faces multiple challenges. The biggest is getting U.S. allies and friends in the Middle East, including Israel and the Gulf states, to support the agreement.

The Gulf states publicly welcomed the deal with cautious optimism but privately expressed concern because they see Iran as a major adversary, Ladha says. In contrast, Israel con-sistently and unequivocally rejected the deal. Netanyahu also rebuffed American offers of increased security assistance and froze talks on future aid. In response, the U.S. could demonstrate its ongoing commitment to Israel by creating a formal treaty alliance between the two nations—something Fletcher School Dean James Stavridis, F83, F84, suggested in a September piece in Foreign Policy.

Opponents of the deal raise fears that Iran will use its newly released money to finance terrorism. But Ladha believes the funds will more likely be funneled into investments overseas and the international currency market to boost the Iranian economy, which, after being crippled by international sanctions, is now becoming an attractive emerging market for foreign investment. Already, Iran is lining up major commer-cial purchases, including a fleet of Airbus jumbo jets and a Peugeot automobile manufacturing facility, he says.

Despite the challenges, the Iran deal provides an opening for positive change, and the United States should focus on how to “take advantage of the historic opportunity we have to build on this deal,” Ladha says. “I am cautious, but hope-ful. This is a very good start.” —MARJORIE HOWARD

IN THE WINGS

BY HEATHER STEPHENSON

RobertaRobertaRobertaRobertaRobertaRobertaRobertaRobertaRobertaRobertaRobertaRobertaRoberta Jacobson is ready to lead inininin Mexico—if Congress Congress Congress Congress Congress Congress Congress Congress Congress Congress Congress Congress Congress Congress Congress lets her

PHOTOGR APH BY JUSTIN TSUCAL AS

F L E T C H E R M A G A Z I N E 9

It’s been nearly a year since president obama nominated roberta

Jacobson, F86, A19P, to be U.S. ambassador to Mexico. As this maga-

zine goes to print, she’s still waiting for approval from Congress. The

delay is widely interpreted as punishment from Republican lawmakers

who disapproved of the landmark negotiations, led by Jacobson, that

re-established U.S. diplomatic relations with Cuba last year. Jacobson

has been Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs

since 2012, and before that she was the State Department’s point person

for Mexico, Canada and NAFTA. If approved, she will be the first woman to

serve as ambassador to Mexico.

Jacobson recently talked with Fletcher Magazine while visiting Tufts to see her

older son, who is a freshman at the university.

FLETCHER MAGAZINE: What drew you to work in U.S.-Latin American relations?ROBERTA JACOBSON: Around my sopho-more year at Brown, I had decided, to my mother’s delight, that I was going to do political science instead of dance and theater because I liked eating too much to do dance and starve myself the rest of my life. I had studied Spanish in high school, and I was in college from ’78 to ’82, the period during which Latin American countries began to go from military dictatorship to democ-racy. So as a laboratory for political science, it was a really interesting time in Latin America.

I also became captivated by the culture and the rhythms of the music and the dance, so it all came together for me, which was odd for a nice Jewish girl from New Jersey.

Why was it important to reconnect the U.S. and Cuba?It was clear that American public opin-ion had changed. Trade opportunities were being missed, and people were wondering why we were continuing this anachronistic policy.

The Cuba issue was the pebble in the shoe in our relationship with Latin America and the Caribbean. It was undermining our relationship with countries around the hemisphere.

Meanwhile, I’d been working to get

Alan Gross out of prison. He was a U.S. Agency for International Development subcontractor who’d been arrested by the Cubans for bringing in a satellite phone and trying to help the Jewish community connect to the Internet. Alan was not doing well emotionally. We were holding three Cuban spies in prison, and there had been an effort over two years to see if we could work out an exchange. We knew we were going to take a lot of political heat for any kind of swap, so we decided we’d be much better off doing something very big.

The thing that came out of the White House—and honestly I had never contemplated it—was normal-ization of diplomatic relations. And that was because the president thought, OK, I want to do something that really changes the relationship and signals to Latin America and Europe that we’re changing the relationship. I can’t lift the embargo, because the embargo was codified into law. But normalizing diplomatic relations is a big signal. The polling since then shows very, very strong support for the new policy of engagement, even among Cuban Americans.

Although you took some heat for it.From some members of Congress, yes. But I can’t buy my own drinks in

Miami. People want to buy me drinks. People want to kiss me. I can hardly walk through the Miami airport with-out people coming up and thanking me.

Marco Rubio, the Republican senator from Florida and former presidential candidate, seems particularly unhappy with you. He’s twice held up your con-firmation to diplomatic posts, and last fall he placed a temporary hold on your nomination as ambassador to Mexico. What did you do to get Marco Rubio so upset with you?I’m the face of the Cuba policy and I’m up for nomination. So yeah, he’s upset with me, but it’s about the policy. The whole process of nomination and con-firmation with the Senate has become not just broken but really deleterious to our foreign policy. We didn’t have an ambassador in Russia for six months at one point. We didn’t have an ambassa-dor in Turkey for something like nine months. And we don’t have an ambas-sador in Mexico for however long it is until I get confirmed. This should not be happening.

Your first full tour overseas began in 2000, when you were named Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) at the U.S. Embassy in Peru. Some Foreign Service members criticized your appointment because DCM posts are supposed to go to career Foreign Service employees. How has your unusual path to diplomatic posts affected your work?I had passed the Foreign Service Exam, but I made the decision, because my husband’s work was domestic, that I was going to stay in the States. When I was offered the post in Peru, I didn’t feel entitled to it. I understood that the notion that civil servants were going to take DCM jobs was very hard to accept for the American Foreign Service Association. But cases like mine are, in fact, pretty unusual. What I was proudest of was that I could win over, through my work


and the way I treated people, even the greatest skeptics who didn’t think I could do this job because I hadn’t come up the same way they had.

Mexico is the United States’ third-largest trading partner, and you’ve said that your first priority as ambassador will be “to advance U.S. economic compet-itiveness and deepening the economic ties that are so central to opportunities, good jobs and growth.” How would you help the administration do that?There are two main things ambassa-dors can do. First, there is a bully pul-pit. You’re the U.S. ambassador, and people pay attention to what you say, so you can use that for highlighting issues that you think are particularly important. The other thing is sim-ply how you run your team. Mission Mexico, meaning the embassy and the nine consulates, is about 2,800 people. So I would want to make sure that they have the priorities right, and that I’ve been clear about what I think we can all do in these priority areas.

So many of the problems that Mexico faces and that affect our rela-tionship with Mexico, including the economic relationship, boil down to rule of law and having a better-func-tioning justice system and transpar-ent government institutions. They still have a long way to go in Mexico. People tend to think of rule of law as being about access to justice for the poor or about a reduction in human-rights abuses. It’s just as much about the sanctity of contracts, and about a level playing field for foreign investors and open and competitive bidding processes. The current judicial system in Mexico enables cronyism, corrup-tion and bribery. The greater the rule of law, including in the economic and commercial sphere, the better we are going to be able to advance our own competitiveness with Mexico and their own achievement of being a modern, sophisticated economic state.

You helped develop the Merida Initiative, a 2008 security cooperation agreement among the U.S., Mexico and the coun-tries of Central America to combat drug trafficking, organized crime and money laundering. How’s that going? This is such a government answer, but I think it depends on the metrics. We are criticized sometimes because, after all, there are still a lot of drug traffick-ers in Mexico, there are a lot of drugs still coming through Mexico, there is still a great deal of violence. All true. But in Mexico, the federal police have gotten much better—more respon-sive, more capable. But there are over 400,000 state and local police, and from what we know, some of them are among the worst abusers. Sometimes they’re traffickers themselves. So we have a long way to go. Another problem is that the cartels have fragmented, so instead of three or five cartels like when I first started work-ing on Mexico, there are roughly 15. They fight each other, which is where a lot of the violence comes from. The Obama administration has put a lot more money into demand reduction and prevention. That’s critical. Most important, we have to go after drug financing the way we’ve gone after terrorist financing since 9/11. And we are not devoting the same amount of resources to that.

As ambassador, how can you address the continuing flow of people heading north from Central America hoping to get to the United States?I think the larger crisis in Syria and Europe is masking the fact that there is still a crisis here. And it could get worse. We’re looking at drought con-ditions in Central America, especially accelerated by El Niño, that could push 2 million more people into food insecurity. This mass migration will keep happening over and over and over again, with untold tragedies in the meantime, if we don’t attack the

underlying conditions that drive folks to migrate, such as violence, corrup-tion and lack of economic opportu-nities. And we can’t do that without significantly more resources. Congress has allocated up to $750 million to try to get at the underlying causes of the migration. And that money has the potential to make a huge difference. We know what works. The Agency for International Development did pro-grams in 50 communities and looked at another 50 communities where they didn’t do programs, and the crime rates in the program communities all went down significantly. We can now expand upon those programs that we know work. Sustained investment in the region is the only way we start making a difference. And we can’t work only on security. We have to work on economic development and we have to work on governance.

You spend a lot of time mentoring younger professionals. What’s your main message?With work-life balance, I tell people that you can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once. There are different times in your life when you emphasize different things, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There were times when my kids did have to come first and they needed me, and there were other times when they didn’t under-stand why I couldn’t do the field trips and the baking brownies and all the rest of it. But when they stood on the stage with Hillary Clinton, they thought that was pretty damn cool and probably worth it.

HEATHER STEPHENSON, the editor of this magazine, can be reached at [email protected].


daniel reifsnyder sat at the center of a

wide dais in a cavernous former airplane hangar,

his image projected onto four giant screens

above hundreds of diplomats from around the

globe. It was early December and the officials

had gathered in France, a country still reeling

from terrorist attacks just three weeks before,

with the hope of crafting the first climate change

agreement to involve all the nations of the world.

For the past year, Reifsnyder, F14, had been

co-chairing the negotiations leading up to this

United Nations conference, which was the result

of a 2011 U.N. commitment to reach a univer-

sal climate deal by 2015. As the summit drew

nearer, it was common to hear it described as

our last best chance to save ourselves from an

apocalyptic future of our own making. “Never

have the stakes of an international meeting been

so high,” French President Francois Hollande

said at the conference’s opening plenary, “since

what is at stake is the future of the planet, the

future of life.”

BY HEATHER STEPHENSON ILLUSTR ATION BY BRIAN STAUFFER

Behind the scenes at the historic Paris climate conference, where two Fletcher PhDs helped deliver the

deal that just might save humanity from itself

2 SEPARATION

OF°



To protect the future of life, and to avoid devastating floods, droughts, food and water shortages, and destruc-tive storms caused by climate change, scientists reckon that we’ll need to keep the increase in our steadily rising global temperature to just 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above the aver-age from the late 19th century. That will require drastically reducing our carbon emissions. Agreeing on how, exactly, to do that was the job of the diplomats at this conference.

Unfortunately, saving ourselves from ourselves is hardly assured. Recent history is riddled with unsuc-cessful attempts to get the countries of the world to make climate deals or stick to them. For more than two decades,

the U.N. has been holding annual climate talks, which have produced mixed results. Some of that is because climate summits often run round the clock in their final days, and even hardened diplomats can lose their cool. In 2007, after 12 days of wrangling, China accused negotiators of ignor-ing protocol, leading the U.N. official heading the talks to burst into tears and leave the stage. And at the failed 2009 Copenhagen talks, when the U.S. and several other nations hastily cobbled together a nonbinding accord that was announced on live television before some delegates had even seen it, the Venezuelan negotiator Claudia Salerno pounded her table so fiercely that she drew blood. “Climate change is about ecosystems,” France’s senior climate envoy, Laurence Tubiana, has said. “Climate change negotiations are

about ego-systems.”Another reason that climate deals

are hard is that switching from fossil fuels to cleaner energy can be difficult and expensive, and nations have been haggling for years over who should pay. India and other developing countries want the developed world to take greater responsibility. They say it’s immoral to expect poorer nations, which have drastically lower emissions per person, to reduce those emissions to clean up a mess they didn’t make. For them, cutting back emissions often means sacrificing economic development. “The lifestyles of a few must not crowd out opportunities for the many still on the first steps of the development ladder,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote in the Financial Times. Meanwhile, South Africa’s delegate to the negotiations declared in October

that the climate solutions being offered amounted to imposing a new “apart-heid” on developing countries.

Adding to the challenges of the Paris talks were the demands by island nations that any global pact offer them help with rising seas and intense storms that threaten their existence. And it was widely understood that the United States needed any deal to be con-structed in such a way that it wouldn’t require approval from a Congress con-trolled by Republicans who have been hostile to the idea of climate change in general, and the need to mitigate it in particular.

Little wonder, then, that many observers were skeptical about the pros-pects for the Paris conference, which was actually being held in the northern suburb of Le Bourget. A Washington Post editorial published the day the talks

UNFORTUNATELY, SAVING OURSELVES FROM OURSELVES IS HARDLY ASSURED. RECENT HISTORY IS RIDDLED WITH

UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPTS TO GET THE COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD TO MAKE CLIMATE DEALS OR STICK TO THEM.

14 F L E T C H E R M A G A Z I N E | S P R I N G 2 0 1 6 PHOTO: MATT TEUTEN

Daniel Reifsnyder, F14, spent a year co-chairing the

negotiations that led up to the Paris climate confer-

ence. With just hours to go until his deadline, the

chances for a landmark climate deal seemed slim.

opened predicted that the negotiations would fail to “produce a specific plan to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.” Instead, the editorial declared, the conference should be considered a success if it merely bent “the global greenhouse emissions curve downward” and pressed countries to do better.

Still, the recent history of interna-tional climate negotiations hasn’t been all bad. In fact, one very important suc-cess in 2014 set up the potential for a landmark agreement. A full year before the Paris conference began, China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, and the United States, the second larg-est, pledged to cut their emissions. That ability to find common ground after years of “you-first” squabbling helped inspire 184 other nations to submit their own voluntary emissions-reduc-tion plans for the Paris talks. The U.S.-China accord was generally understood to have paved the way for a broader international agreement. Without it, the prospects for a deal in Paris would have been significantly diminished.

Reifsnyder and his co-chair, the Algerian diplomat Ahmed Djoghlaf, had spent the past year leading a group charged with

creating a draft document to serve as the foundation for any accord that would come out of the Paris talks. Reifsnyder and Djoghlaf had picked up the group’s negotiations, which stretched over four years, from the previous year’s co-chairs, which Djoghlaf likened to a new airplane crew taking over in the middle of a trans-Atlantic flight, with-out detailed instructions on what course to take. That may not sound like a good idea, but it is standard protocol for the United Nations.

In the months ahead of the Paris conference, the process to produce the draft document at times seemed to be moving backward. Debates about how to proceed ate up hours, and the draft

text shrank from nearly 90 pages in the summer to approximately 20 pages—when the co-chairs offered their own rather controversial version—until acrimonious negotiations in October sent it ballooning back to 55 pages, with nearly 1,500 passages set off in brackets, meaning that there were unresolved issues with them.

When the two-week talks in Paris began, Reifsnyder and Djoghlaf had just six days left to complete the draft document. After that, the text would be handed over to the president of the conference, the French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who would attempt to produce a climate deal during the gathering’s final week. Any accord that came out of Paris was going to have to be accepted unanimously, so Reifsnyder and Djoghlaf had been working from morning to night trying to address as many of the outstanding issues as possible to make it easier to reach a deal. But as the week they’d been given neared its end, those who’d predicted trouble in Paris were looking like they knew what they were talking about. On Friday, the day before their deadline, Djoghlaf had spent hours trying to help delegates resolve their remaining disagreements, but had made no progress. “Tensions ran high,” reported the Earth Negotiations Bulletin in its daily summary, written by a team including Fletcher doctoral students Anna Schulz and Rishikesh Bhandary.

Still, Reifsnyder seemed calm as he sat on the dais on the final day to pro-duce the document. In a few hours, he and Djoghlaf were scheduled to hand off the text. The French hosts would then lead the final push to try to reach an agreement over the next week, with the help of national foreign ministers, environment ministers and other high-level negotiators, including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

Reifsnyder and Djoghlaf had decided to make no changes to the document, which was still riddled with bracketed

sections that remained unresolved. Instead, they added a “reflection note” listing all the objections that remained from the previous afternoon. “If there is anything in the reflection note that is inaccurate, that doesn’t reflect what you said, or if there is anything not in the reflection note that you feel absolutely has to be in that reflection note, please submit it to us today, if you can by 1 o’clock,” Reifsnyder told the members of the group. The deadline was just an hour away, but he assured the delegates that every concern would be included in the final document.

From there, Reifsnyder got an earful. First up was a delegate from China who questioned the document’s title. Calling it the “draft Paris agreement” was presumptuous, he insisted, since there was no guarantee of an agreement at all. Delegates from Saudi Arabia, India, West Timor and Kuwait expressed concerns about items left out of the reflection note. In a businesslike tone, Reifsnyder reiterated that all their points would be incorporated in the final version. For the title he suggested “draft Paris outcome” instead, and the delegates approved. The gavel went down. The text, messy as it was, would be forwarded to the French.

The mood in the room wasn’t exactly panic, but few at the confer-ence were feeling entirely optimistic about the prospects for a deal. “I don’t think there’s going to be an agree-ment,” Fletcher professor Kelly Sims Gallagher, who has been involved in climate change negotiations since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, said at one point. “The text is in terrible shape. I don’t see how they’ll get from here to there.”

Gallagher, f00, f03, was instrumental in securing the landmark 2014 U.S.-China climate deal. She spent a year

helping the Obama administration develop the agreement on emissions and a new U.S.-led public-private


partnership to help poorer nations cope with the changing climate.

Each year, Gallagher teaches a Fletcher class on climate change and clean energy policy that includes a simulation of climate negotiations. A few weeks before the Paris confer-ence, her students were conducting a simulation of the coming talks, using the actual draft text that Reifsnyder had been working on. Playing the roles of Reifsnyder and Djoghlaf were Lisa Tessier, F16, from France, and Tarun Gopalakrishnan, F16, from India. Over two class sessions devoted to the simulation, they had no luck coming up with a deal that their fellow stu-dents, playing diplomats from around the world, would agree to. In fact, they made less progress than any of Gallagher’s previous classes. The barri-ers to the students reaching an accord included everything from the text itself to intransigent negotiators block-ing compromise. Their experience,

Gallagher said, was just like that of real U.N. negotiators. “Maybe this reflects what we should expect,” she said of the upcoming conference.

About a month before the start of the Paris talks, Gallagher invited Reifsnyder, whom she first met at a U.N. climate conference more than 15 years ago, to return to the Tufts campus to discuss the negotiations with her students. Sitting at the head of a wooden table in the Murrow Room, Reifsnyder described his rather unusual career path. Although he’s 65 and graying at the temples, his round face and easy smile make him

seem still boyish. A lawyer, he started out focusing on federal fisheries reg-ulations for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, followed by bilateral science and technology agreements for the State Department. In 1989, he started working on U.S. climate change policy, an assignment that he assumed would be short term. Nearly three decades later, he was still at it. He earned his doctorate from Fletcher in 2014, taking six months off from his State Department post to finish his dissertation.

Reifsnyder told the students that, during the George H.W. Bush presi-dency, it was his job to promote the administration’s belief that “targets and timetables don’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions, policies and measures do.” But when Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected in 1992, their focus was on targets and timetables. “I was out there saying, ‘Focusing on policies and mea-sures is a fool’s errand. We need targets

and timetables.’”After the class, Reifsnyder and

Gallagher walked to Ginn Library, where Reifsnyder used his iPhone to take a quick photo of his dissertation, which sat on a shelf beside the work of other recent Ph.D.s. From there, they headed through the rain to Ballou Hall, where Reifsnyder was scheduled to give another talk that evening. Arriving at the hall, they encountered professor emeritus William Moomaw, a mutual mentor with whom they both worked on their dissertations. Gallagher greeted him with a hug.

Moomaw is the soft-spoken grand-father of environmental policy wonks at Fletcher. In 1992 he founded the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy, which Gallagher now directs. A chemist by training, he was a lead author of reports on greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy and other topics for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Now in his 70s and semiretired, Moomaw said he wouldn’t be leaving his specially designed zero-net-energy house in the Berkshires to attend the conference in France. Referring to his former students, he said, “I did what I could. They’re running it now.”

After Gallagher and Moomaw’s embrace, Reifsnyder stepped forward, his arms outstretched. “Can I give you a hug too?” he asked.

Once reifsnyder gaveled the meeting in Paris over, with the conference delegates agreeing to forward their draft text, he

handed his paperwork and a rolling briefcase to an assistant and stepped down from the dais. He and Djoghlaf posed for photos with two women who had stayed behind as the hall emptied. “So far, so good,” Reifsnyder said to one of them.

Later, outside the hall, music blared from a boombox as a group of young climate activists from Brazil danced, their conference badges flapping on lanyards that read “Sexify the Climate.” At the song’s end, they posed for photos with a security guard and chanted his name: “Joe-Joe-Joe.” Most of the other activists at the conference didn’t have access to the negotiations area and were instead congregated in the nearby Climate Generations pavilion on the former airport grounds. There, curious Parisians, having passed through security, mingled with people who’d traveled from around the world to make presentations in the exhibition

AS THE WEEK DANIEL REIFSNYDER AND HIS CO-CHAIR HAD BEEN GIVEN NEARED

ITS END, THOSE WHO’D PREDICTED TROUBLE IN PARIS WERE LOOKING LIKE THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT.


halls and meeting rooms, which played host to a side conference of academics and NGOs. The atmosphere was one part festival and one part trade show. A number of informational displays were dedicated to the virtues of bicycle-gen-erated power, including a station where you could pedal to recharge your phone, a juice bar where you spun for a smoothie, and a music area where bikes powered the tunes. An art installa-tion, meanwhile, featured red poppies made of “upcycled” plastic bottles. At another booth, a man in a long brown and orange African robe whistled bird songs to draw attention to a program that teaches schoolchildren in the Republic of the Congo how to grow food and protect the environment.

The planet’s imperiled state may have brought all of these people together, but an undeniable feeling of celebration was in the air. Even Reifsnyder, his official work largely behind him, seemed to

be seeing the bright side of things. The text he’d passed along included a lot of bracketed passages, but from what he could tell, the French team leading the final week of negotiations was pleased with the document. “You can see within it the emerging agreement,” he said. “Now, it’s going to take will on the part of parties to get there. There’s a lot of stuff that’s going to have to fall away. But you can see a deal.”

Across town from the climate talks, Gallagher was welcoming the arriving guests at a brunch she and Tufts economics pro-

fessor Gilbert Metcalf had organized at a hotel in Montmartre, the northern Paris district known for its nightclubs and white-domed basilica on a hill. She greeted the brunch attendees like old friends, appropriate since most of them were. It wasn’t long, though, before she

got to business. Gallagher and Metcalf had invited

these 30 or so leading thinkers—people like Jim Skea, co-chair of the mitigation working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and Zou Ji, deputy director of China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation—to discuss the research questions that should be tackled after the Paris conference, what-ever its outcome, to help policymakers working on climate change.

Gallagher and four of her students were planning to write a paper on the research needs identified at the brunch, and she ran the gathering like a gradu-ate seminar. The conversation danced from topic to topic: How can we speed up access to clean energy for the poor? Can public dollars be leveraged to spur even greater private investment in sustainability? Which incentives would inspire nations and businesses

S P R I N G 2 0 1 6 | F L E T C H E R M A G A Z I N E 17PHOTO: MATTHEW MODOONO

Fletcher professor Kelly Sims Gallagher, F00, F03, bet a dollar that the Paris conference would fail to produce a climate agreement. She was delighted to lose.

to reduce carbon emissions faster? Are government climate policies effective?

After the brunch ended, Gallagher headed out with a participant from China. They talked for hours, walk-ing the hills of Montmartre, before Gallagher strolled to her final commit-ment of the day, a gathering of Tufts alumni, many of whom were attending the climate summit. Arriving at the event, Gallagher checked her Fitbit: nearly 16,000 steps, or about 7.5 miles. “No wonder I’m tired,” she said.

At the alumni gathering, much of the talk focused on the climate conference. “We’ll have an agreement,” predicted Metcalf, a former deputy assistant secretary for environment and energy at the U.S. Department of Treasury who participated in the 2011 climate change negotiations that led to the Paris confer-ence. “It just won’t be terribly ambitious.”

Gallagher disagreed, saying it was unlikely that there would be a deal, but clarified, “I’m not saying that’s what I want.” When someone offered to bet her $1 that there would be an agree-ment, she readily shook his hand.

W ith the draft text approved, Reifsnyder walked alone from the negotiations hall to a dining area and

stood in line, reading messages on his phone. After placing his lunch on a tray, he took a seat at a table and was soon back on his phone, typing angrily with both thumbs.

His wife, Kathryn, had flown to France just to see him on stage that morning, but the U.N. Secretariat had given her a badge for the wrong date and she wasn’t allowed in. Reifsnyder fin-ished his complaint email and hit send, but the phone wouldn’t deliver his mes-sage. So he called his assistant and asked her to complain for him. “If I tell them, I may twist some necks,” he said. “I’m thinking it’s a good idea if you be my buffer.” After a pause, he added, “I don’t

know. Tell everyone.” Then he hung up. Perhaps it occurred to him in that moment that, with his term as co-chair coming to a close, he no longer had whatever influence he’d once wielded.

Suddenly a woman and a docu-mentary cameraman from National Geographic approached Reifsnyder. It seemed that they wanted to interview

the negotiations co-chair, but it quickly became evident that the woman had no idea who Reifsnyder was—she asked for his name twice. Having seen him talking to a journalist, she’d simply assumed he was someone important. “I’m the retired co-chairman,” he said with a smile. He handed her his business card. “They’re collectors’ items now.”

Gallagher wound up losing her bet, of course. Seven days after Reifsnyder’s handoff of the draft text, 195 countries and

the European Union signed a historic agreement in Paris. As expected, the deal aimed to lower greenhouse gas emissions and stave off the worst consequences of climate change. But it surprised many by setting an ambitious new long-term goal: to keep global warming “well below” 2 degrees Celsius and to “pursue efforts” to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The parties even agreed to negotiate more ambitious plans every five years, and wealthy countries pledged to help pay for poorer countries to reduce their emissions and adapt to climate change.

Since its approval, the accord has

been alternately characterized as both a success that marks a new beginning and a failure that doesn’t do nearly enough to address climate change. For her part, Gallagher was glad there was any deal at all.

A month after the conference ended, she participated in a panel discussion in a Fletcher lecture hall to analyze the

agreement. “I was kind of dreading Paris,” she told the 30 or so students and Fletcher staff in attendance. “Maybe because my expectations were so low, it was a wonderful surprise to see how much progress they made.”

A few factors made the agreement possible, Gallagher said, including the landmark U.S.-China accord a year earlier and the skillful diplomacy of the French. And although it frustrated many parties, she said, the decision by Reifsnyder and his co-chair to slim down the draft text in the early fall also contributed to the conference’s ultimate success. That shortened ver-sion gave the French a preview of what might be accomplished, even though some negotiators rejected it.

Still, Gallagher said that the deal glossed over many important details, particularly the specific policies by which global temperatures will be reined in. Much work remains to be done, she said, which is why she is launching the new international Climate Policy Lab at Fletcher. The U.N. process “takes almost forever,” she said. “We need to start thinking about a more flexible approach. This has already taken too long. How do we move things faster?”

“I WAS KIND OF DREADING PARIS,” KELLY SIMS GALLAGHER SAID. “MAYBE

BECAUSE MY EXPECTATIONS WERE SO LOW, IT WAS A WONDERFUL SURPRISE TO SEE

HOW MUCH PROGRESS THEY MADE.”


ENTER, SPRINGEach of the four small gates in the inner courtyard of theCity Palace of Jaipur, India, represents a season. This one, with its undulations of green, celebrates spring. Spandana Battula, F16, took the photo, now on display in Ginn Library.


ConnectKEEPING UP WITH THE FLETCHER COMMUNITY


Connect

PHOTO: VALERY SHARIFULIN/TASS VIA GETTY IMAGES

“The relatively rapid international-ization of the Syrian conflict last year worsened the war, increasing the already high levels of Syrian civilian casualties, but it may prove, paradoxically, the catalyst for real movement towards a feasible solution,” says Elizabeth Prodromou, J81, F83, a visiting asso-ciate professor of conflict resolution at the Fletcher School. Prodromou, who is teaching a class on politics, religion and security in Eurasia this spring, says that a negotiated end to the conflict is essential. “A resolution to the Syria crisis is impossible without an emphasis on diplomacy,” she says.

She spoke recently to Fletcher Magazine about the origins of the con-flict, its religious dimensions and what it will take to end the war.

FLETCHER MAGAZINE: How did the conflict in Syria, which started out locally, esca-late into a regional conflict?ELIZABETH PRODROMOU: The Syria con-flict, at its inception, was already part of a broader regional conflict—the continuation of the Iraq war and the ongoing instability there. The collapse of the Iraqi state in the immediate post-Saddam period generated mas-sive numbers of refugees in Jordan, Syria and Turkey. The absorption of an estimated 1.2 million Iraqi refugees into Syria generated economic and social strains and laid bare already existing tensions between the al-Assad regime and society.

The recalibration and reconfigura-tion of the Sunni-Shia balance of power in post-Saddam Iraq was part of a broader reconfiguration of Sunni-Shia competition in the greater Middle East. The Syrian conflict also developed within the context of the so-called Arab Spring transitional movements. When the al-Assad regime responded with brutality to the anti-regime pro-tests that began in Syria in early 2011, regional actors based their reactions on their calculus about the Sunni-Shiite

THE WAR IN Syria began in March 2011 with peaceful protests against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, but soon became bloody. Now the country faces a growing conflagration, with a massive humanitarian crisis that is affecting not just the region but Europe as well. More than 4 million Syrians have sought refuge in other countries, while an

estimated 6.5 million are displaced within Syria, half of them children. Half the country’s population needs humanitarian assistance.

The conflict has become international, with Iran, Russia and Lebanon’s Hezbollah fighting to prop up the al-Assad regime, while the opposition is backed by Turkey, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The Islamic State (ISIS) and the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front are fighting against the regime. The United States, along with its NATO and European allies, has recently tried to secure a durable ceasefire agree-ment that would allow for humanitarian relief and a political transition.

Solving Syria Other nations may be key to settling the conflict and the wider humanitarian crisis BY TAYLOR MCNEIL

After five years of war, half of Syria’s people need humanitarian aid.

S P R I N G 2 0 1 6 | F L E T C H E R M A G A Z I N E 21PHOTO: CHERYL HAMILTON

power balance in the region, the ongoing instability in Iraq and the fears of conservative authoritarian regimes about the contagion effects of the Arab Spring.

When did this regional conflict become an international one?Foreign fighters from as far afield as Europe and North Africa and the Caucasus have been flooding through Turkey into the Syrian theater since the earliest stages of the conflict, and the U.S.-led coalition launched air strikes against ISIS in Syria in 2014. But the real tipping point came last year, mainly because of two military developments: the significant uptick in Iran’s involve-ment through the presence of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces in Syria, and the start of Russia’s air strikes against ISIS and anti-Assad positions in Syria, as well as Moscow’s advisory and intelligence support to Syrian state forces.

There was also Europe’s extremely belated awakening to the massive refugee and IDP [internally displaced persons] flows generated by the war, as Turkey began sending enormous streams of Syrian refugees into the European Union via the maritime route into Greece.

What are some possible dangers of international involvement?There are expanding, ever-more complicated threats associated with the internationalization of the cri-sis. These include the possibility of a NATO-Russia engagement, due to the brinksmanship of Turkey and Russia—since Turkey shot down a Russian aircraft in November and Russia imposed sanctions on Turkey, NATO policymakers have been very concerned about escalation. Russia has walked back from its more provocative stance. But the leaders of Russia and Turkey are both reckless and unpre-dictable, and the Turkey-Russia strains reflect the broader problem of Turkey’s

ambiguous role as a NATO ally with its own agenda in Syria. Meanwhile, the escalation in tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia also underscores the need for a durable cessation of hostilities.

What can be done to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Syria?The international community has to step up, to respond more consistently and intentionally with funding, struc-tural support and long-term develop-ment assistance. The impacts of the ref-ugee crisis begin in Syria and extend to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, and also to the EU. In the case of the EU, it’s critical to avoid the kind of Faustian bargains between Brussels and Ankara that have turned refugees into political bargaining chips and that reveal the lack of moral authority in Europe and Turkey.

Will current efforts stop the war?A lasting cessation in hostilities will take a mammoth effort involving com-bined military, diplomatic, humanitar-ian and economic strategies for dealing with the Syria crisis. It must involve the coordination of military actions in the Syrian theater and the implemen-tation of a clearly delineated political transition plan for a post-Assad Syria. The partial truce brokered in February by the United States and Russia, which called for a two-week cessation of hos-tilities, was an important step, but the war continues and there is no mean-ingful consensus among the stake-holders about the advantages of a hard ceasefire. And the deal did not even include two of the key combatants, ISIS and the al-Nusra Front.

The bottom line is that there are no optimal military solutions to the Syria crisis. In the absence of political will and candor about the threats and costs of war, conditions in Syria will continue to get a lot uglier, as Secretary of State Kerry recently said. Success will require an enormous amount of political will and leadership on all fronts.

REFUGEE CHAMPIONSASHA CHANOFF, N04, F04, was honored at the White House last year as a World Refugee

Day Champion of Change. Chanoff, a graduate of the Master of Arts in Humanitarian Assistance

program at the Fletcher and Friedman schools, is the founder and chief executive of RefugePoint, a Cambridge-based organization that provides long-term help to the world’s most vulnerable refugees. Since founding the nonprofit in 2005, Chanoff has worked in more than 20 locations across Africa with people fleeing persecution in war-torn areas.

In November, he told WBUR’s “Radio Boston” that concerns about refugee reset-tlement programs allowing dangerous people into the United States are based on fear and not an understand-ing of the vetting process. Of the nearly 20 million ref-ugees in the world, he said, less than 1 percent will have access to a resettlement program.

“We know that we have to take extraordinary cautions to select the right people for these programs,” Chanoff said. It may take years of cor-roborating interviews and fact collecting. “We get to know them.” When humanitarian groups recommend a refugee be resettled, he said, it is often “a life-saving measure.”


Connect

PHOTO: UN/STATON WINTER

The Business of WarA new book argues that in the Horn of Africa, leaders are driven by money and power, not ideology BY DAVID GOODMAN

FOR THE PAST 30 years, the Horn ofAfrica has seen famine, brutal civil wars and floods of refugees fleeing violence. But the upheaval is not sense-less—it has its own inexorable market logic, driven by politicians, generals and insurgents seeking power. That’s the argument that Alex de Waal makes in his book The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power (Polity Press, 2015).

De Waal, a research professor at the Fletcher School and a leading expert on Sudan and the Horn of Africa, argues that the region’s political and military leaders operate on what is fundamen-tally a business model. Money and power are the common currency, and violence is used to achieve specific goals.

As a member of the African Union mediation team for Darfur from 2005 to 2006 and as a senior advisor to the African Union High-Level

Implementation Panel for Sudan from 2009 to 2012, de Waal had a seat at the table during complex negotiations between presidents, warlords, war criminals and diplomats. Mediators were attempting to broker an end to the long and deadly conflict in Sudan that has raged intermittently since the 1980s, claiming more than 2 million lives and displacing some 4.5 million people. The negotiations ultimately led to indepen-dence for South Sudan in 2011, but con-flict continues to dominate the region.

Firsthand experience negotiating with warring parties leads de Waal to make some surprising assertions. For example, he argues that armed opponents are not as ideologically committed to their cause as one might imagine. “Men who belong in different political camps, or who organize lethal violence against each other’s follow-ers, do not hate each other,” writes de

Waal, who has spent years cajoling truces out of such adversaries. “Human

allegiance is tradable: individuals will serve others

for reward.”De Waal, who is the executive direc-

tor of the World Peace Foundation, shows how the behavior of political and military elites is governed by what he calls market logic. “Political entrepre-neurs operate in the political market-place using money and violence,” he writes. “A politician needs money that he can use at his discretion without having to report or account for it—a ‘political budget.’ . . . Most of this fund will be spent on buying (or renting) other politicians, especially those with armed followers. The public budget is the sideshow.”

“Politics is intrinsically unpredict-able, but it is all about staying on top,” de Waal says. “So the political market is simply the rules of this game and how it operates. It’s about who has money, the going price for loyalty and their political skills.”

This political marketplace, shored up by violence, is eroding the institu-tions of government and undermining nation building. But it is essential to understand if one is trying to mediate the extraordinary challenges of the region, he says.

Years of mediating in one of the world’s most intractable conflict zones leaves de Waal cautiously hopeful. “What gives me hope is that as com-munication and education levels improve, there is a push for more inclu-sivity in political systems, which makes them less violent.”

Ultimately, the opportunity lies in engaging with the political market-place. “If the political financiers can come together,” he predicts, “they can change the rules of the game.”

DAVID GOODMAN is the author of Fault Lines:Journeys into the New South Africa.

Insurgents like this Sudan

Liberation Army soldier, shown at a 2008

gathering of peace negotia-tors and rebel groups, “operate

in the political marketplace using money and violence,”

says Alex de Waal.


BOOKSA LU M N I

ABRAHAM, DAVID S., F03The Elements of Power:Gadgets, Guns, and theStruggle for a SustainableFuture in the Rare Metal AgeYale University Press, 2015

BRAUTIGAM, DEBORAH, F82Will Africa Feed China?Oxford University Press, 2015

BREUNING, LORETTA GRAZIANO, F83Habits Of A Happy Brain:Retrain Your Brain to BoostYour Serotonin, Dopamine,Oxytocin, & Endorphin LevelsAdams Media, 2015

GOLDSTEIN, STEVEN M., A61, F62China and TaiwanPolity Books, 2015

GRESH, GEOFFREY F., F07, F11Gulf Security and the U.S.Military: Regime Survivaland the Politics of BasingStanford University Press, 2015

JUDAH, TIM, F86In Wartime: Stories from UkraineAllen Lane, 2015

O’NEIL, VINCENT, F96Dire StepsHarperCollins, 2015

SAKAMOTO, PAMELA ROTNER, F90, F97Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American FamilyCaught Between Two WorldsHarperCollins, 2016

SARGENT, WILLIAM, F71Energy Wars: Notes From the FrontStrawberry Hill Press, 2015

SCOTT, CHARLES R., F94Daunted Courage: A Family’sBicycle Adventure on theLewis and Clark TrailCreateSpace IndependentPublishing Platform, 2015

SPEEKENBRINK, ANTON, F60Trans-Atlantic Relations in aPostmodern WorldAuthorHouse, 2014

FA C U LT Y

CONLEY-ZILKIC, BRIDGET, ED.How Mass Atrocities EndCambridge University Press, 2016

CHAYES, ANTONIABorderless Wars: Civil MilitaryDisorder and Legal UncertaintyCambridge University Press, 2015

CHESTERMAN, SIMON, IAN JOHNSTONE & DAVID M. MALONE

Law and Practice of theUnited Nations: Documentsand Commentary, 2nd EdOxford University Press, 2016

JOHNSTONE, IAN, JACOB KATZ COGAN

& IAN HURD, EDS.

The Oxford Handbook ofInternational OrganizationsOxford University Press, 2016

LEGVOLD, ROBERTReturn to Cold WarPolity Books, 2016

PERRY, JOHN CURTISSingapore: Unlikely PowerOxford University Press, 2016

TRACHTMAN, JOELTrade Law, Domestic Regulationand DevelopmentWorld Scientific Publishing, 2015

Have you published a book this year? Let us know by emailing

[email protected].

Rising Star Spotted in Foreign ServiceForbes magazine has named ARIEL JAHNER, F13, to its “30 Under 30” list, its annual roster of the “brightest young entre-preneurs, breakout talents and change agents” in 20 fields. Honorees were nominated through online submissions and chosen by leaders in their fields.

Jahner, a Foreign Service officer based at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, was honored in the category of law and policy. A narcotics officer in the Policy Unit of the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement

Section at the U.S. Mission in Mexico, she collaborates with U.S. and Mexican officials to stem the flow of heroin from Mexico to the United States. On a typical day, she might prepare talking points for high-level meetings, draft reports for Congress about drug-trafficking trends in Mexico or help develop ways to enhance U.S.-Mexico collaboration on heroin.

Jahner, 27, also supports the Mexican government’s efforts to professionalize law enforcement institutions through the implementation of the Merida Initiative, an intergovernmental partnership established by the U.S. and Mexico to fight organized crime and advance reforms in Mexico’s law enforcement and justice systems.


Connect

PHOTOS: DAVID A. PATIÑO (MASSENGILL); PHIL HUMNICKY (KOSTURA)

HEADING TOD.C. CAREERSFour second-year students in Fletcher’sMALD program who plan to pursue U.S. government careers have been selected as Robertson Fellows, for which they receive full tuition for the academic year. The fellowships are funded by the Robertson Foundation for Government, a nonprofit dedicated to preparing top U.S. graduate students to pursue federal gov-ernment careers in foreign policy, national security and international affairs.

KAITLYN NEUBERGER, aGeorgetown University grad-uate who has worked as a civilian for the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.N. World Food Programme in West

Africa, is focusing her Fletcher studies on civil–military cooperation, with a specialization in Africa.

KRISTIN BUSHBY, who hasdesigned, managed and evaluated programs funded by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development,

is specializing in conflict resolution and human security at Fletcher.

ALEXANDER KOSTURA, a graduateof the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown who also holds a certifi-cate in city planning from UC-Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design, is

concentrating his studies on how to use information and communications tech-nology to support democratization and

sustainable development. LYNN MASSENGILL, a mem-

ber of the Fletcher Energy and Environment Club, is studying international energy and environmental

resource policy and international busi-ness relations.

GENDER POVNew interdisciplinary program is important for every facet of study at Fletcher

THE FLETCHER SCHOOL has launched a new interdisciplinary study pro-gram focused on gender. The Gender Analysis in International Studies program draws on 11 courses the school already offers on gender issues in humanitarian action, international development, armed conflict and other areas.

“Gendered perspectives are relevant to virtually every issue that we study and teach at Fletcher,” says Academic Dean Steven Block, a professor of international economics. “We were too long in recognizing this.” The new program was announced in December, at the school’s first Conference on Gender and International Affairs.

To fulfill the requirements of the new area of concentration, students must take four related courses, including the required overview, Gender Theory and Praxis, which was offered for the first time this spring.

One of the drivers of the program was a 2009 report by the Gender and Equality Project, a student group that recommended that gender be incorporated into all courses. The report provided a baseline for mea-suring progress in areas such as whether Fletcher professors incorpo-rate gender analyses into their courses, the numbers of men and women enrolled in different courses and fields of study, and faculty and student attitudes about gender analysis in their areas of focus.

In 2012 students formed the Gender Initiative to create more oppor-tunities to study gender, says Roxanne Krystalli, F14, now a doctoral student and program manager at the Feinstein International Center at Tufts. “We moved from requiring gender analysis to saying, ‘We want more opportunities for students who want to learn, and for faculty who want to teach [in this area],’” she says.

“Students, faculty and administration at Fletcher have really worked together to reach the important milestone we are at today,” says Dyan Mazurana, an associate research professor at Fletcher and research director at the Feinstein International Center, who has been teaching about gender since 2004 at Fletcher.

The Gender Initiative and another student group, Global Women, organized the December conference, which featured 18 speakers over two days.

“It’s not just about having a conference or adding an important field of study,” Mazurana says. “It’s about how the institution changes and opens up to this very critical form of analysis, as well as the hiring and support of women faculty and faculty with this expertise.” —DAVID GILMORE, F16

To learn more about Fletcher courses and other activities related to gender analysis and women’s leadership, visit go.tufts.edu/gender.


BOSTONThe Fletcher Club of Boston hosted a huge barbecue on the Blakeley lawn in June 2015, with more than 80 alumni and their family members attending. In November 2015, the group co-hosted the sixth annual Boston Alumni-Student Networking Evening at the Hampshire House in downtown Boston, with more than 90 alumni registered. The club also continues hosting regular happy hours. You can find out more about the club’s activities on its Facebook and LinkedIn pages.

SAN FRANCISCOThe fall 2015 season kicked off with a Fletcher Women’s Brunch hosted by PRIYA GHANDIKOTA, F02. This was followed in October by a lunchtime discussion about Chinese climate policy and Fletcher’s Center for International Environment and Resource Policy, featuring Professor KELLY SIMS GALLAGHER, F00, F03. In November, Dean JAMES STAVRIDIS, F83, F84, and former Fletcher dean and former ambassador to Afghanistan Ted Eliot held a fireside chat with alumni on topics ranging from Syria to cybersecurity. PAUL SLAWSON, F60, ED HOYT, F62, F64, and MEREDITH LUDLOW, F03, hosted the event.

NEW YORK CITYThe Fletcher Club of New York (FCNY) picnic in Bryant Park in September 2015 was well attended, despite an unexpected rescheduling due to inclement weather.

As part of its annual support for Fletcher students interning in New York during the summer, FCNY awarded $500 each to GRACE CHOI and JULIUS KAESS, both F16. Grace interned with the policy and corporate program at the Korea Society. Julius interned with the Department for General Assembly and Conference Management at the United Nations headquarters. To those who made donations to support this important activity, the FCNY extends a sincere thanks!

Club members also participated in New York Cares, a volunteer activ-ity to support community needs in the city, and attended events at the Cynthia Corbett Gallery, directed by CYNTHIA VALIANTI-CORBETT, F78.

BRUSSELSThe Fletcher GMAP program held its residence in Brussels in August 2015. JAN HAVRANEK, F09, hosted Dean JAMES STAVRIDIS, F83, F84, and GMAP students for an engaging discus-sion at NATO. MARK STORELLA, F83, A19P, hosted a reception at the U.S.

ambassador’s residence for alumni, GMAP students and a broad repre-sentation of diplomatic and Belgian officials. MARK BAKER, F95, arranged a lunch discussion with Ignacio García Bercero, deputy director general of DG Trade and lead European negotiator for the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.

HONG KONGThe Fletcher Club of Hong Kong re-united in November 2015 for dinner with JACOB HAMSTRA, F11, based in Hawaii; STEPHEN GOODMAN, F00, a leading innovation advisor at Radius in Boston; and CHARLES LEE, F90, who is living and working in Paris and Hong Kong. New club members included University of Hong Kong professor COURTNEY FUNG, F12; her husband JASON FUNG, F10; and HASHAM MEHMOOD, F09, who recently joined the International Finance Corporation. DEIDRE LO, F90; ALICIA EASTMAN, F04; and MAURIZIO BUSSI, F04, also attended a discussion in October for Bridges and Beyond, focused on East/

West dialogue. Maurizio is making headlines heading the International Labor Organization in Bangkok.

LONDONCYNTHIA VALIANTI-CORBETT, F78, hosted the Fletcher Club of London for a private viewing of her exhibi-tion, “Young Masters: Dialogues,” and a talk by ALINA GARCIA-LAPUERTA, F94, who discussed her recent book, La Belle Créole, The Cuban Countess Who Captivated Havana, Madrid and Paris.

PARISTwelve Fletcher and Tufts alumni, including some double Jumbos, and their partners joined Tufts President Anthony P. Monaco for dinner at the Restaurant Lilane in the 5th arrondissement on Oct. 21, 2015. Special thanks to IVY VO, A09, who helped coordinate the event.

FRANKFURTThe Fletcher Club of Frankfurt met at the Riz, a nice little wine bar close to the Goethe Haus, on July 2,

Club News

Brussels

New York City

San Francisco

Connect


2015. The group included CHRISTINE MAURER-VOSS, F97; RAYA KUEHNE, F07; VLADA TKACH, F99; HEINZ HENGHUBER, F04, N04; and JOEL EL-QALQILI, F15. On Sept. 30, the club enjoyed a private tour of a gallery of the Kronberger painter colony, one of Ger many’s earliest artist colonies, in a small town outside Frank furt. Afterward, the group went to Christine’s place, where members enjoyed tarte and conversation with her husband, Ulrich, and son, Ruben.

JAKARTAThe Fletcher Club of Indonesia host-ed an alumni gathering on Aug. 8, 2015, in Jakarta. FAWZIAH SELAMAT, F12; BRYAN STEWART, F06; BRIAN DUSZA, F03; RODRIGO ORDÓÑEZ, F06; and DAVID ABRAHAM, F03, attended.

MEXICO CITYThe Fletcher Club of Mexico held its first Thanksgiving brunch on Nov. 21, 2015, and more than 20 alumni attended. With live music and a special menu prepared by a celebrity chef recommended by

JEANETTE MORENO, F97, the group celebrated the ever-increasing participation of Fletcher alumni as key players in Mexican politics, the Foreign Service and the business community. ULISES CANCHOLA, F92, the Mexican ambassador to Iran, was planning to meet with Fletcher alumni in Mexico City in early 2016 to discuss his experience as a diplo-mat in the U.S., Austria and Iran.

KIGALISOPHIA DAWKINS, F11, BART SMIT DUIJZENTKUNST, F10, and SWETHA SRIDHARAN, F11, escaped the depths of Lake Kivu in a sinking canoe in May 2015. Kigali then saw an invasion of northern-hemisphere summer interns followed by the northern-hemisphere autumn arrival of fresh Fletcher graduates. Get-togethers included a June welcome dinner and meetings at a July Kigali Up! concert and at the October Stromae homecoming concert.

MADRIDThe Fletcher Club of Spain had a

Thanksgiving meal in a beautiful restaurant in Madrid, La Gamella. Attendees included LOURDES MARTÍNEZ, F09, and her husband, José María Benlloch; ISABEL JIMENEZ MANCHA, F16; ISABEL RAVENTOS, F84; JUAN DE LUIS, F84; RENATA CAPELLA, F09, F10; ALBERTO LÓPEZ, F96, and his wife, María Naranjo.

THE FLETCHER WOMEN’S NETWORKAfter elections in October 2015, the Fletcher Women’s Network wel-comed a new steering committee and executive committee, chaired by KIMBERLY (CORCORAN) RHATIGAN,

F14, with vice chairs PRIYA GHANDIKOTA, F02, and ILIRIANA KACANIKU, F04. LESLEY YOUNG, F10, and REBECCA SHOLES, F90, will serve as treasurer and secretary, respec-tively. Incoming steering committee members include CELIA DE ANCA, F90; SILVIA CONTI, F82; PAULA FYNBOH, F14; NITHYA KRISHNAN, F10; NAHLA NANA, F10; CAROLINA NEAL, F14; ANNIE PAULSON, F13; APARNA POLAVARAPU, F10; SHOLES; SUSAN SIMONE, F09; KARI SUVA, F11; and SUSAN WILLIAMS, F00. Many thanks to the nominating committee, led by LINDA YEUNG, F91, along with MIEKE VAN DER WANSEM, F90, and SUSAN WILLIAMS, F00.

Kigali

Madrid

Hong Kong

Jakarta

Mexico City


UNITED STATESARIZONAMORGAN LERETTE, [email protected]

CALI FORNIALOS ANGELESMARK NGUYEN, [email protected] DIEGOBOB STECK, [email protected] FRANCISCOMEREDITH LUDLOW, [email protected]

COLORADOCARL DELFELD, [email protected]

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA*JIMMY ANTIA, F09 [email protected]

FLORIDA*MIAMISABA HAQ, [email protected]

GEORGIAATLANTATIM HOLLY, [email protected]

HAWAI IGREGG NAKANO, [email protected]

I LLI NOISCHICAGOGREGG BAKER, [email protected]

MASSACHUSETTSBOSTON ADRIA CHAMBERLAIN, F08MIKE O’DOUGHERTY, [email protected]

NEW YORKNYC & TRI-STATE AREAMATT HOISINGTON, F12fletchernyc.org

OREGONPORTLANDEDIE MILLAR, F85 [email protected] KRISTEN RAINEY, F06rainey@alumni. princeton.edu

PENNSYLVANIAPHILADELPHIATOMMY HEANUE, [email protected] ETZEL, [email protected] DENNEHY, F89, [email protected]

TEXASHOUSTONSAMINA JAIN, [email protected]

WASHI NGTON*SEATTLEJULIE BENNION, F01 [email protected]

INTERNATIONALAFGHANISTAN*KABULNeeds new leadership

ARGENTI NABUENOS AIRESLUIS ROSALES, [email protected]

ARMENIAARUSYAK MIRZAKHANYAN, [email protected]

AUSTRALIAMELISSA CONLEY TYLER, [email protected]

AUSTRIARAINER STAUB, [email protected] TIRONE, [email protected]

BANGLADESHDHAKASARWAR SULTANA, [email protected]

BELGIUMBRUSSELSMARK BAKER, [email protected]

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVI NASARAJEVOHARIS MESINOVIC, [email protected]

BRAZ I LSÃO PAULOPAULO BILYK, [email protected] PFEIFER, [email protected]

BULGARIANADJA MILANOVA, [email protected] RADKA BETCHEVA, [email protected]

CAMBODIA*Needs new leadership

CANADATORONTOAZIZA MOHAMMED, [email protected]

CHI LEANDRES MONTERO, [email protected] OLAVE, [email protected]

CHI NABEIJINGSTEPHANE GRAND, [email protected] KONGDOROTHY CHAN, [email protected] EASTMAN, [email protected] DONG, [email protected]

COLOMBIASTELLA CUEVAS, [email protected]

COSTA RICAMARIANO BATALLA, [email protected]

ECUADORQUITOGENEVIEVE ABRAHAM, [email protected]

ENGLANDLONDONTANNAZ BANISADRE, [email protected]

FRANCEPARISWILLIAM HOLMBERG, [email protected]/fletcherclubofparis

GERMANYBERLINPAUL MAIDOWSKI, [email protected] TSENKULOVSKI, [email protected]*JOEL EL-QALQILI, [email protected]

GREECEGREGORY DIMITRIADIS, [email protected] VARVITSIOTIS, [email protected]

HUNGARYBUDAPESTANITA ORBAN, [email protected]

I NDIADELHIJOHN FLORETTA, [email protected] CHHATWAL, [email protected]

IRAQBAGHDADNeeds new leadership

ISRAELCECILIA SIBONY, [email protected] HERZBERG, [email protected]

ITALYROME/MILANCHIARA DI SEGNI, [email protected]

JAPANTOKYOMARIKO NODA, [email protected]

KENYANAIROBIANNE ANGWENYI, [email protected]

KOSOVONeeds new leadership

LEBANON*Needs new leadership

MALAYSIASHAHRYN AZMI, [email protected]

MEXICOGUSTAVO E. ACEVES RIVERA, [email protected] ALANIS, [email protected]

NEPAL*RAM THAPALIYA, [email protected] THAPA, [email protected]

NETHERLANDSJENNIFER CROFT, [email protected]

PAKISTANMUMTAZ BALOCH, [email protected]

PHI LIPPI NESCATHERINE HARTIGAN-GO, [email protected]

POLANDWARSAWNICOLAS FIERENS GEVAERT, [email protected]

ROMANIASINZIANA FRANGETI, [email protected]

RWANDAKIGALIIMAD AHMED, [email protected]

SAUDI ARABIAJAMIL AL DANDANY, [email protected]

SI NGAPOREKIM ODHNER, [email protected]

SOUTH AFRICAJACQUES ROUSSELLIER, [email protected]

SOUTH KOREASEOULSUKHEE HAN, [email protected]

SPAI NMADRIDALBERTO LOPEZ SAN MIGUEL, [email protected]

SWITZERLANDGENEVAANAND BALACHANDRAN, [email protected] JAN THRAEN, [email protected]

TAIWANTED I, [email protected]

THAI LANDBANGKOKEKACHAI CHAINUVATI, [email protected]

TURKEYNESLI TOMBUL, [email protected]

UGANDA*Needs new leadership

UKRAI NEKIEVVALERIA SCOTT LAITINEN, [email protected]

UNITED ARAB EMIRATESDUBAIPAUL BAGATELAS, F87CHRISTINE LAUPER BAGATELAS, [email protected]

SHARED INTERESTFLETCHER ALUMNI OF COLOR ASSOCIATIONKELLY SMITH, [email protected]

FLETCHER PHD ALUMNINeeds new leadership

FLETCHER WOMEN’S NETWORK*KIMBERLY (CORCORAN) RHATIGAN, [email protected]

CLUB CONTACTS

*Change or addition since the last edition of Fletcher Magazine


Connect

In Memoriam1940sROBERT A. RUPEN, F49, an inter-nationally renowned expert on Mongolia, at his home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on March 27, 2015, at age 93. He joined the U.S. Army Air Corps in early 1942, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He received an honorable discharge at the rank of staff sergeant in 1945, and then went to Williams College on the GI bill, graduating in 1948; he earned his M.A. from Fletcher the fol-lowing year. It was as a doctoral stu-dent at the University of Washington that he developed a lifelong passion for Mongolia. His dissertation was based on extensive interviews with Mongolian refugees in Germany. His book, Mongols of the 20th Century, was published in two volumes in 1964. He published a political history of Mongolia, How Mongolia is Really Ruled, in 1979. He taught in the political science department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, for more than 30 years. He also taught at Bryn Mawr College, Columbia University, the Institute for the Study of the U.S.S.R. in Germany and both the Naval and the National War Colleges. He visited Mongolia many times over more than 50 years, speaking at the first International Mongolia Congress in Ulaanbaatar in 1959 and receiving the Genghis Khan Award, the government’s high-est honor, in 2004, in recognition of his contributions to the Mongolian nation and its people. He regarded his major contribution as providing the Mongols with an objective view of their history over the 70 years of Soviet and communist rule. He is sur-vived by Alice, his wife of 67 years, a son and two granddaughters.

1950sEDWARD MALONIS, F53, on July 26, 2015, at his home in Mashpee, Massachusetts. He was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, and graduat-ed from Lynn Classical High School. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1952, and received his master’s from Fletcher the next year. He joined the U.S. Navy and was a lieutenant on the minesweeper USS Notable as well as serving as a le-gal/operations officer in Japan and the Mediterranean. He then joined the Foreign Service and worked in the Bureau of Economic Affairs in Milan. He returned to the States in 1963, working for Esso and then as managing editor of Petroleum Intelligence Weekly. In 1970, he started a 19-year career as director of international government affairs at CONOCO, working in the Middle East, Africa and the North Sea, and then in New York, Connecticut, Delaware and Houston. He retired from Agip Petroleum in 1999. He is survived by his wife of 55 years, Mary Huggins Malonis, a daughter and five grandchildren. He was predeceased by his son.

ROBERT G. BENT, A53, F56, on Aug. 9, 2015. A 1950 graduate of Maine Maritime Academy, Bent served as a Merchant Marine officer for two years and then came to Tufts, earning an undergraduate degree in political science. After two years of active duty in the U.S. Navy, he returned to Tufts for a master’s program at Fletcher, where he met his future wife, MARTA BENT, F56. He was a Foreign Service officer for a number of years, posted to U.S. embassies in Saudi Arabia,

Syria and Iran. Later in his career, while based in Washington, D.C., his duties took him to Baghdad, Prague, Berlin, Rome, Panama and Seoul. He retired in 1986, and he and his wife moved to Maine, where he served as president of the Portland Marine Society and of the Maine Maritime Academy Alumni Association. He was on the board of the Portland Harbor Museum for more than a decade; one of his greatest joys was working on the archeological project for the clipper ship Snow Squall, which was built in Maine and abandoned in the Falkland Islands in 1864, after she sustained heavy damage trying to round Cape Horn. He is survived by his wife, a daughter, a son and five grandchildren.

1960sJON TRAIL, F66, on Oct. 6, 2015. He was raised on the family farm outside of Payette, Idaho, and graduated from the University of Idaho in 1965; he earned a mas-ter’s degree at the Fletcher School. He returned to the family farm, and doing business as Trails Inc., he and his parents raised registered Hereford cattle and grew hay, grain, apples, cantaloupes, watermelons, sweet corn and pumpkins. He loved the land, and followed good agricul-tural practices; he was involved in Leadership Idaho Ag, the University of Idaho Agricultural Advisory Council, the Washington County Planning and Zoning Commission, on which he served for 30 years, and the Idaho Horticulture Society. He is survived by his sister, aunt, many cousins and his three rescue border collies and a cat.

1970sHARRY RADLIFFE II, A71, F73, on Dec. 1, 2015, after a seven-year battle with colon cancer; he was 66. An award-winning producer for 60 Minutes for 26 years, he was the first African American to head a CBS News bureau. He earned a bachelor’s in international relations from Tufts and a master’s from Fletcher. He traveled the world, producing stories for CBS News correspondents Walter Cronkite, Ed Bradley, Steve Kroft, Bob Simon and Scott Pelley, among others. As chief of the network’s London bureau—the largest CBS operation outside of New York—in the 1980s he supervised coverage of landmark events of the time, including the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, the rise of terrorism in Europe and turmoil in the Middle East. He contributed nearly 100 stories to 60 Minutes, and received the Peabody Award, television’s highest honor. He was chosen to accompany Cronkite to Pakistan to produce the news-making interview of Gen. Mohammed Zia Ul-Haq, the president of the volatile country on the brink of becoming a nuclear power. While stationed in London, he produced stories on the American hostages in Iran, the funeral of Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat, the war between Israel and the PLO and the Falklands War. He returned to New York in 1988 to become a senior producer for the CBS Evening News, for which he did reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the late 1990s and a profile of Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu in 1999. After 9/11, he began doing 60 Minutes

S P R I N G 2 0 1 6 | F L E T C H E R M A G A Z I N E 57PHOTO: ALONSO NICHOLS

stories from the Middle East, in-cluding profiles of Dubai and Qatar and an analysis of Saudi Arabia and its role in breeding Islamic fundamentalism. He won an Emmy for “Aleppo,” an October 2012 report he produced on the civil war in Syria. He is survived by a brother and a sister. For more memories of him, visit issuu.com/fletch-ermagazinespring2015/docs/harry_radliffe.

MARCIA SPILLANE, F75, on Aug. 16, 2015. She graduated from a one-room school house in rural Nebraska, and she and her husband, John, had three children. She devoted her life to her family and was active in church and school activities. She also worked as an accompanist; most recently she enjoyed playing for school performances at the Harley School in Rochester, New York. She and her husband lived in New York City, Mexico City, Rochester and San Francisco before retiring to Ormond Beach, Florida.

1980sMARIUS GUS SORENSON, F80, on Feb.16, 2014, in Dallas, Texas, from injuries resulting from a fall. He at-tended the U.S. Air Force Academy Prep School and then entered the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, graduating in 1970 with degrees in international affairs and Far Eastern studies and an Academic Order of Merit. He did pi-lot training from 1970 to 1971, and then pursued graduate study as an Olmsted Scholar at the National Taiwan University School of Law in Taipei and the Fletcher School. He returned to the Air Force Academy in 1983 to attend Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base and then served as a command pilot for the C-130

Global AmbassadorDean Emeritus Stephen Bosworth practiced ‘unique brand of diplomacy’

STEPHEN W. BOSWORTH, dean emeritus of the Fletcher School, died ofpancreatic cancer at his home in Boston on Jan. 4. He was 76.

Bosworth, who served as dean from 2001 to 2013, increased the size of the faculty and student body while securing the financial stability of the school during a time of economic uncertainty. He also oversaw the creation of new degree programs that significantly

expanded the school’s teaching, research and global outreach. “Dean Bosworth was an exemplar of all we truly value here at

Tufts,” said Tufts President Anthony P. Monaco in a message to the university community. “As an academic leader and a former U.S. ambas-

sador to the Republic of Korea, he brought moral courage, personal integrity and a passion for scholarship, research and teaching to bear on many of the thorniest problems of our time,” Monaco wrote.

Raised on a farm in Michigan, Bosworth, whose early education occurred in a one-room schoolhouse, became one of the world’s foremost experts on North Korean human rights and nuclear issues. While at Tufts, he also served for three years as the Obama administration’s Special Representative for North Korea Policy.

As ambassador to the Republic of Korea from 1997 to 2001, he strenuously advocated for engagement with North Korea. As head of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization from 1995 to 1997, Bosworth led the negotia-tions to implement the ill-fated 1994 agreement with North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program in exchange for light-water reactors.

“He brought that practitioner’s ethos to Fletcher, and was someone who every one of our students and faculty looked up to, not only as an intellectual leader, but as a person of deep impact on the world,” said James Stavridis, F83, F84, who succeeded Bosworth as dean of the Fletcher School.

A career diplomat, Bosworth also was ambassador to Tunisia and to the Philippines, where he played a key role in the historic negotiations that led to the peaceful transition from the regime of longtime dictator Ferdinand Marcos to the democratically elected administration of Corazon Aquino.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who as a young senator worked with Bosworth on the Philippine negotiations in the mid-1980s, said in a statement that Bosworth’s “unique brand of diplomacy blended the gravitas of a statesman and the timing of a comedian.”

Bosworth is survived by his wife, Christine, four children, 10 grandchildren and two brothers.

Instead of flowers, the family encourages donations to the Bosworth Scholars, a scholarship program the Fletcher School established to honor the dean and his 12-year tenure. Donations may be mailed to Kathleen C. Ryan, The Fletcher School, 160 Packard Ave., Medford, MA 02155. You may also make your gift online at f letcher.tufts.edu/givenow; click “Other” under “Select an Area,” and type in Bosworth Scholars. For more information, email [email protected] or call 617.627.2720.

Connect


Hercules aircraft with the TacticalAir Command. Sorenson retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1989 at the rank of lieutenant colonel with more than 3,000 hours of flight time. During his military career he also was an assistant professor, director of curriculum and sched-uling and pilot/instructor pilot for the 557th Flying Training Squadron at the Air Force Academy. He also managed security assistance programs with Malaysia, the Philippines, Japan and Taiwan. Following his military service, Sorenson worked for Northrup Grumman as vice president of marketing and then as vice president of business develop-ment for Lockheed Martin Global in Taiwan and the Philippines. He is survived by his wife, Margaret A. Sorenson, a son, two sisters and a brother, a stepdaughter, two step-grandsons and several nieces and nephews.

2010sCHRISTOPHER FITZGERALD WRENNSR., F12, on Sept. 1, 2015. He was a highly decorated soldier in the U.S. Air Force, receiving a Defense Meritorious Medal and Joint Service Commendation Medal, among others. During the latter part of his career, he dedicated his efforts to protecting the United States from nuclear and cyber wars. His final military appointment was as deputy director of the Asia-Pacific Cell at the Pentagon; he retired in 2014. He earned a master of public administration degree from Harvard University, an M.S. from Air University and a Ph.D. in interna-tional relations from the Fletcher School. He is survived by his wife, Andi Madden Wrenn, his mother and father, five children, three grandchildren, four siblings and eight nieces and nephews.

Warrior-IntellectualGeneral John Galvin, former dean,shaped counterinsurgency strategy

JOHN R. GALVIN, 86, a four-star Army general who was the top U.S. andNATO commander in Europe in the final years of the Cold War

and whose thinking on counterinsurgency strategy influenced his young aide, future general and CIA director David H.

Petraeus, died on Sept. 25, 2015, at his home in Jonesboro, Georgia, from complications from Parkinson’s disease.

Galvin, who served in the military for 44 years before being appointed dean of the Fletcher School in 1995, was widely known as a warrior-intellectual. A West Point

graduate, he earned a master’s degree in English literature from Columbia University and was a devotee of the poetry of

William Butler Yeats.“Jack and his legacy are woven into the fabric of the school,” Dean

James Stavridis, F83, F84, wrote in an email to the Fletcher community. During his five-year tenure, “he prompted Fletcher’s expanded focus on global business; he established a joint master’s degree in humanitarian assistance between Fletcher and the Friedman School of Nutrition; he oversaw the development of the school’s signature Internet-mediated degree program for midcareer professionals (GMAP); and he inspired the Institute for Human Security,” Stavridis wrote.

“As our former board of advisors chair Peter Ackerman noted back in 2002 at a ceremony for the unveiling of the portrait of Dean Galvin that now hangs in the Ginn Library, ‘Jack was determined to make Fletcher a better place. He restructured the school for a post-Cold War environment. He put a new stamp on Fletcher and was up for any idea that was different, that would make Fletcher fly.’”

While in the military, Galvin had command assignments in West Germany and then in Panama, where he was responsible for U.S. military forces in South and Central America and the Caribbean. In 1987, as the newly appointed supreme allied commander in Europe, he publicly endorsed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The accord eliminated an entire category of nuclear weapons both nations had deployed in Europe, facing each other.

Galvin retired as supreme allied commander in Europe in 1992. He was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Distinguished Service Medal, the Silver Star, and three awards of the Legion of Merit.

The son of a bricklayer, Galvin was the first in his family to go to college. He wrote two books about Revolutionary War history and a memoir, Fighting the Cold War (University Press of Kentucky, 2015). He is survived by his wife of 54 years, Virginia Brennan Galvin, four daughters, a brother, a sister and five grandchildren.

Donations in honor of General Galvin may be made to the General John R. Galvin Lecture Series and mailed to Kathleen C. Ryan, The Fletcher School, 160 Packard Ave., Medford, MA 02155. You may also make your gift online at f letcher.tufts.edu/givenow; click “Other” under “Select an Area,” and type in John Galvin Lectureship. For more information, email [email protected] or call 617.627.2720.

FOLLOWERYou choose.

LEADER

Your contribution leads the way.

Your leadership gift will be instrumental in enhancing Fletcher’s reputation as a school that

promotes stability and prosperity in an increasingly interdependent society. You won’t just

be changing the school. You will be changing the world.

GIVE TODAY: fletcher.tufts.edu/givenow2

FLETCHER ASSOCIATES : Trustees’ Circle: $50,000+ | President’s Circle: $25,000-$49,999

Society of Fletcher Fellows: $10,000-$24,999 | Ambassadors’ Club: $5,000-$9,999 | 1933 Founders’ Club: $2,500-$4,999

Global Leaders’ Club: $1,000-$2,499 | Dean’s Inner Circle: $100x years since graduation

FUNDTHE FLETCHER


Detail

ILLUSTRATION: WARD SCHUMAKER

Brothers of the RoadThere are worse places to fall off a motorcycle than in a Muslim country BY BILL MILES, F82

I KNEW IT WAS a bad idea to get back on Bawa’s motorbike in the middle of a torrential rainstorm that night. Some of the potholes in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso,

the West African nation in which I was conducting ethnographic interviews, had turned into veritable ponds. But Bawa, my host, had been kind enough to ferry me between migrant neighbor-hoods for my research, and now it was time to head back to my lodgings. On top of that, Bawa was the eldest son of the chief I had first met 17 years before, who had since died. I was in Bawa’s care now, and it would have been gauche to question his judgment.

So even as warnings like “This is not a good idea,” “I am taking a chance,” and “C’est dangereux” formed in my mind, we set off on the drenching ride across this city of two-wheel transport and no helmets. I reminded myself of the statistical unlikelihood that a road accident would occur while I was actually contemplating it—a talisman I hoped would ward off the frightful event. Rather than watching the pavement as we bumped along it, I shielded my face from the unremitting rain in the hood of my jacket. That is, until the bike began swerving violently

from side to side. “It is happening,” I then had to admit to myself. “It really is happening.”

Bawa and I flew off his motorbike onto the hard pavement, and I did a kind of bounce and flip before scrambling to my feet to avoid being hit by oncom-ing traffic. My watch and glasses were smashed to smithereens. When I saw the grimace on Bawa’s face and blood spilling from mine, I knew I had been pretty badly smashed, too. “I want to bring you to the local clinic,” Bawa declared, in the Hausa language we had in common. But how? His bike was mangled.

“Frère!” he yelled into the pitch-black night, waving to those of his Muslim brethren who were fool-hardy enough to be plying the high-way. “Frère! Frère!” And a brother responded. A man in a flowing robe and kufi—the pillbox cap favored by the Muslim community—did a turn-around to see what the fuss was about. He too grimaced when he saw my face.

The two spoke in what I took to be Mossi, the most common language in Burkina Faso, of which I know not a word. I was reluctant to be “rescued” on yet another motorbike, by a stranger with whom I could barely speak. Nor did I wish to be separated from my host, or to be treated in the kind of

facility the Peace Corps, which had first brought me to West Africa 37 years before, had warned us to avoid. But what choice did I have? My host’s scooter was broken, and I was bleed-ing. We sped off, then stopped to ask a woman on another scooter for direc-tions. She looked at me, grimaced, and instructed my new driver.

When the “doctor” (really, a paramedic) at the clinic saw me, he grimaced in the manner to which I was becoming accustomed. “We’ll have to sew him up,” he said to the pharmacist on call, “to avoid infection.”

My Good Muslim Samaritan left me after Bawa arrived, apologizing in rudimentary French that he had to “continue.” But he phoned me at 1 a.m. to ask how I was doing, and again the following day.

Two weeks later, when I limped into my classroom in Boston at the start of the fall term—a plastic boot on my foot to protect a fractured fibula, and my left eye crowned by five cordlike sutures reminiscent of Frankenstein’s—my accident turned into a lesson. Two American journalists had just been beheaded in the name of Islam. The Muslim Brotherhood was being vilified as a terrorist organization in Egypt. And American culture was infected, as it still is, with Islamophobia. I knew I had to share my experiences.

Having lived for years in Muslim West Africa, I had come to rely on the communitarian spirit fostered by Islam. I tried to impress upon stu-dents the most important thing I had learned: that the real “Muslim brother-hood” is one that extends its assistance to all in need, including the white stranger from America.

WILLIAM F.S. MILES, F82, is a professor of political science and former Stotsky Professor of Jewish Historical and Cultural Studies at Northeastern University. His most recent book is the aptly titled Scars of Partition: Postcolonial Legacies in French and British Borderlands.

Consider making a gift to support the future of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. By simply including Fletcher in your will or trust, or naming Fletcher as a bene�ciary of your retirement plan or life insurance policy, you can provide future generations with the resources they need to e�ect change in local and global communities. Your planned gift will help Fletcher continue to make a vital impact on dedicated and passionate students and our ever-changing world.

The World Is Constantly Changing.

One Thing Remains the Same: Your Support Will Help Tomorrow’s Leaders Tackle the World’s Greatest Challenges.

FletcherT h e A u s t i n B .

Society

For information about how to bene�t the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy

through your estate plans, please contact our gift planning o�ce:

888.748.8387 • [email protected] • www.tufts.edu/giftplanning

Icebergs �oating in a glacier lake in Jokulsarlon, Iceland.

NONPROFIT ORG.U.S. POSTAGE

PAIDBOSTON, MA

PERMIT NO. 1161160 Packard AvenueMedford, MA 02155

6 Precious metals 8 After the Iran deal 22 Cash and conflict

COOLING HER HEELSPresident Obama wants ROBERTAROBERTAROBERTAROBERTAROBERTAROBERTAROBERTAROBERTAROBERTAROBERTAROBERTAROBERTAROBERTAROBERTAROBERTAROBERTAROBERTAROBERTAROBERTAROBERTAROBERTAROBERTA JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON, JACOBSON,

F86,F86,F86,F86,F86,F86,F86,F86,F86,F86, A19P A19P A19P A19P A19P A19P A19P A19P A19P A19P A19P A19P, to be the next U.S. ambassador toMexico. But her confirmation has been stalled since last summer. What would she do in the role—and why the wait?

FOR MORE ON THE STORY, TURN TO PAGE 9.

Change of address? Questions? Email [email protected].