Where we’re headed

Where we’re headed

by Baylee Simon
Northwestern Chronicle
January 30, 2005

Approximately 68 Northwestern students and Evanston residents gathered in Harris Hall Jan. 24 for the 8 p.m. Town Hall on "The Future of U.S. Development Policy," sponsored by Americans for Informed Democracy (AID) and the Center for International and Comparative Studies.

The Town Hall featured guest speakers Richard Joseph, director of NU's Program of African American Studies; Richard Longworth, executive director of the Global Chicago Center, part of the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations; and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, U.S. Representative of Illinois' Ninth Congressional District since 1998.

"The idea was to create a panel that came from a variety of fields that dealt with [developmental policy]," said Sarah Bush, president of AID. "I think there's a growing interest on campus for international issues. Most of share the belief that the U.S. does have a role to play in the world, we're not just living in a bubble," the Weinberg senior said.

A part of a national initiative of AID sponsored events entitled "Red, White and Blue Coming Together," this past Monday's Town Hall focused on the conflicts U.S. development policy faces, including Tsunami aid, the AIDS pandemic and foreign policy in an increasingly more global community.

"The real solution to development lies through the process of globalization," said Longworth, a Medill graduate. "The fact is globalization has the promise of solving long term problems. It also has the promise of causing real long term pain."

Longworth breaks U.S. emergency aid down to three levels. The first level is the type of short term aid that functions to alleviate the damage of national disasters, such as the Tsunami.

"This sort of emergency aid can do an awful lot of good and is something for us that is very painless," Longworth said, comparing such short term emergency aid to buying a StreetWise from a homeless person.

The second level of emergency aid is more long term development aid that "can alleviate problems of health, do infrastructure work and cut extreme poverty" in developing countries. The third level of aid is "they kind of policy that obviates need for aid in the long run," according to Longworth.

"This aid reaches into places where private markets don't reach," said Longworth, pointing out that the U.S. is only giving one-tenth of what it should be in emergency aid according to the U.N.'s Millenium Aid Goals, established in 2000.

The problem lies in balancing responsibilities to U.S. citizens and foreign countries in need, a feat that becomes increasingly more difficult with the affects of globalization in transforming the world into a global community.

"By living up to people in one part of the world, we can't give up our responsibility to people in another," Longworth said. "Our chore is to try to balance these responsibilities to our communities. Globalization means nothing unless we can raise the standards of other people's living to our levels."

Congresswoman Schakowsky argues that it is not only the U.S.'s duty to ensure aid to suffering countries, but it is also in the U.S.'s best interest to endorse strong developmental policies.

"We need to get over the idea of developmental aid as a wonderful, generous way of feeling good about ourselves. We need to understand it in its most narrowest view as being in our own self-interest," said Schakowsky, who serves as Chief Whip on the House Democratic Leadership team and is part of both the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Congressional Human Rights Congress.

She points out policymakers' changing ideology of freedom and liberty, disconnecting the two from such basic needs as having enough food on the table and an education for those struggling in poverty.

Congresswoman Schakowsky read statistics citing approximately 1.3 billion people in the world living on less than $1 per day without any access to clean water. She also read that 3 billion people in the world live on less than $2 and have no access to sanitation.

"It is in the interest and capacity of this great country to not only address these preventable causes of death, illness and suffering around the world, but we need to do it for ourselves if we're going to have a world with a modicum of stability," said Schakowsky.

Richard Joseph, a John Evans Professor of Political Science with expertise in democratic transitions, state building and conflict resolution, compared today's global issues to those of the 1960s and the Vietnam War, citing both as fights that affected every U.S. citizen.

While Joseph sees the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals, seven goals around which countries are supposed to draft policies and chart developmental successes, as positive, he maintains the most important aspect of making social and economic progress is raising awareness.

"The challenge we face is how do we make the exceptional the norm?" Joseph said. "Consciousness raising is very important and so is advocacy. But not to be overlooked is engagement."

Joseph charges NU with the task of introducing international development as a more quantifiable part of the undergraduate education, a challenge he has already taken up with African Studies programming.

"We should give you the opportunity to prepare for the real world out there," Joseph said.

AID co-vice president Megan Dold was very pleased with the Town Hall turnout.

"I think it went fairly well," the Weinberg sophomore said. "I was really happy that community members were so involved. I was happy that they would want to take part in this as much as the students."

Wednesday, Feb. 2 at 8 p.m. AID will reconvene in Harris Hall to discuss the Millennium Development Goals and draft a proposal on funding to policymakers.

News Editor Baylee Simon is a Medill sophomore. E-mail her at b-simon@northwestern.edu.