The ICWA Board of Trustees have selected Shannon Sims for a two year Forest and Society Fellowship in Brazil.
A 2011 graduate of The University of Texas School of Law, Shannon has a passion for photography, travel and the environment. She earned a B.A. in International Relations with a concentration in Politics from Pomona College in 2005. She also completed coursework at Cattolica University in Milan, Italy; İstanbul Bilgi University in Istanbul, Turkey; and University of the Aegean in Mytiline, Greece. Following the BP Oil Spill in April 2010, she was nominated for an environmental law internship with the United States Coast Guard District 8 Legal Division in New Orleans, where she helped draft unique legal regulations defining the role of the Coast Guard during a drilling moratorium.
In 2009, through the Rapoport Fellowship from the Rapoport Center for International Human Rights and Justice at the University of Texas School of Law, Shannon completed a legal clerkship with the Attorney General's Office of the Ministry of the Environment of Brazil (IBAMA). She researched concessions management in environmentally protected areas along the coast, and documented small Brazilian fishing communities.
As an ICWA Forest and Society Fellow in Brazil, Shannon will later this year begin researching and writing about stakeholder involvement in the governance of the South Atlantic Coastal Forest, the Mata Atlantica—a vast and important, yet heavily degraded, forest belt running along Brazil’s eastern seaboard.
A little after 9 a.m. on Sept. 15, 1990, the owner of a steel-products
company pulled up to her office in Vinegar Hill, near the Brooklyn Navy
Yard, and spotted a black garbage bag sitting on the sidewalk out front.
She parked her car and went to...
Spending four years in Haiti, where the government is too poor to provide even basic services, made me realize that the United States is moving in the same direction. It’s time to start propping up our government—instead of destroying it.
Dominican drug rehab centers are struggling to keep up with a rise in crack and cocaine addiction, a consequence of the country's decades-long role as a transshipment point in the international drug trade...
El Paso and Ciudad Juárez lie together uncomfortably like an estranged couple, surrounded on all sides by mountains and desert. The cities are separated by the thin trickle of the Rio Grande, which flows through concrete channels, built to put an end to the river’s natural habit of changing course and muddying boundaries...
On the second Sunday in July, exactly one year after the final game of the 2010 World Cup was played here at Johannesburg’s Soccer...
From the moment it leaped out of captivity on January 12, 1995, the wolf has been fruitful and multiplied and replenished the earth. From a dozen Canadian transplants, 1,700 individuals in 250 packs now roam our Rocky Mountain wilds…|
INTERVIEWS |
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Wendy Call featured on PRI's The World
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Nicholas Schmidle - Details Of The Bin Laden Raid, Recounted By The SEALs
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Dirk Vandewalle Speaks About the Crisis in Libya
www.charlierose.com |
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Andrew Tabler has been prominent commentator on Syria and the Middle East
Council on Foreign Relations C-SPAN Washington Journal Charlie Rose PBS Newshour NPR New York Times, 3/27/11 New York Times, 3/25/11 Wall Street Journal Early positive review for: In the Lion's Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle With Syria by Andrew Tabler (see Books below), was reviewed in the July 11, 2011 issue of Publishers Weekly (circ 19,068). http://www. |
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AWARDS |
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Padma Award 2011
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Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with author Wendy Call about the clash of traditional Mexican culture with economic globalization in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Call’s book “No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy” talks about the villages and cultures found on the isthmus. 
Former ICWA fellow Dirk Vandewalle is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, and former chair of its Asian and Middle Eastern Studies program. His academic specialty focuses on the political economy of North Africa, and on strategies of political and economic liberalization in the Middle East. He is the author of “Libya Since Independence: Oil and State-building” (Cornell University Press), “A History of Modern Libya” (Cambridge University Press), and editor of two volumes on Libya and North Africa. Dirk has received — among many awards — two Regional Fulbright Research Awards for research in Morocco and Yemen (1997), and the Arab Gulf countries (2005-06) respectively, as well as a Social Science Research Council grant. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Institute for International Development and at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. As part of his 2005-2006 Fulbright award, he spent 10 months in the Arab Gulf countries, investigating the politics of economic reform and development in the region. He was an ICWA Fellow in Egypt and North Africa (1986-1989).
An expert on Syria and Lebanon, Andrew is a Next Generation Fellow in the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute, where he focuses on U.S. engagement with Syria. During his ICWA fellowship (2005-2007), he wrote on Syrian, Lebanese and Middle Eastern affairs. He's the cofounder and former editor-in-chief of Syria Today, Syria's first private-sector English-language magazine, and has been a media consultant for Syrian nongovernmental organizations (2003-2004) under the patronage of Syrian first lady Asma al-Asad. His book, In the Lion's Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle with Syria, is scheduled for release on September 1st (Lawrence Hill Books). He has most recently appeared as a guest on: Charlie Rose, PBS Newshour, NPR. 
Granville (Red) Austin has been awarded the Padma Shri, one of India's highest civilian honors, in recognition of his work on the Indian constitution. The Padma Awards, announced each year on the eve of the country's Republic Day, are generally awarded to Indian citizens to recognize their distinguished contribution in the areas of Arts, Education, Industry, Literature, Science, Sports, Medicine and Social Service. This year, Red was one of five Americans who received awards for distinguished service in Literature and Education, Journalism, Public Affairs, and Science and Engineering.BOOKS |
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IN THE LION'S DEN Vast, inscrutable, unpredictable, Syria has traditionally been the toughest nut to crack in the Middle East peace process. After 9/11 and Damascus' opposition to the War in Iraq, Washington decided it had had enough, and began a quiet campaign against Asad's regime. There were no Western journalists or academics based in Damascus during this period - except for Andrew Tabler. "In the Lion's Den" tells the unique story of the war no one knew about as seen from the inside. As Tabler negotiates his way through the labyrinth of Syrian politics, where nothing is at it seems, and no-one says what they mean, we learn how the country works, and how the signature events in Washington's attempts to create a 'New Middle East' - sanctions, meetings with opposition groups, support for Israel's 2006 bombing campaign in Lebanon - played out in the corridors of power in Damascus. Part expose, part vivid narrative account of one man's encounter with one of the most baffling political systems in the world, "In the Lion's Den" is an essential introduction to modern Syria and a warning for international policymakers now trying to engage with the state of the hidden depths that lie beneath its sun-scorched surface. Lawrence Hill Books
— September 1st, 2011
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Policy Entrepreneurship and Elections in Japan Ozawa Ichiro is one of the most important figures in Japanese politics, having held the positions of Chief Secretary of the Liberal Democrat Party and, after defection from the LDP, President of the Democratic Party of Japan. Ozawa has distinctive ideas that set him apart from the average Japanese politician, he believes in the concept of the independence of the individual, as opposed to the importance of the group, and as a policy entrepreneur he has had a huge impact on political change not only advocating but precipitating institutional change in a key political area – the election system. Using extensive interview data from key players in the political arena, this book examines Ozawa's struggle to normalize alternation in office between two competing political parties – particularly significant given the results of the 2009 election which handed over power to the Democratic Party of Japan – and how he has used his entrepreneurial talents to precipitate and carry out institutional change. Not only a political biography, but also an in-depth analysis of the Japanese political and electoral systems, this book will be of huge interest to anyone interested in Japanese politics and electoral systems. Routledge - 224 pages
— April 21, 2011
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The Genius of Islam Islam is one of the world’s great religions, one of history’s most important civilizations, and one of the foundational cultures of the West. During Islam’s first five hundred years, from the seventh through the twelfth centuries, this new religion created the most innovative and influential civilization on earth, an essential bridge between antiquity and modernity. The Genius of Islam surveys the remarkable contributions Islamic civilization has made to the world - in art, design, calligraphy, architecture, music, engineering, philosophy, astronomy, medicine, agronomy, optics, cartography, paper, and mathematics - how those contributions sparked the European Renaissance and how, until recently, they were mostly forgotten. The Genius of Islam is essential reading for anyone interested in history, the turning of fortune’s wheel, and the march of contemporary events in the Muslim world. In English by Knopf
— April 5, 2011
www.brynbarnard.com
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The Rule of Law in Afghanistan: Missing in Inaction How, despite the enormous investment of blood and treasure, has the West's ten-year intervention left Afghanistan so lawless and insecure? The answer is more insidious than any conspiracy, for it begins with a profound lack of understanding of the rule of law, the very thing that most dramatically separates Western societies from the benighted ones in which they increasingly intervene. This volume of essays argues that the rule of law is not a set of institutions that can be exported lock, stock and barrel to lawless lands, but a state of affairs under which ordinary people and officials of the state itself feel it makes sense to act within the law. Where such a state of affairs is absent, as in Afghanistan today, brute force, not law, will continue to rule. Cambridge University Press
— April 30, 2011
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No Word for Welcome Wendy Call visited the Isthmus of Tehuantepec—the lush sliver of land connecting the Yucatan Peninsula to the rest of Mexico—for the first time in 1997. She found herself in the midst of a storied land, a place Mexicans call their “little waist,” a place long known for its strong women, spirited marketplaces, and deep sense of independence. She also landed in the middle of a ferocious battle over plans to industrialize the region, where most people still fish, farm, and work in the forests. In the decade that followed her first visit, Call witnessed farmland being paved for new highways, oil spilling into rivers, and forests burning down. Through it all, local people fought to protect their lands and their livelihoods—and their very lives. Call’s story, No Word for Welcome, invites readers into the homes, classrooms, storefronts, and fishing boats of the isthmus, as well as the mahogany-paneled high-rise offices of those striving to control the region. With timely and invaluable insights into the development battle, Call shows that the people who have suffered most from economic globalization have some of the clearest ideas about how we can all survive it. University of Nebraska Press
— June 2011
www.nebraskapress.edu
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