The James D. Ewing World Affairs Lecture was named in honor of James Ewing, owner and publisher of the Keene Sentinel, an award-winning daily newspaper for the Monadnock Region from 1954 to 1993. The Endowment has been established to bring speakers to Keene State College and the Keene community to address current public or world affairs issues.
During his years as publisher of the Sentinel, Mr. Ewing successfully campaigned for a wide range of local and state causes, including environmental protection, freedom of information, and public services for the poor. His life-long dedication was to raise the standards of journalism at home and abroad, to advocate for strong news coverage, open-meeting laws, and fair reporting. His newspaper philosophy was “to help make the Sentinel a force for progress in all senses, and to make a contribution toward a richer life for every person within our reach.”
Mr. Ewing was active in civic and cultural organizations and supported many causes in Keene and beyond. He founded the New Hampshire Humanities Council in 1973 and served as director for the MacDowell Colony, Yankee Publishing Corp., Keene Regional Industrial Foundation, Greater Keene Chamber of Commerce, and the Monadnock United Way. He helped launch the International Center for Journalists, a Washington, DC based training institute for journalists from around the world. For three years, he served as a judge for the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism. Mr. Ewing’s wife, Ruth, continues to pursue the couple’s strong interest in the world community.
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Marcelo Brodsky, Visual Artist, Human Rights Advocate
“Memory Works”
Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 6:30 p.m.
Mabel Brown Room, L.P. Young Student Center
Forced into exile in Barcelona after General Jorge Rafael Videla’s 1976 coup in Argentina, Marcelo Brodsky studied economics at the University of Barcelona and photography at the Centre Internacional de Fotografia. In 1986, after returning to Argentina, he founded his own picture agency, Latinstock. With work focused on visual language, memory, and human rights, Brodsky is the recipient of the 2008 B’nai Brith Award for Human Rights and the 2014 Dr. Jean Mayer Award.
In conjunction with the talk, the Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery will host Marcelo Brodsky: 1968: The Fire of Ideas and Selected Works March 20 – June 23, with an opening reception from 4-6 p.m. March 20, before the Ewing Lecture.
Dr. Bridget Coggins, Associate Professor of Political Science
“Not Part of US? Secessionist Politics in the US and Abroad”
Monday, March 26, 2018 at 7 p.m.
Centennial Hall, Alumni Center
The US periodically grapples with demands for independence, but sincere efforts, drawing large numbers of supporters, have not occurred for decades. Recently, Americans on both ends of the political spectrum have begun discussing separation more seriously; however, the movements seem tainted by foreign countries motivated by their own interests, and not principles like justice or self-determination. The US too, has been deeply involved in the politics of secession in other countries including Kosovo, Georgia & South Sudan.
What do we know about the causes, dynamics and consequences of secessionism elsewhere that can help us think through the new politics of separatism in the US today? What role does, or ought, the US play in the politics of secession in the distant & varied conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Cameroon, Somalia, Spain or the UK? What influence will outsiders have on independence movements in the US? Who is a part of us & who should part us?
Manal al-Sharif, Activist and Campaigner
“Live Free & Drive, in the Kingdom of Saudi Men”
Tuesday, October 11, 2016 at 7 p.m.
Mabel Brown Room, L.P. Young Student Center
Manal al-Sharif, a Saudi activist and campaigner, got her first driver’s license in Concord, NH, at the age of thirty. When she went back to Saudi, she started a movement that shocked her country and the world.
She garnered international attention after posting a video on YouTube of herself, driving, in an act of civil disobedience. In retaliation, the Saudi government detained al-Sharif and charged her with “disturbing public order” and “inciting public opinion.” Over 4,500 Saudis signed a petition to King Abdullah demanding her release. After sustained pressure from domestic and international groups, al-Sharif was released on the conditions that she post bail, return for questioning upon request, and refrain from driving and from speaking to the media. She remains an active critic of the Saudi authorities.
Foreign Policy named al-Sharif one of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2011,” and in 2012, she was one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People.” She is also a Vaclav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent Laureate.
Now, al-Sharif returns to New Hampshire to tell us what the media didn’t report.
Dr. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Chair and Distinguished Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies
“Confronting Imperial Democracies: Cultivating a Passion for Gender Justice”
Tuesday, October 13, 2015 at 7 p.m.
Centennial Hall, Alumni Center
What do social justice scholars, activists, and cultural workers need to know, analyze, and learn about so we can forge ethical solidarities across borders, and build the landscapes of racial and gender justice that we dream about and struggle for? Reflecting on her own journey as a feminist from the Global South, committed to building cross-border solidarities, Chandra Talpade Mohanty examines the USA, Israel, and India, comparing three geopolitical sites as areas of normalized violence. Neoliberal and militarized state and imperial practices at these sites are often sustained by development/peace-keeping/humanitarian projects. Talpade Mohanty suggests that social justice advocates need to confront them as imperial democracies.
Chris Mburu, Human Rights Activist
“Education as a Human Right: Global Solutions for Global Problems”
Wednesday, March 26, 2014 at 7 p.m.
Mabel Brown Room, L.P. Young Student Center
When Swedish holocaust survivor Hilde Back supported a young, rural Kenyan student named Chris Mburu, she thought nothing of it. Now a graduate from Harvard University and a human rights lawyer for the United Nations, Mburu found the stranger who changed his life, has started a scholarship program, and has named it for his former benefactor. Mburu, a passionate human rights defender and human rights lawyer for the UN, now fights
the battle to make education free for all children. He argues that the failure by many governments to invest in education has led to disempowerment and marginalization, which breeds deadly violence and conflict.
Roya Hakakian, Author, Poet and Activist
“Journey for the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran”
Wednesday, October 1, 2014 at 7 p.m.
Mabel Brown Room, L.P. Young Student Center
Hakakian is the author of two collections of poetry in Persian. She serves on the board of Refugees International and is a founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. She has written a memoir of growing up as a Jewish teenager in post-revolutionary Iran, Journey from the Land of No, and her most recent book is Assassins of the Turquoise Palace, about Iran’s terror campaign against exiled Iranian dissidents in Western Europe. Hakakian is also a recipient of the 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction.
Born and raised in a Jewish family in Tehran, Roya Hakakian came to the United States in May 1985 on political asylum.
La Pocha Nostra, Performance by Brujo Guillermo Gomez Pena
“Strange Democracy”
Thursday, March 29, 2012 at 7 p.m.
Mabel Brown Room, L.P. Young Student Center
Post-Mexican writer and performance artist Brujo Guillermo Gómez-Peña reflects on identity, race, sexuality, pop culture, and current politics. He also denounces anti-immigration hysteria and assaults demonizing views of the US/Mexican border. Using acid humor, hybrid literary genres and multilingualism, Gómez-Peña pushes the “mainstream” to the margins and focuses on cultural borders.
Greg Mortenson, Co-Founder and Executive Director of nonprofit Central Asia Institute
“Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School At A Time”
Friday, March 5, 2010 at 12:30 p.m.
Mabel Brown Room, L.P. Young Student Center
Greg Mortenson will present the Ewing World Affairs lecture on his 15 years of experience working in remote, rugged mountain regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan that have made him an expert in a region that few people know about – which is now front and center on the global arena of the war on terror. Through his unique perspective of the region’s culture, history, geo-politics and development aspects, Mortenson shares insightful commentary and stunning photography about his extraordinary journey of a decade long effort to promote girl’s education.
Gretchen Steidle Wallace, Founder of Global Grassroots
(2008-2009)
“Survivors of Conflict, Agents of Change: How Africa’s Women Are Using Grassroots Social Entrepreneurship to Rebuild from Genocide,”
Gretchen Steidle Wallace, founder of Global Grassroots, a nonprofit organization that invests in social entrepreneurship to advance women’s well-being in poor countries, will be the guest speaker at Keene State College’s James D. Ewing World Affairs Lecture at 7 p.m. on Thursday, October 30, in the Mabel Brown Room of the Student Center. Her talk, “Survivors of Conflict, Agents of Change: How Africa’s Women Are Using Grassroots Social Entrepreneurship to Rebuild from Genocide,” will explore her work as a social entrepreneur helping to empower women in genocide- and conflict-torn areas of the world. The lecture is free and open to the public. Gretchen Steidle Wallace received a BA in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia (where she attended as a Jefferson Scholar), and her MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, where she helped found what is now Tuck’s Allwin Initiative for Corporate Citizenship. The Allwin Initiative works to give business leaders a sense of corporate responsibility, service, business ethics, and knowledge of social enterprise. She co-authored her brother’s memoirs, The Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur, the story of former Marine Captain Brian Steidle, and produced a documentary film with the same title. She was honored by World Business Magazine and Shell as one of the top International 35 Women Under 35. In 2004 Wallace led a team to South Africa to study the impact of HIV/AIDS, the work of social entrepreneurs combating the disease, and the opportunity for creative business investment in the epidemic. In the townships of South Africa, she discovered how critical a role the lack of women’s sexual and economic rights played in the continued spread of HIV. In late 2004, inspired by her work in South Africa and her brother’s tenure in Darfur as a military observer for the African Union, she incorporated Global Grassroots. Global Grassroots (www.globalgrassroots.org) uses consciousness practices, social entrepreneurship training, and seed funding to help women victims of conflict and genocide launch their own ideas for social change. In 2005, she returned to Africa to launch Global Grassroots’ initial work in the Darfur refugee camps of eastern Chad.
Dan Maxwell, Tufts University Professor
(2007-2008)
“Why Do Famines Persist? Humanitarian Action in Emergencies in the 21st Century”
Daniel Maxwell has worked for most of the past decade in East and Central Africa – one of the most famine-prone areas of the world. His current focus draws on that experience: How have we responded to famines in the past and how has our understanding of famines changed? What do we know about their causes? How will we cope with the changing risk of famine in the future and the challenges facing both humanitarian aid workers and people at risk of famine in the 21st century? For nearly 30 years, Professor Maxwell has held leadership roles in humanitarian program development and management in various roles, mostly in Africa. Much of this work was both addressing the acute affects of famine and food security crises and working to reduce the risk of such crises. For 20 years, he has also been engaged in interdisciplinary-applied social research with an emphasis on famine and food security. He is currently associate professor of nutrition at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University and research director, Food Security and Livelihoods in Complex Emergencies, at the Feinstein International Center also at Tufts. He is responsible for developing and leading a program of research in famine and food insecurity in complex emergencies and conducts broader research on humanitarian action and agency quality and effectiveness. Before that, he spent eight years with the CARE-International, East and Central Africa Regional Management Unit. He is the coauthor, along with Chris Barrett of Cornell University, of the 2005 book Food Aid after Fifty Years: Recasting Its Role.
Dr. David Walton, Partners in Health
Dr. Paul Farmer, Partners in Health
(2005-2006)
“Globalization: Impact on Peoples of the World”
In a reflection of his work with Partners in Health in rural communities in Haiti, Dr. David Walton wrote, “I came to realize that the poor deserve preferential treatment. Diseases settle on the poor because they have been forced to endure hunger, famine, political violence, and social inequality.” Tuberculosis, cholera, and malaria are all but unknown in the West. Yet these treatable and preventable diseases are among the major causes of mortality in poor and developing nations. Dr. Walton, a resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a volunteer for the international charity organization Partners in Health, will speak at Keene State College’s fourth annual James D. Ewing World Affairs Lecture. The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held on Friday, November 4, at 4 p.m. in the Mabel Brown Room of the Student Center. The lecture is part of KSC’s Fourth Biennial World Affairs Symposium “Globalization: Impact on Peoples of the World,” which will be held November 3-5. Dr. Walton divides his time between Boston and Haiti, where he works with Partners in Health, which provides direct health care services and undertakes research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty. In his address, “Medicine and Social Justice,” Dr. Walton will d
iscuss his work for Partners in Health: diagnosing and curing infectious diseases and bringing modern medicine to those who need them most – those living in poverty
Dr. Paul Farmer founded Partners in Health (PIH) in 1987, initially to support local community health activities
in Central Haiti by providing clinic and a training program for community health workers. Today, PIH provides medical services to the poor of Haiti, Rwanda, Peru, Russia, and Boston. Between his first and sec
ond years of medical school, Dr. Walton spent several months working at the hospital in Cange, on Haiti’s Central Plateau, run by PIH’s sister organization Zanmi Lasante. He wrote, “My experience there was unlike any of my previous experiences abroad. The abject poverty and despair I witnessed is unparalleled in the western hemisphere. Haiti humbled me, brought tears to my eyes, and lit a fire in my heart.” The 60 days he stayed in Haiti, he wrote, “were the most important of my life.” During that time, Dr. Walton served as Paul Farmer’s research assistant, accompanying the doctor on house calls – via full-day, arduous treks through mountains. On each visit they encountered patients with illnesses that would be easily and, by Western standards, affordably treated with state-of-the-art medicines. But, says Dr. Walton, many Haitians, burdened over the years with corrupt governments and natural disasters, cannot afford food, let alone pay for medicine. Farmer’s solution: to ignore expensive, name brand drugs and scour the world for cheaper, but just as effective, generics. With these medicines, Zanmi Lasante and PIH provide over 1,000 patients daily with free, quality medical care. Equally important, they work together to provide local residents with specialized health training as pharmacists, birth attendants, and community health workers, and to arrange more advanced training for physicians and nurses. By finding innovative solutions to medical problems that afflict mainly the poor, PIH is also attempting to change the Western view of health care, says Walton. In 2001 Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in collaboration with PIH, created the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities (DSMHI), an institution dedicated to addressing disparities in health through training, education, research, and service. Dr. Walton was one of the first candidates to be selected for the DSMHI’s Howard Hiatt Residency in Global Health Equity and Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He has been working with Partners in Health since 1997.
Kirk Endicott, Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College
Robert Welsh, Visiting Professor in Anthropology at Dartmouth
(2004-2005)
“Tribal Peoples: The Dilemma of Change”
As countries become more aggressive in economic development, threats to the survival of the indigenous peoples of the world increase, according to Kirk Endicott, professor of anthropology at Dartmouth College, and his colleague Robert Welsch, a visiting professor in anthropology at Dartmouth. Endicott and Welsch, co-editors of the anthropology reader Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Anthropology, will speak at Keene State College’s third annual James D. Ewing World Affairs Lecture. The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held on Wednesday, March 23, at 7:30 p.m. in the Mabel Brown Room of the Student Center. In their address, Tribal People: The Dilemma of Change, Endicott and Welsch will discuss the rights of indigenous people whose lives are disrupted by economic development and nation building. They will present case studies from around the world, looking in particular at issues of assimilation and the retention of cultural identity. The James D. Ewing World Affairs Lecture Endowment is named in memory of James Ewing, who was the owner and publisher of The Keene Sentinel from 1954 to 1993. The Endowment was established to bring speakers to Keene State College and the Keene community to address current public or world affairs issues.Endicott has a long-standing interest in indigenous peoples. At graduate school at the University of Oxford, he studied the Orang Asli, the aboriginal peoples of Peninsular Malaysia. Later, he focused his fieldwork on a then-unstudied group of Malaysian hunter-gatherers, the Batek, concentrating on documenting their economy, social organization, and religion. Endicott has devoted much of his time to raising awareness of the plight of the Orang Asli as they are displaced from their homelands by Malaysian government development programs. Endicott has taught anthropology at California State University at Northridge, the University of Malaya, Cornell University, the Australian National University, and Dartmouth College, where he has been a professor of anthropology since 1993. Welsch, adjunct curator of anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago, has conducted more than five years of field research in Papua New Guinea and two years of field research in Indonesia since 1977. He trained as a medical anthropologist, studying how people in New Guinea have made use of modern medicine. Among his many research projects in New Guinea and Indonesia, Welsch has studied medical anthropology in Java and cultural variation in Sulawesi, where he spent a year interviewing people in several dozen villages. Welsch is the author or editor of seven books and many articles, has been affiliated with the Field Museum since 1984, and has worked at Dartmouth since 1994.
Sandra Postel, Director of the Global Water Policy Project
(2003-2004)
Sandra Postel is the director of the Global Water Policy Project in Amherst, Massachusetts and a visiting senior lecturer in environmental students at Mount Holyoke College. From 1988 until 1994, she was vice president for research at Worldwatch Institute, with which she remains affiliated as senior fellow. The leading US authority on international freshwater conservation issues, Postel was named one of the “Scientific American 50” by Scientific American magazine in 2002. Postel’s work is dedicated to the preservation and sustainable use of Earth’s freshwater ecosystems. She is the author of Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last? and Last Oasis which appears in nine languages and was the basis for a segment of the 1997 PBS documentary Cadillac Desert. Her newest book, coauthored with Brian Richter, is Rivers for Life: Managing Water for People and Nature (Island Press, 2003). Postel has published extensively in popular and scholarly publications, including Science, Natural History, Scientific American, Foreign Policy, BioScience, Ecological Applications, Technology Review, Environmental Science and the and Technology, and Water International. Her op-ed features have appeared in more than 30 newspapers in the United States and abroad, including the New York Times and the Washington Post; her article “Troubled Waters” appears in the 2001 Best American Science and Nature Writing. She has addressed the European Parliament on environmental issues and has served as a commentator on CNN’s Futurewatch. Postel is an advisor to the Division on Earth and Life Studies of the U.S. National Research Council and has served on the Board of Directors of the International Water Resources Association and the editorial boards of Ecosystems, Water Policy and Green Futures. She received a bachelor’s degree in geology and political science at Wittenburg University and a master’s degree in environmental management at Duke University. She has been award a Pew Scholars Award in Conservation and the Environment and a lifetime chair with the International Water Academy in Oslo, Norway.
Dr. Charles Jacobs, Co-Founder and President of the American Anti-Slavery Group
(2002-2003)
First Ewing Lecture Addresses Slavery in Africa. The first annual James D. Ewing World Affairs Lecture at Keene State College will address the institution of slavery in present-day AfricaThe lecture, scheduled for Thursday, April 10, at 7 p.m. in the Mabel Brown Room of the Student Center, will be presented by Dr. Charles Jacobs, co-founder and president of the American Anti-Slavery Group in Boston, and by Francis Bok, a 22-year-old native of Sudan who escaped slavery. Both men were present at the White House in October when President Bush signed into law the Sudan Peace Act, which condemns the Sudanese government for the use of slavery as a weapon of genocide and threatens sanctions against Sudan if it does not negotiate for peace in good faith. The Ewing Lecture was established last year by the estate of James D. Ewing, the longtime publisher of The Keene Sentinel, who died last January. The lecture, along with the James D. Ewing High School Newspaper Workshop – to be conducted under the auspices of the N.H. Press Association – will be supported by gifts from Ruth D. Ewing, James Ewing’s widow and a partner in many of his journalism-related undertakings.