Scholars, advocates, and activists seeking to make the U.S. a more responsible global partner.
Women
Fashioning Resistance to Militarism

Fashioning Resistance to Militarism

by , , | Mar 9, 2009

In the silver lining to the devastating economic crisis, critiques of excessive military spending are now beginning to echo around Capitol Hill and throughout mainstream media. Federal budget priorities — and the billions of dollars tied up in the military budget — are coming under much wider scrutiny. For years, the National Priorities Project, WAND (Women’s Action for New Directions), and War Resisters League have calculated the tradeoffs for military spending with readable pie charts, diagrams, and interactive websites to educate and empower ordinary people to take part in this policy debate.

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Afghanistan: Build Infrastructure, Not Bases

Afghanistan: Build Infrastructure, Not Bases

by , , | Feb 23, 2009

In 1995, Sakena Yacoobi cofounded the Afghan Institute for Learning (AIL) — today one of the largest nonprofit organizations in Afghanistan — and is now its president and executive director. AIL provides education and health services to over 350,000 women and children annually in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with offices in the United States, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Sakena has received numerous prestigious awards for peace-building, including the Peacemakers in Action Award from the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, the Gruber Prize, the Bill Graham Award from the Rex Foundation, and most recently, the Kravis Prize for Leadership.

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Un-Gagging Women’s Human Rights

by , | Feb 5, 2009

Of the many crises President Barack Obama faces, few are more urgent than preventing the needless deaths of half a million people this year. This is the number of women who die annually from a lack of basic reproductive health services. Unlike the global recession, climate change, and other disasters compounded by George W. Bush, the crisis of maternal mortality is easily resolved. Last week, Obama took an important first step by rescinding the "global gag rule."

Formally known as the Mexico City Policy for the place where it was first announced, the gag rule cut U.S. funding to foreign healthcare organizations that provide abortions or abortion counseling, or advocate legalizing abortion in their own countries (though in true Bush-era fashion, anti-abortion advocacy was permitted).

The policy was nicknamed the “global gag rule” because it stifles free speech and public debate, violating healthcare workers’ right to press to change the laws that lead to nearly 70,000 abortion-related deaths each year. The gag rule was thus an attack on women’s health, democratic process, and free speech. Rescinding it is a fitting farewell to the Bush era, but it’s only the first step in a needed overhaul of U.S. reproductive health policy.

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Gender and U.S. Bases in Asia-Pacific

by , | Mar 14, 2008

The power dynamics of militarism in the Asia-Pacific region rely on dominance and subordination. These hierarchical relationships, shaped by gender, can be seen in U.S. military exploitation of host communities, its abuse and contamination of land and water, and the exploitation of women and children through the sex industry, sexual violence, and rape. Women’s bodies, the land, and indigenous communities are all feminized, treated as dispensable and temporary. What is constructed as “civilized, white, male, western, and rational” is held superior to what is defined as “primitive, non-white, female, non-western, and irrational.” Nations and U.S. territories within the Asia-Pacific region are treated as inferiors with limited sovereignty or agency in relation to U.S. foreign policy interests that go hand-in-hand with this racist/sexist ideology.

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The Post-Washington Dissensus

The Post-Washington Dissensus

by , | Sep 21, 2007

Development circles were not shocked last year when two studies detailed how the World Bank’s research unit had been systematically manipulating data to show that neoliberal market reforms were promoting growth and reducing poverty in developing countries. They merely saw these devastating findings, one by American University Professor Robin Broad, the other by Princeton University […]

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Interview with Iranian Poet Farideh Hassanzadeh

Interview with Iranian Poet Farideh Hassanzadeh

by , | Jun 12, 2007

Farideh Hassanzadeh (Mostafavi) is an Iranian poet, translator, and freelance journalist. Her first book of poetry was published when she was 22 years old. Her poems appear in the anthologies Contemporary Women Poets of Iran and Anthology of Best Women Poets. She writes regularly for Golestaneh, Iran News, and many other literary magazines and newspapers. Her poems translated into English appear in Kritya, Jehat, interpoetry, museindia, earthfamilyalpha, and Thanalonline. Her anthology of contemporary American poetry will appear in 2007. You can read her poem Isn’t It Enough? here.

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