Stanley Research Awards for International Research

Stanley Informational Workshop

Tuesday, October 23, 3:30-4:30 p.m., International Commons, 1117 UCC

 

Please join us for a Stanley Research Award informational workshop Tuesday, October 23, from 3:30-4:30 p.m. in the International Commons, 1117 University Capitol Centre. The Stanley Undergraduate and Graduate Awards for International Research are given annually to outstanding University of Iowa students for the pursuit of learning activities in international studies and international research/fieldwork. Undergraduates interested in international studies are especially encouraged to attend. This year's application deadline is February 7, 2013, at 4:30 p.m.

 

Joining us for this workshop will be Senior IRB Education and Compliance Specialist Kelly O'Berry from the University of Iowa Institutional Review Board (IRB).

 

Students interested in applying for these programs are encouraged to visit our website for further information: http://international.uiowa.edu/funding/stanley-undergraduate-awards-international-research and  http://international.uiowa.edu/funding/stanley-graduate-awards-international-research.

 

Please direct questions to: Karen Wachsmuth, academic programs and student services administrator, International Programs, karen-wachsmuth@uiowa.edu, 319-335-1436.

Studying the Middle East

Posted by Professor Vicki Hesli

How about a career devoted to studying the Middle East? Among the many routes that one could take to achieve this goal, one path starts with earning a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the University of Iowa.  Remember to also take courses in the Arabic language – as this will give you a skill that puts you far ahead of your competitors. Check out these links to the International Relations Major and to the Arabic Minor.  In setting up my own research focus on the Middle East, I earned a doctorate degree after my undergraduate work in order to become a professor, but this is only one of many possible career paths to working in the Middle East.

 I made my third trip to Egypt this past summer (July 2012) to continue my ongoing investigation of the growing power and strength of the Muslim Brotherhood.  The Muslim Brotherhood first came to my attention when I noticed that the organization won 20% of seats in the 2005 Egyptian parliamentary election. This was actually a strong showing given that it was illegal for Brotherhood candidates to participate under the banner of a religiously-oriented political party.  I then decided to study the question of how could an organization, officially banned from election campaigning by the Mubarak dictatorship, win such a large proportion of seats?  

Having previously studied the demise of the Soviet Union and having written extensively about democratization processes, I wondered whether the Muslim Brotherhood would provide the organizational foundation for the overthrow of the authoritarian regime in Egypt.  Indeed, my thoughts were prophetic.  During the Arab Spring of 2011, Mubarak was forced to resign and today the Muslim Brotherhood controls both Egypt’s presidency and parliament.

Early on I discovered that surprisingly little was known about the Muslim Brotherhood. Though it is one of the most politically astute and enduring Islamist organizations in the Middle East, it had escaped the attention of most scholars. Thus, in January and February 2008, I traveled to Egypt to organize a team of researchers for the purpose of studying the Muslim Brotherhood’s tactics and strategies. I met with scholars from Cairo University, the American University in Cairo, the Al-ahram Foundation, and the Centre d'études et de Documentation Economiques, Juridiques et Sociales. I also negotiated an agreement of cooperation between the University of Iowa and Cairo University – the largest university in Egypt.  I returned again to Egypt in May 2009 with University of Iowa Associate Provost Downing Thomas for the signing of the agreement. 

During the period from 2008 thru 2010, my team of researchers catalogued the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood as it solidified its support among Egyptian voters while continuing to challenge the Mubarak regime. The tipping point occurred when Mubarak announced that his political party had won the December 2010 parliamentary elections by an overwhelming margin. The results were simply not credible.  As the Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition groups alleged fraud, demonstrators flowed into the streets, and after a series of violent confrontations one of the world’s longest serving dictators, President Mubarak, was forced to leave power and new elections were held.

Needless to say, my research project changed when the Muslim Brotherhood won the free and fair elections held after Mubarak’s departure.  The Muslim Brotherhood was no longer the main oppositional organization operating in Egypt – it now held the reins of power. I returned to Egypt in July 2012 to organize surveys with professors at Cairo University that will allow researchers to trace public opinion in the aftermath of the 2011 and 2012 foundational elections. The question now is: What will the Muslim Brotherhood need to accomplish to secure the support of the people and the legitimacy of their new regime?

If you would like to explore the answers to such questions, consider the International Relations major at the University of Iowa.  If you have any questions about the research described above, please feel free to contact me at vicki-hesli@uiowa.edu

Two Pictures:

The view of Tahrir Square from my hotel:

Hesli visiting one of the original seven wonders of the world:

Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Workshop

Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Workshop for Students Interested in Summer Study

Wednesday, October 17, 1:30-2:30 p.m., 1117 UCC

 

Critical Language Scholarship (CLS)  Program Officer Leslie Root from Washington, D.C. will present a workshop at the University of Iowa on Wednesday, October 17 from 1:30-2:30 p.m. in International Commons, 1117 UCC. The Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program is a program of the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and provides fully-funded 8-10 week intensive summer language institutes for undergrad and graduate students in all fields of study. Many of the languages that are part of the CLS Program require no prior experience with or study of the language, including Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, and Russian. 

 

Undergraduate and graduate students interested in pursuing international grants that require critical language study are encourage to pursue this wonderful opportunity for funding. If you are a UI student who wishes to study critical or less commonly taught languages, please contact Elena Osinskaya, Language Initiatives Manager, DWLLC, at elena-osinsky@uiowa.edu or check the website: http://international.uiowa.edu/language/allnet.

Languages offered by CLS include:

 

• Azerbaijani, Bangla/Bengali, Hindi, Indonesian, Korean, Punjabi, Turkish, and Urdu: Beginning, advanced beginning, intermediate and advanced levels;
• Arabic and Persian: Advanced beginning, intermediate and advanced levels;
• Chinese, Japanese, and Russian: Intermediate and advanced levels.

 

This workshop is co-sponsored by International Programs and the Division of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures, and is free and open to the public.

 

Please direct questions to: Karen Wachsmuth, academic programs and student services administrator, International Programs, karen-wachsmuth@uiowa.edu, 319-335-1436.

BARBARIANS AT THE GATES: SHOULD WE FEAR THE POLITICAL INFLUENCE OF FOREIGN COMPANIES IN THE US?

Posted by Professor John Conybeare

The US House Intelligence Committee just released a report suggesting that both public and private buyers should avoid purchasing telecommunications equipment from two Chinese companies, Huawei and ZTE.  Its concern is that the Chinese government might use these companies to engage in espionage in the US.  President Obama recently followed the recommendation of the inter-agency Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, and blocked a Chinese company from acquiring a wind farm in the US, on the grounds that the farm is close to a military base.  During the Bush Administration, the Chinese oil company CNOOC was dissuaded from buying UNOCAL and Dubai Ports World (owned by the government of Dubai) forced to divest itself of its acquisition of US port operations.

Foreign investors were welcome contributors to US economic development in the 19^th century, but since the Second World War, attitudes to foreign companies have been ambivalent.  As European and Japanese companies began coming to America in large numbers during the 1970s, reactions in the US were varied. When Honda built its first car factory in Ohio in 1983, xenophobic newspaper articles invoked Pearl Harbor and “yellow peril” rhetoric to suggest that Japan was beginning to take over the US by stealth.   Yet when Renault rescued American Motors from bankruptcy in 1987, the media cheered the French savior of American jobs.  Is there no more to this than discriminatory chauvinism?

The EU and other countries have been doing the same thing. Leaders of the EU (especially Chancellor Merkel) have long called for the EU to block "politically motivated” investments in the EU’s “strategic industries.”  Canada, Russia and Australia have announced that they are monitoring foreign investments for adverse political implications. The Australian government blocked a Chinese aluminium company from buying a 20% equity share of the Australian mining company BHP.  Last month the EU announced that it was investigating a Russian state controlled oil company, Gazprom, for allegedly conspiring to restrain competition in the European energy market. Gazprom supplies 25% of the EU’s gas.

There may well be legitimate concerns about foreign companies.  Monitoring foreign investment in a country’s defense industries is understandable and to be expected, though there is disagreement over what qualifies as defense related activity.   The term “strategic industry” seems to have expanded to include any industry where the government does not want foreigners to compete.  The US, for example, restricts foreign ownership of TV stations and fishing vessels. Similar concerns are expressed over the global reach of "sovereign wealth funds" (state owned firms that invest a country’s wealth outside its borders), especially the possibility that such funds might pursue political objectives that go beyond getting a good mixture of risk and return.  Finally, foreign companies might reduce competition and cause consumers to pay higher prices. When Daimler took over Chrysler in 1998, the US Justice Department and the EU’s Competition Commission had to agree that the merger would not reduce competition in the auto market.

Although these may all be legitimate concerns about foreign investment, we need to be careful that these arguments are not used to achieve less worthy goals that may not be in the national interest.  First of all, the specter of “barbarians at the gates” may be used by vote seeking politicians who see no downside to presenting themselves as “strong” on national defense and blaming foreigners for whatever problems ail us.  A second reason for restraint is that these strident condemnations of foreign investment often seem to be encouraged by US firms that are in competition with the foreign firms.  The Dubai Ports World case was initiated by complaints from a US firm that was competing with DPW for port operation contracts.   The decision by the House Intelligence Committee to investigate Huawei and ZTE was partly motivated by complaints that these firms undercut US firms when bidding for telecommunications contracts.  Third, action taken against foreign firms will provoke retaliation. When Congress passed a law in 1996 to punish foreign firms that do business with Cuba, the EU persuaded President Clinton not to enforce the act by threatening retaliation against US firms.

All this is part of the anti-globalization rhetoric pushed by people who see our national sovereignty threatened and our national economy weakened by globalization. Beware of anti-globalists bringing apocalyptic messages of economic Armageddon. They are fixated on a zero sum view of the world in which international investment cannot benefit both sides of the transaction, because only one side can gain and the other side gets exploited.  Perhaps we need to remind ourselves of the simple benefits of voluntary exchange: if I sell you something for more than it is worth to me, and you buy it at a price less than you would be willing to pay, we both gain. The same goes for the senders and recipients of foreign investment.