| Symposium |
2007 EPIIC International Symposium Information
The international symposium is an annual four-to-five-day public forum featuring scores of international practitioners, activists, academics, public intellectuals, and journalists. EPIIC's symposia -- consisting of presentations, panel discussions, topical forums, informal gatherings, multimedia and dramatic presentations, and workshops -- are intellectually wide-ranging and accessible. The perspectives of the participants are intentionally diverse, often competing, and at times adversarial. Below are some examples of the controversial and complex issues that EPIIC has explored.
In 1989, for the Drugs, International Security, and U.S. Public Policy symposium, EPIIC, with the assistance of then U.S. Attorney Richard Gregorie and the U.S. Witness Protection Program, brought the top witness against the Medellin cartel to the Tufts campus to explain the intricacies of money laundering. He was interrogated for several hours in front of a public audience by the Special Agent in Charge in Miami for the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Director of Operation Greenback for the Internal Revenue Service, and a Senior Economist with the RAND Corporation.
A panel of the 1991 symposium on Confronting Political and Social Evil brought together General Hector Gramajo, Defense Minister of Guatemala, with Henry Steiner of the Harvard Law School who was blocked from establishing an independent judiciary in Guatemala, and Michael Massing, a reporter for The New York Review of Books who had accused General Gramajo of complicity with the death squads.
In 1992, the EPIIC symposium, International Security: The Environmental Dimension, brought chiefs of the Kayapo nation of Brazil together with chiefs of the Cree nation of Quebec to discuss their common concerns regarding development, specifically hydroelectric dams planned for their respective lands, and to draft a common statement for the United Nations Year of Indigenous Peoples.
In 1999, Wole Soyinka of Nigeria, Luis Moreno Ocampo of Argentina, and Gisela von Muhlenberg of Chile, debated the role and impact of truth and reconciliation commissions as part of the Global Crime, Corruption, and Accountability symposium. Each was involved in his or her own country's struggle with justice and accountability.
As a critical component of its public forums, EPIIC stimulates ethical debate by bringing leaders of moral stature to the campus who have had to make difficult choices in their lives, such as Sonja Anderson, a senior scientist at the Hanover Nuclear Reservation who exposed the company's illegal storage and dumping of nuclear waste; Gherardo Colombo, chief prosecutor of the Mani Pulite (Clean Hands) anti-corruption trials in Italy; General Jovan Divjak, the Bosnian Serb commander who led the defense of Sarajevo in support of a pluralistic society; and Chai Ling, former Commander of the Tiananman Square student democracy movement. Students are given the opportunity to discuss openly the decisions these individuals have made, probing the basis for their actions as well as their views on the outcomes and consequences.
EPIIC also encourages the original presentations of its students. For the 1998 symposium on Exodus and Exile: Refugees, Migration, and Global Security, three of EPIIC's students comprised a panel on AIDS, Migration, and Refugees. The students presented their original research and two of them, as freshmen, spent their summer in Nepal researching the illicit trafficking of girls to brothels in India and their subsequent difficult reintegration into Nepali life. The third student, a senior, presented her work on asylum and immigration based on her research at the World Health Organization in Geneva.
Reactions The Boston Globe "...This is a symposium that promises to bring history makers together with students to seek the answers for the knottiest problems bedeviling the contemporary world. The event illustrates the possibilities for moral and intellectual relevance at a university." The Boston Globe "At a time when the national discourse seems forever reduced to its lowest common denominators -- to sound bites and slogans -- EPIIC is a refreshing antidote. Far from looking to simplify the world, the symposium aims to teach students to view life in a way that respects complex human systems." Dr. Mark Kleiman "The panelists were discussing some of the real issues, more or less as they might in private with their professional peers, and the audience was asking real questions, questions designed to advance the discourse rather than to express emotion. It was a glimpse of what self-government might look like as a fact rather than a piety." Dr. Leon Fuerth "This was an intellectually tight and emotionally intense affair. The fact that it is the work of your students makes the whole thing that much more exceptional." William E. Colby "Representing some of the more contentious of the subjects covered, I can say that I was treated with the utmost courtesy but subjected to the most direct of intellectual challenge -- which is what such conferences are supposed to be all about." Richard Nuccio "I have been an observer/participant of academic enterprises all my professional life. The level of excitement and dedication displayed by your students is unrivaled in my experience. EPIIC has helped highly qualified and motivated individuals to become even more effective through the forging of a collective conscience and work ethic." Thomas F. Eagleton "I doubt if there has ever been brought together in any one place the collection of knowledge and talent on covert action. EPIIC has been a trailblazer in this regard." |