reflections

On Wednesday we took a trip to the International Spy Museum. While this was certainly very cool and informative, for me the real highlight of the day was seeing the Dalai Lama speak. It's not every day that you get a chance to see one of the world's great religious leaders and Nobel Peace prize winners address such a large and diverse crowd. To be honest I did not know much about the problem in Tibet before this past week, just the bare bones of the issue. However, after watching a film on the conflict for one of my classes, reading up and going to see the Dalai Lama, I realize just how big of an issue it really is. Unfortunately we seem to have a very short attention span, not just here, but throughout the globe. It was not that long ago that Tibet was a huge issue, but now we have all but forgotten. This past Monday my professor for Views from the third World asked who thought they had a real grasp on the situation and only a couple seniors raised their hands, they were the only ones old enough to remember when it was actually on the news, when we actually cared. Something the Dalai Lama said struck me, he said that United States support of Tibet had been unwavering. He said this even though we removed all support in favor of stronger economic ties with China, even though we are funding their suffering through the grape vine. Maybe when he looks at the United States he sees more than just the fickle support received from our government, maybe he sees the individuals that keep the struggles and hardships of the Tibetan people in mind even when our government and media seem to have stopped caring. Not every American has to have a short attention span. Darfur was on the news constantly not that long ago, but now coverage is a lot more sparse. The same goes for every huge global humanitarian issue. We care for awhile, forget, hear about it again and think that the problem has returned when really it never stopped.
Even with the fickleness of the media and government towards these issues it was reassuring to see that the US did not cave into China's wish for us to cancel the event. Though the repercussions will be slim to none even with things carried out as planned it is at least a comfort to know that we cannot be that easily made to go back on our word. Perhaps that can serve as a sign that their may still be hope for the good reputation and honest word of the US government in the future.

Reflection Week 8

Tuesday we discussed national security documents. I thought it was very interesting how eerily similar the two documents were despite the fact that they were separated by half a century and many changes in world politics. The two documents were very similar even though they seemed to be going after two different enemies. The methods used against these enemies were similar revealing how little the tools of American foreign policy have changed in half a century. In terms of the structure of the discussion I liked it more than our large group discussions. We were able to discuss the issues more in-depth with fewer people and everyone was able to speak more and subsequently we could have more of a conversation. With such small groups you could have a conversation in which each person would have multiple chances to talk rather than just one and therefore I think we were less afraid that we had to say everything we wanted to all at once. We worked together to come up with an answer we all agreed upon rather than fighting with one another as to who was right which provided a nice change of pace.
As far as the Spy Museum goes, I think the whole premise of the museum is more interesting than the museum itself was. Megan pointed this out to me when she said that it was interesting in a free society we had a museum devoted to our spying. The whole purpose of spying is to be secretive and often to hide that you are spying at all and yet there is a museum dedicated to how spying is done which clearly reveals that we have spies. I guess the cat is out of the bag now since everyone knows that all countries have spies. Nevertheless it is still interesting that information about the tools of spying are displayed in such a public way. Anyone could walk in there and learn about spy techniques. Certainly many details have been left out but still this means the United States must be very confident that its spying endeavors will not be compromised by the information presented. However it still strikes me as odd that we have such a museum but maybe that’s just me.
Erica Peterson