By Benjamin Tennenbaum, courtesy of the University of Chicago Undergraduate Law Review

Hunger is no longer the sole nutritional problem facing the developing world. 1996 marked a pivotal year for the World Food Programme (WFP): it was the last year when more than seven million tons of food aid was donated by the Programme for non-emergency related aid. 2006 was the last year more than one million tons of related aid was donated and delivered. The numbers keep falling—year after year less food aid is donated and distributed by the WFP to people who need it, even as the economic crisis swells the ranks of the hungry.

Yet since 1980 a historically rich-world phenomenon—obesity—has reared its ugly head in nations previously considered too poor for obesity to be a problem. It isn’t only in consumption that developing countries are now mirroring the developed. Heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic diseases that more typical middle-aged Westerners develop are spreading throughout the developing world as fortunes rise. Developing countries are experiencing developed-world problems.

The World Health Organization (WHO) regards health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Health is under attack, but the international community is doing too little to bulwark health because weak international interests are continually trumped by national ones.

Many countries around the world have limited access to cheap, affordable, healthy, and nutritious food. The European Commission in a September, 2011 report on trade raises fears over heightened protectionism among G-20 members, and agricultural products are no exception. In 2011 Ukraine raised export duties on grains, between 9 and 14 percent increases; Algeria banned exporting cereals like wheat and barley and flour; Kazakhstan banned the export of buckwheat; the Russian Federation tightened grain exports in the wake of a devastating drought. In developing regions like Central Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa, where regional agricultural net producers buttress net importers, insular exportation policies greatly harm those reliant on cheap imports. There are no export restrictions on the Twinkie and many other less-than-essential foodstuffs. Instead of fostering healthy trade and doing away with trade restrictions, policies like these make it more difficult to purchase healthy and cheap food. As a consequence, the WFP and other global assistance funds donate less and less cheap and healthy food, and poorer consumers buy less cheap food.

During economic hardships the international community seems to forget “the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food,” declared in Article 11 of the United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, choosing instead to hold back giving. The European Charter on Counteracting Obesity, signed in 2006 by all 53 members of the European region of the World Health Organization, serves as a good start for developing regional goals to combat obesity, which can lead to a reduction in other non-infectious diseases related to an unhealthy weight. Supranational efforts spearheaded by the European Union like the European Platform for Action on Diet, Physical Activity and Health are good steps, but do not take action in reducing European obesity levels; instead of passing meaningful reform to promote habits, legislators call for more talk and less action.

While these are important initiatives, and more pan-national dialogue will lead to greater awareness, fitness does not garner the same calls for reform that a unified monetary policy does. There is an astonishing absence of law pertaining to preserving health. In the developing world, where citizens cannot afford to buy healthy food, the percent of a population that is overweight is significantly higher. While certain outliers exist among developing countries—only 4 percent of India’s population is overweight—Middle Eastern countries tend to be both more overweight and obese than their European counterparts. The Pacific Islands, where weight used to be a sign of affluence, have been hit the hardest: Nauru has the dubious distinction of being the fattest nation in the world, with more than 79 percent of its population obese. When obesity, which costs the US alone $123 billion in direct and indirect costs, is compared with other economic activities, it would seem imperative that something must be done. Obesity and diabetes cost the Pacific Island of Tonga $1.95 million per annum. While this may seem a small sum, this figure represents nearly sixty percent of the health budget and six percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

$7.3 trillion will be lost in output by 2025 from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and lung disease according to the World Economic Forum. And yet there remains no effective mechanism on an international level to combat non-communicable diseases (NCDs). On a national level there has been some success albeit limited—with Scandinavian countries leading the way. Sweden has introduced voluntary labels informing consumers about the nutritional content of food items, helping consumers make healthier choices. Finland has studied the eating habits when free vegetables or a free salad was added in a meal.

School lunches—the Finnish study was conducted in a university cafeteria—play an integral role for children. What children eat at an early age lays the foundations for successive eating habits. A school in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois has staked out new ground by banning home-packed lunches; only school-prepared lunches are allowed, unless students are medically-required to eat certain foods. This policy helps students from backsliding at an early age into unhealthy eating habits. Julian Ruiz, a second-grader at Little Village Academy, confesses: “sometimes I would bring the healthy stuff, but sometimes I would bring Lunchables.” While Julian may not be totally ignorant of what is healthy, the schools should nonetheless be praised for taking the initiative to reinforce healthy behavior.

The Chinese government has unique abilities to make healthy changes for their citizens. Chinese culture places a great deal of power into the hands of the community. The central government, realizing the scope of diversity in China, has decided to engage the community in tackling eating habits. Through the National Plan of Action for Nutrition for China, the government—utilizing such diverse bureaus as health, agriculture, and State Planning—will attempt to “alleviate hunger and food shortages; […] prevent, control, and eliminate micronutrient deficiencies; and to improve the general nutritional state of the people and prevention nutrition-related chronic disease [15,000 deaths per year, or 70 percent of mortality in China] through proper guidance to consumption behavior, improvement of dietary patterns, and promotion of healthy lifestyles.”

By setting price controls to make unhealthy foods more expensive or even ban them outright, and administering gargantuan publicity campaigns that can reach any corner in China, the Chinese government has immense power to reduce obesity—power unrivaled anywhere else. However, because of China’s scope, little has been accomplished. It must be noted that Beijing had historically been hesitant, even hostile, towards creating broad-reaching social programs like those of the developed world (e.g., some form of retirement insurance or socialized medicine). This reluctance could lead to a uninformed and unhealthy aged population, and only recently have steps been taken to provide social benefits.

Here in the United States, the courts have recently backed initiatives to make consumers better informed about their decisions. In New York State Restaurant Association v. New York City Board of Health (2009), the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a statue issued by the New York City Board of Health mandating the prominent display of caloric information for food purchased in restaurants, sparking a national trend. Outside of the United States and Western Europe, there is very little evidence to support much legal action to curtail hidden caloric information or fast food-related media aimed at children.

One huge factor in preventing and treating NCDs around the world is readily-available generic medicine, bringing the power to save hundreds of millions from pharmaceutical companies to the developing world. During most of the Twentieth Century, developing countries lacked access to sophisticated drugs manufactured in the developed world because of high costs and little cash. Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) medication is notoriously expensive, limiting its market to the wealthy infirm. African governments, valuing human life over copyright laws, threatened to manufacture essential drugs cheaply and illegally to prevent a public health crisis.

The public relations storm that ensued, along with other outcries against other expensive treatments led to the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), a World Trade Organization (WTO) international agreement that set down for the first time the minimum standards for many forms of intellectual property. TRIPS spells out how “members [of TRIPS] may exclude from patentability inventions [… that] which is necessary to protect ordre public or morality.” This groundbreaking agreement paved way for the Doha Declaration in 2001, which further emphasized the flexibility of TRIPS member states in getting around patent rights to essential medicines. While acute diseases, spurring on national emergencies, are listed for public health crises, given current trends in the prevalence of NCDs, the Doha Declaration may experience revisions unforeseen ten years ago, and what exactly constitutes a public health crisis will come under fire. Countries may manufacture without consent drugs to treat obesity-related conditions as well as fighting AIDS.

This drive for individual expression, whether it is showing wealth by eating unhealthy foods in a country where a great many people do not have the ability to make ends meet, or to ignore copyright law for the good of many at the expense of a few shareholders, lies at the very heart the conflict to uphold of the universal idea of health laid down by the World Health Organization. The Supreme Court of the United States has further emphasized the “freedom of information,” but freedom now means producers can advertise to the general public potentially harmful products: cigarettes. In Lorillard v. Reilly, the Supreme Court mandated removing tobacco advertising limitations designed to protect Massachusetts children. The Court explained this decision by citing smoking as a lawful activity and that tobacco companies had an interest in providing accurate information about their product. The law sends a mixed message about the freedom to live in an environment where harmful interests daily interact with people to produce health issues. The Supreme Court strikes down most efforts to create a paternalistic intervention to prevent unhealthy lifestyle choices that would undermine personal freedom and responsibility, highlighting the tension between protecting public health and protecting personal responsibility. The developed world is not setting the best example for others to follow. If tobacco can be advertised when small children are watching, McDonald’s can target with equal impunity small children.

The global economic downturn had made it more difficult for those living in poverty to gain access to adequately-healthy food. The endemic threat posed by NCDs has been addressed by global strategies and charters, United Nations summits, and other international movements, gently guiding nations towards reducing obesity levels. The problem is that generating international law to combat non-communicable diseases must not oppose national law and initiatives and vice versa, reducing economic clannishness and protectionism, and thereby lowering global food prices and allowing more people access to food.

Governments around the world must take steps to make healthy food available to all those who need it, especially giving food aid to developing nations; and pharmaceutical companies must, even in hard times, make readily available essential medicine to poverty-stricken countries who can benefit from this the most. Lipitor, Avandia, Plavix, Viracept, Norvir, Sustiva, and many other drugs that treat high cholesterol, prevent blood clots, and control HIV respectively, and many other expensive, time-tested drugs will within five years become first-time generic or R_x-to-OTC. While there is no pill to cure obesity, its effects can be controlled. The pressure to litigate and reapply patents will be strong, but governments, especially the United States, must take a firm stance and allow these medications to slip into the public domain. Even if readily available, cheap medication is not seen as the best solution to solving the spread of chronic, non-communicable diseases.

Even though it has been more than sixty years since the WHO set down its standards of health, they ring as true today as they did following the hemoclysms of the first half of the twentieth century. Supranational organizations that exert considerable economic influence, such as the European Union, have the power to change the social status quo, encouraging and even mandating healthier lifestyle “paths.” Basic foodstuffs are abundant worldwide but are astonishingly poorly distributed. The temptation to purchase cheaper, less-healthy foods where possible is ever present, but surely the economic loss presented by NCDs outweighs the pain of pain of passing on the fries and a shake. National political units must take note of what it means to be healthy and encourage healthy habits to defray costs in the long run. Cracking down globally on tobacco was a good first step for many countries. Will there ever come a time when Twinkies cannot be consumed within two hundred feet of a school anywhere?

By Matt Hartman

North Korea is a country often discussed under the pretext of evil: heir to Stalin’s communism, hoarder of nuclear weapons, threat to our civilized world. But the death of Kim Jong Il leads us to re-think that definition–or at least it should. The future of North Korea will not necessarily right itself now that Kim has died. He tied North Korea into an ideological apparatus difficult to escape and the nation’s future will depend not only upon how the international order can interact with Kim Jong Un–who has taken over after his father–but also upon how the North Korean people respond to Kim Jong Il’s death.

Political leaders have often given meaning (of some sort) to their people, becoming pseudo-mythical beings whose loss set the nation reeling. JFK was the man who saved the world from nuclear war, who tied together the ends of American ideology in the Cold War era. Stalin, on a much larger scale, turned himself into a persona that held together the straining Soviet Union, acting as a lynchpin for everything behind the Iron Curtain.

Kim Jong Il did the same on an extraordinary and terrifying level. He may even surpass Stalin’s cult of personality, creating an ideological system so grand that any discussion of it invariably turns into black humor. Kim Jong Il turned his existence into a piece of propaganda which he then used to define the political existence of the North Korean people.

The examples are startling. According to official records, Kim Jong Il’s birth was marked by the appearance of a double rainbow and the birth of a new star. His divine origins are matched only by his (officially reported) achievements: walking at three weeks old, speaking at eight, authoring 1,500 books, and shooting 11 holes-in-one in the only game of golf he ever played. And then, of course, there is the fact that he does not defecate.

Perhaps North Koreans find Kim Jong Il as absurd as the rest of the world. (Perhaps that would have loved Trey Stone and Matt Parker’s depiction.) But it seems many North Koreans take Kim quite seriously, even adopting his peculiar fashion sense. Even if his official biography is not taken literally within North Korea (and for my sanity, I choose to believe it is not), Kim Jong Il’s efforts have created an ideological apparatus that refuses to allow any sort of modern politics to be undertaken by the North Koreans.

This is demonstrated by another strange fact. In response to mass famine, Kim Jong Il decided that giant rabbits would be the best way to feed his nation. But the dozen rabbits gifted to North Korea to breed their new food supply served only as the main course at Kim Jong Il’s birthday party.

The audacity of the above tells the whole story. For the official records of a nation to claim anything like what they do about Kim Jong Il, there must be an immense power structure keeping order. The fact that the North Korean government can still claim any of these ridiculous facts is proof of the power they wield over the North Korean people.

What’s more, the poverty that follows from Kim Jong Il’s rule is well-known, and the suffering that his rabbit-solutions and subsequent rabbit filled feasts cause are obvious. Of course a leader as megalomaniacal as Kim Jong Il misuses funds and drags his nation into the third world. Satellite pictures of Korea at night show a brightly lit South, but a sharp line at the 38th parallel leaves the North in darkness, save for Pyongyang and a handful of small blips.

The result for North Korea is a nation whose entire political existence has been the rambling programs of a self-obsessed, self-fashioned demi-god. And, tragically, it is an existence that lacks the resources to combat their leader. Obviously North Korea needs, first and foremost, food, literacy programs, infrastructure, and the rest of the basic necessities denied by Kim Jong Il’s rule. Obviously Kim Jong Un must be coaxed, if possible, into the international order in a way his father never was.

But none of this will be possible without approaching the ideological prison created by Kim Jong Il. The ideological matrix he created siphoned power to his person and handicapped the people. As long as that matrix exists, the people cannot begin to gain any power. Kim Jong Un has already begun to build his own myth–now as the official Supreme Commander of the military. This shows, above all, the extent to which North Korea has been made dependent upon their ideology. There isn’t much of another option in a land where Kim Jong Il is Eternal President even in death.

By Matt Hartman

There are certain news stories that stand out in their very ordinariness, yet they highlight the workings of our historical era and put our systemic thought on display. Such is the case with the story of Fatma and Khaled Wahabe–a story seemingly unremarkable, but for that reason all the more interesting as it highlights our current state of affairs. Their untimely and tragic death shines light on the inhuman mechanism of law and justice that has taken root in the post-9/11 era.

Mother and son were killed by an IDF missile meant for a group of fleeing militants. In their home, mother and son died as innocents in a war that enveloped their lives. The Wahabe family sued for damages after the incident, but their lawsuit was denied and the missile launch was declared legitimate. Moreover, the Israeli government demanded payment for legal fees. The family must not only suffer loved ones lost, but now they must also pay for wanting recognition of their injustice.

This is not to vilify Israel, nor to say that Israel’s military operation was, in this case, unjustified. This incident is meant to demonstrate a more ubiquitous problem–that of the inflexibility of law and the inhumanity surrounding its deployment. Israel, I imagine, is right that the firing of the missile was legitimate, that they were under no legal obligation to pay reparations, and that they had the (legal) right to have their experiences recuperated. But it is this very system of justification that is problematic.

Legal and social institutions were built in order to ease human lives and to ensure, as much as possible, human happiness or flourishing (say Hobbes, Locke, and a whole host of other Western political theorists). These systems were created for the purpose of preserving what is human in the world, to protect and grow what it is that makes us, us: practical reasoning, social bonds, etc. The very essence of law is suppose to be something human.

But what Israel has exemplified, in the case of the Wahabes, is the mechanic idea of law. What is right and what will be done is what the law says. Not only will the Wahabes not receive any benefits in light of their tragedy, but they will in fact pay the State because the law says that this is what will be done. The law, in this thinking, lies outside of human agency, outside of any ethical or moral principles that one might hold, and outside of any considerations–of any concrete or particular sort–of what a human life is.  In reality the law says that the Wahabes could be forced to pay the legal fees. To go so far as to demand those fees is to grant the law a mechanical existence that is supra-human. In doing so, humans must now cater to this law.

But if the law is a human creation to be used for the furthering of human lives, it cannot have anything close to this character. It must always retain the indelible mark of humanity. Consideration for the tragedy that befalls a human life, then, must forever be the guiding principle of any legal decision. This is the problem of Joseph K, the problem of an obscurity antithetical to the stated purpose of law, and, despite Kafka’s influence, still the problem of our times.

Illegal immigrants are deported or held in holding cells without recourse because, according to the law, they are not equally as much a person as a citizen is. A woman will die because her ailment is not legally covered by her insurance. The Wahabes will pay legal fees. In all of these cases, law was made inhuman through a rigidity that denies the very thing it was created for. In its structure, it forbids its own end–the flourishing of human lives.

It is easy to forget that this paradigm comes into being only through particular human actions. The (legal) denial of what is human is done by humans: by those legislators, and by those who sign the forms, and whoever, in their daily work, perform the minute tasks that allow for law to take this inhuman form. Hannah Arendt pointed out of the banality of evil –I will point out the human banality of inhuman law. Of course, these actions are forced by other laws: by the possibility of being fired, of being jailed oneself, etc. Becoming aware of this fact is not enough. But to recognize the incoherence of this legal paradigm we find ourselves in is enough to allow us to use its parts against the whole and to give space for a full human life to exist.

By Matt Hartman

After months of civil war, Muammar Gaddafi is dead. As the news spread and celebrations in Libya and elsewhere began, the picture began to take shape: Libya is free, the people can live in peace, and another tyrant has fallen in the Arab Spring. Gaddafi’s death is nothing but good news, a cause for elation. But the news that has come since clouds that picture and makes those vibrant colors murky.

For this picture to be accepted, the rebels must be the glorious democratic heroes doing battle with the evil tyrant for justice. And they certainly were–at least to some extent. Gaddafi’s leadership in Libya was geared toward nothing but his own personal pride, towards waving the golden guns he had made for himself as a symbol of his brilliance. No one needs reminding that he ordered his troops to fire on civilians after they made it clear that they would not be easily silenced.

But even in Gaddafi’s death we can see a dark shadow. He was killed in Sirte, his hometown, after he was found in a sewer. But elsewhere in the city, 53 bodies were found. While these men were Gaddafi’s supporters who had followed him through all of his crimes, they were found having been executed with hands bound and many having already been wounded. Ten of the bodies were dumped into a reservoir nearby.

Moreover, Gaddafi himself was killed in a most brutal  fashion. He was beaten, dragged away to be stabbed (and possibly sodomized with a knife), thrown on the ground and shot multiple times, thrown into the back of a truck while still alive. Only later did he die from his wounds. The way the rebels attacked Gaddafi combines a sickening amount of violence and degradation.

Perhaps more important, however, is that the rebels originally claimed Gaddafi was killed in crossfire between themselves and loyalists. They also only agreed to investigate the bodies after pressure began to mount once the news stories began to spread. The National Transitional Council (NTC)–the rebels now ruling Libya–have already shown a willingness to play the same sort of power games that have marked regimes like Gaddafi’s. These news stories also show that the rebels looted and ransacked civilians in Sirte in the name of the revolution. In doing so they are certainly more concerned with making the uprisings out to be more beautifully democratic, but they are using the same techniques Gaddafi used. They make claims of democracy while obscuring the information necessary for any true democratic life.

Gaddafi was strikingly similar. He both claimed to represent the people and actually did some good. His regime was marked by a massive lifestyle discrepancy between the people and his family, in which those close to him lived lavishly while the public suffered disgusting projects like the Great Manmade River, which abused money for glory. And yet Gaddafi’s regime also raised literacy, life expectancy, and the standard of health care. This doesn’t make him good, but the way the NTC fights ostensibly for democratic principles mirrors the direct democracy Gaddafi named throughout his reign. His abuse of power revealed itself in how he worked towards his goals–favoring pride and glory over true democracy–in a way that, even before they have been able to put any programs in place, the rebels have hinted at mirroring.

To fight Gaddafi, then, one must change not only the end to be worked towards, but also how the work is done. When Gaddafi was killed, he was found with his golden pistol, which was then shown off by his captors and brandished as a mark of pride and glory. But if there is one enduring symbol of the dead Colonel, it is violence made golden, death turned to wealth. To be considered separate from Gaddafi, the NTC must rid itself of this concern with glory and its symbols. Difficult though it may be, the rebels must refuse to sacrifice the methods of democracy even in the midst of the battle for it. That means that they must respect the limits of their power as defined by democratic principles. Anything short of that and the democratic character of their revolt will die away.

By Annie Pei

“Please Vote for Me” exploded onto the documentary scene at Silverdocs 2007, winning the Sterling Feature Award for its portrayal of a democracy experiment in a Chinese third grade classroom. The film almost made the final five on the Oscar’s Best Documentary Feature shortlist.

Imagine if you didn`t find out that voting existed until you were eight. The thought isn`t one a lot of us can relate to, especially because we grew up in a liberal democracy. But for children who live in countries with limited to no democratic proceedings, the knowledge that something like voting exists comes as a surprise, causing confusion and curiosity

That`s where “Please Vote for Me” picks up.

Director Weijun Chen takes us to Evergreen Primary School in Wuhan, China, where he claims the first democratic school election in China is about to take place. Deviating from tradition, Mrs. Zhang introduces her third grade class to the idea of democracy by holding an election to determine the year’s Class Monitor, a position previously appointed by teachers. Three candidates are selected based on their work ethic, academic standing, and perceived personal integrity to run, making them the documentary’s central characters.

The film follows the candidates as they (and their parents) campaign to win. Luo Lei, the son of a pushy police officer and his equally determined wife, is clearly the most coddled and power-hungry of the three. His aggressiveness, however, is quickly matched by the intelligence and competitive spirit of Cheng Cheng, the son of a TV producer who takes the opportunity to fix up her son`s presentation skills. Xu Xiaofei, the third candidate, is a shy girl for whom the process turns out to be extremely intimidating when she`s thrown in the middle of Luo Lei and Cheng Cheng`s power struggle.

The mud-slinging, name-calling, and bribery start almost immediately. In a progression that mirrors any U.S. election, the campaigning heats up and soon the debates center on personal attacks and broken promises. The parents are equally as invested in the campaign and resort to teaching the kids tricks to put down their rivals and elevate their personal standing.

But “Please Vote for Me” also fascinates by examining another essential building block of democracy: a strong middle class. As China`s economic growth skyrockets, its middle class expands, with some reports pegging the number at 80 million or more. And as individual economic stability becomes more widespread in China, so, too, does the individual desire to be heard and dictate policy. Though the Chinese Communist Party remains politically unopposed, it is aware of the middle class` ability to speak out. As a result, though the CCP’s own policies facilitated middle class emergence, its current maintenance and extension of those policies are to placate the middle class.

The middle class in China truly believes that it has a say in dictating the country`s direction, a mentality mirrored by the candidates` parents on a smaller scale. To them, the classroom election is more than child`s play: it`s an outlet for them to exercise a power that comes with being part of the expanding middle class. Even if school officials selected the candidates, the simple fact that an election is taking place represents democracy’s slow, steady progress in China.

Chen substantiates this message by frequently switching between shots of the classroom and the candidates` life at home. While our school elections usually only involve a few practice speeches and maybe a little candy, Chen shows us nightly speech sessions that last for hours, riddled by constant parental meddling. Later on, one of the parents even pays for and reserves a monorail ride for his son’s classmates, demonstrating just how much the election means to him. The parents’ intensity isn’t just a matter of Chinese family pride; it’s excitement over the prospect of finally having a say, and Chen doesn’t need too many embellished shots to show that.

Never having heard of democracy and being so young, Luo Lei, Cheng Cheng, and Xu Xiaofei probably won’t understand Mrs. Zhang’s experiment until much later. But when this happens, they will be an integral part of the Chinese middle class’ movement to be heard. The CCP does seem to be slowly easing up on previously tough laws and regulations (like divorce and property rights), though whether or not this will satisfy the middle class is still unclear.

“Please Vote for Me” succeeds as a movie because it analyses democracy in practice while also revealing the important link between the middle class and democracy. Our lifelong exposure to a strong democratic society separates us from Mrs. Zhang’s class, but we can still relate to the children and their families through how much we value freedom. With that, Chen unveils an attitude among Chinese citizens that leaves us to wonder about the country’s fate. Though it’s still too early to tell, we can only imagine that liberal democracy in China may, in fact, be closer than we thought.

It is at times like these that my longing for Bombay reaches its peak. The images traveling from my city— halfway around the world— in news flashes and YouTube videos; the excited messages from friends and family; and the happy exclamations at Team India having finally held aloft the magnificent Cricket World Cup at the Wankhede Stadium- all these create not the nostalgia of an international student in the United States, but a dull ache in my chest that is better verbalized as deeply felt desire, for home.

Paradoxically, whenever I am home, the ideal of a cosmopolitan megapolis eludes me. It is not the image of an alluring, prosperous city by the sea that grips me in its vice whenever I am in Chicago but an image of an urban environment dominated by dirt, filth, poverty, and violence.

Where do the myths associated with cities come from? How do you pin down the identity of a place? Whose city is it? What does it mean to be a Bombayite, or indeed, a Chicagoan, a Londoner, a Parisian, a Shanghainese? These are questions that haunt me every time I go back home, but lately, it is not only at home that I have been asking them. They arise every time Bombay appears in a news clipping; when I speak to another Indian; and when I talk politics with my mother.  They arise in a myriad of seemingly innocuous situations that contain embedded deep within them memories of a city that represent not a built space or something that can be visualized but rather a state of mind.

When I think about Bombay— here in Chicago— the myth that disguises reality is more transparent. It is easily stripped away – I see my city, indeed, I see all cities, as they really are for most people – brutal, tough places to live, where access to basic facilities is often limited, where there is often vast disparity in living standards, and I start to wonder how even though cities in different parts of the world seem so different from each other, beneath the surface, beneath the glimmer and flash, beneath the rattle and hum, beneath the crowds, perhaps they’re not so different after all.

I have always been deeply fascinated by the practice of politics in the South Asian subcontinent. A deeply disturbing image, an image which saw its genesis with the new, post liberalization India, recurs when I try to visualize a sub-continental politician. This is an image an image of a short and portly man, usually bespectacled, a spectacularly evil smile on his face, sporting a mustache that definitely shouldn’t be adorning the upper lip of any discerning, self – respecting gentleman in this century. Somehow I always visualize a man even though to do this, I understand, is to commit a profound injustice to the thriving population of enormously successful female politicians in India.

I’ve often wondered why this sinister image doesn’t simply go away. Why has this image persisted in the face of a storm of political change in the past two decades? Why hasn’t it disappeared with the advent of the new India, the shining India of the free economy? I’ve come to the stark and uncomfortable conclusion that it cannot go away because there is no political persona of stature and charisma to make it vanish.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a proud and patriotic Indian. All I’m saying is that stirring rhetoric in the class of ‘This was their finest hour…’ or ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can for your country…’ isn’t Dr. Manhoman Singh’s forte, nor is it P. Chidambaram’s, nor is it Pranab Mukherjee’s. There is no Congress higher up who is simply put, that good.

When the economy opened up in 1992, Indians changed dramatically. Gone were the tweed suits, the oiled hair, the thick black glasses, and flabby old bureaucrats intent on ensuring that you had successfully obtained the thirty ninth license you needed to set up a type-writer maintenance factory in some forgotten by – lane between Kalighata and Kolkata. In were Italian ties, gelled hair, foreign educations, and a new urban you that suddenly wasn’t very different from urban youth elsewhere. These young people watched American sitcoms instead of Doordarshan and ran on treadmills with their MP3 players running on full volume. They were an urban youth that was informed and sick of the way the country was being run.

There’s a stain on this rosy picture, though. This new urban youth, for all its flash, for all its rebellion, has failed to produce politicians. Notice how I say politicians, because there is no lack of leaders, it just seems as if the private sector seems to gobble talent up. People would only laugh at me if I began to speak of a career in politics in the same way as I speak of a career in the financial services or in law or in engineering. It’s just not done that way. You only get into politics if your mother or father is in politics, who themselves probably only got into politics because their mothers or fathers were in politics, ad infinitum. Or at least that’s how it seems from where I’m sitting in the Indian rainbow. Rahul Gandhi seems to be an inspiring chap, but he’ll probably be a grandfather by the time he’s prime minister, and there’s simply no way of getting around the fact that inspiration can only take you so far if your mom’s not Sonia Gandhi.

The Hindustan Times, in collaboration with Rutgers University, recently conducted a massive survey of Indian nationals studying in the United States. Of those surveyed, 92% wanted to seek a career back home on completing their studies. They spoke excitedly of corporate jobs, of entrepreneurship opportunities, of big ideas, of big dreams – but not of politics. Getting into that dirty business doesn’t seem very enticing when there’s no one inspiring enough to make running a country seem worthwhile. It’s easy to see how a phenomenon can become cyclical – gone are the Nehrus and Vallabhai Patels , the Rajagopalacharis and the Jayprakash Narayans, residents of an era that doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to return. And that is the greatest tragedy of the world’s largest democracy.

UBELONG is a new study abroad organization that was founded by two former classmates from Cornell University. Through this organization, the founders hope to encourage more volunteerism abroad at a low cost for students. Programs are currently offered in six countries across the world and growing every day.

I am fascinated by the fact that you were heading to Wall Street and the co-founder Raul was heading into academia. How did each of you stray from those paths and finally decide to start UBELONG? Why is this organization so important to you?

RAUL:

A volunteer in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in an orphanage.

I have been involved in international development work for over 13 years, and I have always managed to combine my work as a practitioner, consultant and social entrepreneur with teaching and research at universities. As a professor in international affairs I have never been confined to the ivory tower. Even as a doctoral student I was involved in multiple consulting assignments that took me to over 15 countries across the developing world. I now teach part-time at Johns Hopkins and Cornell.

Some people may think that my path is not conventional, but my work with students as a university professor moved me to co-found UBELONG with Cedric. What I still strive to do in my courses is to inspire others to add value to society, fulfill their potential as global citizens, and get involved in real issues at the ground level. That is exactly what we are doing at UBELONG but at a much larger scale. We are inspiring people of all backgrounds to share their talent in important causes and educating them about global issues.

CEDRIC:

Raul Roman during a visit to a shelter for street kids in Saigon, Vietnam, where UBELONG volunteers teach English.

From volunteering in a local hospital and with my town’s ambulance corps when I was in high school to giving my parents fits [for] travelling alone to Spain to bike the Camino de Santiago when I was fifteen, I have always had a passion for community service and travel. At Cornell I majored in economics and management and focused on international development courses. After graduating I worked in investment banking in New York. I had student loans to pay back and banks were the only ones hiring business majors at the time. From a networking and intellectual point of view my banking experience was incredible: I met a lot of smart people and learned skills that continue to help me today.

However, in 2009, after many all-night kick in the rear “where is my life going?” conversations with Raul, I decided to make the jump and launch UBELONG. Professionally it was an easy decision. We’re both passionate about international volunteering and together we have the experience, network and skills to create an organization as complex as UBELONG. The market is also wide open; there is no organization in the world that combines affordability, flexibility and quality like UBELONG.

From a personal standpoint the decision was more difficult. The tale of “entrepreneurs leaving it all behind and following their dreams into the sunset” is a Hollywood myth. Leaving a steady paycheck is scary and stepping from behind a big corporate name to stand alone can be invigorating but also very lonely. Moreover, the famously long hours that investment bankers work are part-time when compared to what you need to put in to launch an organization. Raul and I haven’t worked less than 90 hours a week since 2009, and with how rapidly UBELONG is growing that will continue into 2011.

But I love it. I don’t have a job, I have a passion. As challenging as launching UBELONG has been there is nothing else in the world I would rather be doing.

Many study abroad programs have sought an egalitarian liberal education objective, but many have fallen short.
By Conor Gaffney May 27th, 2008

Today’s study abroad programs, “the hottest new education market,” according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, are unlike the smaller and less common research-oriented international education programs of the 1960s. Undergraduates today choose from a dizzying array of options: working, volunteering, or studying on every continent, even Antarctica. International experience has become a common element of the American undergraduate education, and a credential much desired by employers. Two schools, Goucher College and Soka University of America, have already instituted mandatory study-abroad requirements for undergraduates, while other schools like Harvard and Duke are currently debating whether or not to follow suit.

Studying abroad, however, is just a single facet of a much larger educational trend that has repositioned the idea of a liberal education in American political and social life. Recruiting foreign students, creating international research groups, designing a multilingual and multicultural campus at home, and sending students to study in foreign countries around the globe are all efforts made by America’s colleges to master the profound, yet ill-understood effects of globalization. As part of the larger program of internationalization, adjustments in curricula, new initiatives, and the diminishing gap between campus and the market, reveal the reorientation of values in American education.

Internationalization is the new “diversification,” a social and educational vision that has profoundly changed the terms of a liberal education. Diversification, popularized by Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell in his in 1978 opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, enshrined the idea of an ethnically diverse campus as reflective of American egalitarianism. By ruling that race could be used as a criterion of positive discrimination in college admissions, making affirmative action constitutional, Powell’s opinion helped establish diversity as a centerpiece of American liberal education.

Louis Menand, a cultural and intellectual historian at Harvard, notes that the consequences of diversification have reached far beyond the color of college campuses: “the changes are visible today in a new emphasis on multiculturalism (meaning exposure to specifically ethnic perspectives and traditions), and on values (an emphasis on the ethical implications of knowledge); in a renewed interest in service (manifested in the emergence of internship and off-campus social service programs) and in the idea of community; in what is called ‘education for citizenship.’” Diversification reoriented the values of a liberal education, enthroning cross-cultural understanding as the critical element of American citizenship.

An American student chronicles her travels — and her fluid identity — as she visits the Middle East.
By Shira Tevah; May 19th, 2008

I arrived at the JFK airport in New York from Damascus after a layover in Istanbul. The official behind the passport and immigration desk had taken one look at the countries I’d visited and slashed my customs form with a yellow highlighter. I was standing now before a second official. “It’s definitely not Israel. It’s not Turkey. It’s probably not Jordan,” he said, speculating about the reason I was flagged for interrogation. “It’s gotta be Syria.”

He handed me the paper marked by the yellow slash. “Take this to the end of the corridor,” he said. I followed his instructions, and after some minutes of tapping my foot anxiously in a non-descript office, I was called to a different booth.

“What was this, some kind of religious pilgrimage?” the third customs official asked me. From August to December last year, I studied Arabic in the Palestinian territories and Israel, and vacationed to Jordan and Syria. Life in the Middle East is a game of identity, and my own identity had become flexible during my time there. It wasn’t who I was—it was what I was, and where. In the Middle East, the situation determines if it’s better to label yourself as an American, a student, a religious traveler, an Israeli, a Canadian, or an Arab. Guess wrong and a cabbie might overcharge you, a country may refuse you entrance, or a friend could turn his or her back on you. With every border and checkpoint I crossed, I assumed new facets of identity and concealed others.

“No,” I replied. “I was on a leave of absence from university, just traveling. I’m studying the Middle East.”

He typed some things into the computer in front of him and sighed. “Well, they sent you over here for a reason,” he said. “Where are your parents from?”

“Both American,” I told him.

“I mean, where are they from?”

“How far do you want me go back? I think my mom’s parents are British or Scottish and my dad’s family are mostly Jews from the Ukraine and Eastern Europe.” He looked puzzled.

“Let me explain something to you,” he said, his voice taking on a lecturing tone.

“When I come back into the United States after a trip, I get a hard time. People even ask me if my parents were slaves. And I’m an officer in the U.S. Navy. Now why do you think they do that?” he asked me, gesturing to his black skin. “Look at you, and your name, and this list of countries. It’s not right they sent you down here. But now that your name’s been flagged, I just have to put some information into the computer to de-flag it.”

Something dawned on my sleepless, addled mind: He meant I’d been profiled as an Arab. Though singling people out for questioning at airports on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion is illegal, it is widely recognized to be a continuing practice. Apparently the four months I’d spent in the Arab world trying to experience life as a Palestinian had worked better than I’d imagined. It wasn’t the fact alone that I’d been to Syria that the first official noticed; it was the fact that I’d been to Syria and look like I might be Syrian.

• • •