Ariadna Khafizova

In the summer of 2001 The Chase Coggins fund allowed me to travel to Dharamsala, the Tibetan capital in exile, to work at Norbulingka Institute (www.norbulingka.org) and learn more about its mission to preserve traditional Tibetan art and culture while providing recent refugees with apprenticeships that offered them a chance to earn a living. While my initial intent was to learn more about the religious underpinnings of the artistic forms practiced at Norbulingka, the project evolved into a collection of oral histories. I spoke with a number of refugees, among them monks who participated in rebellions against the Chinese rule, were imprisoned, and then fled to India to practice their religion and openly venerate His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Other interviewees came for economic opportunities that were lacking in their remote villages, preferring to move to India instead of mainland China because they felt educationally disadvantaged by their lack of training in the Chinese language. What drew me to the stories was the immediacy of the experience and the similarity to what my own family had gone through in the early years of the Soviet Union, being forced to abandon their land and religion with the advance of communism into the Urals. This potent reminder of universality of human suffering and resilience has remained with me many years after that summer, urging me to be responsive to social injustice and natural disasters, wherever they may occur.

Study and photograph seabirds of Newfoundland

Civil society in Syria is vibrant, alive, and eminently prepared to investigate the complex issues facing women in Syrian society

Susanna Ferguson
Summer 2008
Coggins Fellowship Report

As a recipient of the Chase Coggins Memorial Fellowship for Summer 2008, I spent six weeks in Damascus, Syria, as an intern for al-Thara, a women’s rights magazine based in Damascus, and parent organization Etana Press. Through al-Thara and Etana, I was offered a unique opportunity to experience the dynamism and vision of the repressed Syrian civic sector first-hand, and my experience changed the way I think about the Middle East and myself as a student of the region.

When I arrived in Damascus to intern for al-Thara and conduct research about the intersection between gender and activism in the Middle East, I did not know what to expect. I had been told that local activist movements in Syria were not permitted to operate at all, let alone allowed to tackle the tough issues often associated with the rights of women. What I found, through my experiences in Damascus and my association with al-Thara, was that most of the things I had been told about Syria were wrong. After a summer spent building relationships with passionate Syrian activists (both male and female) and working with al-Thara and similar organizations, it was clear to me that civil society in Syria was vibrant, alive, and eminently prepared to investigate the complex issues facing women in Syrian society.

Sunset over Damascus

At the Hamiddiyya Souk

Outside the Hamidiyya Souk

As an intern for Thara, I was involved in their projects in a variety of capacities. At the most basic level, I served as an editorial intern, going to the office each day and translating articles from Arabic to English to be posted on their website. I also sat in on interviews with women and journalists reporting on women’s issues, and on meetings with contributors and cartoonists. I got to see the day-to-day operations of the Thara magazine, observe their interactions with the government officials who came regularly to check up on their activities, and share their sense of commitment to their work and hope for the future.

I also got the opportunity to spend several days shadowing Ma’an abd-al-Salaam, the director of Etana Press (the parent NGO which runs Thara, along with a variety of other programs). With Ma’an and his associate Rania, I heard all about the office they were planning to open in Beirut and attended several meetings of the seminar on gender in Syria they were offering to a group of students and community members, who were about to leave for Germany to take part in an international conference on women’s rights.

I came into my experience at Thara feeling as if I knew nothing about where I was or what my role should be in such a viscerally unfamiliar context. All of my sense of intellectual preparation fell away, and I felt utterly foreign, unqualified, and unprepared. But this sensation, at first so uncomfortable, proved to be one of the most important things I experienced in Syria: it helped me to begin to reevaluate myself as a student of the Middle East. As I pursued my internship at al-Thara, I understood that I, too, had come to Syria with a set of expectations: I had hoped that the criticisms levied by the Western press about gender in the Middle East would prove unfounded, and that my findings would sustain my skepticism about international media coverage of the Middle East. As I delved deeper into these issues with my colleagues and mentors at al-Thara, however, I realized that I needed to lose sight of the answers I wanted to hear in order to ask more creative questions. I became a student in a way I’d never been before–I had no tools at my disposal but humility, confusion, and curiosity, which seemed to deepen with each question I asked.

Ultimately, what my experience in Syria did was to return me to a sense of wonder. After focusing academically on the language, history, and formation of the modern Middle East during my time at Yale, I realized in Damascus that what I love about the study of foreign cultures is not the collection of answers, but the constant expansion of my ability to ask questions about my passions–culture, society, and development in the Middle East–as my language skills grow. I also realized that the kind of local civic development work that organizations like Etana do is one of the best ways of effecting real change that matters to people on the ground, and I plan to spend the next several years exploring (both professionally and academically) how I can best contribute to that process. Thanks to the Chase Coggins Fellowship, I will never look at the region, or at my own study of it, in the same way.

Managing the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska in the Common Interest

Kevin Currey
February, 2008
Report on Summer Research Experience

With the generous support of the Chase Coggins Memorial Fund, I spent eight weeks this summer studying the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The 23-million acre NPR-A is the largest tract of federal land in the United States. It lies west of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Prudhoe Bay in Alaska’s oil- and gas-rich North Slope region. The Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency responsible for managing the NPR-A, divided the area into three sections: northeast, northwest, and south. I focused my research on the 4.6 million acre northeast section, because the management of this area has been most contentious. The BLM opened a portion of the northeast section to oil and gas development in a 1998 Integrated Activity Plan/Environmental Impact Statement, and the agency opened even more of the area in a 2006 amendment to the 1998 document. A subsequent lawsuit by concerned conservation organizations forced the BLM to revise its 2006 analysis. In May 2008, the BLM released a supplement to the 2006 amendment that reversed many of the development expansions allowed in the 2006 amendment.

The broad goal of my research is to investigate whether the NPR-A is being managed in the common interest. To do so, I have tried to understand the social process surrounding the dispute over the NPR-A’s management and the decision process used by the federal government, purportedly to resolve that dispute. My work is guided by several subsidiary questions: What groups are involved in the EIS process, and with what outcomes and effects? What demands do they make, based on what values and expectations? How does the BLM incorporate different perspectives into its analysis and management decisions? Are BLM officials able to describe how they make decisions? What role does science play in the social and decision processes? How are scientific arguments used and misused by the different participants? Why did the BLM change its management strategies in 1998, 2006, and 2008? What social and political factors explain those changes? How do the Inupiaq Eskimos define the NPR-A policy problems? How do they participate in the debate? Are their voices being heard? In what ways does development help and hurt their well-being? Does oil and gas development affect their health, subsistence hunting, and cultural traditions? Are local and traditional knowledge collected and incorporated into the decision process? Will comprehensive development planning help mitigate the social, environmental, and political impacts of development?

To answer these questions, I used a methodology known as the policy sciences, a set of contextual, problem-oriented, and multi-method approaches to understanding the policy process. As the end of the spring semester and beginning of the summer, I engaged in a literature review, obtaining and reading relevant scientific articles, articles from local and national magazines and newspapers, integrated activities plans, environmental impact statements, records of decision, court decisions, and the transcriptions from public meetings about NPR-A. While in Alaska, I conducted interviews with 39 people representing about 25 unique organizations with a vested interest in the management of the NPR-A. A complete list of the interviews conducted is available in the appendix. During these semi-structured interviews, I asked the participants to explain their personal involvement in the NPR-A debates and to outline their organization’s involvement and position over time. I then asked a series of more specific questions about science, decision making, cultural issues. Some questions were standardized across all participants, and others were unique depending on the context.

I lived in Anchorage for most of the summer, but I made occasional trips to surrounding cities and also spent several days in Fairbanks. Although I did some library research, I spent most of my time in Anchorage interviewing participants in the NPR-A policy dispute. I talked with government officials from the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Land Management, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Commission on Arctic Research. I also talked with representatives from several conservation organizations and oil companies, as well as from the Resource Development Council, North Slope Borough, the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, and the Kuukpik Village Corporation. As I expected, each participant in the case offered a different perspective on the NPR-A, placing emphasis on different facts and values and in some instances framing the issues using drastically different worldviews. These interviews provided a better functional understanding of the disputes that have taken place and placed these disputes in a fuller, more nuanced context better than any other method has done so for me.

I devoted the final two weeks of my time in Alaska to traveling across the Arctic. I first visited Prudhoe Bay, the largest oil field in the United States. The plane flights in and out provided a good sense of the scope of development. I walked through some of the production facilities and saw the first drill site, where ARCO discovered oil in 1968. I also learned about the area’s history and current industry practices from workers and operators.

I then spent a week in Nuiqsut, a small native village of approximately 450 mostly Inupiaq Eskimo residents. I toured many of the town’s facilities, including the power plant, school, community center, teen center, health clinic, water treatment facility, AC store, and Presbyterian church. I had countless informal conversations with residents on the streets. I also hired a local translator and interviewed five of the village’s respected elders, most of whom have a very limited ability to speak and understand English.

They helped me understand how the Inupiaq culture has changed over time and offered a variety of explanations for and reactions to those changes. Speaking with the elders was one of my favorite experiences of the entire summer, and it provided a perspective on development and cultural change I could not have obtained in any other way. On my last night in Nuiqsut, I was invited to participate in an 18-hour oogruk (bearded seal) subsistence hunt in the Arctic Ocean. I saw first-hand how subsistence hunting works in the Arctic, from spotting and hunting the seals to preparing and eating the meat.

I cannot imagine how I could ever understand the challenges and opportunities facing the Inupiat in general and the people of Nuiqsut in particular without witnessing such an important aspect of their way of life in person.

Finally, I spent several days in Barrow, the northernmost town in the United States and the borough seat of Alaska’s North Slope Borough. I met with several members of the North Slope Borough staff, who helped me understand the Borough’s perspective on oil and gas development in the NPR-A and shared with me the results of some studies conducted by the Borough’s Wildlife Department.

Over the upcoming semester, I will work to analyze my data, refine my research question, and develop conclusions and recommendations. I am confident that my experience this summer will greatly enrich my senior thesis in Environmental Studies. I am extremely grateful for the tremendous opportunity to design and conduct my own research project. This was my first opportunity to conduct social science research in the field, and my skills greatly improved over the course of the summer. I really enjoyed the change to live and travel alone and to meet with so many extremely interesting people. There are not many opportunities to do so as an undergraduate, and I believe the experience is invaluable. This summer was the most exciting, educational, and enjoyable one I have had. Thank you again for helping to make this possible. I look forward to using what I have learned this summer in my professional career, where I hope to continue the search for creative, common-interest solutions to complicated policy problems.

Appendix: Alaska Interviews Summer 2008

Anchorage Area

1. John Toppenberg Director, Alaska Wildlife Alliance
2. Hans Neidig Special Assistant to the Secretary for Alaska, Dept. of the Interior
3. Mead Treadwell Chair, U.S. Arctic Research Commission
4. Jennifer Hillman BLM Policy Analyst, Alaska Wilderness League
5. Jennifer Curtis NEPA Review/Compliance Officer, EPA-Alaska Operations Office
6. Pat Pourchot Senior Policy Representative, Audubon Alaska
7. Ted Murphy Deputy State Director, Division of Resources, BLM Alaska
8. Jim Ducker Environmental Program Analyst, BLM Alaska
9. Kurt Parkan Director of External Affairs, the Nature Conservancy
10. John Payne Executive Director, North Slope Science Initiative
11. Jason Brune Executive Director, Resource Development Council for Alaska
12. Carl Portman Deputy Director, Resource Development Council for Alaska
13. Rachel James Alaska Program Associate, Pacific Environment
14. Jason Bergerson Research Analyst, North Slope Borough
15. Jon Issacs Associate Planner and Director of Business Development, URS Corp.
16. Mark Hanley Manager, Public Affairs, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation
17. Tara Sweeney VP of External Affairs, Arctic Slope Regional Corporation
18. Lanston Chinn CEO, Kuukpik Corporation
19. Tom Lohman Attorney, North Slope Borough
20. Natalie Lowman Director of Communications, ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc.

Fairbanks

21. Lon Kelly Manager, Arctic Field Office, BLM Alaska
22. Bob Schneider Fairbanks District Manager, BLM Alaska
23. Jim Zelenak Biologist, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
24. Pamela A. Miller Arctic Issues Coordinator, Northern Alaska Environmental Center

Nuiqsut

25. Sam Kunaknana Mayor
26. Isaac Nukapigak President, Kuukpik Corporation
27. Heather Smith Pastor, Kuukpuk Presbyterian Church
28. Rosemary Ahtuangaruak Community Activist
29. Eli Nukapigak City Council Member
30. Gina Rath City Administrator
31. Marjorie Ahnupkana Elder
32. Joe Ericklook Elder
33. Amy Taalak Elder
34. Annie Lampe Elder
35. Joe Kasak Elder

Barrow

36. Noah Ashley Wildlife Biologist, North Slope Borough
37. Brian Person Wildlife Biologist, North Slope Borough
38. Price Leavitt Executive Director, Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope
39. Glenn Sheehan Executive Director, Barrow Arctic Science

The Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders in South Korea

Nicolas Abreu
Branford College
Yale Class of 2008

Thanks to the Chase Coggins Fellowship, I studied a wide range of issues surrounding children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in South Korea. For eleven weeks, I conducted research in Seoul at the Korea Institute for Children’s Social Development. I spent the first couple of weeks working on a project analyzing data from thousands of autism screening questionnaires for a large-scale study of the prevalence of ASD in South Korea. I devised a series of algorithms to work with incomplete data and my results were then used to determine which children deserved follow-up assessments for ASD. I then designed and ran an experiment studying face recognition skills in children with ASD because there is a lack of research on face processing in children with ASD outside of Western cultures. I tested Korean children with and without ASD using a recognition memory test and my initial results suggest that just like Western children with ASD, Korean children with ASD also exhibit face recognition deficits. Extending this further, face recognition deficits might likely be a universal marker of ASD, not affected by the culturally defined social standards for face perception and eye contact. Finally, I absolutely adored the spare time I spent volunteering with an alternative school in Ilsan and the Institute.

This fellowship gave me a fantastic opportunity to pursue my academic interests in exciting new territory. Not only did I carry out some excellent work that I will use for my senior essay in Cognitive Science, but I have gained a deep appreciation for Korean culture and have developed a cross-cultural sensitivity when dealing with and discussing medical issues. I found that I am most fascinated by questions like “What is autism really?” and “How we can best define the disorder?” and by pursuing a career as a child psychiatrist, I will be able to more precisely determine what the core combination of cognitive, behavioral, and medical issues are in ASD so that we will be able to provide the best possible therapies to each and every autistic child.

Artistic response, by painting, to dinosaur digging and its landscape on a new tract in Wyoming.

Toward a Holistic Understanding of Malaria Prevention and Treatment in Mali.

A bird survey in the upland forests of Savai’i, Samoa

John Mittermeier
Davenport College,
Class of 2008

Imagine a purplish-slate bird with the build of a bantam hen, bulging onyx eyes, coral red legs, a fiery bill and a dandelion yellow casque. While most of its close relatives scamper through sunny marshes, this bird – nocturnal and flightless – digs burrows into the mountainside of a tiny island in the middle of the South Pacific. This is the Samoan Moorhen (Pareudiastes pacifica), and no one had seen it for 130 years, until, in 2003, a reputable bird tour guide reported seeing a pair on the island of Savai’i, Samoa. With funding from the Chase Coggins Memorial Scholarship, the Environmental Studies Summer Internship Program, and the Yale College Dean’s Research Fellowship, I spent the summer of 2005 following up this report and trying to determine whether the Samoan Moorhen is in fact extant.

My work focused on the largest remaining forest block on the island – the uplands surrounding Mauga Silisili (“Top-of-the-top Mountain”). I started in early June in the northern section of the forest, where the 2003 report was made. For seventeen days, I camped along the edge of the Mata o le Afi (“the Eye of the Fire”) Volcano at 1500 m above sea level.

This area is a full day’s walk from the nearest village, A’opo, and there are no nearby water sources; almost certainly, my seventeen days represent a longer time than anyone has ever spent in this part of Savai’i’s interior. While there, I surveyed the area within a rough 1 km. radius of Mata o le Afi. This included the volcanic succession habitat around the crater itself, the forest between Mata o le afi and Mauga Mu (“Mountain of Flame”) to the west, the inside of the Mauga Mu crater, the forest on and around the unnamed mountain to the south of Mata o le Afi, the forest to the east between Mata o le Afi and Mauga Silisili, and the forest and marshy areas directly to the south of Mauga Silisili. In addition to this, I spent time sampling habitats at 1300 m and 1000 m above sea level along the A’opo – Mauga Silisili trail to the north of Mata o le Afi.

The 1000 m site is the exact area of the 2003 report; I did not concentrate the majority of my time here, however, because the forest farther inland was in better condition, and any moorhens seen at this lower elevation would likely be vagrants from the more pristine forest area.

After A’opo, I moved to the valleys near the 200-meter-high Sinaloa Waterfall on the south side of Savai’i’s upland forest; a half day’s walk inland from the village of Sili.

The scenery in this area was sublime; sheer cliffs studded with umbrella-like tree ferns, dozens of roaring waterfalls, and a perpetual cover of heavy gray clouds. Unfortunately, the weather and topography prevented me from carrying out many surveys in this area. It rained constantly and the forest understory – filled with fallen trees and secondary vegetation after being damaged by cyclones in the early 1990s – was virtually impenetrable. Access to the more remote areas was blocked by waterfalls, mudslides, surging rivers and tall cliffs. At one point, a flash flood forced my team to abandon camp and left us floating downriver on banana trunks! Work was further complicated by logistical difficulties in the village, most notably a village funeral which barred people from going into the forest for two weeks.

These difficulties limited my surveys to the valley directly below the Sinaloa Waterfall. I was also able to reach the lower areas of the Alia o le Gaoa (“Rugged Watercourse”) and the Alia o le Vanu (“Watercourse of the Chasm”), but was unable to explore as far as I would have liked.

Never once did I see any sign of the Samoan Moorhen or hear any convincing evidence of other people having seen it.

Hunters looking for pigs and pigeons visit the forest near Sili and A’opo with regularity.

In Sili, the two most active hunters reported having killed twenty pigs and numerous birds over an eight month period. They use hunting dogs (the Sili hunters brought a pack of 9-10 animals with them), and shoot and eat local birds including species as small as the Samoan Parrotfinch (Erythrura cyaneovirens). These men did not recognize pictures of the Samoan Moorhen and were unfamiliar with its Samoan name. At first glance, they confused pictures with “manuali’i,” the Purple Swamphen (Porphyrio porphyrio). When I pointed out the differences between puna’e and manuali’i – most notably the Moorhen’s bright yellow casque – they responded that they had “never seen this bird.’

My personal field observations included recording large numbers of feral rats, cats, pigs, and birds. Near Mata o le Afi, I found extensive evidence of feral cats – scat and bird kills – and observed Red-vented Bulbuls (Pycnonotus cafer), a recent introduction from Southeast Asia, in the upland forests.

Rats and pigs were common to abundant throughout the forests. All of these species heavily impact native bird populations; cats and rats in particular are incompatible with the survival of a flightless, ground-nesting bird like the Moorhen. A telling example is that of Stephen’s Island off New Zealand, where a single cat drove the island’s endemic wren to extinction in less than a year.

Invasive plants were also common, especially in areas which had been damaged by human activity, such as logging, or cyclones. Merremia vines completely blanketed some of the forest near Sili, choking out all other vegetation.

Near A’opo, I found that the exact area of the 2003 report had been heavily disturbed by recent logging roads. In addition to cats and rats, pigs were particularly abundant in this area as were extensive stands of invasive grasses and Merremia vines. Given this, I think it is unlikely that the 2003 moorhen sighting is accurate. My guess is that the birds seen were juvenile Purple Swamphens (Porphyrio porphyrio). These are a similar color and shape to the moorhen and, in the poor light of the forest interior, could be easily confused with one. Swamphens fly and are less susceptible to predation by invasive species than a Moorhen would be.

In my opinion, the Samoan Moorhen is extinct. Its decline corresponds to the arrival of Europeans and their foreign plants and animals. The Norway Rat (Rattus norvegicus), I would guess, is most to blame. It has populated all areas of Savai’i, depleted native arthropod and reptile populations and probably destroyed the Moorhen by predating eggs and chicks.

The inaccessible valleys around the Sinaloa waterfall could still provide a glimmer of hope. In the north, east and west of Savai’i, the more sloping terrain has permitted human access and disturbance, which in turn has allowed introduced species to spread. Near Sinaloa, however, forest patches in the upper areas of the Alia o le Vanu and the Alia o le Gaoa may still remain relatively untouched. With good equipment, knowledge of the topography, and a lucky stretch of weather it might be possible to reach the upper areas of these valleys and approach Mauga Silisili from the south side. At least two weeks would be necessary just to cut the preliminary trail. This is an extremely limited area though and any population of moorhens would be very small. I would be interested to hear survey reports from these areas.

Travel and interviews defining ‘the pursuit of happiness

Improving communication about water issues and usages on the Kenya-Tanzania border.

Study on the experience of migration from the viewpoint of the Mexican side of the border.

Photographic essay on Bosnia after the War.

As difficult as such an intellectual endeavor may be, it is time to look at both sides of the Cuban coin, to work to eradicate the serious human rights abuses perpetrated by the Cuban government, while at the same time learning from the successes that same government has achieved.

My experience in Cuba, funded by the Chase Coggins Fund, was one of the most formative in my life. It was in Cuba that summer that I learned to hold paradox in my mind. Namely, on the one hand, Cubans do lack political freedoms. Yet, the standard of living was undeniably higher than it was in so many other Latin American countries I had visited. I wrote my senior essay on the research I had done in Cuba, and also wrote a play called Speak Easy Havana based on the experience.

I am deeply grateful for the experiences I had enabled by the Chase Coggins Fellowship.

Jocelyn Lippert Alt
Yale Daily News
Friday, April 11, 2003
Opinion Editorial, Page 2

The Fidel Castro you never knew

In his letter to the editor last week, Michael Bustamante ’06 discounts positive impressions of Cuban society as the result of government manipulation engineered to mask the true horror of the Cuban regime. (“Let’s get the Cuban government’s record straight,” 4/4)

The unbalanced view of the Cuban government to which Bustamante falls victim is shared by many in this country. In the recent coverage of the arrests of Cuban dissidents, there is a side to the story Americans are not hearing. And with the elimination of licenses for people-to-people educational exchange to Cuba, announced by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control on March 24, one of the primary avenues open to Americans to hear the other perspective will be cut off.

While I was in Cuba last month on the Yale educational trip, it became clear to me that both the Cuban and U.S. governments and media are guilty of one-sided portrayals of the island. Cuban representatives never mention human rights violations; the United States talks of nothing but. Cuban representatives talk of the achievements of their government in the realms of health, education and environmental management; the U.S. media is silent on such matters.

These polarized positions on the Cuban government are unconstructive. The truth is more complex, and it is important to seek a middle ground in our intellectual understanding of this Caribbean enigma.

The 16 Yale students who traveled to Cuba this spring break on a Reach Out service-learning trip were fully aware that in meetings with Cuban officials and officially sanctioned members of Cuban society, we would hear a slanted story of the Cuban reality. All 16 students are enrolled in a semester-long seminar about Cuba and our professor left us with no illusions. We knew that we should take everything we saw with a grain of salt.

Indeed, in many meetings, we heard Cuban representatives extol the successes of the Cuban government since the 1959 revolution, in eradicating illiteracy, providing free health care for all, empowering women, curbing the spread of AIDS, protecting the environment, and more.

And, as Bustamante says, this view was undoubtedly one-sided. But — and this is what people opposed to the Cuban government often will not recognize — the fact that it was one-sided does not mean it was false.

UNICEF reports a literacy rate in Cuba of 96 percent and an infant mortality rate of 7 per 1,000 live births, a rate equal to that of the United States. In Bolivia, 79 percent of adult women are literate; 62 babies die per every 1,000 live births. These statistics are not empty numbers. Before the revolution, Cuba was characterized by the same huge income gap, low literacy rates, inaccessible health care for the majority of the population, and environmental degradation that marks many other Latin American countries.

Today’s statistics reflect real advances made in Cuba since the revolution that are the result of a determined commitment to improving these quality of life indicators, and are substantiated through individual accounts of everyday Cubans.

For example, in Cuba I met a 64-year-old man at a neighborhood gathering in a town called Vinales who told me about the jaw surgery he had last year. “I didn’t pay a cent,” he said. Under Cuba’s universally free health care system, staffed by thousands of doctors trained in medical schools established since 1959, the Cuban government covered the entire cost of this man’s surgery, hospitalization and food, and post-operational appointments.

While in Cuba, I walked to school with the 7-year-old girl whose family I stayed with in a remote inland town near Santa Clara. She wore a government-provided uniform and carried a backpack full of textbooks supplied by the government. Her grandparents had been illiterate, but she could read and write better than the second-graders I have tutored in New Haven.

Stories like these contrast sharply with conditions I have seen in other parts of Latin America.

While I was working at a school for the blind in Bolivia last summer, I met a man named Gustavo who lost his sight a year and half ago due to a brain tumor. He would have more than a 60 percent chance of his regaining his sight with an operation. But he can no longer work and cannot afford the $4,000 he would have to pay for the operation. Had Gustavo been a Cuban, he may have had to wait in a long line and suffer from the shortage of medicines that now plagues the Cuban health system, but he probably would have gotten that operation, and he may today have been able to see.

In El Salvador last spring, I met a 12-year-old boy in the town of Cuidad Romero who told me that only his eldest brother was able to go to school. His family, he said, cannot afford the uniforms and books for the other children and needs them to labor in the fields to earn money.

In Cuba, 10 people may live in a one cramped apartment, but the shanty towns of cardboard and tin houses that cover the landscapes of other Latin American countries are conspicuously absent.

Such things matter. At a time when millions of people in developing countries not only live in poverty, but also lack access to basic health care, education, housing, food, and clean water, the world ignores Cuba’s successes at its own peril.

The reality is that exemplary achievements and odious government repression exist simultaneously in Cuba. The everyday constraint of political freedoms is stark, and can be seen clearly in the control of the press and the intolerance of the expression of “counter-revolutionary” ideas.

In Havana, we met a Cuban university student studying English and German who deplored the discrimination against Cubans that prohibits them from entering the tourist hotels. He said he hates living in a country where he cannot express his views freely, that he wants to leave Cuba, and that Cuba must undergo reforms.

And although I did not hear of the incident until I came back to the United States, the round-up of dissidents accused of engaging in subversive activity began while I was still in Cuba. Some of the dissidents have now been sentenced to more than 20 years in prison. With these arrests and condemnations, the violation of rights we as Americans hold dear has reached a crisis point in Cuba, and it is critical that the international community do everything it can to protect the civil and human rights of Cuban citizens.

But efforts to open the political climate and protect against the breach of civil and human rights should not negate the advancements that Castro’s government has achieved.

When I asked the university student who expressed deep resentment of government policies what he thought about Fidel, he responded, “Castro is a great man. He has made some mistakes, but he wants the best for us.”

Cuba is a country of contradictions, and Cubans have practice living with the paradoxes. We owe it to them and to ourselves not to oversimplify our understanding of the island by confining ourselves to one-sided views.

As difficult as such an intellectual endeavor may be, it is time to look at both sides of the Cuban coin, to work to eradicate the serious human rights abuses perpetrated by the Cuban government, while at the same time learning from the successes that same government has achieved.

Jocelyn Lippert Alt was a junior in Timothy Dwight College. She is a former Staff Reporter for the Yale Daily News.

Effects of the history of educational inequalities in south Texas

Ariadna Khafizova

In the summer of 2001 The Chase Coggins fund allowed me to travel to Dharamsala, the Tibetan capital in exile, to work at Norbulingka Institute (www.norbulingka.org) and learn more about its mission to preserve traditional Tibetan art and culture while providing recent refugees with apprenticeships that offered them a chance to earn a living. While my initial intent was to learn more about the religious underpinnings of the artistic forms practiced at Norbulingka, the project evolved into a collection of oral histories. I spoke with a number of refugees, among them monks who participated in rebellions against the Chinese rule, were imprisoned, and then fled to India to practice their religion and openly venerate His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Other interviewees came for economic opportunities that were lacking in their remote villages, preferring to move to India instead of mainland China because they felt educationally disadvantaged by their lack of training in the Chinese language. What drew me to the stories was the immediacy of the experience and the similarity to what my own family had gone through in the early years of the Soviet Union, being forced to abandon their land and religion with the advance of communism into the Urals. This potent reminder of universality of human suffering and resilience has remained with me many years after that summer, urging me to be responsive to social injustice and natural disasters, wherever they may occur.