Brandeis University – a Training Camp for Up Standers
As I became engrossed in the events leading up to the birth of Southern Sudan, the planet’s newest and most unlikely nation, I realized how Brandeis University shaped my work as a human rights advocate and how much my work on Sudan is closely tied to my time at Brandeis. Brandeis is a place where residents of cities and towns become citizens of the world. For the new nation of South Sudan, these will be crucial months for the exercise of responsible citizenship, and I am proud that Brandeis students and alumni will inevitably be part of that effort.
To most of us, Sudan is a foreign, overwhelming place. Perhaps we have heard of Darfur – the country’s western region where the government in Khartoum preyed on tribal hatreds to fuel the first genocide of the twenty-first century. As we witnessed the birth of South Sudan this past weekend, we may have learned something about the decades-old civil war between the Muslim north and Christian/animist south. We may have heard the names of President Omar al Bashir or governor Ahmed Haroun – both of whom are wanted by the International Criminal Court for committing crimes against humanity and war crimes (Bashir is also wanted for genocide). In January, when the South voted overwhelmingly to secede and become its own country, everyone knew that its path to independence would be fraught. Along the border between the two nations, where a good amount of the oil wealth lies, Bashir’s government has yet again waged a campaign of mass violence and ethnic cleansing. More than 73,000 people were displaced in recent weeks, as Khartoum seeks to drive out those whose ethnicity or religion would tie them to the South, so that the North can claim the oil for itself. In the end, it may turn out that gaining independence was the easy part.
But what does any of this have to do with Brandeis?
Brandeis is where I learned that massive, intractable problems can be solved through small measures and collective action. In 2000, I took a class with Professor Dessima Williams entitled Global Apartheid and Social Movements. For the final exam, my group was tasked with studying Sierra Leone – a West African nation whose civil war in the 1990s left 50,000 dead and 4,000 more mutilated, often at the hands of child soldiers who had been forcibly conscripted. This could well have been the end of the course – a recitation of the gory history that left everyone with more knowledge and less hope than when they had started. But it wasn’t. Like most of my Brandeis instructors, Professor Williams pushed us to go deeper. Just because a problem is huge, we were told, doesn’t mean that there isn’t someplace small that you can start to solve it. That was a lesson I learned over and over at Brandeis, both from my professors and from my peers. One of my group members kept going on about a movement to stop the flow of “blood diamonds.” Activists, he told me, were claiming that if we could stop companies like DeBeers from buying and selling these jewels, it would cut the flow of money to rebel armies and eventually bring an end to the conflict. It sounded simplistic; it sounded naïve. And it worked. Pressure from individuals and organizations eventually led to UN sanctions on blood diamonds and the establishment of the Kimberly Process for mineral certification. When the money stopped flowing, the rebel groups that had been terrorizing Sierra Leone began to splinter and fight amongst themselves. Ten years later, Sierra Leone is at peace, and Charles Taylor, the former president of neighboring Liberia who orchestrated many of the atrocities in Sierra Leone, is standing trial in the Hague.
To borrow a term from the Enough Project, a D.C.-based organization dedicated to ending mass atrocities, Brandeis is a place that takes bystanders and turns them into up standers. It not only opens your eyes to the world, but it gives you the tools to engage with it. As South Sudan takes its first, tentative steps to build an independent country after decades of war, a t-shirt for sale in Juba, the new capital, optimistically reads: “I got 99 problems, but Bashir ain’t one.” With violence on its borders, no formal economy, and a population where 76% cannot read and have had little formal education, South Sudan joins the community of nations as one of the poorest countries on the globe. The t-shirt also overstates the case: Bashir, the country’s former President, now neighbor, and still-indicted war criminal, has already made menacing threats and has a long history of carrying them out.
Now that the ceremonies are over, there will be a great temptation for the world to send a birthday card, cross its fingers, and go home. But much can be done. The United States can respond to any cross-border violence by tightening sanctions on the Bashir regime. On the other hand, it can also incentivize peace by holding out the possibility that Sudan could be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism if it respects the peace and sovereignty of its new southern neighbor.
Here’s what I learned at Brandeis – you don’t have to be in the government to make change happen. You don’t have to be an attorney or an aid worker to be an activist. You just have to care enough to get involved at whatever level you can. In my sophomore year at Brandeis, I was amazed to learn that, with the right tactics, and with strength in numbers, small steps could bring peace to even the most horrific conflicts. As an institution that is steeped in the struggle for social justice, Brandeis attracts students and faculty that continue to make it a wonderful training ground for up standers. The world needs more of them.
James Bair ’03 is an attorney and a contributor to Enough, the project to end genocide and crimes against humanity at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. While at Brandeis, James double majored in English and History and minored in Education. He still works closely with the Brandeis International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life. For more on what you can do to help ensure a peaceful future for South Sudan, visit www.enoughproject.org.