Weekend College Updates Fall 2010

1-credit Weekend College opportunity-- "Advocacy" CDS 1196 WCA

Dates: Friday November 19th and Saturday November 20th
Time: Friday 6:30-9:30; Saturday 9:00-6:00 pm
Instructor: Chris West, CRS

The Department is Partnering with Campus Ministries to offer a popular weekend college, Advocacy. This course will provide you with the skills and tools to engage in advocacy whether it is for development, poverty, children, the environment...etc. Learn how to develop media messages, lobby, work with government officials and get them to take you and your issues seriously.

The course is open to any and all students, regardless of major. If you are registered for less than 18 credits this semester, there is no cost for the course. It is a great opportunity...and may fill in some of the credits dropped at an earlier date.

If you have questions or would like to register, please contact Dr. Mulligan (tmulligan@iona.edu).

Congratulations Mock Trial Team!

Iona's Mock Trial team competed in it first competition this year. With a largely new team, they put up an impressive showing with 4 wins in the tournament, defeating St. John's University, tying Harvard and splitting against Columbia.

We are very proud of them!  Congratulations

Upcoming Events:

Film Screening: Enemies of the People

On Monday, November 8th, at 7pm the Department invites you to attend the documentary screening of; "Enemies of the People", with question and answer session with film director, Rob Lemkin. The event will be held in Romita Auditorium in the Ryan Library.

About the Film:
The Khmer Rouge ran what is regarded as one of the twentieth century's most brutal regimes. Yet the Killing Fields of Cambodia remain unexplained. Until now.

In ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE the men and women who perpetrated the massacres - from the foot-soldiers who slit throats to the party's ideological leader, Nuon Chea aka Brother Number Two - break a 30-year silence to give testimony never before heard or seen.

Unprecedented access from top to bottom of the Khmer Rouge has been achieved through a decade of work by one of Cambodia's best investigative journalists, Thet Sambath.

Sambath is on a personal quest: he lost his own family in the Killing Fields. The film is his journey to discover not how but why they died. In doing so, he hears and understands for the first time the real story of his country's tragedy.

After years of visits and trust-building, Sambath finally persuades Brother Number Two to admit (again, for the first time) in detail how he and Pol Pot (the two supreme powers in the Khmer Rouge state) decided to kill party members whom they considered 'Enemies of the People'.

Sambath's remarkable work goes even one stage further: over the years he befriends a network of killers in the provinces who implemented the kill policy. For the first time, we see how orders created on an abstract political level translate into foul murder in the rice fields and forests of the Cambodian plain.

Please contact Dr. Tricia Mulligan (tmulligan@iona.edu) or Dr. Robert Lacey (rlacey@iona.edu) for more information.

This event is sponsored by the Department of Political Science and International Studies, Office of the Dean of Arts and Science, Office of Retention, Campus Ministries, Office of Student Development, ICTV, The Ionian, Model United Nations

Week of the Peacemaker Events: November 18th and 19th

A Visit with the Consulate General of Israel

On Thursday, November 18th at 7:30pm in the Thomas J. Burke Lounge of Spellman Hall, the Department invites you to attend an event with the Consulate General of Israel.

This session, "Partnering Across Nations and Other Considerations Related to Disaster Relief Planning" will bring an international perspective to this year's theme, "Advocacy: Speaking out for Justice".

In a world of natural and human-made disasters, international cooperation across nations is paramount and increasingly common. Leaders take steps to assist individuals, groups, and other nations without any direct national gains. What leads nations to engage in partnerships for disaster relief planning? Why do states advocate for citizens who are not their own? Joël Lion of the Israeli Consulate in New York City will address these questions and Israel's participation and partnerships in disaster relief planning and international advocacy.

This event is sponsored by The Br. John G. Driscoll Professorship in Jewish-Catholic Studies, the Department of Political Science and International Studies, the Department of Mass Communication, and the Iona College Honors Program.

United Nations International Leadership Series: "Water as a Basic Human Right"

On Friday, November 19th, the Department of Political Science and International Studies and Campus Ministries are going to be taking a student group to participate in the Lower Hudson Valley Consortium of Catholic Colleges and Universities to New York City to participate in an International Leadership Program focusing on "Water as a Basic Human Right".

We take water for granted in our country. There are estimated to be more than 1 billion people who do not have access to safe water in the world today. Lack of safe water is a cause of serious illnesses which kill over 2 million people every year and is the number one cause of child illness and mortality worldwide. Witness the emerging cholera pandemic in Haiti.

In July, the UN General Assembly declared that safe and clean water and sanitation is a human right and the Human Rights Council has affirmed that this right is contained in existing human rights treaties

We will be attending a morning session at the Salvation Army with H.E. Solon, the Bolivian Ambassador to the UN, who introduced and steered this resolution to adoption. We will hear from NGOs who are directly engaged in the challenges of bringing safe water and sanitation to all.

Students will have transportation to the event but will be responsible for their return from the City.

If you are interested, please contact Dr. Mulligan, (tmulligan@iona.edu).

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS:
DELEGATIONS TO RWANDA AND BOSNIA:
SUMMER 2011

Global Youth Connect, an international human rights organization that facilitates cross-cultural human rights programming for youth, is pleased to announce that we are accepting applications from young leaders (ages 18-35) for our Summer 2011 international human rights delegations to Bosnia and Rwanda.

Each GYC human rights delegation is a unique, first-hand opportunity to cross cultural boundaries, learn about the daily reality of human rights as experienced in a complex and increasingly globalized world, and to contribute to progressive action. Each delegation weaves together three core sets of activities:
- a training workshop with local youth activists
- site visits to important institutions & historical sites
- service projects with grassroots organizations

We invite interested young leaders to apply.; We are looking for participants who are between the ages of 18-35 and who possess U.S. or Canadian citizenship or residency as well as international students studying full-time at a U.S. or Canadian college or university. Most importantly, applicants should wish to expand their knowledge and understanding of human rights and/or conflict resolution and social justice and to offer hard work, skills, connections to the work already underway in Rwanda, Bosnia, and globally. Participants will become part of a growing global movement of youth acting together for compassion, human rights and responsibility.

 

Prof. T. Mulligan, Chair, Political Science Department
Director IS, Pre-Law Director tmulligan@iona.edu