Course Description

Mass poverty is one of the world’s most pressing problems and daunting challenges. The compelling facts are well known:

• Over one billion people – almost one in five – live in extreme poverty, subsisting on less than a dollar a day.
• If the poverty line was raised to $2 a day, more than half of the world’s population would be living in poverty.
• Over 100 million primary school-age children cannot afford to go to school.
• Eight million people die each year simply because they lack the means to survive.
• Over 11 million children die each year from preventable causes like malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia.
• According to the 2001 US census, the wealthiest 20 percent of Americans accounted for more than 50 percent of the national income, while the poorest 20 percent accounted for 3.5 percent

Much progress has been made over the last few decades. Global poverty is rapidly falling for about 80 percent of the world and the number of people living in extreme poverty has been cut in half.  Yet, many challenges exist, from the expected rise in population in developing countries  over the next four decades – representing 86 percent of the world’s population – to the anticipated, and unanticipated, consequences of global warming.  Eschewing ideology, this year’s EPIIC colloquium will seek a nuanced understanding of the concepts and reality of global poverty. Is it possible to transcend the images of starving children, the stereotypes of ruthless corporations, and corrupt politicians, to explore a realistic agenda for alleviating poverty?

The yearlong colloquium will explore theories of development and causes of poverty, from dependency theory to the “resource curse” to the new “Developmentalism”, as well as the personal experiences of those living in poverty. Are there new ways of thinking about the causes of poverty?  Are there new ways that it can it be fought?

What is the relationship between power and economics?  How do elites maintain their power?  What are the economic origins of dictatorship ? Of democracy? Is egalitarian redistribution feasible and/or desirable in an era of globalization? Can, should, the welfare state survive in an economically integrated world?  Is good governance a prerequisite for alleviating poverty?  What role does capitalism play in both causing and alleviating poverty?  What should be the roles of the International Financial Institutions?  Of the United Nations?

What is the nexus of poverty, security and conflict? Why is a country with a $250 per capita income 15 percent more likely to experience internal conflict than a country with a $5,000 or greater per capita income?  Is there a “doom spiral,” what some economists assert as a crisis afflicting 50 failing states or the “bottom billion?”  Why are these countries failing, and what can be done about it?  How can the capital assets of the poor – what the Ford Foundation calls “the physical, financial, human social, and natural resources that can be acquired, developed, improved, and transferred across generations” – be developed?  What are the benefits and drawbacks of income- based strategies and asset-based approaches to development?

This colloquium will also focus on developing a “fact-based worldview,” working with such techniques as GIS and Gap Minder, a visualization interactive animation design to render global statistics comprehensible and to help dispel and confront our common misperceptions about poverty in both the “developing” and “developed” worlds.

Colloquium Lecturers and Advisers include:

Gwyn Prins, Director, Mackinder Centre for the Study of Long Wave Events, London School of Economics
Fredric S Berger, Chairman, The Louis Berger Group; Founding Trustee, American University of Afghanistan; Member, IGL External Advisory Board
Jonathan Greenblatt, Founder, Ethos Water; Former Vice- President, Global Consumer Products, Starbucks Coffee
Ricardo Hausmann, Director, Center for International Development, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; Former Chief Economist, Inter- American Development Bank
Sanjoy Hazarika, Managing Trustee and Founder, Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research; Former Member, Indian National Security Advisory Board
Seth Itzkan, Futurist and Entrepreneur; Founder, Planet-TECH Associates
Padraig O’Malley, Moakley Professor for Peace and Reconciliation, McCormack Graduate School for Policy Studies, UMASS, Boston; Editor, The War on Poverty: Unfinished Business
Andrew Savitz, Partner, Sustainability Services Group, Pricewaterhouse Coopers; Author, The Triple Bottom Line: How Today’s Best-Run Companies Are Achieving Economic, Social and Environmental Success

Tufts Lecturers and Advisers include:

Julian Agyeman, Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning • Edith Balbach, Community Health • David Dapice, Economics • Neva Goodwin Co-Director, Global Development and Environment Institute • Jeffrey Griffiths, Medical School • David Gute, Engineering • Shafiqul Islam, Engineering • Edward Kutsoati, Economics • Joann Lindenmayer, Environmental and Population Health, Veterinary School  • Maggie McMillan, Economics • William Moomaw, Fletcher School • Adil Najam, Fletcher School • Lynne Pepall, Dean of Graduate Studies • Jennifer Burtner Rangel, Anthropology • Enrico Spolaore, Economics • Bea Rodgers, School of Nutrition • Patrick Webb, Dean of Academic Studies, School of Nutrition • Donald Wertleib, Child Development • Peter Winn, History • Peter Uvin, Dean of Academic Studies, Fletcher School • Richard Vogel, Engineering

Required and Recommended Texts over TWO semesters, include:

Poverty in World History, Steven Beaudoin • The Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor, Paul Farmer • Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World, Carolyn Nordstrom • A Billion Bootstraps: Micro Credit, Barefoot Banking, and the Business Solution for Ending Poverty, Phil Smith and Eric Thurman • The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, Paul Collier
Read Student summaries of the reading here >

Institute Scholars and Practitioners in Residence (INSPIRE):

Jose Maria Argueta
He is a former (and the first civilian) National Security Adviser for Guatemala and the former Guatemalan Ambassador to Japan and Peru.   He will also be a Fellow at the Project on Justice In Times of Transition, a strategic ally of the IGL, housed at the Institute.

Gregg Nakano
He is the Military Liaison Officer at the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, USAID. A DART (Disaster Assistance Response Team) expert, he is a former Marine infantry officer who fought in the Gulf War and studied in Iran and China after leaving the military.

Benjamin Pogrund
A South African-born author and journalist currently living in Israel, he is the founder of the Yakar’s Centre for Social Concern in Jerusalem.  He is the former deputy-editor of the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg and the chief foreign sub-editor of The Independent, London.

Sathyandranath Ragunanan (Mac) Maharaj
Mac Maharaj’s political life uniquely brings together all the strands of the struggle for democracy in South Africa. Over the past 40 years, he has been an activist, a detainee, a political prisoner, an exile, an underground commander, a negotiator and a cabinet minister in South Africa’s first democratic government.

Sara Terry
A former staff correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, Sara Terry is now a photojournalist and documentary photographer. She is the Director and Board Chair of The Aftermath Project: “War Is Only Half the Story,” a non-profit organization committed to telling the other half of the story of conflict — the story of what it takes for individuals to learn to live again.

The Norris and Margery Bendetson 23rd Annual EPIIC International Symposium
February 21–24, 2008

The EPIIC international symposium is an annual public forum designed and enacted by EPIIC’s students. It features scores of international practitioners, scholars, public intellectuals, activists and journalists in its panel discussions and workshops. This year, EPIIC students will also host peer delegations from the US Military, Naval, and Air Force Academies, as well as from Brazil, China, Finland, Germany, Nigeria, Singapore, South Africa, and South Korea. 

Symposium Advisers and Participants include:

Jeff Ballinger, Director, Press for Change; Paul Collier*, Professor of Economics, Oxford University; William Easterly, Visiting Fellow, Global Economy and Development, Brookings Institution; Obiageli Ezekwesili, Vice President for the Africa Region, World Bank; Barbara James, Managing Director, African Venture Capital Association; Lord Joel Joffe, Executive Director, The Centre of Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies; Terry Lynn Karl, Author, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro States; Inge Kaul, Director, Office of Development Studies, United Nations Development Programme; Kei Kawabata, Sector Manger, Health, Nutrition and Population, Human Development Network, The World Bank; Helmi Kittani, Executive Director, Center for Jewish-Arab Economic Development; Felix Morka, Executive Director, Social and Economic Rights Action Centre, Lagos, Nigeria; Mishkat al Moumin, Former Iraqi Minister of the Environment; Hon. Mary Robinson, President, Realizing Rights – The Ethical Globalization Initiative; Stuart Edward Rutherford*, Founder and Chairman, SafeSave; Amartya Sen*, Recipient, Nobel Prize in Economics; Andrew Yager*, Sustainable Energy Policy Advisor in the Environment and Energy Group, United Nations Development Program; Shahid Yusuf, Research Manager, Development Economics Research Group, World Bank

This year’s Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award recipients, who will either participate in the symposium or the colloquium, include:

Martti Ahtisaari -- Special Envoy for the future status process for Kosovo, Secretary-General, United Nations; Former President, Finland; Founder and Chair,  Crisis Management Initiative

J. Brian Atwood -- Founder, Citizen’s International, an innovative venture that establishes public-private partnerships to help build democratic, market systems

Jennifer Leaning -- Professor, Practice of International Health, Department of Population and International Health, Harvard University; Director, Program on Humanitarian Crises, FXB Center, Harvard School of Public Health

Robert Kinloch Massie -- Fellow and former Executive Director of CERES, the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies

Richard Mollica -- Director, Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma; Author, New Principles and Practices for Recovery of Post-conflict Societies

* confirmation pending

• EMPOWER: Social Entrepreneurship and Poverty Alleviation
This year, the Institute will inaugurate its newest initiative, EMPOWER, a social entrepreneurship program focused on poverty alleviation.  EMPOWER encourages students to engage in research and internships with proven organizations in poverty alleviation, including ACCION, The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, The Echoing Green Foundation, The International Youth Foundation, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, TrickleUP, SKS and Ujjivan in India, and the SCOJO Foundation.  ACCION has created research projects for EMPOWER students which address rural microfinance and empowerment of the poor. EPIIC will also help design ACCION’s global expansion strategy into West Africa (Guinea, Mali, Togo, Cote D’Ivoire, Guinea Bissau, Niger, Liberia, Sierra Leone) and Latin America (Colombia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Peru, Dominican Republic).

• Climate Change, Fragile Nations and the Poor
This is an opportunity to work on networked governance efforts to mitigate the economic and societal impact of climate change on the poor. It is  an effort to encourage a more profound and continuous interaction between long-range forecasting and long-range policy-making.  Project advisers and consultants include: Leon Fuerth, former National Security Adviser for Vice President Al Gore; Professor William Moomaw of The Fletcher School; Neva Goodwin, Co-Director of the Tufts Global Development and Environment Institute; Alex Evans, Senior Policy Associate at the Center on International Cooperation; Janet Sawin, Director of the Energy and Climate Change Program at Worldwatch Institute; and Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics.
 
• The 3rd Annual Bory Damyanova Memorial Project on Capitalism, Corporate Accountability and Poverty Reduction
This project will explore the links between multinational corporations and poverty reduction.  Project advisers and consultants include: Jason Clay, Senior Fellow at the World Wildlife Foundation; Mindy Lubber, Executive Director of CERES, The Coalition for Environmental Responsible Economies; Robert Massie, Founder of CERES; and Marcy Murninghan, President of the Lighthouse Group.

• The FC Barcelona/UNICEF Project
FC Barcelona is donating US$1.9 million per year to UNICEF (0.7 per cent of its income). FC Barcelona has also made a commitment to UNICEF’s humanitarian aid programs through a pledge of one and a half million euros for the next five years.  This project is an opportunity to help expand this unique collaboration by creating “teaming” and other outreach efforts to other major U.S. and global professional sporting teams and leagues.  The project adviser is IGL Board Member Abbas Bayat, Owner of the CharlesLeRoi Football Club of Belgium.

Many other opportunities will be discussed during the first class on Sept 4.