Andrew Crighton
News Editor
“The world we live in today, whether we like it or not, has been transformed, affected by colonial rule.” This remark, spoken by Karni Bhati, set the tone for the 46th annual Frank Church Symposium at ISU March 2 and 3.
The ISU International Affairs Council organizes and hosts the event every spring in order to help increase awareness of international issues and open dialogue with students by having experts from all over the world come to campus.
The event is named after Idaho Senator Frank Church, who held the position chair position of the U.S. Committee on Foreign Relations throughout the Vietnam War.
Every year the event has a general topic of discussion selected by the IAC members. The 2017 symposium carried the topic of “The Post-Colonial State.”
Presenters for this year included Bhati, an Associate Professor at Furman University, Saad Omer of the Emory Vaccine Center and Bonny Ibhawoh, a professor at McMaster University.
Ibhawoh presented the keynote address Thursday night at the Stephen’s Performing Arts Center.
Throughout the event, panels were hosted on various sub-topics of post-colonialism. Such panels included gender, intervention in the Middle East, interregional issues, conflict and global health.
Each panel consisted of three guests who a gave presentation, after which the floor was opened to the audience for a question-and-answer period.
Each day was supplemented with lecture by one of the visiting panelists.
Roger Kangas, a professor at Georgetown University, gave the Joseph Hearst Memorial Lecture on March 2 and Omer presented the Richard H. Foster Lecture on Friday.
Kangas spoke on Central Asia and Afghanistan while Omer discussed global health.
The panel on colonialism itself was presented by Ogechi Anyanwu, professor at Eastern Kentucky University, Bhati and Adam Warren, a professor at University of Washington.
All three presenters chose to speak on education within post-colonial states, and the similarities they shared despite being completely separate parts of the world.
The three presenters discussed the areas of their research, Africa, South Asia and South America. All of these areas have been colonized by European powers for some length of time. They discussed how the countries’ experience and legacy of colonization shaped their education systems and the states in general; both during and after the times of colonization.
“Post-colonial leaders in Africa used education policies, particularly higher education policies, as a vehicle to decolonize,” Anyanwu said.
Anyanwu explained that during colonization, the European rulers kept the indigenous people from moving on to higher education. Those who did were very particularly selected and it created an elitist institution of higher education.
Bhati expanded explaining that the elitist class created, specifically the one that existed in India, was due to the metropolitan areas created by the British.
Indians who attended universities were taught to modernize their societies, which lead to a disconnect for this class of highly-educated people.
“There is a struggle to understand the past and to relate to the past of their own societies,” Bhati said. “What aspects of their culture to accept, what aspects of their culture to reform? How much religion is superstition, and how much of it is a matter of identity that is non-negotiable?”
Warren’s area of study is South America, where in the panel he focused on the way education of how to perform Cesarean Sections was spread throughout Peru by the Spanish Catholic Church.
The practice of performing C-sections was taught fervently to all types of people, because for the Church, it was a necessary religious ritual.
Warren explained that in the 18th century, the C-section was used almost exclusively in cases where the mother had died.
The Spanish missionaries performed C-sections and taught the people of Peru so the child could be removed and baptized.
If you were not able to attend the event, all panels and speeches presented have been archived by the university at: www.youtube.com/idahostateu.
