Visiting Scholars

Ludmila Hakob Haroutunian

Professor Ludmila Hakob Haroutunian, Chair of the Department of Sociology and Director of the Center for Conflictology at Yerevan State University, Yerevan, Armenia, arrived at ICAR in November 1996. In residence through March 1997, supported by ICAR's USIP-funded Tran-scaucasian Project, she will be working on program design for the Center for Conflictology.

Professor Haroutunian is a former member of the Supreme Soviet of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) where she chaired the USSR Parliamentary Committee on Inter-Ethnic Conflict and Its Prevention and served as a member of the Commission on Nationality Relations and Nationality Policy. She is the first conflict scholar with whom Dennis Sandole and Christopher Mitchell met in 1991 to discuss the initial developments of what has become ICAR's "Transcaucasian Project." After completing her Ph.D. in Economics at Yerevan State University, Haroutunian pursued a program of post-graduate studies at the Sorbonne Univer-sity in Paris. She is the author of more than 40 scholarly publications on the theme of individual, ethnic, and nationality conflict. She has participated on a number of commissions, including one engaged in resolution of German and Meskhetian-Turk minority issues, and another devoted to the examination and effort to resolve the conflict over Nagorno-Karabkh in the USSR Supreme Soviet.

Acting Director of the Center for Conflictology during Haroutunian's absence is ICAR's most recent Ph.D. alumnus, Moorad Mooradian, who will also be continuing his work with Sandole and Mitchell on the Transcaucasian Project.

Kamal Mamedzade

Under the auspices of ICAR's USIP-funded Transcaucasus grant, Mr. Kamal Mamedzade, master's student in International Relations from Khazar University's School of Law and Social Sciences, Baku, Azerbaijan, is in residence at ICAR this semester. He is currently engaged in research and study of conflict resolution theory and practice and auditing classes at ICAR's graduate studies program. Upon his return to Khazar University, he will work with former visiting scholar, Nurlan Aliyev, to develop course offerings in Conflict Studies at Khazar University.

Zeynep Selcuk

Ms. Zeynep Selcuk, master's student in International Relations from Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey, is now at ICAR, along with Professor Ludmila Hakob Haroutunian and Mr. Kamal Mamedzade, under the auspices of ICAR's USIP-funded Transcaucasus grant. Ms. Selcuk is engaged in research in Conflict Studies. She is also completing her thesis on Pre-Negotiation Theory, investigating the variables involved in getting to the table from a state of coercion to actual cooperation and negotiation. She is conducting her observation of the ICAR academic program so that upon her return to Bilkent University she will be prepared to work with the International Relations faculty to develop a program in Conflict Studies.

Robert Midgley

Robert Midgley, Professor of Law at Rhodes University, spent four-and-a-half months at ICAR as a visiting research fellow. He arrived in mid-July, accompanied by his wife, Trish, and their three children. He was here in residence until the end of November 1996. The Midgley family live in Grahamstown, South Africa, where Trish is a practicing oral hygienist.

Professor Midgley's research has two components. He is first taking a retrospective look at some of the activities of the Peace Accord structures in South Africa in an attempt to establish why they fell from grace after the elections. From 1992 to 1994, he played a prominent role on the Grahamstown Peace Committee, monitoring protest activities and mediating a number of disputes in Grahamstown and surrounding areas. He also served on the Regional Peace Committee in the Eastern Cape area and, as an accredited national peace accord trainer, conducted a number of conflict resolution training workshops.

At ICAR, Professor Midgley analyzed a particular intervention, in which he was involved, between the police and members of the Grahamstown Township community concerning the investigation and prevention of crime, which became a catalyst for an entirely different field of academic and practical interest. During these negotiations, one of the participants questioned why relationships between police and the Black community could not be similar to those he remembered as a child. This question resulted in the appointment of a commission to investigate the possibility of implementing community-orientated policing methods in the Grahamstown area. The commission report and the projects that were generated as a result of it received the attention of policy makers at the national level, and for some time Grahamstown was at the forefront of developing community policing policy in South Africa.

Professor Midgley served on the executive committee of the Grahamstown Community Police Consultation Forum. To ensure that the knowledge gained in the process would not be lost and would be made available to other communities, he has conducted about 60 workshops on community policing throughout the province to both community members and the police. He was responsible for the initial draft of the proposed Provincial Community Policing Policy and served as adviser to provincial authorities in this regard. The community work which Professor Midgley now undertakes is done mostly under the auspices of the Independent Mediation Service of South Africa (IMSSA). He serves as a member IMSSA's Community Conflict Mediation Panel, its Mediation Training Panel, and its Arbitration Panel.

While here in residence, he will also spend time redesigning the ADR course, which he teaches to law students at Rhodes University, capitalizing on ICAR's experience in curriculum design. Although his research is the main reason for the Midgley's visit, he made his family's stay in Virginia an educational experience. Since the first part of their stay coincided with school vacation and the end of summer, they made the most of the good weather by exploring the Shenandoah Valley, various Washington museums, and spending an exhausting week at Disney World in Florida. Then it was back to more formal education with the children at school and Professor Midgley in front of the computer. Trish Midgely, meanwhile, remained active by registering for evening adult education classes and volunteering for all sorts of Fairfax County community activities.

Although the Midgely family was surprised at the ease with which they had settled in Virginia, the family was looking forward to their return to South Africa. Life is much the same as before, except that Professor Midgley has added administrative responsibility in his new post as Dean at Rhodes University's School of Law.

Amanda Melville

ICAR is also fortunate in having had Melbourne University student Ms. Amanda Melville in residence this fall. A doctoral student in Melbourne's Department of Psychology, she is engaged in research on conflict and identity.

Francois Nsengiyumva

Born and raised in Rwanda, visiting scholar Francois Nsengiyumva was obliged to leave his homeland in spring 1994. He reports: "When the now world-famous 1994 Rwandan tragedy started on the night of April 6, my bags were already packed and my passport, visa, and tickets in my pocket. In just a few hours I was due in Kigali National Airport for an early morning flight, leaving at dawn for America. As a guest of the U.S. government, I was to join a group of international visitors for a four-week seminar on 'The Role of Congress in the U.S. Political System.' At the time I was a journalist in the Rwandan Office of Information, where I served as chief anchorman on Rwanda National Television. By 3 a.m., with explosions rattling my apartment windows, shouts and screams of agony carrying across Kigali's hills, I felt I stood little chance of taking my scheduled flight to America," he said.

"A few hours earlier a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, together with his Burundian colleague, President Cyprien Ntaryamira, had been downed at Kigali Airport, putting an end to the fragile cease-fire agreement between the Government of Rwanda and the rebel RPF, the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Now warfare was everywhere. I left my house, went into hiding for ten days, and then started a harrowing walk through the hills to neighboring Burundi. I finally left Kigali on April 17, flying first to Brussels, and at last arriving in the United States on April 22. News from home has since told me what I did not want to hear: that many of the people I left behind, including my parents and many of my siblings, were mercilessly slaughtered."

Since his arrival in the United States, Mr. Nsengiyumva has been living under temporary protected status (TPS), and was recently granted political asylum. As a journalist, he is writing articles and has also worked with the Voice of America to broaden the public's understanding of the ongoing Central African crisis. He is supported by a one-year MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, which enables him to undertake research for a book on the origins of the Rwandan tragedy and ways to avert such a tragedy in future. To facilitate his research and writing and to broaden his theoretical understanding of conflict, he has chosen to visit ICAR during summer and fall 1996. He plans to spend the spring 1997 semester at Columbia University School of Journalism and to return to ICAR in fall 1997 to begin work toward his Ph.D. in Conflict Studies.