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Khmer Studies Forum at Ohio University this March
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| The 5th Annual Khmer Studies Forum (KSF) will be held at Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio, U.S.A. on Friday, March 15, Saturday, March 16, and Sunday, March 17, 2013.The 5th KSF has as its theme “identity”: e.g., What is a Khmer? Who is Khmer? How is Khmerness recognized or expressed? How has Khmerness changed over time? We anticipate presentations representing a range of disciplines and approaches.The KSF provides an opportunity to facilitate discussion on topics including but not limited to Khmer language, history, culture, economics, politics, education, and the arts. Faculty, students and community members are invited to participate. Participation in the Khmer Studies Forum is free. The KSF is hosted and organized by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Ohio University, with primary support from the Ohio Humanities Council and Arts for Ohio, with additional support from the Center for International Studies, the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, IARTS, and the Contemporary History Institute. | |||
| PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS | |||
| Keynote Speaker | |||
| Dr. Sophal Ear, Department of National Security Affairs, U.S. Naval Postgraduate School | |||
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| Dr. Sophal Ear is an Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. His research focuses on post-conflict reconstruction, stability, transition, democratization, the political economy of governance, foreign aid, development, and growth in Southeast Asia in general and Cambodia in particular. Dr. Ear serves on the Advisory Board of the Master of Development Studies Program at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, the Editorial Board of the International Public Management Journal, and the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Southeast Asian American Education & Advancement. He has been honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, and in 2011 was elected to a five-year term membership on the Council on Foreign Relations. His most recent book is The Hungry Dragon: How China’s Resource Quest is Reshaping the World (Routledge, 2013), co-authored with Sigfrido Burgos Cáceres.Dr. Ear will present a talk on Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance Undermines Democracy, a book he authored in 2012 (Columbia Unversity Press).For more information on Dr. Ear, visit http://sophalear.com/ |
Beyond the Killing Fields
Op-Ed: The Economist: Intelligent Life
Nearly 50 years ago, Nicholas Shakespeare’s family was forced to flee Cambodia. Now he and his father return for the first time since the fall of the Khmer Rouge, and find ordinary Cambodians enduring a new kind of agony
From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, January/February 2013
“IT’S THE SAME STAIRCASE!”
Excited, my father starts climbing it. We are in the air-conditioned residence of America’s ambassador to Phnom Penh, formerly the British embassy. On a humid day in 1964—in an incident unreported at the time because Western journalists were banned—my father walked down this staircase to confront about 1,000 angry students who had come to trash the building. They were acting on instructions from Cambodia’s ruler, Prince Norodom Sihanouk.
The British ambassador, Peter Murray, was away that morning and had left my father, John Shakespeare, the first secretary, in charge. Three days later, Murray sent a confidential despatch back to the foreign secretary, Rab Butler. This year, on the eve of our first visit to Cambodia since our abrupt departure nearly half a century ago, my father found a copy of Murray’s message in a damp cardboard box in his Wiltshire garage, along with letters, receipts, maps and photographs. Murray’s despatch begins: “I regret to report that the official premises of Her Majesty’s Embassy in Phnom Penh were attacked and badly damaged by a mob on the morning of the 11th of March 1964…As for what happened in my absence, I have the honour—and this for once is no formal phrase—to refer you, Sir, to Mr Shakespeare’s account.”
My father, now 82, reaches the top step. He has rarely spoken about his part in Sihanouk’s sacking of our embassy. The details come back as he looks down the staircase.
He remembers crowds of people assembling in the street out of a clear blue sky. “I saw somebody painting on the wall outside the embassy ‘US go home’ and I went and told him, ‘Look, you’ve got the wrong place. The American embassy is down there.’” More people turned up with placards bearing the words “Perfide Albion”, and in one case “Perfide Albino”. The shouts grew louder. My father instructed all the embassy staff, about 20 of them, to go up these stairs, to a safe area where secret papers were kept in a strong room. Then the crowd surged into the grounds.