First update

For those of you who don’t know what I’m up to this summer, I’m doing field research for my senior essay in political science on ethnic minority political behavior and majority-minority political relations in Macedonia and Israel – I’ll be spending some time in each of those countries, but making some stops along the way.

First up is Montenegro (oops, looks like I get my 20 dinars), where I have a friend who I met last summer, when I traveled to the Balkans with a group of Jewish and Palestinian students on a comparative conflict trip. Many of you have heard me talk about how transformative that trip was for me. My friend here, Ivana, was one of the teachers on that trip. She works for the Nansen Dialogue Center, a Norwegian-funded network of interethnic dialogue centers spread across the former Yugoslavia. On our trip last summer we met with people from NDC-Mitrovica (Kosovo), NDC-Sarajevo (Bosnia), and NDC-Mostar (Bosnia – err, to be exact, Herzegovina), and I plan to meet people at NDC-Skopje (Macedonia) soon. Ivana is an amazing worldly person who never sleeps – it seems like every time I emailed her to plan the trip she’d just gotten back from a conference in Kenya, or was about to go to a European Commission meeting in Brussels. She’s going to Jerusalem for the first time next week for a meeting of a global network of peace educators – her eyes totally light up every time we talk about her trip to Jerusalem, which she seems to consider a dream come true.

Anyways, while we were sitting in the restaurant at the Dr. Milosevic spa/rehab center (no, not THAT Milosevic) in Igalo, Montenegro last July, she said that it would be great if I could come to the university in Podgorica, the capital of the country (known as Titograd during the Yugoslav years), to talk about my studies on the Balkans and Israel/Palestine. I said that sounded great, but I thought to myself, “And when’s that gonna happen?” But here I am!

The morning after I arrived, I went to get my U Montenegro student ID card. The man at the desk did not speak much English, but was very nice. As we waited for the card to print, he asked me, "Which is number one university in USA - Yale or Princeton?" So I guess it's actually Harvard that doesn't matter?

I spent my first day visiting the town of Kotor, sandwiched between steep cliffs and the Mediterranean. I’ll let the attached pictures do the talking.

Probably the most interesting thing I've done so far is to give a lecture at a class in the political science department at the University of Montenegro. Ivana's friend, Sonja, is the vice-chair of the department and an advisor to the president on human rights. She invited me to speak in her freshman lecture. Sonja is a very respected academic in the region, though her appearance is probably not what we would imagine, given her position. Dressed in stylish clothes with heels, lots of bright blue eyeliner, and done-up dyed blonde hair, she basically giggled as she recounted her chance conversation with the tall, chiseled-jaw, pro-Western president of Serbia at the inauguration of the new Macedonian president the previous night.

At least 10 minutes after class was supposed to start, we walked into the classroom. Sonja dropped her keys, put her hands on the table, and launched into a discussion about democracy and tyranny, which Ivana scrambled to translate for me ("eh...now she is talking about violence...eh, Hannah Arendt...if a state needs to use violence for control it is not legitimate..."). After about 20 minutes, she invited me up. I talked about nationalism, talked briefly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to give them a non-Balkan example, and then described my project. The students seemed attentive, and there were some interesting questions (including a few by one student sitting in the front who says we wants to study at Yale). After a few questions, a hulk with gelled hair in the back raised his hand and said, "I have a question, but it has nothing to do with your presentation: so, how are the girls like in San Francisco?" I laughed, responded with "they're great - you should come and see," and moved on to the next question. Overall, it went very well.

One (obvious) thing I'm quickly learning is just how small Montenegro is. Case in point: as Ivana and I walked from the university towards a restaurant, she bumped into a woman she knew. "That's my relative," she explained after. "She is a judge in the constitutional court." Then at dinner, I noticed a woman at another table who looked remarkably like a younger Tzipi Livni (important Israeli politician). I told Ivana, and she leaned in and told me, "ah, yes, I know her - she is a spokeswoman for the opposition Socialist People's Party." We left the restaurant to have coffee and Balkan spirits with her friend, a diplomat working at the Foreign Ministry on Montenegro's EU integration bid (not an easy project, given that Montenegro's Brussels team is - according to Ivana's friend - understaffed, underpaid, and highly undermotivated).

In a few hours, I’m giving a presentation for a group of mostly Albanian teachers in a nearby town who are involved with an inter-ethnic dialogue project at NDC-Podgorica. I’ll have some other meetings and then head to Macedonia on Saturday. I’ll give you the highlights next time.


I’ve noticed that in many emails I get from people in the Balkans, they love to use :) smily faces but always with at least 4 or 5 parentheses. So I’ll wrap up this email in the way Ivana has ended many of her emails to me: So you see, life here in the Balkans is never boring! :~))))))


view from my room of U Montenegro quad - I hear Robert Frost once called it "the most beautiful college courtyard in Montenegro" ;) - err, rather, ;~)))))


Kotor


more Kotor


The prof. in action at U Montenegro