Tag Archives: Cafe series

War is fuzzy

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Last Wednesday, Professor Ohlins lead a discussion during the Becker-Rose Café about international criminal law with a very current focus. I was surprised by how interactive the talk was, especially because he jumped straight into questions. The discussion started off with talking about the hospital attack. I do like to take the time to read newspapers online, but sometimes I read the headline and assume that I know the gist of the situation. Turns out, knowing that Doctors Without Borders was clearly unhappy about the situation barely grazes the surface of the issues with the event. As people mentioned what should be considered war crimes, it was interesting to think about the fact that we even have to define war crimes and that war itself is not illegal. It was also interesting to hear him talk about collateral damage, as at one point, when he mentioned a small military target with a large number of affected civilians not being worth it, I immediately thought about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He talked about how the ICC tends to not deal with cases of collateral damage because there is too much grey area.

I had never really thought about how war criminals were charged. Perhaps I had just assumed that they were brought in front of the UN like how a President is brought in front of the Senate for impeachment. Apparently, the judicial body is separate from the UN and has existed for less than two decades. I hadn’t heard much about the International Criminal Court and I know a lot less about the Middle East than I probably should, but I was surprised to hear about their arrest warrants. The UN had suggested that al-Bashir be tried for genocide and the ICC had put out an arrest warrant for him. South Africa, a signatory to the founding of the ICC, was obligated by the ICC to arrest al-Bashir if possible. Somehow, al-Bashir was invited to South Africa, and when people started to mention the idea of arresting him, the South African government flew him out without arresting him. This is where it gets fuzzy. If the South African government claims that they didn’t arrest him because of diplomatic immunity, they shouldn’t have rushed him out of the country, but they did. Also, it seems like having an international war criminal arrest warrant should have a higher priority than the fact that he’s a visiting dignitary.

Someone asked Professor Ohlins what he thought about Putin and whether or not he should be classified as a war criminal, and that’s an interesting topic because of the history of Putin’s power and his relations with other world leaders. While there is also a lot of grey area about what Putin has been pushing for in Ukraine and Syria and whether or not international war crimes are being broken, Professor Ohlins mentioned the example of the Malaysian airplane which got struck down over Ukraine, and how that incident could be tied to Putin based on the resources that contributed to the event.

Someone else asked a question about the US’s tendency to intervene in conflicts that might not be of particular American interest. This is a question I’ve thought about a lot because the US is strange when it comes to which conflicts it wants to get involved in. Professor Ohlins mentioned that the typical European thinking is to not get involved, which I tend to agree more with. However, he talked about the need for humanitarian intervention. While this sounds like a good idea, it can also seem quite hypocritical at times for the US to get involved in certain conflicts. I would have liked a bit more discussion on the topic, because it seemed like the person who posed the question wanted to address the problems with intervention rather than simply the moral high-ground of wanting to help others.

Overall, I learned a lot more about current issues in international criminal law than I thought I would. I enjoyed the discussion style of the talk because it worked well with the topic, because at the end of the day, there is a lot of grey area when it comes to war and fuzziness when dealing with the aftermath.

How much we don’t know

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No, this isn’t a reference to prelim season which is once again upon us. This is from the Becker-Rose Café talk with Professor Cheyfitz. I knew that the topic was going to be about American Indians, but I wasn’t sure exactly what was going to be discussed, but I was glad I went. Professor Cheyfitz was engaging not only because of the content, but because of his clear passion about the subject.

He took questions from the audience and responded really well, whether it be with statistics that he knew off the top of his head, or with personal anecdotes. What struck me the most was the legality involved in reservations, whether it be the lack of prosecution, or their sovereignty (or lack thereof) in the eyes of the American government. He brought up the cases of Wuster v. Georgia and Cherokee vs. Georgia, which I remember learning about briefly in high school. When he said the oxymoronic “domestic dependent nation” in the decision, I remembered reading about the ruling, but not much else. I didn’t know about the struggles of the Marshall court in relation to the president at the time, or about anything more than just the outcome of the case. Even so, at least I had heard something about it before.

There was a good bit that I didn’t know. When Professor Cheyfitz asked if anyone was exposed to such topics in school, most people didn’t raise their hands, supporting his statements of how much we don’t know. He talked about how one of the main issues American Indians are facing is the public’s lack of knowledge.  When someone asked what was currently being done legislatively to help them, he said that there hasn’t been anything recent, that many people just don’t know.

Another piece of information that I learned about was that Cornell is actually on traditional Cayuga land. Professor Cheyfitz mentioned that there have been efforts for the University to acknowledge that the land this university is on was land of the Cayuga nation initially, but they don’t. He talked about how important he felt about knowing and understanding where we are, and I completely agree. A week ago, I had no idea that Cayuga Lake wasn’t just an arbitrary name with interesting syllables. I had no idea that the Cayuga were a people. It seems sort of obvious that the land that we are on didn’t initially belong to the US, but we don’t think too much about it.

I left the talk thinking about how much we as a society don’t know and how much I, as an individual, don’t know. Professor Cheyfitz’s talk definitely made me more interested in learning more about the Indians of upstate New York. He mentioned that many nations had websites about their culture and history, so I’m looking forward to reading through them at a later time. Professor Cheyfitz also suggested a book called The Round House if anyone is interested (though mostly, I am leaving the title here for my own reference).

Relations with Native Americans

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The past wednesday, I attended the Becker/Rose House Cafe series with speaker Eric Cheyfitz who talked about America’s history and current relationship with Native Americans. I enjoyed this talk not only because it was on a topic I did not know much about but also because the speaker was excited to share the information with all the students. It was clear that Prof. Cheyfitz was knowledgable about the topic. He wanted to make sure he could answer all our questions on Native Americans because although it is bad to not know much about them, it is even worse to have misconceptions about America’s relationship with Native Americans. In high school, I once had a realization that I had not had much exposure to the history of with our relaitonship with Native Americans, so I read some books on the topic. I definitely agree with Prof. Cheyfitz that the current middle/high school curriculum does not do enough to teach students about this topic. I came away from the Cafe series this week with more knowledge and understanding of Native Americans than before. It was definitely one of the most memorable cafe series I have been too (I was a Rose Scholar the previous year as well).

I learnt a lot from this week’s cafe series. It was interesting that Prof. Cheyfitz talked about how Cornell is currently situated on Native Indian land. Although I hadn’t known for certain, I had a vague idea that this used to be part of Native American land. America’s history with Native Americans is also very interesting. One of the most important take away points was how the Supreme Court under John Marshall treated Native Americans. High school curriculum teaches students well that President Andrew Jackson was not kind to the Native Americans. But we are not taught how that affected our policies regarding indigenous people. I really enjoyed the discussion with Prof. Cheyfitz because rather than just going over things that we might have already learnt from high school, he gave us new information about the topic. He made sure we learnt something new and a better idea of America’s current relationship with Native Americans.