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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Iraq attack sparks flak

The possibility of President Bush deciding to topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has sparked furious debate within the administration on every aspect of the plan -- from its timing to its size to the roles of other nations and forces inside Iraq, reports the March 18 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. A key issue is whether the "Afghanistan model" could be used in Iraq, where a small number of U.S. troops would ally with local opposition fighters called the Iraqi National Congress. "One camp in the administration says the Iraqi National Congress is utterly worthless and we ought not to count on them to do anything," says Andrew Bacevich, a CAS professor of international relations and director of the Center for International Relations. "The other camp says that if the U.S. government would simply get serious about providing adequate assistance, supplies, and advice, the INC is the core of a genuine resistance force."

Boston Globe: BU offers home to African ex-presidents

One of Africa's biggest dilemmas is how to persuade its presidents to abide by democratic norms and give up power, especially when retirement means possible prosecution, poverty, obscurity, or even assassination, according to the March 17 Boston Globe. "There is life after the presidency," says the Rev. Charles Stith, a former U.S. ambassador to Tanzania and director of BU's new African Presidential Archives and Research Center. In September BU hopes to have up and running its Presidents in Residence program, which will offer a 12-month residency at the University with an undisclosed stipend, a high-profile platform, speaking tours, and a light teaching load. Sponsored by the Balfour Foundation, the program will bring a different former African head of state to live at BU every year, targeting a pool of eligible candidates who were elected democratically and agreed to step down from power. "I think it is consistent with BU's inclination toward being willing to play a cutting-edge role," says Stith, who just returned from a five-nation tour of Africa to publicize the program.

Boston Globe: BMC now speaks Dinka

When Mahn Krua, a 77-year-old refugee from Liberia, walked into Boston Medical Center for a colon exam, he hoped doctors would understand his limited English and thick accent. A nurse told him to wait until she found an interpreter who could speak Dan, a tribal language of Liberia. City hospitals, which are required to provide interpreters for patients with poor English skills, are finding that the growing number of refugees arriving in Boston from war-torn countries in Africa is causing a language overload, says the March 14 Boston Globe. Liberia, for example, has 33 different dialects. Oscar Arocha, the director of interpreter services at BMC, says the hospital has seen a rise in the past two years of patients who speak a tribal language. "I had to go to the books to find out what Dan was and what Dinka was," he says. "E-mails started flying everywhere. People were asking if I had an interpreter for Dinka and I didn't. Nobody did. So we were on the run and went out looking for one." Arocha later found a Dinka translator, who is now on call at several area hospitals.

Boston Globe: Cullen's Irish cooking legacy

"Noel was like Don Quixote, trying to open people's eyes to the fact that Ireland had great chefs," says Ron Manville, the photographer who accompanied Noel Cullen, an SHA professor who died last month, to Ireland to work on Cullen's cookbook Elegant Irish Cooking. Cullen believed in the project so much that he did it originally on speculation, using his own money, Manville says in the March 14 Boston Globe. The summer they went to Ireland was the sunniest the country had had in 300 years. "It was a very bright summer; it kind of matched up with our quest, so to speak," he says. "It was almost a metaphor for the fact that we were there to do something of importance, to enlighten people."

22 March 2002
Boston University
Office of University Relations