Celebrity crush

I've been working on syllabi for the Centre for Conflict Management and Peace Studies in Gulu. The two classes I am designing are, respectively, press freedom and political speech, and refugees and internally displaced persons. It's been a lot of fun working on these projects, in part because I can include cross-disciplinary material from whatever source I like. So I've been throwing together essays and poetry, sociology reports and surveys, legal cases and legislation.

One of the project perks is writing to professors for help. Just this morning I got in contact with Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, distinguished scholar and professor of law at Oxford University. Professor Goodwin-Gill literally wrote the book on international refugee law, so I am very excited to have his input on my project. Might as well say I ran into Brad Pitt -- that's how giddy I am about corresponding with this man. He was extremely helpful, too; gave me a syllabus to use as a reference for my refugee class and a whole list of links to different source material.

I've also been in touch with professors from Harvard, USC, Tufts ... it's a lot of fun. I hope I get to study with these people some day. Human rights and public international law at the University of Pennsylvania is still somewhat limited, and while I love Professor Burke-White, I do wish more faculty taught courses in the field. Academics have a wide range of perspectives, and I worry how narrow my education might be, coming largely from one man.

In part, that's why I'm so adamant about doing additional research. Every article I read, every chapter of a book is the voice of another intellectual. And while my extracurricular independent studies cannot go into the same depth as our regular coursework, at least I am building some foundation in topics that I hope to work with in the future. At minimum, I know what sources to check for research, and what fact patterns to watch for in practice. Meeting folks like Sarah Paoletti and Adam Kolker, and writing to people like Eric Werker and John Prendergast -- that is the kind of networking I enjoy. I'm so lucky to have this opportunity!

Okay, I have to get back to writing my appellate brief, but I wanted to leave you with this editorial from the New York Times:

Africa's Next Slaughter