Brown and White Vol. 128 no. 16

              The Brown and White
Vol. 128 No. 16
Friday, April 3, 2015
‘All the Lehigh News First’
The Fulbright Scholar Program is the largest and most widely rec­ognized international exchange pro­gram in the world sponsored by the U.S. government. Lehigh currently hosts Fulbrighters from Pakistan, the Dominican Republic, France, Vietnam, Russia, Panama, Algeria, Afghanistan and more.
Applicants apply from all over the world and are selected based on their
Each year more than 1,000 fac­ulty, students and staff travel to the United Nations and bring related programs to Lehigh’s cam­pus. This is a testament to the success of the university’s part­nership with the United Nations, which this year is celebrating its 10th anniversary.
Bill Hunter, founder of the LU/U.N. partnership, worked in New York City serving as an NGO representative to the United Nations prior to his employment at Lehigh.
“I saw the opportunities the U.N. offered the students in New York City, and when I was hired here, I wanted to bring those opportunities to Lehigh, as well,” he said.
After being falsely accused of burning the Quran, Farkhunda, a 27-year-old Islamic law stu­dent, was beaten, run over by a car, burned and thrown off of a bridge by a male mob in Kabul, Afghanistan on March 19.
A memorial was held in honor of Farkhunda by the Global Union in the University Center on Monday.
Since Farkhunda’s murder, the #JusticeForFarkhunda movement has grown throughout the world. Hearing about this global move­ment, Hamid Akbary, a Fulbright graduate student at Lehigh from Afghanistan, decided to take action.
Akbary collaborated with the Lehigh Global Union and the department of sociology and anthropology to hold a memorial for Farkhunda at Lehigh.
“Women’s rights is not an Afghan issue, it’s a global issue,” Akbary said.
In order to raise awareness for the movement, students were asked to hold signs that advocat­ed for justice and women’s rights. Some of the signs included phras­es such as: “For every nation to succeed, its women should enjoy equal rights. Justice for Farkhunda!” and “Neither Islam, nor the Afghan constitution sup­port the killing of Farkhunda. Punish Farkhunda’s murderers!”
The students’ pictures were then taken with these signs, and there are plans to post these images on social media sites.
“The main purpose of the event is to support the movement of women’s rights around the world and to put pressure on the Afghan government,” said Savannah Boylan, ’15, the president of the Lehigh’s Global Union.
Boylan added that Farkhunda’s murder, something that occurred halfway around the world, could have an impact on Lehigh stu­dents, as well.
“We tend to live in a Lehigh bubble, and sometimes it is hard to think about the Middle East,” said Nikki Tannenbaum, the chair of the department of sociolo­gy and anthropology. “Bad things happen in almost every religion, not just in Islam. It’s important to keep in mind that this is not just a religious issue, it’s an issue of human rights.”
Radja Benmansour, a Fulbright graduate student from Algeria,
Lehigh hosts Fulbright Scholars
academic merit, competence, lead­ership potential, English proficiency and their goals for changing their societies after the program.
Sayed Hamid Akbary, a Fulbright scholar who came to Lehigh from Afghanistan in 2013, organized a memorial Monday for Farkhuna, a woman in Afghanistan who was bru­tally beaten in the country’s capi­tal of Kabul. The goals behind this memorial were to show people that this culture should be removed from our social structure and to demand empowerment and rights for women in Afghanistan and other countries where women’s rights are violated.
The aim of the Fulbright Program is cultural exchange to make sure that students who come here on the Fulbright Scholarship introduce their culture, learn on the masters and doctorate level, learn from the American culture and take what they have learned back to their commu­nities as well as promote mutual
Five years after the partnership began, Lehigh was recognized as an official NGO to the United Nations, only the sixth university in the world to hold this status.
“My goal throughout the whole partnership is to get Lehigh staff, faculty and students as close to global decision makers as pos­sible,” Hunter said. “When they travel to the U.N., they are liter­ally sitting across the table from global decision makers.”
To further push the involve­ment of students at the United Nations, the LU/U.N. partnership started the Youth Representative Program, which allows Lehigh students to represent various NGOs around the world.
Prior to the Youth Representative Program, Hunter noticed a key element missing at the NGO brief­ings he would attend on a weekly basis.
“Where’s the youth?” he said. “Where’s the youth voice here?”
Seeing an opportunity, the part­nership reached out to a number of NGOs around the world that were passionate but did not have the funding or staff to be physical­ly at the United Nations.
“We told them, ‘We’ve got some amazing students on campus. Would you be willing to give them one of your badges so that they can be your youth voices at the United Nations?’” Hunter said. “Every NGO we wrote out to said yes.”
Lehigh piloted the Youth Representative Program for near­ly four years when the United Nations approached Hunter and asked to use Lehigh’s program
Lehigh/UN partnership celebrates 10 years
By ANDREA WROBLE
B&W Staff
By ALI KAMINETSKY
B&W Staff
See FULBRIGHT Page 4
See U.N. Page 2
See MEMORIAL Page 4
GU memorial
honors Afghan woman’s death
By REBECCA WILKIN
B&W Staff
Samantha Tomaszewski/Made with Canva, Piktochart