Putting the Globe in Global Studies
Date: October 5, 2006
News/Article
Maxwell Green, Staff Reporter

Global Studies professors do more then give exams and assign readings in textbooks. Many GS faculty travel overseas to lecture and explore the very issues they teach; those that affect the global community such as:  labor, migration in Asia, U.S. involvement in the Philippines and torture in Guantanamo Bay.
Professor Gerald Shenk traveled to Southern Mindanao in the Philippines for the 100th anniversary of the United States’ invasion. Southern Mindanao, a Muslim state, has been portrayed by the BBC as being a war zone between Abu Sayyaf rebels and the federal government of the Philippines.
“People on Sulu/Jolo think of Abu Sayyaf not an organized insurgent group, but as an ideology at leased 1 hundred years old,” according to Shenk; how was more concerned about Christian radical organizations involved in the conflict.
Professor Angie Tran traveled to Vietnam. Tran interviewed workers, labor unions and company representatives at all levels regarding the resent 40 percent raise in minimum wage across country.
 “That is a victory for workers… a long over due issue,” Tran, who has so far published one article and is currently working on a manuscript, said.
There had been a strike in late 2005 that ended in Jan 2006, when Tran had started her three-month trip. Tran’s ultimate plan was to research the role of the unions.
Robina Bhatti is president of Northern California Advocates for Global Education as well as a Global Studies faculty member. Bhatti’s project, “Circuits of Survival: Comparative and Gendered Analysis of Trans-Migrant Women of South Asia,” was presented this past summer in Pakistan.
“Asia stands out as both an exporter and importer of labor—while the U.S. mainly imports labor,” Bhatti says, “I did look at the communities and differences between seven South Asian counties; the configuration of the global political economy,” Bhatti said.
“…the increasing attraction of Asian women’s productive and reproductive labor for people of other countries,” is a big aspect of the project says Bhatti. Kathryn Poethig traveled to Nepal this past summer for a peace mission. Poethig’s goal was “to support inclusion of the Moist Party.” Because according to Poethig the Communist Party of Nepal (Moist) is in support of democracy and human rights.

Poethig explained that until recently in Nepal “the king had absolute control” and there was a tyranny.
Poethig said she was the only American in her group. “It was frustrating as an American” said Poethig because even though she supports the Communist Party of Nepal (Moist) in order to support democracy; the United States does not support the party because there Communist.
From Barkley California Julie Shackford-Bradley has been researching the issue of torture as a tool against terrorism. Also Alan Dershowitz’s “ticking time bomb” argument, which Shackford-Bradley explained as, “if you know someone has info on a ticking time bomb that will surely kill 100,000s of people, it’s your moral obligation to torture.”
Shackford-Bradley expressed much concern about the “U.S. Governments attempts to protect them legally while advocating torture.”
Shackford-Bradley feels the recent Supreme Court decision, that prisoners have rights, was a great victory and hopes that it does not get overturned.