IMMIGRANTS and CITIZENSHIP PROJECT

The Concept

Why this domestic engagement for an internationally focused group?

We believe that progress toward an end to war requires American leadership. But in a world in which the face of war is now dominantly ethnic, racial, and religious, America itself is disuniting. A divided America, unsure of a shared identity and, therefore, of common purpose, is not likely to lead in work to end war or in any other humane effort.

Needed efforts to break bad discriminatory molds and open areas of American life to people previously excluded have deteriorated. Now, efforts to assert group rights are challenging individual rights and equality before the law. "Multicultural" — often, in fact, monocultural — currents in education and in the public square more broadly have replaced an emphasis on a common American identity. Meanwhile, massive increases in immigration, with little serious citizenship education to incorporate these newcomers in schools or immigration arenas, have added new tensions.

Immigrants & Citizenship addresses these challenges at the crossroads where newcomers join our nation: one of the few points that requires defining a common American identity. We in the United States do so not just by history, certainly not by blood, but by a creed of shared ideas: ideas, such as liberty and equality before the law, that challenge both those who would end our immigrant tradition and those who would advocate divisions based on race and ethnicity.

Hence, we seek agreement on the right relationship between diversity and community, by clarifying why the "true faith and allegiance" pledged by new citizens to our common civic culture makes possible peaceful diversity in civil society. Taking immigration as a point of departure, then, we explore why work for a more inclusive society and broader concepts of what an educated person should know -- both good ends -- can, if done wrong, disunite America and damage education.

Failure to meet this challenge will threaten our national unity and well being. It will cripple our ability to take a leadership role in progress toward a world without war.

Work Being Done

The Immigrants & Citizenship pilot work is focused in Marin County, across the Golden Gate from San Francisco. Deep divisions over the question of immigration have arisen in this community, which has experienced a large influx of immigrants over the last decade.

How can this situation be addressed? How do you stimulate needed discussion that addresses hard questions of economics, environment, and culture — discussion that moves beyond the poles of the debate?

• Marin Community meetings with senior government figures:

  December 1, 1997 -- Judge Shirley Hufstedler, Chairperson of the United States Commission on Immigration Reform (USCIR); former U.S. Secretary of Education

  June 9, 1997 -- Lawrence Fuchs, Vice Chair of the USCIR; Professor of American Studies, Brandeis University

  May 14, 1996 — Doris Meissner, Director, Immigration and Naturalization Service

  May 5, 1998 -- Richard Estrada, member, USCIR; member, editorial board, The Dallas Morning News

   

• Civics curriculum development: with community colleges, English as a second language (ESL) teachers, and Marin public schools.
• The Immigrants & American Unity Opinion Survey: an ongoing effort to identify patterns of response to immigrants & citizenship issues with the goal of charting common ground ahead of present polarizations.

***materials available (link)

Contact:

I and C Project Officer
(510)845-1992

IMPROVING AMERICAN COMPETENCE IN WORLD AFFAIRS

What role do nongovernmental organizations play? What role should they play?

The Improving American Competence in World Affairs Project is an effort by six national world affairs organizations, in partnership with the WWWC, to create a wiser, richer, better-linked, and more effective world affairs field in twenty American metropolitan areas.

The Problem

• Even as more Americans than ever before are engaged in international business, travel, and educational exchanges, attention to the larger questions of the right role for the United States in the world has faded.
• This goes on as world affairs organizations are moving from the traditional New York--Washington DC nexus to metropolitan areas across the country, attempting to address the effects of globalization on local communities, but in doing so creating a fragmented field.

The Strategy

The Improving American Competence in World Affairs Project will:

• address this problem initially by charting local fields: publishing guides to the Americans and World Affairs field in twenty American Metropolitan areas. The Project offers sample survey materials and consultant services to local lead organizations developing the guide. The guides introduce the full range of regional organizations, featuring sections on selected groups' history, ideas, strategy of work, leadership, and funding.
• offer additional consultant services on further projects to strengthen the Americans and World Affairs field in a metropolitan area: leadership devlopment; cooperative fellows programs; links between educators and NGO leaders; and connections to universities and local governments. The goal is to leave behind a leadership core concerned about the whole field in their region.

The Opportunity

The Improving American Competence in World Affairs Project is now looking for organizations interested in initiating a metropolitan area guide project in 1998 as either a local lead organization or a cooperating organization.

The 200-page model guide, World Affairs Organizations in Northern California: A Guide to the Field, is available.

If your organization is interested in the IACIWAP, please contact:

Robert Pickus
Project Diretor
(510)845-1992

Email: wwwc@sirius.com

AMERICANS AND WORLD AFFAIRS FELLOWS PROGRAM

Are young people today practically and intellectually prepared to do thoughtful, effective work in the NGO world?

Overview

The Fellows Program is a jointly sponsored career development project serving some thirty Bay Area nongovernmental organizations with a range of political perspectives and work strategies. Initiated by WWWC in 1960, the program became a fully developed cooperative effort in 1987.

 

• Gives participants a better understanding of the role nongovernmental organizations play in shaping our engagements with the world.
• Emphasizes reasoned approaches to analyzing competing values and perspectives on America's role in world affairs.
• Helps develop leaders capable of contributing to progress toward the nonviolent resolution of international conflict and the well-being of democratic societies. It is intended for people of all ages who are seeking not just a job but a vocation.

Program Description

The program involves a year-long internship with a world affairs nongovernmental organization, seminars on basic intellectual and philosophical questions of international affairs, "encounters" with leaders in the local field, and individual study.

Fellows are generally expected to have completed academic work for an MA or its equivalent. Individuals with a BA and demonstrated commitment to the goals and values of the program will also be considered. Fellows will also be selected on the basis of their academic accomplishment in relevant fields and their potential for leadership in organizations and institutions concerned with the United States' role in world affairs.

For a complete applications contact:

 

Fellows Coordinator
(510) 845-1992
Email: wwwc@wwwc.org

 

CONSCIENCE & WAR

The tension between individual conscience and responsibility to community has long been at the center of Council thought and programming. Beginning during the Vietnam era, the WWWC counseled thousands of young people struggling to reconcile deeply held personal and religious convictions with the responsibilities that come with membership in a democratic society.

We pointed out the difference between true Conscientious Objection — an open refusal to participate in war that yet maintains a respect for democratic community and legal consequences — and resistance — a refusal to fight and the willingness to run away or lie to escape the legal consequences.

We have, over the years, conducted programs in schools and churches that explore these themes. Lamentably, we will do so again when the specter of war next appears. In the meantime, we do have available our Conscience & War Kit for Counselors and Students for those thinking about the problem of war and individual responses to it. If interested, please see Materials Available (link).

GOVERNANCE IN WORLD AFFAIRS

Amidst the ongoing debate about the threat and promise of the emerging world order, many voices point to American leadership as a critical precondition of progress toward improved governance in world politics.

Now focused on internal problems,

such American leadership seems unlikely.

Adrift in world politics, America has neglected discussions of mid and long-term strategies for advancing understandings and institutions capable of preventing mass deadly conflict and contributing to the resolution of pressing global problems.

WWWC seeks to:

Restart the governance in world affairs discussion among selected NGO leaders and scholars. (The goal is a book, including standards for judgement worth bringing to policy makers and the attentive public).

Improve the debate by exploring contending perspectives

Enhancing the attentive public's exploration of America's role in developing improved governance in world affairs.

Objective

A long-term American engagement will determine whether world politics will continue to be overwhelmed by unresolved problems and dominated by deadly conflict or whether steady and wise progress toward strengthened world community and institutions of governance will yield progress towards a world without war, safe for free societies.

 

Governance in World Affairs:

Possibilities, Pitfalls, and a Responsible Role for Americans

The book is an introduction to the debate and a discussion framing document to improve public dialogue. It contains interviews with key academic and policy figures expressing contending perspectives on global problems, governance solutions, and responsible policy. Publication is set for Fall 1998. Interviewees include:

 

• Lincoln P. Bloomfield, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, MIT
• Harlan Cleveland, Professor of Political Science, University of Minnesota
• Benjamin Ferencz, Professor of International Law, Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials
• Ernst Haas, Robson Research Professor of Government, U.C. Berkeley
• Owen Harries, Editor, "The National Interest"
• Max Kampelman, Former US Ambassador, Madrid Conference on Human Rights, Geneva Talks on Arms Reduction
• Stephen Krasner, Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations, Stanford University
• Edward Luck, Executive Director, Center for the Study of International Organizations
• Saul Mendlovitz, Dag Hammarskjold Professor of Peace and World Order Studies, Rutgers University: President and Co-Director, World Order Models Project
• James Rosenau, University Professor of International Affairs, George Washington University
• Brian Urquhart, Former UN Under Secretary for Special Political Affairs: Fellow, Ford Foundation

For more information, please contact:

WWWC Program Officer
(510) 845-1992

Email: wwwc@sirius.com