Role of Farce
Study Finds Fewer Fletcher Students Employed in Peacekeeping; More in War-Making
WASHINGTON – The Center for Educational Advancement, a non-profit research
center, released its annual report, which demonstrated that the number of
Fletcher alumni employed in the burgeoning fields of “war-creation,”
“conflict-incitement,” and the less-severe “generation of economic malaise,” has
surpassed the number of graduates employed in “peace-building, “conflict
resolution,” and “development” for the first time since the survey’s inception.
Dr. Peter von Strassen of George Washington University, the study’s lead
researcher, considered it a pragmatic decision on many accounts. “Basically,
there are just more jobs in these ‘confrontational’ fields, as we’ve been
calling them,” Dr. Strassen said, citing the economic crisis as a reason for a
downturn in aid to poor countries, and thus related jobs.
Tamara Golden of the Career Services Office echoed Dr. Strassen’s remarks.
“Sure, a lot of students come in wanting to work for environmental NGOs or to
improve public health in the developing world. But it can’t all be fuzzy bunnies
and kittens, folks. Before it was the security people we saw getting hired to
waterboard Guantanamo inmates. Shultz ran a dynamite workshop on that. But even
Guantanamo is closing—did Obama stop to think about those jobs? Now we’re seeing
the Conflict Resolution students sign up in droves on FCC for our newest
workshop, ‘Using Linked-In: For Money Laundering’.”
Fletcher professor Eileen Babbitt added: “I urge students to be realistic in
choosing careers. I tell them there will always be conflicts in the world. But
there will not always be people willing to pay you to resolve them.”
Law and Development student Anna Wolf, MALD ’10, rolled her eyes. “Now, when we
discuss trafficking in class, it’s not how to prevent it, but which
transnational organized criminal groups are hiring, and if anyone networked with
them over summer break. It’s really getting on my nerves.”
Matt Herbert, MALD ’10, fresh from a trip to Juarez, Mexico, with tan lines in
the form of a bulletproof vest to prove it, agreed. “When I proposed my
self-designed concentration on Illicit Business before this crisis, I was
laughed out of the International Business department! I never thought it would
be this lucrative. Take that, Professor Warde!” Herbert said, making an obscene
gesture.
Dr. Strassen agreed. “I’m sure a lot of those students would rather be teaching
poor farmers in the Sahel sustainable agricultural techniques. But those student
loans are onerous. Sometimes they have no choice but to turn to cigarette
smuggling for Hezbollah, to put food on the table.”
Mohammed Abdullah, MALD ’05, is one of those students. After fulfilling
concentrations in Human Security and Humanitarian Studies, Abdullah ventured out
into the world brimming with optimism. He spent three years working on a joint
USAID-local NGO project on urban sanitation in Juba, Sudan, only to find funding
for his project evaporate in 2008, and himself without a job. “It’s a slippery
slope,” Abdullah conceded. “One moment, you’re sitting in a makeshift clinic
debating how the IMF can best achieve the avoidance of pegged exchange rates and
deal with moral-hazard problems, and the next you’re driving through the desert
in a jeep holding a large-caliber automatic weapon and firing indiscriminately
at villagers,” explained Abdullah, who interned with CARE in Chad on a genocide
prevention project while a Fletcher student.
Claire Jenkins, MALD ’07, thought her Presidential Management Fellowship at the
US Embassy in Tirana, Albania would open her eyes to the conduct of diplomacy in
a former Communist state. “Instead, I found myself videotaping interrogations of
detainees from the ‘war on terror’ and occasionally transcribing their
confessions which was difficult, because I don’t understand Albanian.” Jenkins
detailed a recent experience during a particularly difficult interrogation of a
high-profile Egyptian detainee. “It was scary, but great because for the first
time I was really called upon to take a leadership role. Of course, the
interrogation techniques were a bit harsher than I would have liked.”
Golden summed up the career aspirations of her idealistic charges. “I tell them,
that’s nice, why don’t you write your thesis about it.” She coughed. “Fiction.”
Jenkins agreed. “It hasn’t just been me; I’ve heard of so many other students
saying ‘I’m going to help people and go work for Doctors Without Borders in
Africa blahblahblah,’ and after a couple months they just find themselves
figuring out how many grenade launchers can be concealed in the back of a
Chinese-made pickup truck while crossing the Somali-Kenyan border.” Of the
detainee she interrogated, Jenkins felt she handled the situation well. “I did
strap electrodes to his testicles,” at the behest of the CIA, she conceded. “But
I only shocked him a little bit.”
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