Haverford and the Watson
Fellowship
By Steve Manning '96
In 1975, the venerable Steve Cary '37 took his first mountaineering trip to the Himilaya Mountains. His twelve-person hiking party and their porters were out to conquer Annapurna, the 26,304-foot high peak that lies in the same range as Mt. Everest. Setting off from the village of Pokhara, within sight of the mountain, the group trekked for nine days before they reached the base camp at 14,500 feet. Cary and a friend were the first to reach the camp, empty except for a solitary red tent pitched on the plateau, in front of which sat two men. Cary approached one and asked him where he was from. The twenty-some hiker said that he hailed from near Philadelphia, to which the native Philadelphian Cary replied, "I'm from there too," all the time feeling the world get smaller. "I know," said the young man confidently, "You're Steve Cary from Haverford College." "I almost dropped my front teeth right there," recalls Cary.
Tom Richie '74 was on the Himilayan leg of his global voyage studying alpine vegetation, a trip that also took him to the Andes, Canadian Rockies, and New Zealand Alps. He was spending a year photographing and observing plant propagation at elevations over 14,000 feet, a pursuit that had brought him to the isolated Himilayan base camp and the meeting with Cary. "Here I was, ten days away from any decent-sized village," says Cary, "and I run into someone from Haverford on the side of a mountain."
This alpine encounter proves two things: first, that Haverford is everywhere, and second, the resourcefulness, creativity, and determination of Haverford alums who have been Watson Fellows. Funding for Richie's trip was provided by a stipend from the Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Foundation, which annually awards fellowships to graduating seniors of small colleges nation-wide. Applicants write a proposal for a year-long project that combines international travel with a personal interest - in short something they want to discover more about. The project is subject to only two concrete stipulations. The fellow cannot set foot in the U.S. for the duration their project and cannot formally study at a university. Otherwise, the possiblities are limitless.
"It's an opportunity to go anywhere in the world, to travel among different cultures but in the process to explore a deep passion or interest," explains Associate Dean of the College Steve Watter. "Those interests range from aesthetic to artistic, to political, anthropological, sociological...just about anything." Watter has been Haverford's Watson advisor since 1986, helping students with the lengthy application process. A ten-page written proposal is submitted to a committee on campus, which interviews applicants and selects three or four to present to the Watson Foundation. The Foundation then interviews candidates and makes its selections in the late spring. In all, the process takes most of the academic year.
The application is made up of two components, a project proposal and a personal statement. The project proposal is a specific outline of what the applicant wants to study and where. Feasibility is important. Can the project be carried out, can it be done within a year, and are language barriers an issue? Equally important is the personal statement, where candidates are expected to explain how their project relates to their interests and life. Watter explains, "You have to make a case for yourself as being the right person to do this. You have to have a deep passion and interest in order to sustain this throughout the course of a year. With the possibility of facing some obstacles, we look at the personal qualities of the person, the temperament, to see how that person might react to his or her situation. In short, we look for people and projects."
Haverford has been producing people and projects for Watson fellowships since the college joined the program in 1973. Each year the college nominates four candidates, and an average of two students are awarded the stipend, now totaling 18,000 dollars. This is a good number, considering only 60 fellows are selected each year from a pool of 200 applicants. Haverford projects have covered topics such as Egyptian male culture as seen through the medium of coffee houses, the role of dance in the education of Balinese children, and an oral history of the Spanish Civil War, forgeries and fakes in Italian public monuments and works of art. Many Watson Fellows pursue careers related to their projects, often in the academic world, but also in other fields such as law. In marking the 25th anniversary of Haverford's participation in the Watson Fellowship, HAVERFORD has checked in on four former Fellows, both to listen to some stories and to see what effect their Watson experience has had on their lives.
Bill O'Neill '73
There is an adage that claims that the French minister of education can look up at his clock at 11:30 in the morning on a particular day and know that at that time, every sixteen year-old student is reading Proust. Education in France is rote, standardized, and highly centralized. It was also a powerful colonial tool, and the French imported their system to their numerous colonies, exerting their dominance over the inhabitants of the territories by teaching them French language, history, and culture. Even after the colonies gained independence, the French educational system remained in place. "African kids were learning the amount of annual snowfall in Grenoble even though they had never seen snow before in their lives," recalls Bill O'Neill '73. One of Haverford's first Watson Fellows, O'Neill spent a year moving through former French colonies in Africa and the Caribbean, studying the effects of colonialism on their schools.
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His proposal turned into an ambitious project. Over the course of a year, O'Neill traveled throughout West Africa, visiting the Ivory Coast, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), Mali, Senegal, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. He then crossed the Atlantic to Martinique, and ended his trip in Haiti. Through visits to educational ministries, schools, and private homes, O'Neill was able to piece together some answers to his questions. He found that the French system was present in varying degrees in almost all the countries he visited. Algeria, which O'Neill visited less than ten years after the nation had won independence from France through a bloody war, had made moves towards its own system, but parents seeking the best education for their children still sent them to the French lycées. Even Haiti, a country that has been independent since 1804, had a school system that was an almost exact mimicry of its French predecessor.
"I remember getting off the plane the first morning in the Ivory Coast at the airport in Abidjan and saying to myself, 'I don't know a single person on this whole continent,'" O'Neill says of the start of his Watson trip. He had a letter of introduction from the Watson Foundation which helped him get to know some people at the university in Abidjan. These contacts in turn helped him make connections throughout the country. From there he relied on the overwhelming hospitality of people he met throughout his trip who helped him with accommodations, transportation, meetings and documents. In return O'Neill often found himself in front of a class of African school children, many of who had never met anyone from the United States.
It was the last leg of O'Neill's journey that made the most profound impression. He entered Haiti from Martinique, where he had collected pamphlets from politically-minded students. "The customs guy at the airport picked one up and asked, 'What's the difference between socialism and communism?' I had been idly looking around the airport, but when I heard that, I spun around and knew I was in trouble. The next thing I knew there was a tonton macoute (policeman) going through my bags. He took every paper I had." O'Neill had landed in the Haiti of the Duvalier dictatorship, an authoritarian state suffering from intense and widespread poverty. He was followed for most of his visit, and people were often scared to speak with him, even on the topic of education. "It was the scariest place I had been to, and the irony was that it was three hours by plane from Miami. The fact that it was so unbelievably poor and repressive, yet so close to the United States, stuck with me."
His experiences in Haiti stuck with him through a master's degree in international relations, an incomplete Ph.D. in history, and law school. Law diploma in hand, O'Neill joined a New York corporate firm, but looked for pro bono opportunities on the side. He found one at the Lawyers' Committee on Human Rights (LCHR), a non-profit group that provides legal support and advice for human rights efforts world-wide. O'Neill's first assignment was to represent a Haitian man applying for political asylum in the U.S., a case which resurrected his French language skills and plunged him back into the Haitian situation. In 1986, LCHR asked him to return to Haiti on their behalf, to assess the state of human rights and the transition from a dictatorship to a democracy. He found that the country had sunk even further into economic depression since his first visit in 1974, but that people were exercising their increased freedoms with the departure of the Duvaliers. Creole was being used in the schools and on the radio where it was once banned, and people were no longer afraid to speak their minds in public. O'Neill spent two weeks in Haiti, visiting human rights advocates, lawyers, and priests, all in an effort to erect the legal framework for human rights advocacy.
Since his 1986 trip, O'Neill has left the Lawyers' Committee and has begun independent consulting for various human rights organizations. In 1993 he participated in a United Nations field mission to Haiti as director of the legal department, and has since been to Rwanda, and the Republic of Georgia among other nations, under the auspices of various groups. His primary approach has been to slowly infuse human rights awareness into areas that have known only violence and repression, a process that has made progress in places like Haiti. Bill O'Neill landed in the Ivory Coast in 1973 looking for answers to his questions about education, but instead found a career.
Abigail Adams '82
Abigail Adams was one of Haverford's first full-time female students and also the College's first woman Watson Fellow. Her idea for the project originated from her travel experience in Latin America and an interest in medicine. Adams took a year off from college to work on community development projects in Guatemela, time that fortified her Spanish and exposed her to health issues in Latin America. At Haverford, she developed an independent major, one part soical anthropology, the other biology. "It was a great major for my Watson project, because I had the language and knowledge of the social sciences along with background in the natural sciences," she explains.
Community health care in Latin America was the focus of her trip, specifically health care issues involving women. She observed health care related to women, such as pre- and post-natal care and efforts to bring clinics and doctors to rural areas. She learned that one of the barometers of a country's general health services is the infant mortality rate, which is often high in areas with poor care. Visiting Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cuba, Peru, and Bolivia, she discovered that health services were in dire straits. The International Debt Crisis of the early '80s found many Latin American countries saddled with paralyzing foreign loans, which drained vital money from other national services. Governments would build desperately-needed clinics in rural areas, but didn't have the money to staff them. Women weren't able to get proper pre-natal care and nutrition. In Guatemala, hosptial patients must provide their own food, supplies, surgical gloves, and even thread for sutures.
Not only did Adams play the role of observer, she also had opportunities to participate in rural programs and sample health care herself. She was an interpreter for an American ob-gyn who taught a three week midwifery course in a rural Mexican town. While in Cuba, Adams made a visit to the doctor for her annual check-up. "Anyone, even a foreigner can receive medical treatment in Cuba. The clinic was rather factory-like in its approach, but the doctor gave me a thorough exam. The doctor who helped me was a woman, and I asked her about PMS. Her responses were interesting, and she definitely suggested some of the approaches that at the time were a common approach to dealing with the condition," Adams recalls.
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Her experiences in Latin America convinced Adams to continue her expatriate ways, as she spent another two years in Costa Rica as a writer for the journal Mesoamerica , an experience she found tremendously rewarding. "I found that I loved teaching and interviewing," she explains, "It was basically finding another set of gifts." Adams eventually went to graduate school, completing her Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Virginia before taking a teaching job at Hollins College in Virginia. Now a professor of anthropology at Central Connecticut State University, many of her courses focus on Latin America, as does much of her research.
As a student, Adams had intended to be a doctor. However, her Watson year in Latin America and her subsequent years as a journalist in Costa Rica changed her path. She hadn't had a change of heart about medicine, rather "I realized that doctors were not the solution to international health problems, because a doctor trained in the West may not be allowed to work in another country. There were opportunities through groups such as Doctors Without Borders, but I saw how limited they were in terms of input. I also realized that a doctor without supplies is a very frustrated human being," Adams says.
The Watson year has had other lingering affects on Adams. She has become an amateur gardener and musician, all hobbies she picked up while living abroad. "I walked away an amateur soil scientist," she says, "thinking about land tenure and vulcanology." Her Watson experience also had a life-long effect, "It turned into what I do for the rest of my life. That's not true for everyone, nor does it have to be. Many people go on to do other things, but their Watson experience stays with them."
Tanya Lieberman '91
In 1987, twelve years after the last Americans left Vietnam, Congress passed the Vietnamese-Amerasian Homecoming Act. A largely forgotten legacy of the Vietnam War, the children of American servicemen and Vietnamese women were allowed to emigrate to the United States. An estimated 8 to 15 thousand Amerasian children were born between 1962 and 1975, the majority of whom were able to leave Vietnam and resettle in the U.S. during the late '80s and early '90s. As part of the U.N.-supervised emigration, the Amerasians and their families spent six months in the Philippines Refugee Processing Center in Bataan. There they were taught everything from English language to how to go shopping in a supermarket, all life skills aimed at preparing them for resettlement in the U.S.
Tanya Lieberman spent a year in the camp, teaching some of the courses and interviewing Vietnamese-Amerasians for her Watson project. Her interviews focused primarily on the children's struggle with issues of identity. Shunned by Vietnamese society, many had little or no knowledge of their fathers. Lieberman, who is bi-racial herself, had a personal interest in the issues of mixed race people, and the Vietnamese-Amerasian migration during the early '90s presented a perfect opportunity for her to conduct research.
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After the fall of Saigon, communication between Vietnam and anyone in the U.S. was cut. Almost all of the relationships between Vietnamese women and U.S. servicemen, some of whom were married, fell apart. The mothers of Amerasian children often destroyed documents and birth certificates, fearing persecution from the Vietnamese government. Many children were abandoned and took to the streets of Saigon. Called 'Bui Doi,' or 'dust of life', Amerasian children faced both social and political discrimination. They were often barred from school and scorned by a patralineal Vietnamese society that emphasized racial purity. In Vietnam these children were outcasts, as Lieberman explains. "In my interviews, many of them would talk about a sense of not belonging, feeling like they would never fit in, like they were abandoned."
The refugee camp was a halfway point for the Amerasians; they had left the scorn of Vietnam behind, but were apprehensive about what they would find in the U.S.. "They were aware that they would most likely be relocated to cities, and they knew of some of the problems that people in American cities face," Lieberman says. Many of the first to emigrate came with unrealistic hopes of finding their fathers who either did not want the children in their lives, or who could not easily be located. "The issue of finding their fathers was much more of an identity issue than one of whether or not they would become part of a family or get any kind of financial support," says Lieberman. "It was more of an issue of finding out who they were and feeling like they belonged somewhere."
Adjusting was particularly difficult for the children of African-Americans and Vietnamese women. "The kids knew so little about American culture and they knew even less about African-American culture," describes Lieberman. "What they saw in the media was largely negative and I think they were afraid about not being understood or experiencing discrimination on the basis of their race when they arrived in the United States."
Like other Watson fellows, Lieberman continued to pursue interests overseas. She spent the year after her Watson Fellowship in Cambodia as an electoral supervisor for the United Nations and has since done the same in South Africa and Bosnia. She returned to the U.S. in 1994 to teach a fourth grade Cambodian bilingual class and is currently the consultant on K-12 education for the California Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee.
Although she has always wanted to make education her career, Lieberman will always have an eye pointed overseas. "Once you have a very powerful international experience, you always want more," she says. "I've really felt since my Watson and following year that I'm always going to have a strong interest in working overseas."
Her year in Cambodia immediately after her time in the camp caused her to lose touch with most of the Amerasian friends she had made, but the experience will remain with her. "One of the most powerful things was simply walking around the camp and seeing the faces of a lot of the Amerasians who are really survivors in a lot of ways, who are legacies of a war they don't understand. A lot of them look like their fathers they have never met, which is an identity issue they struggle with all the time. I think they are some of the strongest, most resilient people I have ever met."
Steve Leonard '95
In a scene repeated daily in American summertime playgrounds, stadiums, and streets, a pitcher stares down the waiting batter sixty feet away. A base runner eases cautiously off second base, taking every inch he can without drawing too much unwanted attention. The pitcher contorts himself into a windup and releases his offering, a fastball that is promptly sent into right field with a short stroke of the bat. All defensive attention is now focused on the runner, who has left second base far behind and is circling third, focused on home plate. The throw from right field is on target, the ball and base runner meeting at the catcher's extended glove. The dust settles from the slide, and the umpire, shouting the slogan that defines him, belts out, "Ne Uspyel!"
Of course this isn't your typical American ballpark. The players, the umpires, and the smattering of spectators are Russian, and the game is being played at Moscow State University. Baseball has gained popularity in Russia since the mid-80's, and Moscow is now home to a junior league and a nine-team upper league. The players are not paid - most are young enough to still live at home or are in university. The teams also scrape by on sponsorships from local businesses or sports clubs. The Red Army fields two teams, and the large sports club Spartak is also a team sponsor.
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Steve Leonard went from the Haverford baseball diamond in the spring of 1995 to the Spartak outfield in the fall of the same year. He spent his Watson year studying the development of baseball in the former Soviet Union. He figured the best way to study the game was to play. "I've always played baseball and I love the game," Leonard says, explaining the genesis of his project. "I've also had an interest in Russia since I visited the Soviet Union in 1990 as part of a three-week cultural exchange." The Russian major also read articles on the fledgling Moscow league, and knew he had his angle. "The Watson people always stress that they are looking for a project that is specific to you, one that only you can do. This was the logical one for me."
Russian baseball was much different than the game he was used to playing. Umpires often did not fully understand the rules themselves, needing frequent on-field summits to make calls. Equipment was scarce, meaning that Spartak players were forced to ask American teams who came to play friendship games if they had any extra balls or bats to donate. Coaches also weren't very knowledgeable, making decisions that made little sense. "They don't have years of experience to call upon. Baseball only started in Russia twelve years ago," observes Leonard. However, the players have the same motivations as their American counterparts; they play because they love the sport. The best players have aspirations to play in the U.S., and a few each year are able to pick up with a major league farm team. Leonard's friend, Andrei Selivanov played a year with the Atlanta Braves' rookie team in Florida. There is little chance of seeing a Russian player in the major leagues any time soon, but for the development of the league in Moscow, these experiences are invaluable.
So was Leonard's experience in Russia. His first three months were difficult. He had never spent much time away from his family, he still wasn't fully comfortable with the language, and he had yet to make any close friends. He thought about coming home, but the Watson people calmed him down. "In the Watson Foundation headquarters, they have a big map on the wall, with a colored pin for each fellow. So they were always thinking about us and they would do as much as they could to help us out," Leonard says. He gradually became close friends with his teammates, and did some traveling, both of which helped his spirits. He also by chance appeared on an ESPN special about Russian baseball. Leonard approached a camera crew that was at the Moscow State field and ended up being interviewed for the show. "I didn't think much more of it until I was back in the States and saw myself on t.v. one night," he says.
Currently a Russian history and math teacher at the Heights School in Potomac, Maryland, Leonard has plans to return to Russia this summer with one of his classes. He has also traveled since his Watson year, spending three weeks last summer working in Mother Theresa's Calcutta mission.
The most valuable part of Leonard's Watson year was what he learned about himself. At the end of February 1995, he had to get a new visa, since he could never get the Russians to issue him one for longer than three months. He took a train to Estonia and went to the Russian embassy in Tallinn where he was promptly refused a visa. "This was the first time that I didn't know what to do," Leonard remembers. "But I had been there for six or seven months at this point, so I said to myself, 'Steve, you've got to figure out what to do.'" What he did was hop a train to Lithuania, where he obtained a visa to enter Belarus, finally arriving in Minsk two days later. Without any information on Minsk, he found the American embassy and later the Russian embassy, where he negotiated and obtained a visa. "I spent three days in Minsk; I went to the circus, I saw a concert, visited markets. I found other things to experience," recalls Leonard. "The bottom line is that I found I actually had the knowledge to figure out what to do. I really feel now like I can go anywhere."
Haverford's People and Projects
There are currently two Haverford students traveling on Watson stipends. Sam Freeman '97 is in Britain, photographing the lives of skilled laborers while James Welcome '97 is traveling in China, India, Mongolia, and Nepal, following the path of the monkey depicted in the Chinese Classic Novel. Haverford also nominated four projects this year to be evaluated by the Watson Foundation. They include traditional healing in Vietnam, China and France, and the socio-economics of golf in Scotland and South Africa.
The effect that the Watson Fellowship has had on the Haverford participants has been invaluable. The year is a difficult one: away from family and friends, in a foreign country without any structured program, and entirely on their own, Watson Fellows are forced to be resourceful, self-reliant, and confident. The year affects their career choices and their outlook on the world. Most importantly, they learn who they really are and discover that they can achieve most things they set their minds to.
Haverford's success with the Watson Fellowship in the past 25 years is both a testament to the College and the people who choose to attend. "I think the Haverford education produces people who can think and write well," postulates Steve Watter, "But that education mostly enhances the creative, resourceful, and interesting people who decide to come here."