NEWS

THE TUFTS DAILY

VOLUME LXXXI, ISSUE 7 MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MASS.

Wednesday, september 22, 2021

tuftsdaily.com Tufts supports Afghan student community amid ongoing crisis

by Anton Shenk

News Editor

As Tufts community members impacted by the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan grapple with the ongoing crisis, community members have worked tirelessly to support students and address the lack of on-campus engagement around the issue.

Andrew Shiotani, director of Tufts International Center, has been one community member closely engaging with impacted students — supporting Afghan students through academic, financial and mental health challenges. The International Center has been particularly focused on assisting two new students from Afghanistan.

Tufts support of community members impacted by the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan drew increased attention, including an email acknowledgement by University President Anthony Monaco, as the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks neared.

“While recent events in Afghanistan have undoubtedly caused us all to take pause and reflect, Tufts is committed to supporting our students and scholars from the region, and as part of the larger higher education community, working to ensure that scholars, especially women, receive a safe haven to continue their scholarly pursuits in the true spirit of academic freedom,” Monaco wrote to the Tufts community.

In addition to the array of administrative departments mobilizing to support students in the spirit of President Monaco’s message, Tufts students and organizations have also mobilized, according to Tufts’ South Asian Regional Committee (SARC).

“Many students and student groups have also either conducted their own fundraisers or committed time and effort to raising money for external fundraisers to help the Afghan people,” SARC shared in an email to the Daily.

SARC is optimistic that community events focusing on the Afghanistan crisis will provide a chance for students to become more informed on the region.

“Any lack of engagement or discourse on the crisis at Tufts could likely be attributed to a lack of awareness or understanding of the crisis, so we are hopeful that these planned events will help foster further discourse and broaden students’ understanding of the crisis,” SARC said.

Perhaps contributing to the lack of knowledge about the crisis is Tufts’ limited student enrollment from the region. According to the Tufts University Fact Book, a compilation of characteristics of Tufts’ student

EVAN SAYLES / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES The Tufts International Center supports international students, scholars, employees and their dependents throughout their time at Tufts.

see AFGHANISTAN, page 3 Study abroad programs resume with COVID-19 restrictions

COURTESY SUSAN WANG A London street is pictured, taken by alumna Susan Wang during her time in England, where she got stuck when the COVID-19 pandemic struck during her semester abroad.

by Marianna Schantz

News Editor

As students who plan on studying abroad in the fall semester are gearing up for their trips, many programs are proceeding as planned, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Mala Ghosh, associate dean and senior director of Tufts Global Education, said that it is exciting to watch students return to study abroad programs.

“Students have been arriving at our Tufts Programs Abroad centers in Paris, Madrid, London, and Tübingen as well as beginning other study abroad programs with various partners across Europe,” Ghosh wrote in an email to the Daily.

The university is also operating Tufts in Oxford, which is set to begin next month.

Tufts in Beijing will not be continuing this semester. Tufts@BNU, however, which is also hosted at Beijing Normal University and which started in the summer of 2020 to accommodate Chinese international students during COVID-19, is continuing this fall.

“Unfortunately, we are canceling our Tufts in Beijing program due to visa processing,” Ghosh said. “Students are preparing for spring programs, and we are hoping countries begin to reopen travel and the pandemic restrictions ease when appropriate.”

According to Melanie Armstrong, assistant director of Tufts Global Education, the university decided to defer a few programs that would normally operate in the fall to the spring due to country-specific travel conditions and local conditions. These programs include Tufts in Chile, Tufts in Ghana and Tufts in Japan.

see STUDY ABROAD, page 3

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Cunningham plans to leverage Tisch’s educational, research, outreach capabilities to the fullest

Dayna Cunningham, dean of Tisch College, is pictured.

COURTESY ROBIN SMYTON

by Chloe Courtney Bohl

Assistant News Editor

Dayna Cunningham is the new Pierre and Pamela Omidyar dean of the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life. She arrives at Tufts after working as a civil rights attorney and founding the Community Innovators Lab (CoLab) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her credentials include an undergraduate degree from Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, a J.D. from New York University School of Law and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Cunningham hopes to leverage the research and community power of Tisch College to address the interrelated problems of climate change, public health crises, wealth disparities and racial divides.

“I think Tisch is a perfect place to…sound a clarion call around the importance of institutional transformation, equipping our governing and civic and business institutions to better meet this moment that we are coming into of a multiracial society,” Cunningham said.

As dean, Cunningham works to ensure that the various branches of Tisch College have the resources and support they need to function. In addition to that work, Cunningham sees herself as responsible for “attending to the mission” of the college.

She must answer the question, in her words, of, “After you announce these aspirational ideas, how do you actually create strategies to implement them?”

Cunningham emphasized that Tisch’s mission is critical to responding to today’s political and social issues.

“We’ve all lived through the pandemic, we’ve all lived through Black Lives Matter, we’ve all lived through January 6 and we’re all watching this current administration struggle from a governance perspective to address problems that have solutions,” Cunningham said. “There is a solution to this pandemic, but public will is not there. For years, my work has focused on problems that have solutions, but don’t have public will. But never, ever has it been so widespread and clear as it is right now.”

According to a June 7 TuftsNow article, Cunningham’s work at MIT’s CoLab promoted equitable development and helped marginalized communities achieve democratic control over their economies through urban planning and development initiatives. Cunningham explained how this work prepared her for her new position as Dean.

“What we are doing [at CoLab] is supporting, through development planning, the strengthening of civic infrastructure, and through our connections to civic infrastructure, strengthening the case for communities determining their own development trajectory,” Cunningham said. “That is the core learning that I am bringing to Tisch: that community knowledge is an essential resource for building democratic societies, that civic infrastructure is an indispensable resource for building democracy and that the strongest and most reliable pathway to all of that … is civically committed higher education institutions.”

Cunningham spoke about what distinguishes Tisch College and Tufts from other institutions of higher education.

“A lot of higher education institutions exist behind high walls with very, very high tuition,” she said. “They take up a lot of real estate in the community, and they almost literally physically turn their backs on [the] community. And I think Tufts … every day distinguishes itself for something different than that. And Tisch is a real leader within Tufts around opening itself up, welcoming in partnerships [and] having a view towards co-creating essential and necessary knowledge with communities.”

James Glaser, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, led the search committee for the dean of Tisch College position. He discussed the qualities and experience the committee looked for when interviewing candidates.

“We were really looking for a distinctive leader for a distinctive place — someone who could understand and champion the values of Tisch College,” Glaser said. “And we were looking for somebody who could be a strong voice externally, beyond Tufts, on the various issues that Tisch College participates in.”

Diane Ryan, associate dean for programs and administration at Tisch College, who participated in the search committee for the deanship, shared how Dean Cunningham stood out from other candidates during the search process.

“Her experience greatly complements what we do, but also provides us opportunities for growth in those areas,” Ryan said. “I was just very blown away … with [her] very thoughtful approach to many of the questions that we asked her, and I could see her making a relatively seamless transition to the university leadership.”

As dean, Cunningham will oversee Tisch College’s research institutions, which include the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), the Institute for Democracy and Higher Education and the Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group.

Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, director of CIRCLE, discussed how Dean Cunningham’s appointment will impact research at Tisch College.

“I’m confident that she will really be supportive of the kind of high impact research that CIRCLE hopes to do by leveraging communities’ knowledge and expertise, especially [that of] young people,” Kawashima-Ginsberg said. “We’re just starting our relationship, but I can’t really imagine a better Dean, especially from my position as an applied research center director, to really think about … both the importance of rigor and [the] importance of impact with community.”

TRASHING ONE EGG WASTES 55 GALLONS OF WATER

Study abroad participants face unique challenges

AFGHANISTAN

continued from page 1 body, Tufts sponsored just one student visa from Afghanistan in fall 2020, for a member of the Fletcher School. Student enrollment from the Middle East and North Africa is also low.

According to Shiotani, it’s difficult to attribute limited student enrollment from the region to just one factor.

“I think enrollment is affected by a complex of factors,” Shiotani said in an email to the Daily. “The International Center monitors the impact of US visa and immigration policy and operations on student enrollment trends, but enrollment can also be affected by demographic factors (population size, the overall size of the college-attending population); economic and political conditions in a particular country or region; the strength of alumni networks and historical connections and relationships with schools and colleges in the country or region; [and] home country and US government support for international education, including the availability of scholarship opportunities.”

Despite the limited student representation on campus, clubs and organizations are working to elevate Afghan voices to educate community members. One such effort — done collaboratively between Tufts’ Middle East Research Group (MERG) and SARC — has included a symposium covering U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, regional implications of Taliban control and the impact of Taliban control on Afghan women.

“Given the significance of this moment and the lack of adequate news coverage and discussion on campus and across the country, we are currently organizing a symposium for September 23rd and 24th to cover different aspects of the current situation,” sophomore Zack Burpee and junior Carolina Hidalgo-McCabe, co-presidents of MERG, said on behalf of the club in an email to the Daily. “We wish to provide a forum for regional experts, activists, and most importantly Afghan voices to share their perspective with the Tufts community.”

Tufts’ response to the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan has also drawn attention to how the university traditionally supports international students impacted by crises in their home countries, most recently the COVID-19 pandemic. Shiotani added that this most recent crisis is hardly the first mobilization of university resources to support the international community at Tufts.

“Unfortunately, members of the international community can be and have been affected by different kinds of crises in their home countries – including natural disasters, civil unrest, and other humanitarian crises,” Shiotani said. “More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has only magnified the effects of these events, while being a major threat in and of itself to the safety and wellbeing of our students and their family, friends, and neighbors. The International Center’s response in such situations varies somewhat depending [on] the specific situation, but we’ll always make efforts to reach out, and be available to advise and work with students either individually or collectively regarding their specific needs and concerns.”

As Afghanistan enters its second month under Taliban control — with a mounting economic crisis — impacted South Asian students from the region have relied on one another for support.

“There definitely has been discussion about the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan going on amongst Tufts students and specifically South Asian Tufts Students, most prominently on social media,” SARC wrote. “As South Asian students, the crisis in Afghanistan certainly hits close to home for many of us and there is no one way to process it, but it is clear that most of us are committed to engaging in discourse surrounding the crisis and searching for ways to help.”

STUDY ABROAD

continued from page 1

“We are monitoring conditions in these locations to determine the feasibility of operating each program in spring 2022,” Armstrong said in an email to the Daily.

Tufts has various students participating in external study abroad programs in nine countries, while other countries, such as Australia and New Zealand, are not currently allowing travelers to enter their borders.

Despite the continuation of most programs, there are still travel restrictions and COVID-19 protocols that vary country.

“There are a wide range of travel conditions and restrictions that have variously been implemented by host-country governments that will have implications for travelers: vaccination and/or negative testing requirements, mandated post-arrival quarantine periods, cancellation or rescheduling of flights [and] delays in the processing of passports and visas,” Armstrong said.

Local COVID-19 transmission levels and regional prohibitions on travel as well as testing, treatment, vaccine and mask mandates will have an impact on students’ experience abroad.

“We are relying on our students to be adaptable, patient, and resourceful in order to deal with these ongoing challenges,” Armstrong said.

Sabrina Wen said that COVID19 has not affected her experience with Tufts in Madrid thus far.

“I was a bit worried about COVID hindering my experience,” Wen, a senior, wrote in an email to the Daily. “I feel like I’m able to do a lot of the things I would have been able to do pre-COVID, just with a mask on now. I also think restrictions will loosen up while I’m abroad since Spain and Madrid in particular are steadily increasing their vaccination rates.”

Wen explained that Tufts in Madrid students must wear a mask indoors. Additionally, she and her host family must take at-home COVID-19 tests every week. Though Tufts in Madrid is allowing students to travel to other countries, Wen said she plans to stick with local travel until the COVID-19 situation improves in other European countries.

According to Ghosh, the program directors have created new opportunities for local travel for Tufts students in their host countries.

“Our Tufts Programs Abroad directors have crafted creative new cultural experiences, local travel excursions, field visits, and will offer more individual opportunities for travel within each country where it is allowed,” Ghosh said.

According to Armstrong, Tufts Global Education instituted a requirement for all study abroad participants to be vaccinated prior to the start of their program, regardless of whether or not the program is through Tufts. Many countries require vaccination before travelers enter their borders as well.

As for the external programs, Tufts has remained in communication with partners abroad regarding health, safety and security.

“We also independently make our own risk assessments of each location abroad in collaboration with Tufts Global Operations and the International Travel Review Committee,” Ghosh said. “Tufts does reserve the right to cancel or suspend study abroad for students on external programs based on local conditions or international travel concerns.”

Ghosh mentioned that the COVID-19 pandemic brings many new challenges and protocols for students and administrators alike regarding international travel and education.

“This has been a global crisis on a scale that we have never experienced and international education has been hit very hard,” Ghosh said. “We will continue to navigate the impact, adapt, innovate with new models, and advocate for international education.”