Looking back on my experience as a part of the Global Scholars Program, I am very appreciative of all the amazing opportunities we had through this program. When I think about the highlights of my time in the Global Scholars cohort, some of the things that immediately come to mind are my Capstone project, the GIP trip to Argentina, the GIP event I led featuring Jeremy Glaholt, and the Arn Chorn Pond GIP event. I am beyond proud of how my Capstone project turned out, and seeing the excitement and engagement of the 8th graders was extremely rewarding. The GIP trip to Argentina was one of the most fun and enriching experiences of my life, as I immersed myself in a new culture and made long-lasting, global friendships. Leading the GIP event featuring Jeremy Glaholt was a meaningful opportunity for me, as I very much enjoyed meeting Mr. Glaholt, and I gained leadership skills and experience through leading the event. Lastly, I especially enjoyed the Arn Chorn Pond GIP event, as I loved reading about his life story in Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick, and being able to hear him speak in person enhanced the emotional aspect of his story. Overall, I am beyond thankful for the opportunities that the Global Scholars Program provided me with, and there are several unforgettable moments that I will take with me from my time as a Global Scholar.
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For my Capstone project, I had the opportunity to teach international trade to Dr. Farrar’s 8th graders. I chose international trade as my topic for two main reasons. Throughout high school, I developed a deep interest in business. For example, I am the co-founder of Poly’s Business and Finance club, where we try to address the curriculum gap in financial literacy. Through the Global Scholars Program, I have also become extremely passionate about studying different languages and cultures. I wanted to create a Capstone project that incorporated both of these interests, and international trade fell in the intersection of my passions. To summarize my Capstone project, my class was divided into two main sections. The first section covered an introduction to international trade and a case study on the US-China Trade War. The second section was a game, where I gave the students the chance to incorporate the principles that they learned from the first section of the class. I feel that the preparation I put into my Capstone project really paid off, and I am extremely proud of the execution of my project. There were several aspects of the class that I think went very well. One of the aspects that I was particularly proud of was the engagement activities that I incorporated throughout my class to foster collaboration among the 8th graders. For example, the students worked in groups to generate a list of possessions they owned that were manufactured outside of the US and imported. However, the aspect of my Capstone that I am the most proud of was the International Trade Game I designed. In the International Trade Game, each student represents one country. Each country starts with $300, and each country was assigned a certain quantity of either red, white, or blue chips. The chip that a student is assigned represents the product that that student’s country produces. As an analogy, to assemble an iPhone, the necessary components include the iPhone case, the screen, the battery, and many other components. In this game, I reduced the complexity by using only 3 components, and I used 3 different color chips, red, white, and blue, to represent those components. Let’s say the red represents the case, the white represents the screen, and the blue represents the battery. When a student gets one of each of the 3 components through trading, then they could make a unit, which represents an iPhone. The objective was to be the country with the highest number of units at the end of the game. I was extremely proud of the International Trade Game because I put a ton of planning into it, and I feel that the outcome was more than worth the preparation. The 8th graders were very into the game, often screaming at one another to trade a certain color chip. Overall, I am very happy with my Capstone project. I want to thank Dr. Farrar for letting me teach his classes, and I want to thank Ms. Diederich and Mr. Caragher for supporting my vision of my Capstone project. During spring break, I had an amazing time traveling to Japan. During my time in Japan, I visited four cities: Tokyo, Nagano, Kyoto, and Osaka. While I could talk about all the breathtaking sights I saw and all the delectable foods I tried across all these cities, I want to share my experience in Nagano, where I had the unique opportunity to stay in a traditional Japanese home. My stay in Nagano, which lasted one night, began with a one mile trek up through the snow covered mountain trails. While it was very cold and many people slipped on the ice, I particularly enjoyed the icy hike because as someone from California, I rarely ever see snow, and Nagano’s snowy forest was exceptionally beautiful. After reaching the top of the trail, we visited the Snow Monkey Park and indulged in the Monkey Hot Springs. The Monkey Hot Springs were the highlight of my trip to Japan. While sitting in the hot spring, hundreds of snow monkeys walked directly next to us. A few of the snow monkeys even drank from the hot spring or bathed in the hot spring while we were in it! After leaving the Monkey Hot Springs, we settled into our minka for the night. Minka are traditional Japanese homes. Some of the main elements present in minka are tatami flooring, sliding doors, minimal furniture, and low tables. The minka we in has been around since the 1800s, and it had been passed down from generation to generation. Today, it is managed by an older man, who is the fifth generation owner of the property. He was extremely welcoming to us, and he prepared us a delicious dinner composed of traditional and local Japanese foods. He hand picked bamboo shoots, mushrooms, pickled vegetables, and other mountain greens from the surrounding forest. He also prepared miso soup, mushroom tofu soup, and a wide variety of tempura including squash, mushroom, broccoli, eggplant, and purple yam. To finish off our stay at this minka, we slept on the tatami flooring, which was surprisingly comfortable. Overall, I very much appreciated the opportunity to spend one night in a minka, as it allowed me to further immerse myself in Japanese culture in a fun and hands-on way. Here are some photos from my night in Nagano: It was amazing to have the opportunity to listen to Ms. Jennifer Hall Lee speak to us, and I would like to thank her for such an influential event. One of my main takeaways from Ms. Lee’s speech is how women in Pakistan do not have the freedom to roam at night. This disparity stood out to me in particular because it demonstrated how men dominate and rule the public space; when a group of people are marginalized in the public space, the result is a hostile and unwelcoming environment. I also especially appreciated Ms. Lee’s takeaways from her conversations with the female students at the Islamic University. She talked about how those students were extremely intellectually curious and present, and I thought that the symbiotic relationship between her and the students was fundamental in allowing them to learn from one another. The following quote from one of the students struck me in particular: “Being a female student we have so many restrictions…We don’t have indoor games. We’re not allowed to participate in sports. We are not allowed to build our confidence. We are not allowed to do what we want. We are not allowed to sing. We are not allowed to participate in music.” I found this quote particularly eye-opening because it really puts the power dynamics between men and women in Pakistan into perspective. I am overall very grateful to have listened to Ms. Jennifer Hall Lee's presentation, as it gave me further insight into the gender disparity around the world. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Ms. Kalyanee Mam for such a thought provoking and moving event. Reflecting on my experience watching “Lost World,” I think that Ms. Mam did an outstanding job of directing the short film in a way that would allow me and the other audience members to empathize and connect with the film’s protagonist, Phalla Vy. One quote from Phalla Vy that stood out to me was, “The law has given us all kinds of freedoms. Here we only have the right to sit, shed tears, and witness the destruction of our grandchildren’s home, our village, and our way of life.” I remembered this quote in particular because it was very effective in allowing the audience to view the situation of Cambodia’s sand exportation from the perspective of the Cambodian villagers. Her quote shows how the villagers had no voice and no agency in deciding to have millions of tons of Cambodian sand, which their livelihood and sources of income depended on, exported to other countries. From the Q&A portion of the event, something that really stuck with me was Ms. Mam’s storytelling ability. One story that I especially enjoyed was the anecdote about the plentiful sapphires and rubies in Cambodia’s dirt. To briefly summarize, Ms. Mam’s father had a mine where he gathered sapphires and rubies, and these stones were valuable to the Cambodians because they represented protection from evil spirits. However, Cambodia exported its dirt to Thailand, and when Thailand took the dirt, they also took Cambodia’s abundance of sapphires and rubies along with it. They would then sift through the dirt to collect the riches from the sapphires and rubies. From this story, my main takeaway is the significance of perspective, as perspective drastically changed the meaning of the sapphires and rubies. From the point of view of the Cambodians, the sapphires and rubies were culturally significant stones that provided them with protection. On the other hand, from the point of view of the Thais, the sapphires and rubies were only wanted for their monetary value. Overall, I very much enjoyed watching “Lost World” and also listening to the Q&A, as both were extremely insightful and opened my eyes to the power of perspective. I want to thank Mr. Jeremy Glaholt for coming and taking the time to discuss with us his film, “A Step Without Feet.” I had the amazing opportunity to lead the Q&A portion of the event alongside Mr. Glaholt, and I really enjoyed getting to meet him. His responses to my questions and the questions from the audience were very insightful, and his clear passion for his work and his compassion toward the Syrian refugees was truly inspiring. I also think Mr. Glaholt did a great job of utilizing various techniques throughout his film to create empathy among the audience. For instance, I think that the decision to include music, food, and dance as a part of the documentary was very effective because it allowed for human connection through art and culture. While watching the documentary, a few things struck me in particular. One of the larger themes of the film was the meaning of freedom, and I distinctly remember one of the interviewee’s response to what freedom meant to him. He said, “I lost friends for freedom. I lost my eye for freedom. I lost my country for freedom. I appreciate freedom more than most Europeans…for you, [freedom] was just something you took for granted.” That quote stood out to me because it changed how I viewed my own freedom. I was born free, and I never had to fight for my freedom. I realized that I have been taking my freedom for granted my whole life. This realization really put the individual experiences of the Syrian refugees into perspective, and it allowed me to take a step back from the documentary and have a deep moment of reflection on what freedom means to me. Another major theme from the film is the idea of home. One of the interviewees talked about how home doesn’t necessarily have to mean her home country. She said, “I can be wherever. In Syria, or in Germany, or in America…Everywhere there is some home for us.” I really liked this quote in particular because it demonstrated her strength to create a happy environment for herself despite all the hardships she faced, such as being forced to flee from her home country and having to adapt to the cultural differences between Syria and Germany. Overall, I found both the film and the Q&A with co-director Mr. Jeremy Glaholt to be very thought-provoking, and I feel that this event changed my perspective on my own life and on humanity. The fentanyl crisis, which began in 2014, has become significantly more prominent in the global stage in the past few years, especially in the US. Fentanyl, a highly addictive synthetic opioid, is 50 times more potent than heroin and up to 100 times more potent than morphine. In 2022 alone, the US tallied over 100,000 drug overdose related deaths, and over two-thirds of those deaths were caused by fentanyl or similar synthetic drugs. However, there has been one silver lining amidst the devastation of the fentanyl crisis: the US and China have turned the fentanyl crisis into an opportunity to improve the deteriorating US-China relations. In the past few years, the US and China have experienced declining relations and increased tensions due to major disputes over issues ranging including human rights, trade tariffs, COVID-19, and Taiwan. Up until very recently, the fentanyl crisis was among those list of issues fueling US-China tensions. For instance, the US has accused China of being the primary source of the precursor chemicals of fentanyl. These precursor chemicals are exported from China to Mexico, where drug cartels synthesize the chemicals into fentanyl before smuggling the drugs into the US. From the perspective of the US, the US believes that China could and should do more to limit the export of these precursor chemicals. The US says that China, by not taking greater measures to limit the export of drugs, has failed to show any sympathy for the victims of the drug crisis in the US. In response to the US asking for China’s aid regarding the rise of fentanyl in the US, China responded by saying that the US should actively seek to solve its own domestic problems rather than placing the blame on China. Disputes over the fentanyl crisis seemed to only be contributing to the deteriorating relations between US and China; however, just earlier today (Tuesday, January 30, 2024), the two countries began talks in Beijing regarding the drug crisis, and the progress made during these talks seems very promising. The two countries have reached an important common understanding of the urgency of the fentanyl crisis. Chinese Public Security Minister Wang Xiaohong, when speaking on the recent Beijing talks, said, “Our cooperation once again shows that the China-US relationship gains from cooperation and loses from confrontation.” Additionally, Wang hopes that the Beijing talks will give the two countries the opportunity to adapt to each other’s priorities and consequently contribute positively to sustainable US-China relations. While the fentanyl crisis has been devastating around the world, the recent progress in US-China talks have created hope for reversing the deterioration of the relations between the two countries. The US and China, two of the biggest global superpowers, have also set a precedent for other countries to overcome their differences and come together to combat one of the most pressing global issues. Here are my resources if you would like to learn more:
In today’s world, climate change has become a larger threat than ever, and vulnerability due to climate change drastically affects the lifestyles of communities around the globe. Vulnerability due to climate change is especially high within countries with higher poverty rates. For example, Nigeria, one of the hardest hit countries as a result of climate change, is facing immediate danger. Northern Nigeria, a region already experiencing severe heat and water scarcity, is at risk of extreme drought and heat-related illnesses. The people of southern Nigeria, a very densely populated region, are at risk of losing their livelihoods due to flooding as sea levels rise. Nigeria is just one of the many impoverished countries across the world, particularly within the global south, in which the climate change poses an imminent threat. When we consider climate change in a global context, these impoverished countries, who are the most at risk, contribute the least to climate change. For instance, the CO2 emissions per capita in Nigeria is 0.65 metric tons, and the average lifespan in Nigeria is 54 years. On the other hand, the emissions per capita in the US is 16.1 metric tons, and the average lifespan in the US is 78 years. We can see that the US, a country with a CO2 emissions per capita rate nearly 2500% higher than that of Nigeria, is not nearly as vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In order to address this disparity going forward, the international community needs to prioritize minimizing vulnerability due to climate change in impoverished communities around the world, especially within the global South. I propose a treaty very similar to the “emitters must pay” perspective with a few deviations. In my treaty, wealthier countries that contributed the most towards the effects of climate change should be held accountable and should provide aid to poorer countries to help them cope with those effects. Additionally, wealthier countries need to take the lead in reducing emissions. However, unlike the beliefs of “emitters must pay,” I believe that the restrictions imposed on these wealthier countries should not and cannot be too drastic. Oil and gas play such an important role in the economies of several industrialized countries, and severely restricting these industries would create major job loss and devastating economic downturn within these countries. These industrialized countries are also the cornerstones of the global economy, as they play key positions within global supply chains, so economic downturn within these countries could potentially lead to a global economic recession. A global economic recession would hinder every country’s ability to invest in clean energy, meaning the path to clean energy would only be slowed down. In essence, I believe the most effective approach to mitigating climate change is an approach that effectively creates a balance between holding historic emitters responsible and maintaining the economies of those emitters. This would require cooperation from the entire international community, and more importantly, it would require that the populations in wealthier areas make sacrifices and changes to their lifestyles in order to protect our world and pave the way to a greener future. As a Chinese-American student with a deep interest in business and international relations, the US-China Trade War is an ongoing geopolitical conflict that has really sparked my interest. The US-China Trade War has been an ongoing economic issue since 2018, but the full story behind the trade war reaches back multiple decades. The conflict has largely stemmed from the US and China competing to be the world’s number one economic superpower. To provide a brief introduction about the conflict, the trade war was initiated by the US under the Trump administration. Basically, the Trump administration has implemented tariffs, or taxes on imported goods, on Chinese products. This has caused several rounds of back and forth tariffs since China and the US keep retaliating against each other’s taxes. Essentially, by imposing various rounds of tariffs, the US has limited the development of major international corporations, which mitigates China’s ability to maintain a high rate of economic growth. Tensions leading up to the US-China Trade War resulted from US concerns surrounding China’s rapidly growing economic power. However, China was not always a global superpower. To understand the rise of China’s economy, we need to first look at China’s economic reform during the 1970s. In 1978, when Deng Xiaoping became the paramount leader of the PRC, he loosened state control over the economy which allowed grater development within the private industry. This deregulation was crucial to the rapid growth of the Chinese economy. However, the point in which China’s economy really took off was after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. As a result, trade between the US and China exploded in the next two decades. While the US initially viewed increased trade with China as a plus, the US soon became concerned that China’s economy might surpass their own. By 2010, China became the world’s second largest economy, and the country was clearly a global superpower; even so, it wasn’t until Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign that the public opinion shifted to viewing China as a threat to the US. During Trump’s campaign, he said that Beijing was attempting to drain the U.S. economy, which is just one of many accusations Trump made against China. For example, during one of his speeches, he said “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country and that’s what they’re doing. It’s the greatest theft in the history of the world.” Trump was the most pivotal figure in sparking the US-China Trade War because he was the first person to blatantly speak about China as a threat, which allowed for a major shift in public opinion. The official start of the US-China Trade War was on July 6, 2018, when the Trump administration implemented the first China-specific tariffs. These tariffs collected a 25% tax on over 800 Chinese products. China then retaliated with its own 25% tariffs on over 500 US products. Since then, over the course of the past few years, the US and China have retaliated back and forth several, several times with more and more tariffs. Fortunately, the US and China reached a breakthrough on January 15, 2020, when they signed the phase one trade deal. Under this deal, the US agreed to lessen some of their tariffs on Chinese goods, and China vowed to buy $200 billion dollars worth of American products across 2020 and 2021. While these commitments were not entirely met, phase one still was a major breakthrough because it was a shift away from the precedent of stringent tariffs. The US and Chinese governments have also been engaging in several trade talks, which are typically held in either Beijing or Washington. A trade talk is where both parties negotiate in an attempt to make a deal regarding the tariffs imposed on each others’ goods. Even though negotiations have been taking place, the US-China Trade War currently seems to be in somewhat of a stalemate. Since Biden became the president, he has largely maintained Trump’s precedent of rigid economic relations with China. For example, he has blacklisted dozens of Chinese companies. Unfortunately, the US-China Trade War doesn’t seem like it will be coming to an end any time soon. Neither US tariffs on Chinese goods nor Chinese tariffs on US goods have shown any sign of being lessened. One of the major global finance implications of this prolonged trade war is increased trade uncertainty. Due to the fact that these tariffs are imposed on such a wide variety of products and goods, businesses are now unsure which markets will be open to them in the future, and thus, businesses will be less inclined to make their typical investment decisions. Increased trade uncertainty also leads to countries being less inclined to export as much as they normally would. The IMF predicts that future economic growth will be much slower, and we can already see that the global economy has begun slowing down since the start of the trade war. If the severity of the trade war persists, the stunted growth of the global economy will cause major disruption of global supply chains, and this projection has become and increasingly prominent concern within the economic landscape of our world. If you would like to learn more about the US-China Trade War, here are some additional resources:
I am beyond grateful to all of the panelists for taking the time to come and speak to us about the ongoing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The panel discussion was very helpful in furthering my understanding of the history behind the Nagorno-Karabakh region and the human rights implications of the war. Dr. Shushan Karapetian summarized the sentiment of the people of Artsakh perfectly when she said, “25 years a democratic country…and yet no one in the world recognizes you.” She called the region “the unrecognized republic,” which is representative of how the ethnic Armenians are in the midst of fighting an invisible conflict. Gegham Mughnetsyan touched on this invisible conflict through the lens of his lived experiences. Mughnetsyan explained how the global community has been unable to grasp how there has still been violence and major conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the decades between the 1990s war and 2020 war; however, for the people of Artsakh, “the war never went silent – the world just discovered it in 2020.” Karapetian agreed with Mughnetsyan on this sense of invisibility, as she discussed how the global community has largely dismissed the ongoing human rights abuses. She talked about how many countries including the US have stated their support but have taken minimal concrete action steps to aid the issue. Simon Maghakyan’s perspective within his Time article shares Karapetian’s sentiment on other countries' involvement. Maghakyan condemns the Biden administration for not holding Azerbaijan accountable for the ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh. He additionally bashes Biden for supporting Armenian refugees in Nagorno-Karabakh to a lesser extent than Ukrainian and Israeli refugees; he believes that the US is setting a precedent in which “some democracies—like some lives—are worth more than others.” The Guardian video shown during the event, which contained live reports from Artsakh, was particularly helpful in understanding the emotions and the perspectives of those dealing with loss or separation from loved ones due to the war. One interview with an older Armenian man stood out to me in particular. The man was visiting the Yerablur Cemetery, and he said, “I’ve lost a child, and now we’re also losing a homeland.” This man’s quote really puts into perspective the loss facing the ethnic Armenians in Artsakh, and it is representative of their cross-generational trauma from decades of war. Similarly, in an Al Jazeera article, interviewee Lilit Shahverdyan, who has family currently trapped in Nagorno-Karabakh, voiced her struggle and her growing desire to leave Armenia altogether. She said, “I don’t want my kids to suffer as much as I did. Armenia is not a safe place as long as we have a neighboring dictator and we have this government. I don’t want to have another traumatized generation.” In combination with the perspectives of Armenian Studies professors and Artsakh locals, Steve Swerdlow’s viewpoint from a human rights perspective was very insightful. I appreciated his clarification of what constitutes as genocide from a legal perspective. He explained how genocide does not always entail physical extermination; in some cases, like Artsakh, he argues that the forced displacement of the ethnic Armenian population from the region classifies as genocide. Adding onto Swerdlow’s perspective, Simon Maghakyan further brought to light the current existential threat to the Armenian identity by describing the ongoing cultural destruction of Armenian culture. He showed photos of Azerbaijanis destroying an Armenian cemetery in Djulfa, which is one of the most sacred sites within Armenian culture. This panel discussion showed me how the ongoing crimes against humanity in Artsakh are a continuation of the 1915 Armenian genocide. Karapetian’s New York Times article, for instance, showed satellite imagery of the Lachin Corridor exodus, and these images are eerily parallel to photos of death marches across the Syrian desert during the Armenian genocide. While the panel discussion revealed several eye-opening accounts of the horrific reality of the current conflict, I feel that Steve Swerdlow’s conclusion to the event gave the audience hope. He mentioned that he is currently working with various students, some as young as high school students, in researching the history of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan to produce evidence which will later be used in court. Swerdlow convinced the audience that we, even as high school students, can make a difference. Here are the sources I used if you would like to learn more:
Al Jazeera https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/6/ethnic-armenians-who-fled-karabakh The Guardian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlW5tUew-dE New York Times: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-10-05/artsakh-nagorno-karabakh-armenia-azerbaijan-ethnic-cleansing-genocide Time: https://time.com/6327596/turkey-armenia-azerbaijan-invade-united-states/ |
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