Dr. James Lohmar Lectures at Riverside, California

On Tuesday, May 20, Dr. James Lohmar gave an invited public lecture at the University of California Riverside, under the title “Gore Caesars: Toward a History of Horror.” This summer Dr. Lohmar has been a Mullen Fellow at the University of California Riverside. As a Fellow he has been conducting research in the Eaton archive, known for its holdings on the Fantastic in the Arts, including the horror genre and comics. His research in the Eaton Collection is on the coverage of horror cinema in such publications as Famous Monsters of FilmlandCinefantastique, and Gore Creatures.

Students Present Research at Colonial Academic Alliance Undergraduate Research Conference

from: http://today.cofc.edu/2014/04/17/students-present-research-colonial-academic-alliance-undergraduate-research-conference/
17 April 2014 | 3:03 pm By:
Contact: Vince Benigni, communication professor, 843.953.7019

Ten College of Charleston students presented research April 11-12, 2014 at the annual Colonial Academic Alliance Undergraduate Research Conference in Towson, Md.  These scholars represent the best research papers submitted by students from all majors. The conference is the signature academic and outreach event sponsored by the Alliance, under the auspices of the Colonial Athletic Association, of which the College is a new member in 2013-14. 

The conference included a keynote presentation by Don Thomas, a former NASA astronaut who now heads the Hackerman Academy of Mathematics and Science at Towson University.

“The Colonial Academic Alliance Research Conference provided an excellent opportunity for us to showcase the different types of research and creative projects on which College of Charleston students and faculty collaborate,” said Dr. Trisha Folds-Bennett, dean of the Honors College. “The group of students chosen to represent us were energetic, engaged, and professional. Professor Andrea DeMaria and I were both impressed with their contribution to the conference, and thank the Office of Academic Affairs for funding the trip.”

Student presenters from the College of Charleston included:

Jami Baxley (classics and archaeology; James Newhard, faculty adviser)

Alexandra Cattran (physics and astronomy; Linda Jones, faculty advisers)

Lance Cooper (political science; Gibbs Knotts, faculty adviser)

Colin Cotter (chemistry & biochemistry; Gamil Guirgis, faculty adviser)

Hannah Evans (English & African studies; Simon Lewis, faculty adviser)

Grace Moxley (chemistry and biochemistry; Andrea DeMaria and Beth Sundstrom, faculty advisers)

Jackelyn Payne (health and human performance and communication; Andrea DeMaria and Beth Sundstrom, faculty advisers)

Sarah Turner (biology; Allison Welch, faculty adviser)

Aleisha Walker (teacher education and sociology and anthropology; Christine Finnan, faculty adviser)

John Wise (religious studies; Katie Hladky, faculty adviser)

Gestures won’t defeat Boko Haram

Written by Professor Chris Day for the Post & Courier

Posted: Monday, May 26, 2014 12:01 a.m.

Nigeria does not have a kidnapping problem. It has a Boko Haram problem. The armed group’s abduction of hundreds of young girls is a shameless abuse of human rights. But the recent social media obsession with the issue misses that the four-year-old insurgency is a direct reflection of the country’s more fundamental ills – systematic corruption, failed development and grinding poverty.

This makes the decision by the United States to send 80 troops to Chad to help find the missing girls all the more frustrating. It is a nice gesture. But it is little more than a humanitarian fig leaf that masks the avoidance of more meaningful, albeit thorny political engagement needed to deal with Nigeria’s violence.

What distinguishes Boko Haram is its intersection with political Islam and its use of violence. The group is a splinter of a broader political movement that unsuccessfully sought to impose Sharia law in parts of northern Nigeria. It gained strength through linkages with al-Qaeda’s regional affiliates, and the group populated its decentralized structure with fighters recruited from northern Nigeria’s alienated, unemployed youth that were radicalized with anti-Western messages.

What started as attacks against government officials expanded to high profile bombings, shootings of civilians, and kidnappings – in other words, terrorism. In response, Nigeria’s security forces have been incompetent and ham-handed. Overtures towards dialogue are met with mistrust.

While Boko Haram’s leaders use radical Islamic discourse, it is a mistake to paint the group as “Islamist,” per se, as if violence is a manifestation of being Muslim. Prominent Muslim leaders worldwide have denounced the group. Either way, the motivation to deal with Boko Haram should not be based on the professed religion of its members, but on the violence that they commit.

The United States has a mixed experience with using military force for humanitarian ends. Operation Provide Comfort in 1992 saved thousands of Iraqi Kurds stranded on the Turkish border, setting the scene for more “operations other than war.” Later in the decade, the U.S. led NATO into the first “humanitarian war” in Kosovo. But interest in Africa was curtailed by the Somali debacle of “Black Hawk Down” fame, where the relatively successful Operation Restore Hope went off the rails when the army meddled in Mogadishu’s warlord politics. Soon after, Operation Support Hope helped Rwandan refugees in Zaire, but long after the genocide was over.

Africa has never been a priority for American foreign policy. But for the past decade the U.S. has entered into military partnerships with several African governments. Based in Stuttgart, Germany, the United States Africa Command, or AFRICOM, helps secure and stabilize Africa by building and training professional armies. African allies assist the U.S. in regional counterterrorism efforts. American boots hit the ground to provide logistical assistance for specific operations, like the current hunt for Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army.

In Nigeria the U.S. has several choices. The cold approach of doing nothing has obviously been ruled out.

Going in with guns blazing brings enormous risks. Nigerian politics is amongst Africa’s most incomprehensible and can chew up and spit out even the most seasoned analyst, policy maker, or soldier. Getting bogged down in shambolic Nigeria would be a nightmare. Any intervention must have clear goals, a reasonable chance of success, and guarantee it will not do more harm than good. And the American public is already worn down by a decade of war fatigue and is allergic to any military entanglement.

The current next-to-nothing humanitarian path is politically visible but actually meaningless. It is like delivering food aid to refugees fleeing violence instead of addressing the political causes of the violence itself. It has the self-absolving veneer of trying to “make a difference” but does little to solve the underlying problems deeply rooted in Nigeria’s decaying state.

A potential upside to the current approach is that troops could be using the mission as cover for something bigger – hopefully they are taking good notes.

Either way, Nigeria is a fragmented, violent country and Boko Haram requires more than reconnaissance for a rescue mission that may or not materialize. This is merely meddling with no strategy and is more reminiscent of a movie screenplay than good policy. Nigeria’s abducted girls, and indeed all the country’s victims of insurgent violence, deserve much more.

Christopher Day is an assistant professor of political science at the College of Charleston.

The Curse of CAR: Warlords, Blood Diamonds, and Dead Elephants

Written by Professor Chris Day for the Daily Beast
Christopher Day

World News

05.25.14

The Curse of CAR: Warlords, Blood Diamonds, and Dead Elephants

To end the hideous civil war in the Central African Republic, sanctions against leaders may help, but we also have to stop the trade in gems and ivory that’s funding the warlords.
The rule of lawlessness in the Central African Republic, fueled with money from blood diamonds and poached ivory, has hardened religious identities, divided Muslim and Christian communities with murderous enmity, and allowed warlords to prevail in an atmosphere of impunity.The state in CAR, which has never been strong, is now all but nonexistent. Make no mistake, even though the world is paying little attention, the crisis in the country demands a broad response to halt violence, establish order, and help hundreds of thousands of people at extreme risk.The U.N. Security Council and the White House recently imposed sanctions on five key players in the conflict that is currently swallowing the country They target former presidents Francois Bozizé and Michel Djotodia, as well as strongmen from the anti-Balaka militia and Séléka rebels.

GALLERY: Stranded at Bangui Airport: The Refugee Crisis in Central African Republic (PHOTOS)

This is all well and good. Financial strangleholds are a step in the right direction because they address the political and economic dimensions of CAR’s crisis. But broadening the response to what is required and doing so competently means understanding the conflict’s broader dynamics and its distinct traits. Although the Séléka forces are largely Muslim, and the anti-Balaka largely Christian, the structural roots of the crisis and the forces that drive it are more complicated and have little to do with religion.

Those who are paying attention to CAR generally do so out of concern for the country’s violence. Hundreds of thousands of people have been driven from their homes, with many of them living in an airport-turned-wasteland beneath the wings of derelict jets.

What began as skirmishes between anti-Balaka militias and Séléka forces have expanded as fighters on all sides cast ever-widening nets around anyone guilty by association. Political manipulation of religious identity in CAR is nothing new, but it thrives in institutionally weak environments.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been driven from their homes, with many of them living in an airport-turned-wasteland beneath the wings of derelict jets.

In this sense, CAR’s conflict follows broader patterns of political violence in Africa. Full-scale civil wars are giving way to fragmented armed groups with decentralized power bases in remote border regions. Fitting this profile, Boko Haram unleashes madness upon Nigeria’s northeastern states because the central government lacks control of its hinterlands and overcompensates with heavy-handed repression. The current instability in South Sudan is emblematic of the country’s chronic struggles to tame peripheral power centers, which have historically ethnic contours.

In CAR, the disintegration of the state has opened the way to privatized violence and the pursuit of economic agendas by entrepreneurial militia commanders and foreign mercenaries. Power has withered at the center and devolved to an archipelago of fiefdoms where warlords rule without the burdens of governing. These warlords want to control areas with alluvial diamonds and exploit opportunities for ivory poaching, cattle rustling, and bush-meat trafficking in the country’s periphery.

Sanctions targeting the conflict’s bigger players can help because these actors have wider regional political connections. But the local actors that operate on a smaller scale also sustain the commercial networks that feed global demand for gems and tusks. And their disproportionately violent impact on ordinary Central Africans calls for a hard look at who’s buying these blood-drenched baubles.

CAR’s gems have funded Séléka and anti-Balaka fighters. The Kimberley Process for tracking conflict diamonds officially suspended CAR one year ago. But the country’s gems still are moving and materializing in places like Dubai. A new Kimberley Process working group to monitor CAR might help focus attention on the guilty and choke the diamond flow.

Poaching in CAR is killing more than just elephants. African park rangers are part of the regime’s security apparatus but ill equipped to fight against the raiders. Foreign security sector support can and should include efforts to interdict poachers. But it is also time to curtail the demand for ivory in Asia. Raising the profile of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s global moratorium on the ivory trade might change the dynamics of this market.

In March 2013 the Séléka rebellion toppled the frail Bozizé regime. But the Séléka was incapable of ruling once it seized power. Its caustic mixture of homegrown rebels and regional mercenaries could neither stay cohesive nor project authority over CAR’s vast expanse—larger than California. And, unusually, Séléka leader Michel Djotodia failed to win acknowledgment from other nations as CAR’s sovereign head of state.

African leaders used to recognize almost anyone. No one batted an eyelid when 27-year-old Sierra Leone Army Captain Valentine Strasser fell backwards into Freetown’s Executive Mansion in 1992. Zimbawe’s rigged election in 2002 was met with a collective regional shrug. Even Idi Amin was Chairman of the Organization of African Unity in 1975.

Djotodia’s non-recognition signals a change in Africa’s regional norms, where seizing power violently is now widely viewed as illegitimate and reversible. Djotodia stepped down in January under a pall of political abandonment, and 5,000 African Union troops, backed by French forces, now help CAR’s National Transition Council establish a new government. That the Interim President Catherine Samba-Panza is a woman is another exception to the rule.

Max Weber said, “the existence of the war lord… depends solely on a chronic state of war and upon a comprehensive organization set for warfare.” Although imposing sanctions on the conflict’s biggest villains is a crucial first step, the forces driving CAR’s violence are unlikely to diminish before September’s scheduled deployment of blue helmeted peacekeepers from the United Nations. The region’s smalltime warlords will grow more intransigent, not less, and the conflict more intractable.

CAR’s victims require much more help than they’ve seen so far, and they need it soon.

Dr. James Lohmar Lectures at Riverside, California

On Tuesday, May 20, Dr. James Lohmar gave an invited public lecture at the University of California Riverside, under the title “Gore Caesars: Toward a History of Horror.” This summer Dr. Lohmar has been a Mullen Fellow at the University of California Riverside. As a Fellow he has been conducting research in the Eaton archive, known for its holdings on the Fantastic in the Arts, including the horror genre and comics. His research in the Eaton Collection is on the coverage of horror cinema in such publications as Famous Monsters of FilmlandCinefantastique, and Gore Creatures.

Skip to toolbar