CSB/SJU Faculty to Visit Bosnia

Funded by a gift from Dan Whalen ’70 to Saint John’s University, a faculty team from CSB/SJU will participate in a field seminar in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia. The first program departed from Minneapolis /St. Paul on May 24 and returned on June 5. On location, the faculty will visit the key centers of the wars years in Bosnia—Sarajevo, Banja Luka, Tuzla, and Srebrenica. The program will also include two visits to Zagreb and Belgrade. Local arrangements will be sponsored by the American Refugee Committee, Caritas, Vjesnik (the leading Croatian newspaper), and the Belgrade Circle (an opposition academic and cultural institution). While there, the faculty will study the history and culture of the region and current social, political and economic issues affecting the area. The 2004 Field Seminar is scheduled for May 24- June 6.

For each faculty member, this will provide an experience to connect the tragedy of the ex-Yugoslavia to themes in their own teaching and research. For our institutions and community, this field seminar complements a larger mission of fostering ethical thinking in a global context.

Nick Hayes, professor of history and holder of the University Chair of Critical Thinking, is the director of the seminar. Professor Hayes is a frequent visitor to this part of the world. During the late1980s, many Minnesotans witnessed the demise of Soviet communism through his eyes and regularly featured television reports. His media projects have taken him on assignment to China, South Africa, Rwanda and the Balkans. In 1994-95, as a Fulbright Fellow in Journalism, he was based in Zagreb, Croatia, from where he filed reports on the war in the former Yugoslavia. He reported for the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) from Bosnia in 2000, Russia in 2001 and Islam in Uzbekistan in 2002. “It was ten years ago,” observed Professor Hayes, “but the tragedy of Bosnia and the other nations of the former Yugoslavia, continues today. I believe that the seminal challenge before us is whether the international community has the will to face and resolve genocide, human displacement on a mass scale, the victimization of women, and, finally, the limits on our own power of intervention.”

Nick Hayes
University Chair in Critical Thinking
Quad 451B, SJU
(320) 363-2623

Kathryn Holt
Research Assistant

Norma Koetter
Administrative Assistant, University Chair in Critical Thinking
(320) 363-2770
nkoetter@csbsju.edu