On the patron saint of libraries

Came across this today while reading Paul Lendvai’s The Hungarians (2003) “Three chronicles report different versions, written between 970 and 1075, of an attack on the monistary of St Gallen and its surroundings (today in Switzerland). “The heathen barbarians” advanced like lightening through Bavaria and Swabia along Lake Constance, and inflicted heavy damage on the […]

On past as prologue [5]

Leon Gordenker, Refugees in International Politics (1987) — The misery of refugees thus dulls the glitter of unilateral, short-term campaigning by governments. The homeless, persecuted, hungry, confused people who turn up at border posts and distant airports signify the costs of conflict within and among societies and states. They are living monuments to war, disorder, […]

On interview techniques

After being found guilty and sentenced to 40 years by the ICTY today, David A. Graham over at The Atlantic’s Notes highlights a 1993 interview conducted with Radovan Karadzic — In January 1993, still relatively early in the Bosnian war, [CBC’s] As It Happens scored an interview with Karadzic. In a retrospective segment years ago, former host Michael Enright […]

On past as prologue [4]

Jean-Pierre Hocke, “Beyond Humanitarianism: The Need for Political Will to Resolve Today’s Refugee Problem,” p. 40-1, in G. Loescher and L. Monahan (eds.), Refugees in International Relations (1989). I am particularly concerned about the growing negative public opinion in the west vis-a-vis refugees and asylum-seekers from the Third World. Many governments in the West have […]

On past as prologue [3]

From: Gil Loescher, “Refugees as grounds for international action” p. 36-37 in Edward Newman and Joanne van Selm (eds.) Refugees and Forced Displacement: International Security, Human Vulnerability, and the State (2003) — There has been increasing recognition that massive refugee flows do in fact constitute a threat to international peace and security, and that they […]

On past as prologue [2]

Arthur C. Helton, The Price of Indifference: Refugees and Humanitarian Action in the New Century (2002), p. 23: The common thread, then, is fear: fear that gives rise to refugee flight, fear that but for good fortune one could be a refugee oneself, and fear that keeps people from offering haven to those in need. […]

On past as prologue

As I barrel through a ton of older literature, I’ll be posting quotes that read like they were written today — From: Alte Grahl-Madsen, Chapter 21: “Identifying the World’s Refugees” (1983), in Peter Macalister-Smith and Gudmundur Alfredsson (eds.), The Land Beyond: Collected Essays on Refugee Law and Policy by Alte Grahl-Madsen (2001), p. 259. Stemming the […]

On emergency

Held on 5 February, the Foreign Policy program at Brookings hosted the American Academy in Berlin for the 2016 Richard C. Holbrooke Forum focusing on the global refugee crisis. I finally got around to watching the interesting exchange between Leon Wieseltier, Michael Ignatieff, and Martin Indyk. Worth watching for Wieseltier’s brief discussion about emergency; of his current research on […]

On historical resettlement planning

From FMR 49 – Lessons from planned relocation and resettlement in the past, read by Jane McAdam: In 1942-1945, US President Roosevelt launched a covert “M” project to study resettlement sites around the world, resulting in 660 land studies in 90+ volumes.

On podcasts: Freakonomics and Migration

From a recent Freakonomics podcast, Is Migration a Basic Human Right?, Michael Clemens briefly mentions the global resettlement response for Hungarians in 1956 as a moment in history to learn from when thinking about the global response to Syria today — CLEMENS: We know exactly how to handle this refugee crisis because this is not […]