 Fulbright
Scholar Stories |
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Edward Rhodes, Director and Associate Professor,
Center for Global Security and Democracy, Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey-New Brunswick, New Brunswick, NJ
Lecturing: Constructing Democracy, Identity and Security
in Multiethnic Societies: Baltic and American Experiences
Host: University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia; and Latvian
Institute of International Affairs, Riga, Latvia
September 2000-February 2001
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There
was a "Through the Looking Glass" quality to Riga, where
Edward Rhodes spent a semester on the Fulbright program. It was
full of contradictions-resembling Paris in the 1920s, yet in the
throes of globalization. It was like stepping back in time, but,
also, like stepping onto an escalator that was moving quickly
forward, says Rhodes, an associate professor of political science
at Rutgers University.
Rhodes studied the formation of civic and national identity in
a multiethnic society, but his subjects kept him off balance:
Don't call Latvia's citizens "Latvians," they warned
him; the ethnic group bearing that name comprises only 60 percent
of the population. Don't expect the large, unassimilated Russian
minority to chafe under Latvian rule; the groups get along very
well in a society which, according to Western political science
theory, should be on the brink of violence.
Rhodes also taught international relations and American foreign
policy at the University of Latvia, where he gained a new perspective
on "cheating": The sharing of exam answers was a healthy
response to a system in which survival depended on the ability
of small groups to band together, to overcome the obstacles created
by arbitrary authority.
It was an eye-opening five months for Rhodes, an expert on U.S.
defense policy who, if only because Latvia is so rarely studied
in the West, found himself hailed as a Baltic specialist on his
return. To fill the vacuum, he helped to arrange a Fulbright project
at Rutgers for his counterpart from the University of Latvia,
and designed a Web-based research project on post-communist societies
for scholars from both campuses, that he hopes will lead to publications
on both sides of the Atlantic.
He also attended meetings of the Latvian Institute for International
Affairs, wrote scholarly articles for Latvian and Estonian journals,
and helped initiate a Copenhagen Peace Research Institute (COPRI)
to study U.S. and European Union policy towards Northern Europe.
A few months into his sojourn, Rhodes realized that some of his
faculty colleagues questioned his identity. In what may have been
a holdover from the old Soviet obsession with cloaks and daggers,
he was widely assumed to have CIA connections-and denying it did
little to dispel the belief. But he did enjoy easy access to people
and information. Once, he and a 23-year-old journalist friend
dropped in on the foreign minister, he says. "Can you imagine
dropping in on (U.S. Secretary of State) Colin Powell?"
"One of the wonderful things about the Baltic nations is
their small size," he says. "Nothing is impossible.
You can think big."
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