 |
|
Dr. Jean Mathieu Essis and Laura Perry (CIES)
|
"It was an honor and a privilege," says Dr. Jean Mathieu
Essis who was selected to join New York University's Center on
International Cooperation (CIC) for the 2002-03 academic year
as a Fulbright Visiting research scholar. Essis is one of a handful
of individuals to receive a second Fulbright award; he first came
to the United States on a Fulbright Student award to George Mason
University for doctoral studies from 1992-96. During the six year
period between his Fulbright grants, he established himself as
a leading national expert on issues of public policy at the local,
national and international levels, while serving as a diplomat,
Ministerial advisor, Director of Decentralization and Local Affairs
in the Interior Ministry and Adjunct Professor in Law, Political
Science, Public Policy and Management in Cote d'Ivoire.
His Fulbright/NYU CIC research fellowship in International Public
Policy was made possible by cost-shared funding provided to the
CIC by the Madeline and Kevin R. Brine Charitable Trust. The Fulbright/NYU
CIC Fellowship was designed to give recently minted foreign scholars
an opportunity for research on more effective means of multilateral
cooperation and multilateral responses to transnational problems,
including the division of responsibility between global and regional
multilateral actors.
"It was a unique opportunity for me to continue and expand
my research on the multilateral decision-making process established
by the states parties to the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation
of Nuclear Weapons (also known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty,
or NPT)," Essis notes. His research objective was specifically
to evaluate the contributions of small non-nuclear-weapon-capable
states, non-governmental organizations and other non-state actors
to the past and present operation of the treaty. During the fellowship
period, he surveyed the new NPT literature and collected statistical
data to update the database produced and used in his doctoral
dissertation. He also attended the Second Session of the Preparatory
Committee for the 2005 NPT Review Conference held in Geneva, Switzerland.
While there, he interviewed and networked with many representatives
of states, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations,
as well as other NPT researchers.
The result of those activities are contained in five papers,
which he subsequently presented and/or submitted for publication,
including a presentation to the CIC Conference on "Policy
Approaches to Regional Conflict Formations," where he made
a presentation on "Regional Conflict Formations in West Africa"
and learned about the study and analysis of similar regional conflict
situations in the Great Lakes Region (East Africa) and in South
Central Asia.
Among his many other activities during his grant was a November
2002 trip to Wisconsin, partly funded by the Fulbright Occasional
Lecturer Program (OLP). He lectured on "Nuclear Weapons,
Global Security, and the NPT" at the Department of Environmental
and Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin at Green Bay and on
"Ethnic Polities, Politics and Policy in Cote d'Ivoire"
and "Rights of Passage and Democratic Governance in the ODJUKRU
tribes of Cote d'Ivoire" at the Institute on Race and Ethnicity,
University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.
He also independently visited a number of higher learning institutions,
including the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia
State University, the School of Public Policy at Georgia Institute
of Technology, both in Atlanta, GA; and his alma mater, the School
of Public Policy at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. At
all these institutions he consulted with leaders in academic program
management and faculty members on the operation and evolution
of public policy programs in US universities. In addition, Essis
made several presentations on the civil war and the larger political
crisis in Cote d'Ivoire for African-American, African and Ivorian
audiences, at the invitation of non-governmental organizations
such as the "Forum des Consortiums de la Diaspora Africaine,"
the "African Shepherds Organization" and The Greater
Washington D.C. Area chapter of "LEBUTU-USA."
Essis appreciated that the program gave him the opportunity to
"discover" the needs, aspirations and resources of the
growing diaspora of African and Ivorian natives residing in the
U.S. and to understand how the tremendous potential that their
presence and activities here "can contribute to the new beginning
that we hope and expect our generation will bring about in Cote
d'Ivoire and in Africa." Most importantly, he concluded,
"my participation in the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program
enabled me to reimburse a very modest part of my invaluable debt
to the U.S. government, academic community and larger public for
the knowledge and skills they provided to me when I came here
as a Fulbright student, over 10 years ago."
Please contact us
if you would like to submit your own story and/or photographs.
|
