I watched the Virtual International Film Series: Nameless Gangster on April 17^th.

The South Korean film is about Ik-hyun, a lowly public servant who fails upward after stumbling across a shipment of drugs. Through a friend, he makes a connection with a distant relative Hyung-bae, an up-and-coming mob boss, to become a local powerbroker. Criminal life is not as fun for him as it is in the Godfather, and he is eventually forced to betray his partner to survive. The epilogue shows us that he’s still haunted by this betrayal many years later.

Honestly, I didn’t really understand or appreciate the film when I first watched it. But afterwards, as I usually do, I read some reviews and a summary. I realized that what I had dismissed as familial nonsense was in fact a parody of long-standing Confucian traditions in Korean society. Ik-hyun discovers he’s higher on the family tree than his partner in crime and demands the more experienced criminal treat him with the utmost respect. It’s funny in hindsight.

I appreciated the film. It was interesting, well-paced, and the character development was solid. Nameless Gangster takes context to appreciate fully but it’s a well-made piece of film.

I definitely gained an appreciation for foreign-language film from this movie. I never got around to seeing the award-winning Parasite (a 2019 regret) and this was my entry into Korean filmmaking.

The film didn’t intersect with my coursework, but I personally enjoy crime and gangster movies. I will say The Irishman was terrible, however.

If I could ask director Yoon Jong-bin a question, it would be something along the lines of “Did you know this movie would be a smash hit?” It was nominated for awards at a bunch of different film festivals in Korea and across the Pacific Rim. I’ve always wondered if directors know when small operation films are going to blow up, or if it surprises them as well.

I attended the MLK Day of Service on Monday, January 20th. This counted as my service event for AU19. We mustered at the Union, and my IA group was assigned section A1 which sent us to All THAT.

All THAT, which is a center that provides counseling and resources to at-risk youth. (THAT stands for Teens Hopeful About Tomorrow.) My group did a bunch of leg work for them: we cleaned common spaces, mopped floors, and packed bagged meals for middle school students. All THAT is a group with only a few dedicated staff members; the group’s 40 combined man-hours likely saved a lot of their time going forward. It will allow their staff to focus on their mission.

Youth services aren’t exactly an international topic per se, but I can imagine that there are many facilities – like All THAT – worldwide that are facing a similar need for manpower. This topic was pretty distinct from my coursework, as it usually is. We briefly discussed engineering for social benefit in ENGR 1182, but that was only a brief touching-upon.

I personally gained a lot for such a short service event. I don’t particularly enjoy cleaning, but I did find this service fun and interesting. I was with a great group of students and it was a fun use of a Monday. This type of service is something that I could see myself doing more of. I know there are a lot of services in the Columbus area that help youth.

I attended the Critical Language Scholarship information session at the Kuhn House on October 24th. It was a professional development event. It was run by Corey Efron, an advisor in the Undergraduate Fellowship Office. 

The Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) is a government-funded program that sends college students abroad to learn a language. All of the languages, as the name suggests, have been deemed crucial to our national interests. A few examples are Russian, Chinese, Arabic, and Urdu. It is an intensive study program designed to foster rapid learning: recipients will spend 4-6 weeks in a country in which their language is spoken. There, they live with a host family, attend classes at a local university, and take trips around the host region to explore the culture. Altogether, the goal is to immerse students in the language to facilitate rapid learning. 

This is, obviously, a very internationally-centered topic. The scholarship facilitates the learning of a foreign language spoken in some of the most important countries to international relations. The US government has deemed it crucial to our foreign policy to have more US citizens to understand them. China is attempting to replace the United States as the foremost global superpower. North Korea is a well-known rogue state. Russia is well-known for their attempts to influence US politics through digital media. 

Unlike most of these events, I could see an actual connection to my coursework in computer science. In the cyber security sphere, knowing Chinese/Russian/Korean (the first two particularly) is prized due to its applications in cyber defense. Russia, China, and North Korea are known for their hackers. Their general focus varies slightly, however. Russian hackers are usually just looking for ways to make money: theft, fraud, etc. The lines between private, criminal and government agents are very blurry in Russia, but it’s generally the first two. In China, hackers are looking for a way to get a leg up on American business. Intellectual property theft is all the rage there. And North Korea is looking to wage cyber war to advance their international interests. Back in 2014, they hacked Sony Pictures to scuttle the release of the film The Interview. There are many accounts of hacking directed towards South Korea. US authorities always warn of North Korean attacks on the US grid. Some have even blamed North Korean hackers for the failure of the Indian moon launch the other week. 

The event wasn’t very impactful on me per se, but it was interesting to learn about the ways that US government tries to latently boost us up on the international level. Much has been said about how Americans are less and less likely to learn a language other than English. Some of this is because most Europeans learn English, some due to changing educational curricula and focus, and probably something to do with budget cuts. Budget cuts are usually to blame. 

I enjoyed learning about this opportunity. I may apply for this scholarship next summer. I studied French in high school. I’d like to learn something like Russian or Chinese that would be advantageous to know in building my resume.

I attended Jacob Caponi’s Genocide in Rwanda talk on September 12 in the glass classroom at Smith-Steeb. It was a very interesting presentation about the Rwandan genocide. He did a good job of giving us a concise summary of a very complex series of events; he explained enough for us to understand his research. 

I had read We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families in middle school, and had a pretty strong background on the Rwandan genocide, but it’s always cool to get a different perspective on the topic. Jacob’s work (and his presentation, but to a lesser extent) focused on the role of women during the genocide. Some of the stuff he said about biased assumptions – such as the normal line of thinking regarding a genocide is that it was perpetrated by men – was very thought-provoking. He didn’t get to explain a ton more than just that what he did research on, unfortunately. I would have been interested in hearing more. 

It ultimately wasn’t super impactful on me, because I knew a lot about the topic and am not the type to get upset about something like this, regardless of the horror of the events. I try to study history with a purely critical lense, rather than emotional. This is obviously an international topic, and it’s important to know about and be able to discuss topics like these that are still relevant to our world today, particularly the idea of class conflict.

I attended the Brazilian Film Series Don’t Call Me Son in Hagerty 180 on March 25. It was an academic event.

The film was in Portuguese with English subtitles. It’s about a teenage boy named Felipe whose life is ripped apart when the police arrest his mother for having stolen him and his (adopted) younger sister from the maternity ward. Felipe enjoys, music, parties, cross-dressing, and casual sex. He does not fit in at all with his new (biological) family, who are led by a traditional patriarch who expects his son to be like masculine pursuits, work hard in school, and strive to succeed in life. And… that’s it. There’s not much else to it. It was a relatively short film, with little plot resolution. He begins to grow close with his new brother, and that’s how the film ends.

Honestly, Don’t Call Me Son didn’t really do it for me. The premise wasn’t that interesting, the plot didn’t really go anywhere, and it was just sort of sad. Felipe and his sister had been living a happy childhood with a mother who loved and accepted them. She obviously had stolen them from birth, but they were in a good spot. To be torn away from the only home you’ve ever known at 17 would be terrible.

Felipe’s biological father, Matheus, is obviously not the best guy. Felipe is essentially a grown man, and completely a stranger. Expecting someone in that position to conform to your idea of a son overnight is just ridiculous. I understand Matheus’s concern; Felipe is an aimless youth at an age when you should be getting ready for college or a job. But his narrow-mindedness wipes away any goodwill his overzealous parenting has, in my mind.

I don’t feel like I gained a ton from this film. I suppose I consider myself blessed that I grew up in a stable and supportive household.

As I usually say, this topic was completely out of left field with regards to my coursework. I like math and computers. I know very little about Brazilian culture, LGBT youth, or poor family dynamics.

If I could ask the speaker (in this case, the writer/director Anna Muylaert) a question, I guess it would be something along the lines of “How do you come up with this stuff?”. Seriously. The film is just the intersection of a bunch of different interesting film ideas – stolen baby, restless teenager, culture clash, etc – and I don’t understand where people get the inspiration for making these kinds of movies.

I volunteered at the STAR House on February 16th. It was a service event.

We took the COTA over to the STAR House, where we were were put to work doing inventory. They have a large warehouse in the back of the building with all sorts of clothing and toiletries. Much like a college student’s room, it looked like it was slowly become disorganized.. My group re-sorted and re-folded dozens of boxes of clothing. Funnily enough, some volunteers from the Neuroscience scholars were there at the same time. They got to pick up trash outside. It was a cold day and I was glad to be inside. After we finished our allotted work, the woman who had been directing us gave us a briefing on what the STAR House does.

The STAR House is a drop-in center for homeless youth in Columbus. It’s not a full-time shelter, but they provide resources and services including kitchens, clothing and assistance. They don’t have any beds but apparently guests often sleep with their heads on the table. As someone who frequently dozed off in Physics lecture, I respected that. The STAR House was founded in 2006 by Natasha Slesnick, a professor of Human Development and Family Science here at Ohio State. It was originally founded as a joint venture with the University, but has since spun off as an independent non-profit organization. They served over a thousand youth last year. We were told how homeless youth were at a very high risk of being victims of human trafficking and other crimes due to a lack of a support network. Homeless youth are apparently 12 times as likely to die before reaching adulthood than housed youth.

The whole event was a bit eye-opening to me because I don’t really think about the prevalence of homeless youth either in Columbus or even in general. I grew up in an area where there really weren’t any homeless kids. The idea of a kid being homeless seems kind of foreign to me, as much as I realize this is a widespread issue. There are something like 2.5 million homeless children in America. That’s one in every 25 children. I grew up knowing probably 500 kids and none of them were homeless, which means there are places with rates much, much higher than 1 in 25. That’s a lot of kids who can use help. I’m glad that things like the STAR house exist, and was happy that I could help out. I’ll definitely keep my eye out for events like this one going forward.

I don’t think what we did was monumentally helpful, but I could tell that the staff appreciated our help because it was a manpower-intensive task and the STAR House didn’t seem to have a ton of staff. Helping in the community doesn’t directly relate to the topic of international affairs, but volunteering is definitely in the spirit of the program.

This didn’t really relate to anything I have studied this year, unfortunately.

I attended the Current Events Convo on January 17th in Smith-Steeb. The event was headed by Sam Stelnicki and the topic was “What You Missed In the News”.

This was probably my favorite current event convo so far. We covered a wide range of topics related to international happenings, from the yellow vests to Brexit to Chechen human rights issues. While we sadly did not get to play Kahoot like we had in previous current event convos, the presentation was plenty interactive. As always, Sam did a great job of encouraging discussion. There was a solid turnout, and we did have some good discussions about the issues.

I always have a solid base of knowledge on current events, but I took away more than usual at this event. I hadn’t really thought about Brexit being that controversial of an issue, aside from it being decided by slim referendum. I had formed the opinion in my mind, at least, that the British people wanted to leave the EU and therefore they should. The videos we watched made me realize that this is much more complicated than just the general will, particularly to how it affects the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland particularly, since the two states contentious but currently open border would probably need some sort of demarcation or barrier should Northern Ireland no longer be part of the EU. The small climate change update we got was shocking but also encouraging. I often forget how dire of a need we have to combat climate change. It was encouraging to see that other countries will continue to implement coordinated global reforms even without the help of the United States.

I personally find the yellow vest protestors very interesting. Macron’s relatively narrow victory in the 2017 election showed that France had a lot of discontent brewing beneath the surface. These yellow vest protestors, though, are not the same as the disaffected voters who propelled Marine Le Pen from fringe candidate to runner up. These protesters are unhappy with what they see as Macron neglecting the state of the middle class. Since being elected, Macron has cut taxes on the wealthy and loosened labor restrictions in order to boost the French economy. Discontent with globalization’s effect on the French economy had bolstered support for Macron’s opponent in the election. In keeping with his platform though, Macron has also raised fuel taxes. The increased fuel taxes have been the biggest gripe of the gilet jaunes, many of whom commute to work.

I was surprised to learn that Macron’s biggest moves seemed to be straight out of the American conservative playbook. My limited understanding of Macron was that he was a quasi-socialist who had drifted to the middle, like a more policy-focused Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It feels like he’s trying to wear too many hats: focusing on economic growth while also being pro-environment. While those two goals aren’t mutually exclusive, they’re diametrically opposed in ideology. Macron appears to have gambled that he can keep both promises by catering to business but also be able to point to reduced fuel use. This may have backfired on him though, because hitting the middle class in their wallet – particularly in a society that’s relatively homogeneous like France – is like kicking a hornet’s nest.

The impending US withdrawal from Syria, which was briefly touched upon in the current events convo, was also a topic of discussion in my Air Science (ROTC) class. It will be interesting to see how this affects the stability of the Middle East overall.

For my service event, I attended the Mural Painting at the Columbus Global Academy on December 1st. This event was markedly different from the other International Affairs Scholars Events I had attended. I had only been to Academic or Non-IA events, which were more in my zone of intellectually stimulating and enriching. Painting the jungle mural was personally enriching. Now, I am not a very good painter. They rightfully kept me away from any borders or fine lines. My younger sister, who was practically born with a paintbrush in her mouth, would have been a lot more helpful to this project. With that said, I still came away from the morning feeling like I had done a good service, if only a small one.

Obviously, doing volunteer work to help students from other countries is right in the IA strike zone. Contrary, I’d guess, to students studying international relations and the like, community service isn’t something that has come up in my coursework, at least not yet. I’m studying Aerospace Engineering, and my first-year coursework is still the STEM basics. I’d venture a guess that opportunities for community outreach will come later.

I’ve never been a person who’s loved community service. I always told myself that I had enough going on in my own life, and that I’ll leave the good work to the people who truly cared. Doing just these couple of hours with CRIS, I realized that what they say is true: community service makes you feel good inside. I’m definitely have to look into other community service opportunities in the spring, beyond the mandatory one I’ll have to do for IA.   

The most notable thing about the experience, though, was visiting the Columbus Global Academy. From talking to Mr. Hollon, I learned more about the purpose and makeup of the school. He described the CGA as somewhat of a public-school bootcamp that introduces these students to how we do education in America. I went through the experience of moving schools twice as a kid. I remember how it’s tough to integrate yourself within a new school, especially if everyone already knows each other. I can’t imagine what it’s like to do that in a new country, where the other students and the teachers don’t necessarily speak your language, and have markedly different experiences from you. Even more than that, I’m glad I didn’t have to adapt to a new kind of school. Mr. Hollon told me that a lot of students have to get used to bells signaling the end of class, since for many of them a similar sound meant “air raid” or “fire” in their previous lives.

My high school rarely got new, non-exchange students from foreign countries, so I don’t have any prior experience with this. I’m now realizing how crucial it is that new American students get the resources they need to succeed in our education system. Easier said than done, obviously. And our mural, no matter how beautiful it turned out, will have little tangible impact in that regard. But, hopefully, it will make those students feel a little more welcome.  

I attended the “Current Events Convo with Sam [Stelnicki] on Stereotypes and Current Events of Africa” on October 26th in Smith-Steeb 101. (It was an academic event.)

Sam did a great job of mixing up her presentation style to keep us engaged. We played an interactive trivia game with Kahoot, where the questions appeared on the projector and we answered on our phones. The questions in the trivia game were designed to point out the (relatively) uniformed way in which our society thinks about Africa, particularly the part between the Sahara and South Africa. One of the facts revealed by the game was that cellphone ownership, as a percentage of population, was roughly the same in Africa as in America. Most of the other statistics questions made sense to me, but I’ll admit that one surprised me.

She also showed us a video called “Let’s Save Africa! Gone wrong”. It portrayed a young African actor in charity commercials who was exasperated at the tone of commercials that use African children to solicit donations. (You can watch it here.) It made me chuckle, I’ll admit, I have mixed reviews for the video. It wasn’t as funny as it seems intended to be, and the topic of humanitarian donation solicitation reinforcing stereotypes is too complex for a 5-minute comedic video.

The presentation finished with a short slideshow. The slide that stuck out to me the most was a tweet from Delta that (mistakenly) portrayed Ghana as have giraffes. I think I know more about Africa than most people, but I don’t think I would have noticed that as wrong. It made me realize that I often fall into the habit of thinking of Sub-Saharan Africa as a monolith. I do mentally differentiate North Africa and South Africa from the rest of the continent, but I often visualize everything in the middle as combination of the Serengeti, poor agricultural settlements, and chaotic, sprawling cities.

I liked how the presentation was structured to allow us to gradually realize that we had these preconceived notions about sub-Saharan Africa as a primitive, backwater place. Compared to the many other ways to tell people they are might be less culturally sensitive than they realize, it was a cool, cordial and engaging method. She wasn’t trying to make us feel guilty about how we viewed Africa; we were just supposed to open our eyes a little bit.

The presentation didn’t so much challenge my beliefs but made me realize they were pretty much wrong. I don’t hear too much about specific African countries in the news, just occasionally things about the continent at large. This realization was a little embarrassing for me. I take pride in being worldly and informed. It was like a splash of cold water to realize that I wasn’t too far removed from the people who think “Africa” is a country.

In contrast to probably most of the other people in IA, cultural perceptions of Africa isn’t even in the same stratosphere as the other topics in my STEM-heavy coursework, IA Seminar notwithstanding.

Ultimately, I wish that the Current Events conversation had been longer and more in-depth. It did a good job of showing that we, as Americans, often have an uninformed view of Africa. We only explored a small part of what is a big conversation. This was my first Current Event conversation, but it seems that a large part of it should be discussion by the students. Only a handful of people showed up, and we weren’t too talkative.

I had a chance to talk to Sam during the event, so I wasn’t left with too many questions for her. I hope there are more Current Event conversations, I will definitely try to go to them.

I attended a lecture at the Mershon Center on climate change justice and responsibility with Dr. Brooke Ackerly, professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. (It was a Non-IA/Community Event.)

In all honesty, this was one of the best lectures I’ve ever attended. Dr. Ackerly was well-spoken and engaging, and she presented a very grounded and fair perspective on her material. I didn’t catch any preaching, scapegoating, hypocrisy, or other faults found in many speeches. Her supreme confidence was a little jarring – she stated at point “I don’t defer to anyone’s expertise” – but it was great that she presented lots of facts, anecdotes, and details about the current economic, political and social situation in Bangladesh. She wasn’t really trying to convince us that she was right; instead she gave us the facts of the matter. It was a little bit overwhelming, I will admit, but that didn’t diminish my enjoyment of hearing her speak.

The speech introduced me to grounded normative theory, which I still don’t truly understand. I think the idea is to use facts and real-life details to describe what’s going on. Beyond that, I still don’t get it. It feels like a second-level critical approach, and I need a whole background of philosophy to get on that level. But her speech was still great even without that. It definitely opened my perspective a bit. I am used to thinking about climate change in terms of what we hear about in the media: rising temperatures, rising sea levels, droughts, melting ice caps, those Coca-Cola polar bears, and worsening extreme weather. Dr. Ackerly challenged us to think about climate change not just as one situation affecting the world, and to challenge the way we look at things at the moment. Her message of challenging the dominant narrative is something that sticks with me. I question most of what I hear related to politics, society and the world.

One of Dr. Ackerly’s points was that we can’t hope to solve the issue of climate change while looking at it solely as a first world problem, or burden shared equally by everyone, or in any of the commonly accepted modes of thinking these days. Climate change is one of the most important issues in international affairs and will only grow in prominence as it becomes more drastic.

I learned a lot about Bangladesh, third-world politics, and the effects of climate change on low-lying coastal farming areas. I am a little embarrassed to say that I don’t remember everything she talked about.

The topic of climate change hasn’t come up in my coursework yet, but I’m almost certain that we will discuss it in Scholars lecture at some point, though the syllabus doesn’t list it for this semester. Attending this lecture gives me an interesting, different perspective from what I will likely hear in classes about climate change.

Dr. Ackerly’s talk left me wondering wonder what other modes of thinking in America don’t paint the whole picture of the rest of the world. I wonder if I’m doing a disservice to other countries in the way that I characterize them either in thought or in conversation. In addition, I want to know more about how climate change is affecting other pre-industrial societies around the world.