Breathe Hope’s Blanket Making Event

On Thursday, November 15 I attended a service event in one of the conference rooms located in the Ohio Union put on by Breathe Hope, a student organization on campus. Breathe Hope works to spread awareness about cystic fibrosis and raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. This particular service event involved making tie blankets out of fleece fabric for patients at Nationwide Children’s Hospital with cystic fibrosis so that they can have a warm and soft blanket with them for the cold holiday season. In just one hour, the other volunteers and myself made a total of eighteen blankets.

Prior to attending this event, I did not know what cystic fibrosis was or who it impacted. The name only sounded familiar to me from television commercials that ask for donations. After making these blankets and hearing what Breathe Hope’s leaders had to say about cystic fibrosis and specifically about the patients at Nationwide Children’s, I was moved to research more about it on my own to get a better understanding of who would be receiving the blankets we made. I was surprised to learn that at least 30,000 people in the United States alone have cystic fibrosis and that most people are diagnosed with this genetic disease before they turn two years old.

From this experience, I also had the opportunity to meet other international affairs scholars who came to volunteer. I sat at a table with two second year international affairs scholars who I had never met before and would not normally have gotten a chance to talk with so casually on a Thursday night. One of these students is also in the School of Natural and Environmental Resources and specifically in the major that I am thinking about switching into. It was very beneficial for me to get to talk to her about what she likes about her major and the classes she is in. She also gave me advice to help me decide between majors. She suggested that I look at the classes required for my major and compare them to the classes required for her major to see which ones interest me more. We also have the same adviser so she suggested I talk with our adviser about it as well. In general, I was great to talk to both of these second years to hear about what they like about IA and what is different this year than how it was last year.

This service event relates to International Affairs because cystic fibrosis does not just affect people in the United States, but people all around the world too. There are more than 70,000 people worldwide right now living with cystic fibrosis. Nationwide Children’s cystic fibrosis patients do not come from solely the Columbus area. Their patients come from as far away as West Virginia and Kentucky to be treated here. These blankets we made will help keep children with many different backgrounds and cultures warm this holiday season.

John Mearsheimer, “The Great Delusion: Liberal Ideals and International Realities”

On October 4th I attended John Mearsheimer’s talk about “The Great Delusion: Liberal Ideals and International Realities” at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies. In his talk, Professor Mearsheimer argued that the United States’ foreign policy of liberal hegemony has failed. He asserts that this is due to political leaders overlooking the importance of self-determination because at the core of every nation is the belief that they should be their own sovereign state and that no country wants to be socially engineered by the United States or have their way of life changed.

While this event was largely centered around the United States’ policies and ideals, it also focused on how those ideals transformed into foreign policy and diplomacy, thus relating to international affairs. Professor Mearsheimer addressed how, since the Cold War, the United States has been practicing liberal hegemony to with the goal to remake the world in America’s image. There have been many instances since then where the United States has interfered in another country’s affairs with the intention to impose our democratic system on them. This is illiberal because a central aspect of liberalism is the idea that people cannot agree on fundamental principles, yet in these instances the United States is acting as if there is only one way to run a country and that way is liberal democracy.

Professor Mearsheimer’s talk relates to what I have learned in my Introduction to Development Studies: Global Poverty, Inequality, and the Field of Development course. In the unit that covered foreign aid, I learned that foreign aid donated by developed countries during the Cold War was used as a tool to impose their own political and military motives. This aid was largely wasted on corrupt politicians instead of being given with the intention of helping countries develop. This money transformed into, what some economists argue, a new form of colonialism in which developed countries could still assert their influence over developing countries through their aid money.

Aside from that class, I have not learned much about the United States’ recent foreign policy. In the social studies courses I have taken in the past, we were taught about what happened in the wars and conflicts the United States has fought or gotten involved in since the Cold War. However, we did not learn about their motives for doing so beyond the umbrella reason given that communism is bad and therefore the United States must take responsibility for preventing countries from adopting communism. Professor Mearsheimer’s talk struck my interest because it built upon my elementary knowledge of the conflicts the United States has gotten involved in recently.

From attending this event, I have gained a critical outlook of how the United States interferes in international issues and a desire to learn more about international diplomacy. I want to attend more speaker events at the Mershon Center to expand my knowledge of world events and be exposed to new perspectives beyond what I learn in the classroom.