Manifestos for a better world

In a way, the Program in International Development Policy (PIDP), like so many of Duke's undertakings, has an outrageously ambitious objective as everything else conceived by Senator Sanford, our Institute's founder -- namely to train future statesmen and stateswomen. This is supposed to take 18 months of seminars plus a summer internship, after which the results are expected to show in another 6 months, in the shape of your final seminar papers and Master's projects which should prove that our hopes were justified.

And indeed they were.

What I have been reading over the last two weeks are the challenges, the strategies, the manifestos that will build a better world, even though, unfortunately all too often, such a world will have to be re-built out of the ruins and devastation of the recent past.

Indeed when I reflect on your papers proposing a human development strategy for your respective countries, in so many of them, "tout est à refaire" -- i.e. so much must be started all over again as the economic and social fabric of so many countries or ethnic groups has almost been destroyed. In so many countries, we are told that human resources development has to focus first on the elimination of violence. In some countries, for instance, the priority is to restore people's dignity, generosity, and self-worth, while providing mental and trauma care for the survivors of monstruous genocides aimed at ethnic or ideological cleansing.

More generally, as argued by the Norwegian philosopher of peace Johann Galtung in many developing and transition countries -- as well as, let's recognize it, in the U.S. and other industrial countries -- we need to find ways to reduce the level of both visible and hidden violence in our societies. Should it be a matter of teaching candidate parents better parenting skills? of making sure that only wanted children are born so that they can be raised in a nurturing and welcoming environment rather than an indifferent or a hostile one? of ensuring that all pre-school and primary school curricula stop glorifying men of war, but rather emphasize conflict resolution skills so as to eliminate violence as a normal way of settling even minor conflicts? And will we succeed if TV programs don't stop their own cult of violence, which is being exported world-wide ?

If I bring up these sad comments about modern society, it is to underline that the future professional responsibility of PIDP alumni and alumnae will not be an easy one after two years of living in the middle of Duke's open, blossoming, and welcoming landscape, which reinforces our fraternal, mutually supportive, idealized culture, and has even produced this year the first wedding among PIDP Fellows..

But then, based on your remarkable and uplifting master's projects, facing that often unpleasant reality is what it takes to conceive the blueprints, policies and strategies that should improve the future of the countries our Fellows care about. What I have in mind, e.g., are your proposals to:

• improve your countries' governance, including through decentralization of their administration to make it more transparent and accountable, ensuring a fairer distribution of the national income, and adopting more participative approaches to slum rehabilitation;
• enhance your countries' attractiveness to foreign direct investment, and get their own entrepreneurs to move into the software age, while also supporting the sound development of their artisans;
• improve your countries' capabilities in foreign aid management, restore the viability of their public enterprises; or preserve the quality of their natural environment... and last but not least,
• once again, help put your countries on a path towards a more peaceful future, through either the demobilization of the former combatants; the establishment of a more ethnically balanced political and economic system; the redesign of assistance policies towards emergency reconstruction; or the creation of greater regional harmony with the help of like-minded epistemic communities.

Looking back on our common experience, as all of our faculty know so well, our greatest reward is to share the feeling of exhilaration which comes from having seen all of you push yourselves to your limits throughout these two years -- and especially the last few weeks -- and then seeing the remarkable results. Your capacity to analyze a problem in an integrated manner, looking at all the factors that apply, whether political, economic, social, or institutional, and then mold all of these into a vision and a strategy that makes sense... is what this was all about.

And now the next challenge is for you all to find the opportunities that will allow you to make use of all these skills, with the right blend of idealism and pragmatism... and as we just said, to do so under circumstances that in many cases may be pretty tough...But whatever happens in the future, I know that some day we will count among you, our alumni, either a Prime Minister, or a Ghandian-like moral figure, and why not, perhaps even both.

I wish you all well.