By Sarina Beges

President Barack Obama's trip to Afghanistan this week to sign the Strategic Partnership Agreement reaffirmed America's commitment to secure and rebuild the country beyond the 2014 troop withdrawal. The stakes are high as the United States embarks on an ambitious and expensive 10-year plan that the American public may be reluctant to support after a decade of war. But Stanford law Professor Erik Jensen argues that staying the course will have positive outcomes for generations of Afghans to come.

Jensen just returned from Afghanistan where, he says, the streets of Kabul are bustling with life, business and a renewed sense of pride. Working on rule-of-law issues in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in the mid-1990s, Jensen sees these small changes as signs of progress in a country that has experienced decades of conflict.

Jensen, an affiliated faculty member at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute, has piloted a program to train Afghan lawyers at the American University of Afghanistan. The project has gained the trust of Afghanistan's political, judicial and law enforcement officials, and is a model for innovation in legal education.

Jensen discusses U.S. relations with Afghanistan and the legal education project that has required an adjustment of his own career.

Why is the Strategic Partnership Agreement important?

It is a framework for President Obama to ensure Afghans that America will not pull out lock, stock and barrel in 2014. Afghans are palpably apprehensive about the pullout in 2014. President Obama's trip to Afghanistan to sign this strategic partnership in the presence of President Karzai is a very important signal to Afghans that there is a future to the relationship beyond 2014.


What will happen under the agreement?

What is anticipated is a drastic drawdown on troops and security contractors, but not a pullout. The budget is estimated at $4 billion per year, which might sound like a lot. But the budget currently tops $100 billion. Drastic reductions in funding create opportunities for institutional change. There have been comparisons to the American presence on the Korean Peninsula, which is not inexpensive but you can see a security benefit with relatively modest amounts of money.


How is Afghanistan becoming a stronger, more stable country?

Despite negative publicity that Afghanistan has attracted in the international press, I have seen qualified teachers showing up to teach students who are hungry to learn. On my most recent trip, I drove through Massoud Circle in the heart of Kabul and people handed out photos of fallen Afghan soldiers who had stood up and defended their country against a recent insurgent attack. There was a sense of pride among Afghans. Afghan security forces have been in charge of security in Kabul for several years, and I think this is a really modest but positive sign.

There are a number of Afghans who have put their backs into building democratic institutions. It hasn't all gone that well but they remain committed. The American public owes it to itself and the Afghan people to imagine alternatives and to work hand-in-hand with Afghans to ensure that systems are in place to give Afghans a chance.


What is the Afghanistan Legal Education Project (ALEP)?

Stanford law students and I started this project at the American University of Afghanistan five years ago to build a law curriculum that leads to a legal certificate. The goal of ALEP is to produce capable graduates who can think, write and behave as professional lawyers early on in their careers before they are stuck in sub-optimal institutions where they develop habits that are not good.


How is ALEP strengthening rule of law in Afghanistan?

To date, the ALEP team has written four legal textbooks critically analyzing the laws of Afghanistan. Another two will be released in the next year. As Afghanistan builds its economy and justice systems, it is essential to have lawyers with sound training in commercial and criminal law. A course taught at the American University of Afghanistan introduces students to formal and informal systems of dispute resolution and emphasizes legal pluralisms in customary, Islamic and national laws. Afghan students puzzle through how they can strengthen rule of law, generating recommendations for interventions to reform and change the system. Ethics courses are an integral part of the curricula to encourage students to act ethically and responsibly.


Do you remain hopeful for Afghanistan as you look a decade into the future?

The empirical side of me knows the odds of short- or even medium-term success in Afghanistan, but I'm also inspired by the people I have worked with in Afghanistan. The Afghan vision of a better future is there, and those Afghans deserve our support as we move forward. It is a different world in Kabul today than where it was when the Taliban fell.

One question to ask is: To what extent have the changes in Kabul today become so much a part of life for Afghans that they will fight for greater openness, for television shows they find interesting, for a media that is a growing presence in Afghanistan? I am not sure the clock can be turned back.


Source: Stanford University

Anna Deavere Smith doesn't just talk about grace; she embodies it. During Tuesday's sold-out lecture at Stanford's Cubberley Auditorium, Smith captivated the crowd with a series of first-person monologues that demonstrated how, when we open our eyes, acts of grace are all around us.

Sponsored by the Office for Religious Life, the Heyns Lecture on Religion and Society is an annual event that features a major speaker focusing on problems and challenges of religion and community. Smith's exploration delved into the multi-faceted definition of grace, with impressions of religious figures, including an imam and a Buddhist monk, as well as secular personalities.

Fresh from an artist-in-residency position with Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Smith drew from her theatrical and academic background to give voice to a variety of people exemplifying the forgiveness, love and selfless action that characterize our popular conception of grace.

Over the years, Smith has interviewed people from all walks of life about issues like social justice and, more recently, grace. By transforming the transcripts of those interviews into moving first-person accounts, Smith has pioneered a new form of performance.

Approaching the topic of grace with the combined expertise of a playwright, an actor and a professor, Smith chooses to focus not just on the definition of grace within church literature but rather its manifestations in the "narrative of human dignity."

Opening with the simple statement "When you say a word, it becomes you," Smith went on to describe the creative process she uses to capture the seemingly ephemeral moments of grace. With the raw material collected from interviews, she crafts monologues that reflect not just what the interviewee said but the subtext as well.

After briefly discussing her own spiritual philosophies, Smith segued into the first solo performance of the evening, a monologue in the voice of the late Rev. Peter Gomes, pastor of Memorial Church at Harvard University. Using a pronounced New England accent and affected gestures, Smith launched into the history of the hymn "Amazing Grace."

Smith examined acts of forgiveness and selflessness through the eyes of seven characters. Taking on the voice of Imam Feisal Rauf, Smith noted that "language is a grid through which we see reality. If we don't have a word, we don't see it. Christians use the word 'grace' as a special human intervention by God into human affairs that has a powerful phenomenon from it."

She went on to compare this to the call to prayer in Islam: "The fact that the call to prayer has such a compelling power to anyone that hears it is an act of grace."

Smith also investigated the definition of grace from a secular point of view by portraying the famous Bay Area chef Alice Waters. Smith demonstrated how Waters' quiet manner and delicate fleeting hand motions, both in conversation and in food preparation, conjure sentiments of grace.

As Waters, Smith noted grace "is to give something without expecting anything in return. ... Whatever you have, you want to share!"

Last, in a completely different vein, Smith told a story of grace that emerged from the 1992 Los Angeles riots sparked by the police beating of motorist Rodney King. Maria was one of the jurors faced with determining the fate of four police officers accused of brutal acts of violence. In relaying Maria's courtroom recollections, Smith animatedly described the jurors confessing to feelings of guilt and stress and how their personal exoneration led to a graceful delivery of the verdict.

In a brief question-and-answer session after the lecture, the Rev. Joanne Sanders, associate dean for religious life, told Smith her presence was "richly and fully grace itself."

Added the Rev. Scotty McLennan, dean for religious life: "To have [Smith] come and connect the world of drama to what's happening in society at large and to do that with the topic of grace was ... the ideal connection of religion and society through this medium of drama that she's so adept in."

When asked what aspect of grace she hoped Stanford students would take away from her talk, Smith responded with hope.

"I want to encourage Stanford students," she said, "to realize that with any kind of a crisis or trouble or a lack, people really begin to say and make up extraordinary stories and narratives that allow them to restore human dignity and bring meaning to the world."


Source: Stanford University