Documentary filmmaker and Nobel Peace Prize Winner to visit Wooster

Sanjana Kumbhani

Features Editor

The College of Wooster is one of the supporters of the Great Decisions Lecture Series. Having been around for over 30 years the Series is a joint venture between the College and the local Wooster community. The focus of the series is always on world affairs, and it ties in influential figures to come lecture who appeal to a very broad demographic, from Wooster High School and College students to local adult community members.

This year, the series kicked off spectacularly with The New York Times Correspondent David Sanger coming in to talk about U.S. foreign policy. More recently Ivan Vejvoda, vice president for programs at the German Marshall Fund, highlighted the crisis and success of the European Union.

The next segment of the series involves a screening of the highly acclaimed documentary film, Rafea Solar Mama. This film explores the journey of illiterate women in small communities in Jordan who travel to northwest India. They are trained there to become solar engineers and they take their knowledge and skills of electrifying villages back to Jordan. The film sheds light on the obstacles the women face being from small conservative Arabic communities and debates the question of whether it is appropriate for those women to do this kind of work. On the following day, one of the directors of the film, Jehane Nonjaim — described by John Rudisill, associate professor of philosophy and executive director of the Great Decisions Program, as “one of the brightest new documentarians today” — will deliver a talk capturing the zeitgeist involving the sense of time and developing fully the characters that she is framing in her documentaries. She will emphasize the changing dynamics of a woman’s role in society today, especially those in the Middle East and how they fit into the globalizing world. Being of Egyptian-American descent and educated at Harvard, Nonjaim has the expertise and understanding to deliver a talk no one wants to miss.

The last leg of the series includes a lecture by Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former President of Timor-Leste, José Ramos-Horta. He just returned from Guinea-Bissau where he was appointed by the UN Secretary General to serve as the Representative and Head of the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office to restore constitutional order in the country. He has also witnessed first-hand the violence, unrest and instability Timor-Leste faced when it was invaded by Indonesia after its independence from Portugal. His talk will focus on his own experience dealing with peace and conflict and how wars can be prevented and peaceful resolutions achieved.

It was because of a personal connection that we are able to have Ramos-Horta come to Wooster. Carolyn Robinson, a Wooster citizen who eventually went on to become a producer at CNN, was acquainted with him through her job, and is now a member of the local committee responsible for organizing the series. “Great things can come out of even a small town like Wooster. If it were not for her, we wouldn’t have the honor of having someone like Ramos-Horta come to talk at Wooster,” remarked Rudisill.

For more information about the lecture series, visit http://www.wooster.edu/news/releases/2014/january/great-decisions/index.php.