December
5 , 2003
Front-Page
News
Around the World Kavita N. Ramdas '85,
the president of the Global Fund for Women and new MHC trustee,
was profiled in the November 17 edition of the San
Jose Mercury News. "Kavita Ramdas helped inspire 3,300 women to run
for political office in Cambodia, supported South African domestic
workers in their fight for minimum wage and unemployment rights,
and empowered teenage girls in Uganda to denounce the brutal
rite of female genital mutilation," wrote Michelle Guido.
She noted that the Global Fund is the largest grant-making foundation
in the world—and the only one in the United States—that
focuses exclusively on international women's rights. The
fund has "few rules, and that suits Ramdas just fine. The
organization receives more than 3,000 applications
each year, in any language and in any form. A grant request from
Pakistan might come by email, while one from Somalia might be
scribbled on a scrap of paper and sent on a four-month journey
by post. The organization's belief is that these women know what
they need. And Ramdas knows it's not her place to assume,
for example, that women in a war-torn African nation might need
school supplies when what they really need is a cow, to supply
milk to the village's children. Or a van, so young girls
can be transported to school without possibly being raped on
the way."
Guido writes that it was as a scholarship recipient at MHC that
Ramdas decided to pursue philanthropy. "The idea that people were individually contributing
so that others could have choices and opportunities was a very powerful realization
for me," she said. It was also while she was at Mount Holyoke that Ramdas
met her husband, Zulfiqar Ahmad, at a college dance.
Ramdas, born in Mumbai, India, learned about gender discrimination at an early
age, the article noted. "Her parents frequently received condolences for
bearing only girls. 'People would stop my mother and right in front of
us say, "Oh, what a pity, you only have three girls. But you're still
young, you can keep trying,'" Ramdas recalled. 'And my
parents would always say, "We don't think it's a pity at all.
In fact, our girls can do anything your boys can do.' "
Forty Years Later Both the Springfield
Republican and the Daily
Hampshire Gazette looked recently to Mount Holyoke historian
Daniel Czitrom, as well as to other area scholars, in stories
exploring President John F. Kennedy's legacy 40 years after
his assassination. According to Czitrom, Kennedy's understanding
of both key domestic issues—such as civil rights—and
foreign policy challenges deepened during his abbreviated time
in office.
The civil rights movement was an example of how Kennedy matured, Czitrom observed
to the November 22 Gazette, noting ''While he was not a leader
on this, he was at least willing to learn. The civil rights movement forced
JFK to look at the issue and take a real stand on it.''
And, while Kennedy entered the White House as the consummate"cold warrior," his views became more nuanced in office. According
to the November 16 Republican:
"(Kennedy) was elected in 1960 as a fervent anti-Communist, stumbled badly
with the failed Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow Cuba's Fidel Castro,
and then, as the world appeared to be on the brink of nuclear war, negotiated
a withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba.
"By 1963, he had negotiated an international nuclear test ban treaty and
installed a hot line between the Oval Office and the Kremlin, Czitrom said."
The Gazette also turned to politics professor Vincent Ferraro in its piece,
reporting: "'The Cuban Missile Crisis was a turning point in U.S.-Soviet
relations,' said Vincent Ferraro, politics professor at Mount Holyoke. 'It
signaled the beginning of detente, but also was extraordinarily dangerous…' "Many
blame the Bay of Pigs fiasco on Kennedy's predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower,
but Ferraro noted that Kennedy had made Cuba an issue during the presidential
campaign. 'The big thing is when he realized he was failing, he stopped
it and took the blame. That took incredible courage.'"
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