McCarthy takes a break in his tent.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Disaster struck on the first day of Andrew McCarthy’s expedition to climb Aconcagua—the tallest mountain in the Western Hemisphere.

The graduate student in architecture at the University of Michigan had just pitched the tent that he made himself in a valley when a 40-foot-tall dust tornado kicked up a rock and sent it flying into the side of the dwelling, puncturing a fist-sized hole in a side panel.

It was an ominous start for McCarthy, whose biggest initial worry was whether the tent would hold together when it was getting blasted by the icy howling winds on the mountain, which people die climbing every year. But there he was dealing with a crisis long before the toughest part of the expedition began in western Argentina.

“It was definitely a wake-up call for me,” the master’s student said. “I thought to myself, ‘Wow, if this could happen so low on the mountain, what will happen high on the mountain in the high winds?’”

McCarthy shows where a rock, kicked up by a dust tornado, punched a hole in his tent.

He was able to patch the hole with fabric tape from his emergency sewing kit. His guide, world-renowned mountaineer Vern Tejas, also gave him some tips about how to make the tent stronger, sewing more anchor points on the front and back.

Building the tent was part of McCarthy’s thesis project at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. The Grand Rapids, Mich., native has long been interested in nomadic dwellings and architecture for extreme environments.

Few architecture students get to live in the structures they designed. Even fewer have to rely on their designs for their survival. The apprentices of legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright had to build their own dwellings in the Arizona desert.

Although tents look like simple structures, they’re extremely hard to make. Getting the geometry and fabric tension right is difficult.

It was especially challenging for McCarthy, who didn’t know how to sew and only had five weeks to learn the craft before flying to South America to start the expedition with nine other climbers. Just hours before his flight, he was still putting the finishing touches on the tent.

The expedition began Feb. 15, and the group had to climb to four camps on the mountain before making a final push to the summit.

McCarthy gets ready for bed before another long day of climbing.

McCarthy said he felt physically prepared for the climb because he trained for it by cycling, running uphill on a treadmill and grinding away on grueling Stairmaster sessions wearing his boots and 60-pound pack.

But the mental side of the climb was the toughest: enduring the mountain’s harsh conditions every day with wind chills at 20 below zero, trying to purify water with nasty particles floating in it, choking down protein bars, Oreo cookies and crackers while feeling nauseous due to the high altitude.

The closest he came to cracking mentally was at the second camp at 17,500 feet when high winds hammered his tent.

“I stayed up all night with my headlamp on, holding the cross members of the tent,” McCarthy said. “I was afraid the tent would blow away. Even my guide was concerned and came over in the middle of the night to check on me.”

At first light, he was exhausted and still had 15 more days of climbing. Three members of his group got sick and had to be evacuated by helicopter at the second camp.

The group planned to summit Aconcagua, which means “Stone Sentinel,” on one of the last three days of February. But high winds delayed the climbers, and they finally reached the top on March 3.

Now back in Ann Arbor, McCarthy set up the tent again in the Taubman College. Some of the seams on the rip-stop nylon are stressed but the tent seems to have held up well on the windy mountain, which McCarthy’s guide said was a “tent graveyard.”

McCarthy has no plans to retire the tent. For the remainder of his thesis, he will continue to work on the design, using things he learned while living in it.

“I’m emotionally attached to it,” he said. “I’m sure there will be many more expeditions in this thing.”

More information and photos about the tent and expedition are available at McCarthy’s blog: http://abletoinhabit.com

Seth Soderborg got interested in Indonesia two years ago when he was looking at a list of the world’s most populous nations and noticed it was ranked No. 4, just behind the United States.

The political science major really got intrigued when he found out the U.S. government considers Indonesian to be a “critical language” that’s in high demand but spoken by few Americans.

“I found out it wasn’t a hard language to learn so I thought, ‘Why not give it a try?’” said Soderborg, who hopes the language will give him an edge when he pursues a government career.

Soderborg is one of many students taking advantage of the University of Michigan’s wide selection of courses in so-called “less commonly taught languages.” These are languages other than English, German, French and Spanish.

U-M has long been a great place for linguistically adventurous students. Classes are offered in more than 65 languages, from Polish and Urdu to Filipino, Punjabi and Swahili. The impressive variety, which few other universities offer, is another example of U-M’s commitment to providing a global education.

Students who study less commonly taught languages have a unique experience because the class sizes are usually small, giving them plenty of opportunities to speak, said Agustini, who teaches Indonesian and is the director of U-M’s Southeast Asian Language Program. A variety of financial aid is also available to the students, she said.

“I tell my students that they are very lucky here,” said Agustini, who like many Indonesians uses only one name.

Traditionally, the less commonly taught languages were funded by the federal government, under a Department of Education program called Title VI. The idea was that it was important for America’s national security and competitiveness for students to learn the critical languages.

But last year, Congress cut Title VI funding by 47 percent, forcing many language programs to find new sources of financial support.

Terry McDonald, dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, is committed to preserving the languages and has launched an initiative to raise endowment support for them, said Klementina Sula. Sula is working on a special project for the dean focused on funding languages, especially those affected by Title VI cuts.

“We do want to make sure the University of Michigan remains a full-language institution,” she said.

“We at LSA Development are working to raise $750,000 for each language, and that will ensure that these languages will be forever taught at the University of Michigan,” she said.

U-M alum Michael Dunne, who speaks Mandarin and Thai, believes it’s vital for the university to continue teaching the languages because they’re essential tools for doing business in this era of increasing globalization.

The Detroit native earned an MBA as well as an M.A. in Chinese language and literature in 1990 before moving to Asia to begin a career in the automotive industry. He recently published a book, “American Wheels, Chinese Roads: The Story of General Motors in China.”

He said he had no idea U-M offered courses in Thai until one of his business professors, Linda Y.C. Lim, advised him to study the language.

Dunne said Lim told him, “You’ve mastered Chinese. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Asia is a big place. Why not use some time to develop a second language?”

During his first year of Thai, only five people were in the class, said Dunne, who also earned a master’s degree in Southeast Asian studies.

“When I told people I was studying Thai, they would say, ‘Oh great, how soon will you go to Taiwan?’ There was no knowledge of Thailand. It wasn’t even on the map,” said Dunne, president of Dunne & Company, an auto consulting firm.

After getting his MBA, Dunne went to Thailand and was contacted by Chrysler, which was having difficulty securing Thai government approvals to manufacture Jeeps in the country. Chrysler’s representative was an Australian who couldn’t speak Thai.

“When the Chrysler people connected with me and we met Thai government officials together, I would start the meetings in Thai and end them in Thai, and somehow that made all the difference,” Dunne said.

It was a high profile issue that involved the U.S. ambassador and the Thai minister of finance. The stakes were very high and included tens of millions in investment.

“Speaking Thai broke the ice, made the Thais feels relaxed. They understand they were among friends,” he said. “The foundations for trust and growth were built through language.”

Dunne’s advice to students now is to recognize that the world is shifting to Asia and that countries like Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand are going to be full of opportunities.

“If Asia is going to be at the center, as we think, and these smaller fast-growing nations are an alternative to China, Americans should start learning Vietnamese, Indonesian and Thai – right now.”

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Dominic Nardi got stopped at the airport during his first trip to Burma as a tourist 11 years ago. Customs agents tried to seize a book from him because the cover had a small picture of Aung San Suu Kyi, a dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner reviled by the country’s repressive leaders.

When Nardi returned to Burma over the recent winter break, he didn’t bring any pictures of Suu Kyi. But the graduate student in political science was still interested in the dissident, and he planned to do something that would have been unimaginable just a year or so ago: meet with her in her home – the same place she spent most of the past two decades under house arrest.

Nardi was on a special mission for the University of Michigan to deliver the Wallenberg Medal to Suu Kyi. The humanitarian award is named after a U-M alumnus who saved tens of thousands of Jews near the end of World War II. Past recipients include the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

When Suu Kyi was given the Wallenberg last year, she could not attend the ceremony in Ann Arbor because she feared if she left Burma, the government wouldn’t allow her to return. She wanted to continue her peaceful struggle for democracy and human rights inside her Southeast Asian homeland.

Nardi was one of the best candidates to deliver the Wallenberg medal to Suu Kyi because Burma, also known as Myanmar, is one of his research interests. On his first trip to the country, he fell in love with the land and its people and has gone back nearly every year for the past decade.

“The people I met were extraordinarily kind, very generous,” he said.

He also has a personal connection with Suu Kyi. His wife, whom he met when they were both studying at Georgetown University, is Burmese and her grandfather served as a young bodyguard to the dissident’s father in the 1940s. His duties included occasional stints as a babysitter for Suu Kyi when she was a toddler.

The grandfather reconnected with Suu Kyi 40 years later. He joined her political party and was elected as a member of parliament in the 1990 election, which was later nullified by the regime.

Suu Kyi’s father, Aung San, led the battle against British colonial rule and is widely regarded to be the father of modern Burma. He was assassinated when Suu Kyi was only 2 years old.

For the past half century, the Burmese have suffered under brutal military rule. But when Nardi traveled to the country in December, it was undergoing what many hope will be a deep political thaw. The military appeared to be relaxing its grip, releasing Suu Kyi and scores of other political prisoners.

“It was really shocking,” said Nardi, describing the changes he witnessed.

Nardi said that before he set off for his appointment with Suu Kyi, his wife asked him to go to the market to buy a picture of the Nobel laureate for an autograph. Recalling how Suu Kyi’s image had been banned for so long, Nardi thought he was being sent on a fool’s errand.

“I remember thinking, ‘How in the heck am I going to get a photograph?’” he said.

To his amazement, the photos were virtually everywhere: street stalls, billboards, calendars, magazine shelves in supermarkets.

“This definitely reveals that she’s now more popular, more of a celebrity, more respected than ever before,” he said.

A steady parade of journalists and foreign dignitaries – including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – has visited Suu Kyi in recent weeks. Nardi said he had to wait on a bench outside a reception room in her home as she finished an interview with a TV crew.

When he finally got to meet Suu Kyi, he was most struck by how personable she was. “She comes across as a real person,” he said, “not a human rights icon.”

During the 30-minute meeting, they discussed the history of the Wallenberg medal and chatted about their lives and interests.

Nardi asked Suu Kyi if he could do something that might seem unusual in American culture. He asked her if he could perform a “kadaw”: kneeling down before her and touching his forehead to the ground three times while she says a prayer for him. It’s a common way to show respect to elders in Burma, and Suu Kyi gladly accepted his kadaw.

Some Burma watchers have been careful about assessing the apparent signs of reform, noting that the government has relaxed its grip before only to tighten it again.

But Nardi is cautiously optimistic and believes the current wave of reforms is definitely different from past periods. He thinks the changes are unprecedented and unlikely to be easily reversed.

“After 50 years of being in the desert,” he said, “there are signs of water.”

Brian Arbic flipped through a scrapbook from his days as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching math and physics in Ghana nearly 20 years ago. He found an old class roster, neatly written by hand on ruled paper, and pointed to the name of one of his best students – Joseph Ansong.

Before leaving the western African nation to pursue an academic career, Arbic visited Ansong, who had moved to a new school. The American was sad to see it was a shabby place with poorly trained teachers who often skipped class. The son of a poor corn farmer, Ansong couldn’t afford a better school. The future didn’t look bright for him.

“I remember thinking that Joseph could have gone to the University of Michigan and succeeded here if he were American,” Arbic said.

After losing touch for decades, the teacher and his former pupil are back together again, this time as colleagues, working in offices next to each other in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at U-M. Their improbable reunion is an inspiring story about the power of idealism, education, hard work and the enduring bonds between teachers and students.

Arbic grew up in Sault Ste Marie in the Upper Peninsula and majored in mathematics and physics at U-M. Before going to graduate school, he wanted to take a few years off doing something adventurous. He discussed his options with Ed Diehl, a graduate student in physics at the time. Diehl, now an associate research scientist at U-M, described his experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania.

“By the end of that conversation,” Arbic said, “I thought, OK, that’s what I want to do.”

The encounter was an important part of “the Michigan experience,” he said.

“This is a huge university with all kinds of people around,” he said, “so you meet people who have done interesting things, including people who have been in the Peace Corps, and that’s what did it for me.”

He was sent to the town of Damongo in northern Ghana in 1990 to teach math and physics to nearly 200 students in a high school.

A class photo with Arbic and Ansong (third from the right in the back)

It didn’t take long for Arbic to notice that Joseph was one of the brightest students in the class. “But he was pretty quiet,” he said. “I don’t remember him coming by and asking for advice.”

Arbic left a deep impression on Ansong. The bright, energetic and young teacher gave the school a huge boost, the African scholar said.

“It was a remote area, so you didn’t have good teachers coming over. They wanted to stay in the cities,” Ansong said. “So when you get someone like Brian who is serious about teaching, it was very helpful to us. He did a good job. I know that if he weren’t around, I would have failed physics. The whole class would have failed physics.”

Arbic wasn’t an instant hit. During the first few months, the idealistic young American spent much of his time teaching concepts. But in an education system centered on rote memorization, what the students really wanted was to be coached on how to pass the exams that were the sole determiners of their future, Ansong said.

“So if you are teaching and you aren’t bringing in past exams to demonstrate these are sample questions that you can solve, it was sort of like, ‘No, he’s not a good teacher,’” Ansong said.

Arbic said he eventually caught on and started teaching by using past exam questions as examples.

“I would say, ‘Let’s solve the 1985 math question #47,’ then there was a lot more interest,” he said.

The students also thought Arbic was strange because he would often go to the market to get his own food. In Ghana, students are expected to honor their teachers by serving them, doing their grocery shopping and household chores.

Arbic left Ghana in 1993 and earned a doctorate in physical oceanography from the Joint Program between Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution before eventually returning to U-M, where he’s an assistant professor of physical oceanography and ocean modeling.

After passing his national exams with Arbic’s help, Ansong moved to another school with a faculty of local teachers. His physics instructor was a local man who did trading on the side and was often gone on business trips. “So for a month, he would only come to class once,” he said.

His chemistry teacher was a laboratory technician who didn’t have a chemistry degree. His math teacher only covered one-sixth of the material they were supposed to study.

“You had to learn on your own. Take out the textbook and read,” Ansong said.

Despite the challenges, Ansong got into the University of Cape Coast and graduated at the top of his class. He was awarded a scholarship from the University of Twente in the Netherlands, where he earned a master’s degree and developed an interest in fluid dynamics. He earned a doctorate in applied mathematics from the University of Alberta in Canada.

During those busy years, the two men lost touch. But Arbic said that out of the blue in 2008, six of his former students in Ghana e-mailed him independently, thanking him for his teaching and updating him about their lives. One had a master’s degree from the U.K., while another was a health technician in Indiana.

But he had yet to hear from Ansong. “I was really curious about Joseph’s case because he was one of my best students and I was wondering how all that worked out,” he said.

He asked the others for Ansong’s address and by searching the Internet found out he was at University of Alberta working with Bruce Sutherland, a professor he knows well.

“I wrote to Bruce and said, ‘Do you realize your student was my student many years ago?’ It was pretty funny,” he said.

In late 2010, Arbic began talking to Ansong about the possibility of doing post-doctoral work at U-M. He eventually arrived last May and is part of a National Science Foundation-funded project studying how the ocean dissipates energy and mixes.

Ansong’s success illustrates one of the key takeaways of Arbic’s experience in Ghana.

“I remember telling people the best students there could do well at the best institutions here,” he said, “but they just don’t have the opportunity.”

Yemeni rights activist Tawakkul Karman, the first Arab woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, urged world powers Monday to freeze the assets of her nation’s president and charge him with crimes against humanity in a global court.

Speaking in Arabic and jabbing the air with her hands, the impassioned Karman spent most of her hour-long speech at U-M bashing the authoritarian regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

She drew applause in a packed Rackham Auditorium when she said, “We want a nation that is modern, civil and democratic. We need a nation that fights corruption.”

The crowd clapped again when she praised the courageous role Yemeni women have played in the protest movement that is trying to topple Saleh’s government. She noted that many of her female friends have lost their lives in the struggle in her homeland on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

“Yemeni women are building a new society with their own blood, the ultimate sacrifice,” said Karman, who was invited to U-M by the Arabic Flagship Program, an intensive language program for selected undergraduate students.

Supporters of Saleh say the nine-month protest campaign against the president is being led by extremists who would plunge Yemen — the Arab world’s poorest country — deeper into insecurity and chaos.

But Karman, a 32-year-old mother of three, insisted the protest movement was peaceful and would work together to rebuild Yemen if Saleh were forced from power.

“We want to retrieve our nation,” said Karman, who wore a head scarf with a white, red and rose floral pattern. “We want to end the image created by Saleh that we are a nation of barbarian terrorists.”

She said world powers could help her cause by freezing the assets of Saleh and his family. She also said she hoped Saleh would be charged in the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

This year, Karman shared her Nobel Prize with two other women: Liberian President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson and Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee.

During a question-and-answer session, Karman was asked if the Nobel Peace Prize would protect her from Saleh’s violent crackdowns. She said that she thinks she’s more of a target than before.

“The Nobel has provided me with something better than protection. It has offered recognition of the revolution of the Arab Spring,” she said, referring to the recent political change sweeping across the Middle East.

A 10-year-old audience member asked Karman how her children reacted when she won the Nobel.

“When they heard the announcement,” she said, “They said, ‘Momma, you did it!’”

Other hosting units for the speech were the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, International Institute, Islamic Studies Program, Middle East and South Asia Gender Studies Initiative in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender; Vice Provost for International Affairs and the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Kenneth Lieberthal, a professor emeritus and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, returned to the University of Michigan to join ongoing celebrations for the Center for Chinese Studies’ 50th anniversary.

In an interview with the U-M News Service, Lieberthal, director of Brookings’ John L. Thornton China Center, discussed U-M’s history with China and the outlook for the massive country. Here are excerpts:

NEWS SERVICE: U-M has had a long, amazing history with China that dates back as far as 1880 when President James Angell took temporary leave from the university to serve as U.S. minister to China. Since then, several other faculty members have played key roles in U.S.-China relations. How did this happen?

LIEBERTHAL: It is remarkable because Michigan after all is a Midwestern university. It’s not on the West Coast, and it’s not near a huge center like New York City. I think some of this is serendipitous. When President Angell went to China in the 1880s, it was out of his own personal interest.

Before World War II, we had a number of Chinese come to the University of Michigan to get degrees. One of my real pleasures in going to China in the 1970s was meeting Michigan alumni from the pre-revolutionary period, before 1949. They got Michigan degrees and had gone back.

We have three members of the center family, Rich Solomon, Michel Oksenberg and I, who was lucky enough to be the third, to serve as the top person in charge of Asia, including responsibility for China, on the National Security Council under three different presidents: Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and, for me, Bill Clinton. So we played a direct role in U.S.-China relations.

NEWS SERVICE: In Washington, lawmakers have renewed calls for China to further revalue its currency. There have also been new threats about tariffs for Chinese exports. Would this be a smart move?

LIEBERTHAL: Frankly, currency issues are ones that almost no one understands except real specialists. It sounds plausible that if China increased the value of the renmninbi vis-a-vis the U.S. dollar, it would correct our trade imbalance. The reality is that for a series of complicated reasons, that’s wrong. It would have a minor impact on our trade balance but not a significant impact.

From the perspective of a member of Congress, it’s politically very attractive because it effectively says that the imbalance in our trade is all due to the Chinese, and they just need to flip a switch to a new policy in Beijing and correct everything. So the U.S. doesn’t have to do anything and we have no responsibility for this. The reality is that it’s much more complicated than that.

I think there are other areas, such market access in China and Chinese investment in the U.S.?a variety of things that are more difficult and more complicated?that are far more important for balancing our bilateral trade relationship.

NEWS SERVICE: What are the prospects for U.S.-China relations? What kind of advice do you give U.S. policymakers about how to deal with China?

LIEBERTHAL: I think we have some very big problems to confront. One of the most significant of those is a lack of mutual trust. We have built this relationship over 30 years and have been more successful than either side would have anticipated 30 years ago. But at the end of the day, neither side trusts the long-term intentions of the other.

The narrative in China is very much that the U.S. is No. 1 and China is no. 2 in the global economic rankings, and the U.S. inevitably seeks to hold down China’s rise and even to disrupt that rise to prevent competition from a rising power.

On the U.S. side, I think we are still looking for a win-win outcome with China. We want to see China rise. We think that holds a lot of opportunities. We certainly don’t want China to fail. We think the problems that would be created by failure are ones that no one knows how to manage. I would say that we want China to rise as a constructive global player.

But if we see over the long run that China sees this relationship in zero-sum terms, it will color our own thinking about where our own interests lie. If a stronger China feels it needs to undercut the United States in order to do what it wishes in the world, that’s a very significant issue. So there are some dangers lurking here.

NEWS SERVICE: We often hear about how China is booming and is expected to soon overtake the U.S. as the world’s No. 1 economy. But what are some of the main challenges that China faces?

LIEBERTHAL: The country has had a streak of economic growth that is the envy of the world. But at the end of the day, they are in deep trouble. They confront dramatic challenges that the leadership is very well aware of and frankly extremely concerned about at this point.

China has followed a development model that is based on several key assumptions. They’ve been good assumptions for several decades but are now basically exhausted.

One relates to demographics. They assumed that they would have an almost unlimited pool of very cheap and very flexible young labor. That pool is now shrinking. Labor rates are going up. Laborers are becoming more demanding. This is moving China out of the low-end of the manufacturing sector.

The second assumption is that China could develop now and clean up later like Japan and so many other countries did. The reality is that China’s environmental catastrophe is so profound at this point that they realize they can no longer afford to develop at such an unlimited cost to the environment.

Thirdly, they assumed the world would tolerate almost unlimited increases in Chinese exports. But ever since the global financial crisis, that absorption capacity is no longer there in nearly the degree they had before.

The bottom line is that right now, there are very, very serious concerns about social stability in China, resulting from inequality in wealth, environmental degradation, all kinds of additional sources of tension.

When China’s leaders look at their country, they see challenges as far as the eye can see. From the outside, it looks like an unstoppable machine. From their side, this is a place that is extremely difficult to manage.

Foreigners go to China and tend to congregate in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, the big, wealthy dynamic East Coast cities. I think the real way to view China is as a relatively developed, reasonably modern country of about 450 million people who live on islands of relative modernity in a sea of a developing country with a population of over 800 million?and the interaction between these two sides of China is pervasive.

Many of those who visit don’t understand the dynamics of this. Butno leader of China ever forgets about the 800 million and concentrates solely on the 400 plus million. So you need to appreciate this is an extraordinarily difficult set of issues. The problems are more profound than most outsiders realize. I think the leaders have done a reasonably good job of handling it, but this is something that no leader can ignore and no outsider who studies China should neglect, either.

Seated in a room that once was her prison cell, Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi chatted with U-M students, dishing out advice, analyzing the Arab Spring, joking about an upcoming Hollywood movie on her life and sharing hopes for democracy in her repressive country.

The rare and lively discussion with the global icon for democracy was held Oct. 25 after Suu Kyi received the Wallenberg Medal. The humanitarian honor is named after a U-M alumnus who saved tens of thousands of Jews near the end of World War II.

Suu Kyi accepted the medal in absentia because of fears that if she leaves Burma, the authoritarian rulers wouldn’t allow her to return to the Southeast Asian nation.

Her Wallenberg Lecture was recorded by video in her living room in Rangoon a few weeks before the event and shown during the ceremony in Rackham Auditorium, packed with students, faculty and community members.

A live question-and-answer session via Skype with Suu Kyi followed the lecture. When her face appeared on the massive screen in the auditorium, the audience stood up and gave her a thunderous round of applause. Suu Kyi smiled as she was shown her Wallenberg Medal.

Four students seated on the stage asked the first couple rounds of questions before taking more from the audience.

It was a unique opportunity to talk to the dissident and Nobel Peace laureate, who has spent most of the past 20 years detained in her home. She was freed nearly a year ago amid signs that a political thaw might be underway in Burma. But such periods of apparent liberalization have ended with renewed crackdowns in the past, so it’s uncertain whether Suu Kyi will remain free much longer.

The Burmese dissident told her U-M audience that the years she spent in detention were worthwhile because they helped focus global attention on her movement. Suu Kyi’s party won elections in 1990, but the military rulers refused to give up power.

She applauded the Arab Spring and the toppling of repressive regimes in the Middle East. But she said it was regretful the changes in Libya did not come peacefully. Violence “leaves wounds that are very difficult to heal,” she said.

“I think in the long run, non violence pays off, but it’s a long road. It’s difficult,” she added.

Suu Kyi said that democratic reforms were inevitable for other countries, such as China. “I myself believe in democracy and I believe human beings want to be free and want to be secure,” she said.

When asked to name some of the most inspiring figures in her life, she first mentioned her mother, who taught her how to be courageous and have a highly developed sense of duty, she said.

She also said she was inspired by Raoul Wallenberg, a 1935 graduate of the U-M College of Architecture. While working as a Swedish diplomat, Wallenberg saved the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews by issuing them protective passports and hiding them in safe houses.

Suu Kyi said she has been campaigning for a better life for her own people, but what made Wallenberg so heroic is that he risked his life for people of another race and religion.

Some have questioned whether Burma will ever be able to create a true democracy after being mired in oppression and corruption for decades. But Suu Kyi said the American example made her hopeful about Burma’s future.

“Wasn’t there oppression in the United States?” she asked, drawing laughter from the audience. “You can’t pretend there was never such a thing as oppression in the United States and you worked your way out of it.”

She added, “What’s the point of being human if you’re prepared to stay in a pit forever. We’ve got to climb out.”

Suu Kyi’s life story has been made into a Hollywood movie, “The Lady,” which will be released soon and feature former “Bond girl” Michelle Yeoh in the lead role.

“I find it a little embarrassing,” she said. “I have to confess I don’t like the idea of a film made about me. I don’t know what’s in it. I’m not terribly keen on watching the film. Perhaps I never will.”

The discussion with the students made Suu Kyi reflect on her own school years, which she said were some of the best ones in her life. She urged the students to live an active life and try to change the world.

“When I was under house arrest, I used to think of my days as a student, and it would make me happy because we were so full of confidence.”

She added, “Just don’t sit there. You won’t get anywhere if you just sit there.”

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Oct. 24—University of Michigan students have been awarded 29 Fulbright grants for the 2011-12 academic year, topping the list of U.S. institutions for the fifth time in the past seven years.

As participants in one of the most competitive and prestigious awards programs in the world, the students will fan out across the globe to do research, study or teach English for six to 12 months.

The grantees will represent U-M in 25 countries. Their interests range from researching structural engineering in Norway and cancer screening in Tanzania to water quality in India and literature in Germany.

“It’s no accident that the University of Michigan has consistently achieved high numbers of grantees in a scholarship competition designed to enhance global exchanges,” said Ken Kollman, director of the U-M International Institute. “The university has taken great care to foster an environment that values and promotes student immersion in other cultures.”

The grants are awarded to about 1,700 students each year on the basis of academic or professional achievement as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. The program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the U.S. and other countries. It offers grants in nearly all fields and disciplines and operates in more than 135 countries worldwide.

Ranking behind U-M this year was Northwestern University with 27 recipients, Yale University with 26 and the University of Chicago with 25.

George Dong, who completed his U-M bachelor’s degree in 2009, is among the new grantees. He plans to research access to higher education for minorities in Yunnan, a province in southwestern China.

“My parents grew up in rural China and never had the opportunity to attend college,” Dong said. “I applied to the Fulbright U.S. Student Program because I want to return to my parents’ home country to help underprivileged students in Yunnan Province. I hope to use insights gained from this experience to develop a broader understanding of how to improve and expand educational opportunities for all.”

For further information about the Fulbright U.S. Student Program: www.ii.umich.edu.

The 2011-2012 U-M Fulbright U.S. Student grantees, their degrees*, the countries where they will be studying, and their projects include:

Irsida Bejo, M.Arch, TCAUP (Architecture), Albania;Reactivating Public Space in Tiran: Enabling New Continuities That Inform Urban Performance

Jennifer Buison, B.S.E, College of Engineering (Civil Engineering), Philippines; Housing Initiatives of Non-Government Organizations in Metropolitan Manila

Edward Byrne, B.S.E., College of Engineering (Civil Engineering), Norway; Proposed Study of Structural Engineering in Norway

George Dong, B.A., LSA (English), China; Access to Higher Education: The Wa Ethnic Minority in Lincang, Yunnan

Jacqueline Doremus, Ph.D., LSA (Economics), Republic of Congo; Strategic Implications of Independent Forest Monitoring

Georgia Ennis, B.A., LSA (Spanish), Ecuador; English Teaching Assistantship

Matthew Gacioch, B.S., LSA (Program in the Environment), Indonesia; English Teaching Assistantship

Jennifer Geiger, B.S., LSA (Program in the Environment), India; Arsenic-contaminated drinking water: Poisoning child development in West Bengal?

Zachary Goldsmith, B.A., LSA (Political Science); Armenia, English Teaching Assistantship

Elizabeth Gramm, M.F.A, LSA (Creative Writing); Turkey, English Teaching Assistantship

Kamayani Gupta, B.S., LSA (Brain, Behavior, and Cognitive Science), Malaysia; English Teaching Assistantship

Dorothy Heebner, B.A., LSA (Political Science, Economics), Taiwan; English Teaching Assistantship

Adam Janosko, B.A., LSA (English Language and Literature), subsequent M.A., American University, Kenya; English Teaching Assistantship

Hajin Jun, B.A., LSA (History, Political Science), South Korea; Hosanna, Mansei, or Banzai? Religion and Politics in the March First Movement

Delvina Kolic, B.A., LSA (Political Science, History), Bulgaria; English Teaching Assistantship

Kyle Locke, B.A., LSA (History), Spain; English Teaching Assistantship

Carolyn Lusch, B.A., LSA (Spanish, Creative Writing), Spain; English Teaching Assistantship

Katherine MacDuffie, B.S., LSA (Neuroscience), New Zealand; Imagining the Future in the Context of Reward

Powell Perng, B.S.E., College of Engineering (Biomedical Engineering), Tanzania; Barriers to Cervical Cancer Screening in Rural Villages of Bagamoyo District, Tanzania

Kathryn Sederberg, Ph.D., LSA (German), Germany; Surviving the “Zero Hour”: Women’s Writing in Postwar Germany 1945

Rohit Setty, Ph.D., School of Education (Teaching and Teacher Education), India; Shaping Teacher Education: India’s New National Curriculum for Teacher Education

Catherine Shubert, B.A., LSA (English Language and Literature), subsequent M.S., University of Pennsylvania, Andorra; English Teaching Assistantship

Charles Sullivan, Ph.D., LSA (Southeast Asian History), Indonesia; Changes in Political, Religious and Cultural Authority in Solo from 1800: A Southeast Asian Case

Heather Tidrick, Ph.D., LSA (Anthropology and Social Work), Hungary; Roma integration, Romological Knowledge, and Institutional Practices with Roma in Hungary

Joseph Viscomi, Ph.D., LSA (Anthropology and History),Italy; Morals, History, and Migration: A Historical Ethnography of Egypt Migrants in Italy

Christine Walker, Ph.D., LSA (History), Jamaica; Jamaica’s Motley Brood: How Widows, Slaves and Strumpets Created the British Empire

Jasmine Way, M.S.E., College of Engineering (Industrial and Operations Engineering), France; English Teaching Assistantship

Cynthia Yoon, B.A., LSA (Political Science, Asian Studies), Vietnam; Vietnamese Brides in Mekong Delta, Vietnam

Jacob Zunamon, B.A., LSA (History), Spain, English Teaching Assistantship

* Degrees listed are either the highest degree attained or the degree currently in progress.

Fulbright Program
Since its establishment in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the Fulbright Program has given approximately 300,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists, and scientists the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns. For more information, visit fulbright.state.gov.

University of Michigan International Institute
The University of Michigan International Institute houses 18 centers and programs focused on world regions and global themes. The institute develops and supports international teaching, research, and public affairs programs to promote global understanding across the campus and to build connections with intellectuals and institutions worldwide. For more information, visit www.ii.umich.edu.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Susan Waltz, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, served as an observer in Sunday’s historic elections in Tunisia—the nation that sparked the Arab Spring uprising with a surprise wave of street protests.

Waltz, who teaches in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, was part of the Carter Center’s Election Observer Mission working in the northern Africa country.

“It is, of course, a real privilege to be here as an election observer,” Waltz said via e-mail. “In just a few short months, Tunisians have undertaken a complete overhaul of their electoral system—everything from setting up a system of polling centers, creating a bureau of independent election officials and registering people to vote.”

Waltz’s work is another example of U-M’s deep interest and involvement in Africa. The university also provides fellowships to young African scholars and collaborates with engineering and public health projects across the continent.

Sunday’s vote was the first free election since a massive uprising—fueled by anger over corruption and poverty—in January toppled the government of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled for 23 years.

Voters cast ballots to elect a body that will write a new constitution and choose an interim government before more elections are held in about a year. The voting was complex, with some electoral districts having between 80 to 100 lists of candidates to choose from.

Waltz said her vote-monitoring responsibilities included filling in a series of detailed checklists at polling stations in a district south of the capital, Tunis. Monitors paid close attention to whether polling stations are accessible, voters have time to cast ballots, procedures guard against duplicate voting and adequate privacy is provided, among several other issues.

Scholarly gems are often found by sifting through dusty archives in foreign lands thousands of miles away. But sometimes they’re discovered just by doing some office cleaning on campus.

That’s what happened recently at the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. Staffers who were tidying up a storage room found a stunning collection of rare propaganda papercut images from the Cultural Revolution—a period of massive political upheaval in China that began in 1966 and lasted about a decade.

That’s what happened recently at the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. Staffers who were tidying up a storage room found a stunning collection of rare propaganda papercut images from the Cultural Revolution—a period of massive political upheaval in China that began in 1966 and lasted about a decade.

With incredible detail, the long-forgotten papercuts portray the euphoria and zeal of the era as well as the violence and destruction that left the Chinese economy in shambles. The beautifully preserved poster-size images are painstakingly cut out of red paper in the tradition of the age-old Chinese handicraft, more commonly used to make decorations for weddings, Lunar New Year celebrations and other festivities.

One papercut shows the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong and his hand-picked successor, Lin Biao, standing up in a convertible car and waving to his cheering youthful followers, or Red Guards. In another image, Red Guards burn books while trampling on a Buddhist statue and other symbols of the feudal culture that Mao sought to wipe out. One papercut shows rallying workers threatening to stab political enemies with giant fountain pens that look like spears.

Wang Zheng, an associate professor of history at U-M, said she plans to use the papercuts in a book she is writing about the Cultural Revolution.

“What struck me as extremely valuable is that this papercut set has 15 images total, and these 15 papercuts actually present a historical narrative,” Wang said. “I’ve never seen such a large coherent narrative presented visually.”

The Center for Chinese Studies, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this fall, has no clear record of who left the papercuts.

But the center’s director, Mary Gallagher, associate professor of political science, said the images were part of a large collection of material donated by the late scholar Michel Oksenberg, who taught at U-M for two decades beginning in 1973. Oksenberg is believed to have collected the paper cuts while doing research in Hong Kong in the early 70s, Gallagher said.

The set was probably made between 1970 and 71—during the middle of the Cultural Revolution—because they feature Lin Biao, Wang said. Lin was later accused of plotting a coup against Mao and branded a traitor after dying in a plane crash while fleeing the country in 1971.

Wang said the papercut collection is also significant because it was produced at a small art academy in the southern province of Guangdong—far from the center of power in Beijing. It’s unlikely that the collection was authorized or commissioned by the Communist Party’s central leadership, she said.

“This large art set was kind of spontaneously produced by the local artists. They didn’t have to follow Mao’s command,” she said. “In other words, we can use this to see how the very common, very average artists understood the Cultural Revolution at the time.”

Wang is trying to track down the artists in China and hopes to interview them to gain more insights about the era.

China’s revolutionary art is in high demand by collectors, and prices for papercuts vary a great deal in auctions and websites, said Xiaobing Tang, a U-M professor who studies modern and contemporary Chinese literature and visual culture.

Tang said that U-M’s papercuts are likely more valuable than others found online because they are more complex and refined.

“I would not be able to give the collection an appraisal,” he said, “but I can well imagine that each papercut may fetch over 1,000 RMB ($155) if it finds a serious collector.”

There are no immediate plans for a public display of the actual images because of concerns about preserving the delicate pieces. However, the public can learn more about the collection at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/ccs1ic or view high-resolution scans of the papercut images at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/ccs1ic?med=1;sort=ccs1ic_id;type=boolean;view=thumbnail;rgn1=ic_all;q1=ccs1ic.