The Next Chapter for Greg Mortenson and the Central Asia Institute

I've written before about my desire to salvage some good from the Greg Mortenson story and the charity, Central Asia Institute (CAI), he founded for the sake of the Pakistani and Afghan children the charity serves and the American children who have invested in it. We read two books by Mortenson, Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools, and our Loyal Readers certainly believe that promoting education of girls in the remote regions of these countries is very important. So what's happened since 60 Minutes and Jon Krakauer questioned some of CAI's origin story and exposed the non-profit's dubious accounting? There have been some developments in the possible rehabilitation of Mortenson and CAI, so I've assembled a few links to bring us up to date.

First, the Montana Attorney General has issued a report. According to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, the AG found that funds had been mismanaged and that Mortenson should pay $1 million in restitution to CAI, but that there was no basis for criminal prosecution. Admonitions were also made regarding the structure of the charity's governing board and Mortenson's future relationship to the organization. Mortenson has already repaid about half the money he owes to CAI and the board has a timetable for restructuring. For more about CAI's response, here's a brief audio interview from WBUR's Here & Now with Anne Beyersdorfer, CAI's acting director. If the governance reforms are implemented, this may go some way towards answering the critics (see, for example, Non-Profit Quarterly from last year). CAI's website has improved somewhat, with more information about the status of their projects, and a blog with regular updates from the field. Also of interest, last year Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty sent a reporter to assess the status of some CAI-built schools and found some thriving, while others appear to be struggling, suggesting a lack of oversight. Mortenson still faces a civil lawsuit from a group of disgruntled readers who claim that parts of his story were fabricated and that they were therefore mislead into buying his books and are asking for compensation and punitive damages. The lawsuit has just had it's first hearing but there is some skepticism that the case will move forward as that kind of accountability for a memoir would be unprecedented. The outlook for CAI over all does seem to be improving, and I hope that with new leadership and even greater transparency in the coming year, the good that the organization has already accomplished will be reinforced and future mentions of the charity on this blog can focus on the Afghan and Pakistani children whose needs captivated us from the start.

Sorting out the Greg Mortenson Scandal

I've waited a few days after the big scandal regarding Greg Mortenson's books (we've read both Greg Mortenson's Stones into Schools and Three Cups of Tea) and his non-profit work building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, to see what the fallout would be. Now I think I have a few useful links to share as we try to make sense out of the story.  First, of course there is the original 60 Minutes story and Jon Kraukauer's piece for Byliner.  Mortenson has responded via the Central Asia Institute's website and this interview in Outside. The news for Mortenson gets worse with the Montana Attorney General's office investigating and lawsuits in the wind.

For a more mixed view of Greg Mortenson and CAI from those who have met him and visited his schools, check out this this reaction from a reporter for MinnPost and the NYT editorial by Nick Kristof, Three Cups Spilled.  I also recommend, Peter Hessler's very insightful New Yorker piece, What Mortenson Got Wrong. Kristof worries about cynicism setting in regarding overseas charitable endeavors while Hessler wonders where the skepticism in the press has been for Mortenson and CAI over the past decade.  I've found myself wondering, where have all those now emerging to critique CAI been all these years?  I would gladly have shared that information as part of our discussion. It would have made for a lively debate!

The New Yorker's Book Bench blog comments with a sentiment felt by many readers of his books, I'm sure,

The Times talked to a military official in Afghanistan, who said, “We continue to believe in the logic of what Greg is trying to accomplish in Afghanistan and Pakistan because we know the powerful effects that education can have on eroding the root causes of extremism.” That’s an endorsement of an idea, not a person—the hope is that the idea can survive the person who gave it life, should that person be found wanting.

For the sake of the many school children who saved Pennies for Peace in the hopes of helping children in Pakistan, I too hope the message survives the man.

Our March Author: Greg Mortenson

This month we are reading Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Education in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Greg Mortenson. We've already discussed Three Cups of Tea, his first bestseller about building schools in Pakistan and we recommend you check out our previous related posts.  Stones, which brings the school-building story forward into Afghanistan was released at almost the same time President Obama announced his plans to increase troop strength in Afghanistan in December 2009 so a discussion of the way forward in Afghanistan dominated interviews with the author, such as this one from On Point or try this Bill Moyer's interview.

 BILL MOYERS: How is your work going to be impacted by the fact that it's going on in a society where the war is being escalated?

GREG MORTENSON: Well, our work will go on whether or not the U.S. has military there or not in that we work so closely with the elders. With the deployment of troops there, I, I've got a lot of mixed feelings on it. The first thing is that when President Obama had nine meetings to ascertain or decide whether or not to deploy troops to Afghanistan, those meetings were held in secrecy, behind closed doors. There was no public debate. There was no congressional hearings. There was no media involved.

We can't run democracy in secrecy. And it doesn't matter whether it's George Bush or Obama. That was one of my main concerns is-it's a big decision. The other thing is that there was no consultation with the elders or the shura in Afghanistan. Every province has three to five dozen shura. And these are elders. They're poets. They're warriors. They're businessmen, a few women. And they're not elected, but they've kind of risen up through the ranks. And these to me are the real people with integrity and power in Afghanistan. So when this decision was made to deploy troops, none, there was no consultation with the troo-- with the elders. And they felt very marginalized by it because, you know, want to go into another country, we want to be able to at least have a part and a say in it. And it's not that difficult. You can do it at a district level, or local level, or at a national level. It's, you know, I think half of diplomacy is just showing up. You know, we've got to actually just show up and start to talk and then maybe we could get somewhere. 

NYT columnist Nick Kristof is a big fan. See Dr. Greg and Afghanistan and 1 Solider or 20 Schools? and the NYT's Elizabeth Bumiller explores Mortenson's relationship with the US military: Unlikely Tutor Giving Military Advice.  For a lighter perspective on Dr. Greg there is this interview from travelblog World Hum.

Not all of us are going to come back from a trip and start a foundation to fund education projects.
I hope not.

What do you recommend for the rest of us?
One of the things is to try to continue just one of your relationships that you made on your trip. Whether it’s a hotel worker or a guide, just keep in touch with somebody. I also think there are so many more travel companies that are giving five or 10 percent to local organizations. 

And maybe what you saw was very beautiful, but you probably also saw some things that were not too pleasant. I think we shouldn’t try to bury them. We should talk about those things, whether it’s child labor or slavery or environmental degradation. The power of one is very powerful.

Finally, if you do nothing else, just take in this page from the Central Asia Institute showing a map and growing list of all the schools which have been built in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And then for a glimpse of some of the children, watch this short Christiane Amanpour report from CNN.

The trashy Sunday supplement Parade occasionally has an interesting tidbit, and today is a case in point: an article on Greg Mortenson, author of the best-selling Three Cups of tea, which we read a year or so ago. Here's the link. It seems that Greg is still active in both Pakistan and Afghanistan and doing some good, which (if true) is a change from the usual dismal news from that area. This article is no doubt related to his forthcoming book, which Martha mentioned in her blog last month.

PS: Also in today's LATimes is a review of the latest by Ha Jin, of whom we read The Crazed in 2004. I found this review particularly interesting because it discusses his life since he fled China after Tienanmen and switched to writing in English, which he now teaches at Boston U. (Couldn't find the review online, but it's by Julia Klein.)

Rights Readers Round-up

Our periodic round-up of what's been happening with our favorite authors:

Martha Minow (Between Vengeance and Forgiveness) has been appointed Dean of Harvard Law School.

A retrial has been ordered for some of the alleged conspirators in the murder of Anna Politkovskaya (Putin's Russia).

Amira Hass (Drinking the Sea at Gaza) speaks with Amy Goodman about editing her mother's Holocaust memoir (Diary of Bergen-Belsen: 1944-1945--Hanna Levy-Hass).

In the wake of the sentencing of two American journalists to hard labor in North Korea, the NYT discusses sources of information regarding life in North Korea which of course includes Kang Chol-hwan's (The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag). Also noted is this video of the camp where Kang lived. Take action for Laura Ling and Euna Lee here.

Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea) received the Jefferson Award for public service and more recognition from the National Education Association. National Geographic notes a Pakistani honor and investigates his project's Taliban problem.

Toni Morrison has been promoting a volume she edited on censorship (Burn This Book: PEN Writers Speak Out on the Power of the Word) which includes essays by Rights Readers favorites Salman Rushdie, Orhan Pamuk and Nadine Gordimer, The NYT reports,

Morrison, looking regal and speaking in a warm, languid voice, talked about how she had proudly framed and hung in a bathroom a letter that said that “Song of Solomon” could not be distributed among Texas inmates because “it might stir inmates to riot.” She let that sink in for a few seconds. “I thought, ‘what a powerful book.’ ”

Speaking of censorship... Jose Saramago (Blindness) has found himself at the center of the struggle for press freedom in Italy. The BBC has a good profile on the Nobel Laureate in anticipation of his forthcoming book, Death with Interruptions.

Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) has sanctioned a reworking of some of her material to promote Iranian democracy. The Guardian quotes the creators of the mash-up,

"Her cartoon are about her life but to my generation of Iranians (at least in the West) they have become more than that, they have become iconic. The fact that images from 30 years ago can tell a story about what is happening now makes them all the more powerful.

"Unlike her original work, Persepolis 2.0 is filled with flaws and inaccuracies, but the bottom line is that it has helped spark hundreds of conversations and that's more than we could have expected."

Californians! Read Sister Helen Prejean's (Dead Man Walking) no-holds-barred letter to the Department of Corrections regarding revisions to California's lethal injection protoccol.

Were you aware of Amnesty International's contributions to the history of comedy? Fun interview with Monty Python vets from WNYC here.

The Girl Effect

Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea is now out in picturebook and young reader versions. The NYT takes a look. While we are being reminded of this powerful story centered on children, especially girls, how about a little women's history month PSA:



For more see: Girls Count: A Global Investment & Action Agenda

Spring Cleaning

Lately I've accumulated a backlog of links which I should have blogged in a timely fashion so that you would have learned that Michael Ignatieff (Rights Readers selection Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond) is now the leader of Canada's Liberal Party -- and just now has taken the opportunity of his meeting with President Obama to discuss the case of Guantanamo juvenile detainee Omar Khadr.

Or you would know that Samantha Power (A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide) has taken a position with the NSC, but before she stepped up to serve she wrote yet another profile of a human rights defender for the New Yorker (and oh yeah here's a short version of the one she wrote a whole book about.)

And then there's Arundhati Roy's (The Cost of Living) response to the Mumbai attacks, the fact that Jon Burge (a central figure in John Conroy's Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The Dynamics of Torture) was arrested last fall, and Daniel Alarcon (Lost City Radio) had a New Yorker short story with a provocative title published in October.

Fortunately, this American Scholar article about Chinese censorship by Ha Jin (Ocean of Words Army Stories and The Crazed) is the sort of thing that doesn't date that fast and a little item in my local paper-- "Last month a bipartisan group of six members of Congress nominated Greg Mortenson [Three Cups of Tea] for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize"-- might still make a you-heard-it-here-first list.

Phew! That felt good! Perhaps we'll do that again sometime, sooner rather than later.

Greetings from Wisconsin!

Most Loyal Readers know already that their Leader Reader has departed California for Wisconsin. Here's a little update on my reading exploits since moving here:

Apart from venturing into a community book discussion group, I arrived just in time for River Falls Reads 2008 and attended the kick-off event featuring Jerene Mortenson, the mother of Greg Mortenson, author of Rights Readers selection Three Cups of Tea. As noted before, River Falls is the birthplace of "Pennies for Peace", a program that educates American children about the world beyond their experience and raises funds for schools in Central Asia. A few things I learned from the talk: that there are over 400 U.S. schools now in the program, and that pennies were chosen to make sure children of all incomes could participate. I was also intrigued to learn that storytelling is part of the curriculum for students in Pakistan, thus incorporating the elders of the village and the oral tradition into the schools. I would love to hear some of those stories! My California readers will also be heartened to learn that steps are being taken to build new schools that are designed to better withstand earthquakes. The rest of the River Falls Reads event line-up looks interesting as well. Small towns have a lot to offer! I am sure I will have more reading adventures to share in the future...

Our August Author: Colin Cotterill

Launching our discussion of Colin Cotterill's mystery, The Coroner's Lunch, I want to direct you to the author's website: Colin Cotterill. Not only are the pictures, always a plus, especially in our reading discussion-lite August mode, there are cartoons! Also, for those who just finished reading Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea, you'll want to check out the Books for Laos section --more about under-served kids and education.

NPR's Day to Day did a profile on the author a couple years back: Book Bag: Laos as Character in 'The Coroner's Lunch'

Greg Mortenson Round-up

All our Greg Mortenson / Three Cups of Tea discussion posts can be found here.

Moshin Hamid Update

While we are on the subject of Pakistan, in contrast to our journey with Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea) Moshin Hamid (Rights Readers selection Moth Smoke) takes us on an urban journey, as interviewed in the Guardian,

"I'm a big city dweller," he explains. "The world has become majority urban and this urban narrative is rapidly becoming the typical human narrative. I would say Moth Smoke was an urban third world novel, much more than a southern Asian novel. A magazine editor in Chile who had read the Spanish translation phoned me up out the blue and said 'This book is about Santiago!' which shows how a city can resonate across the world."

Looking forward to reading his latest in the near future.

It's All About the Children

When reading Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea, especially the "Pennies for Pakistan" story of children at Westside School in River Falls, Wisconsin (blocks from where your Leader Reader grew up!), I couldn't help but be reminded of "A School for Iqbal" and the inspiring story of middle school students in Massachusetts who raised money to build a school for former child laborers in memory of slain Pakistani child activist Iqbal Masih. Here's another kid-friendly presentation of the Iqbal story. I've always said when encountering young people's enthusiasm for causes that are meaningful to them, that I wish that some of that unbridled idealism could be bottled up and sold to cynical adults.

And here's a story from PRI's The World about a former Peace Corps worker who has helped revive folk songs that were banned during Taliban rule for the benefit of today's Afghan children. What a lovely gift!

Aid to Pakistan: School for Scandal?

A little more food for thought for our discussion of Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea:

From a 2004 report from the International Crisis Group, Pakistan: Reforming the Education Sector,

Recent attempts at reform have made little headway, and spending as a share of national output has fallen in the past five years. Pakistan is now one of just twelve countries that spend less than 2 per cent of GDP on education. Moreover, an inflexible curriculum and political interference have created schools that have barely lifted very low literacy rates.

From a May 2007 report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists,

ICIJ's data show that when all U.S. programs are combined, Pakistan's increase in U.S. military aid in the three years after 9/11 is a stunning 45,000 percent, growing from just $9 million in the three years before the attacks to more than $4 billion in the three years after. In the process, Pakistan has become the No. 3 recipient of U.S. military training and assistance, trailing only longtime leaders Israel and Egypt.

Getting into the Environment of Three Cups of Tea

A couple of somewhat tangential links to Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea:

A sampling of Galen Rowell's photos from Pakistan.

Just for fun, more about snow leopards from the Snow Leopard Trust.

Afghanistan: Attacks on Schools

A timely supplement to our reading of Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea:

The New York Times reports on attacks on female students attending schools in Afghanistan.

Shukria, the slain 13-year-old, was considered a polite girl who reverently studied the Koran. Saadia, the other student killed, was remarkable in that she was married and 25. She had refused to let age discourage her from finishing an education interrupted by the Taliban years. She was about to graduate.

The article includes a photo essay.

A recent Amnesty International report Afghanistan: All who are not friends, are enemies: Taleban abuses against civilians offers up some grim statistics:

• At least 172 violent attacks on schools took place in the first six months of 2006 compared with 60 for the whole of 2005.
• 75 students, teachers and other school staff were killed in attacks between 2005 to 2006.
• Between 2005-2006, 359 schools were closed in the provinces of Kandahar, Paktika, Zabul, Ghazni, Khost, Helmand Uruzgan and Daikundi due to security concerns for children and teachers, denying access to education for around 132,800 children.
• 183 schools were burned in arson attacks across the country between 2005-2006.
• Six children have died as a result of school attacks in 2006.

See also Afghanistan: Women Still Under Attack.

One reason attacks like these continue is the lack of accountability for past human rights violations. Put pressure on the Afghan government to end impunity here.

Interviews with Greg Mortenson

More fuel for our discussion of Three Cups of Tea:

Hey, did anybody catch the KPFK interview on July 5? Not to worry, as you can find it in their audio archive (July 5, Morning Review with Eisha Mason). He was leaving for Pakistan that day. And here's a transcript of a fairly recent interview by Maria Hinojosa on PBS' Now.

Finally, here's a taste of a Beliefnet interview,

I don’t think I’m a hero. My heroes are the children going to school... There’s one thing that makes me feel so incredibly proud and joyous--it’s watching that first girl going down the trail into the school.

That first brave girl, I know what’s it’s taken to get on that path. It’s dealing with the elders, some cultural bias, or the mullahs. But most often she does have the support of the community. Watching that first girl is like watching man taking his first step on the moon--one giant leap for mankind.

Behind that girl comes dozens more girls, eventually hundreds and thousands. And when that girl becomes a mother, her values are instilled in the community. So I don’t think of myself as a hero. I think if this as just--I’m a dedicated person. To me, my real heroes are every child that I can watch reading and writing for the first time. It’s such a joyous thing to watch.

Our July Authors: Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

For all those people hitting this site looking for discussion questions for Three Cups of Tea (and I realize I just invited a ton more), I'm going to disappoint you. However here are links to the more obvious sites and if you hang around here in the next few days, we will have more posts with interesting links to explore, both fun and serious, that provide some more context for your reading of this book, as our own (off-line) discussion of the book approaches this Sunday.

First, here is the website for the book Three Cups of Tea and one for co-author David Oliver Relin. The Central Asia Institute has its own site, one desperately in need of a blog, I might add. Fans/supporters need to know what's goin' down! At least there are a few pictures. Pennies For Peace is the website for teachers and students and includes a downloadable curriculum guide and a list of age-appropriate suggested reading.

Coming up: links to interviews with Greg Mortenson...

For July: Three Cups of Tea

For July we have selected Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin,

Anyone who despairs of the individual’s power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan’s treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and promised to build them a school. Over the next decade he built fifty-five schools—especially for girls—that offer a balanced education in one of the most isolated and dangerous regions on earth. As it chronicles Mortenson’s quest, which has brought him into conflict with both enraged Islamists and uncomprehending Americans, Three Cups of Tea combines adventure with a celebration of the humanitarian spirit.