US Spending for Social Change

School Blog 9

            
            For this weeks adventure the JSBP crew and I visited the International Law Enforcement Academy, located on the Buda side of the river. And while I very rarely enjoy any interaction with a bunch of cops, this place was pretty cool. ILEA is an organization that is run by the US Government, with the help of Hungarian law enforcement, to teach and, with any luck, establish a more western rule of law and way of thinking in the emerging countries of the former eastern European Soviet bloc.

ILEA's cafeteria was filled with coffee, doughnuts, and silly cartoons

The International Law Enforcement Academy is funded through US taxpayer money, with the goal of promoting positive relationships between the US and these emerging countries, as well as supporting the relationships between the law enforcement officers of these countries. While many Americans would have walked onto this campus in the middle of Hungary and wondered why the heck they were paying for its existence, ILEA has proven itself a very worthwhile endeavor through its promotion of a safer and more amiable eastern Europe. But perhaps more importantly, the academy has quite brazenly attempted to foster an open sense of understanding between ethnicities that have extremely deep seeded hatred for one another.

ILEA is run by various officials from every sector of the American and Hungarian justice systems (ie the Department of the Interior, the FBI, the CIA, etc.). These men and women run five programs a year, and in each session they instruct a number of law enforcement officers from three different emerging countries. In an attempt to create a more unified central eastern Europe, ILEA officials in both Budapest and Washington pick three countries that have historical tensions with one another. Some of these combinations have been extremely volatile (in one case a man murdered another with an axe, and let me say the murder may have been justifiable.. the Turkish government still refuses to admit that they massacred over one and a half million Armenian’s less than a century ago), while most sessions have caused close friendships across nationalistic and cultural boundaries.

The Turks actions were an original inspiration for Hitler, and sparked his fascination with ethnic extermination

I found it interesting that the hierarchy of ILEA was not shy to admit that social understanding had been one of their central goals, even perhaps a more chief focus than the literal teaching of law enforcement strategies. The widespeard effects of the former Soviet Union weren’t only economic and political, but were also very cultural. Many countries and communities that could have flourished into more liberal and tolerant ones have been forced to stagnate socially. One example that Thomas E. Stocking (the Deputy Director of ILEA) shared with us was that in many of these countries the style of thought is that “a wife unbeaten is like a house unkept”. 

Wife beating is still a norm in many eastern european countries

Social backwardness has been promoted through the closed Soviet system rather than corrected by it. Changing social norms and fostering understanding can only take place in a culture that allows an open and free exchange of ideas. If programs like ILEA can use US money to change the way that cops in these countries feel about wife beating, racism, or freedom of speech, than perhaps their cultural norms will start to evolve. It was nice to finally hear a positive way that the US is spending money abroad, rather than the usual tales of our militant and coercive foreign policy.

Keep it keeping homies,

And use that vote to promote progress.

Love,

Mama’s Boy