liberal arts poster children

i can't resist pointing to this article, originally printed in the new republic -- and written by tnr editor jason zengerle, a swat alum himself -- about the genocide intervention network.

along with war news radio, gi-net is one of the more exciting things to come out of swarthmore college lately. (apparently all that "ethical intelligence" talk is really getting somewhere.)

it's alternately pleasing and distressing to watch this happening from my current vantage point: yale undergrads seem not to be undertaking these sorts of projects. there are a million and one vanity journals to edit here, but despite the big and exceptionally talented undergrad population, risk-taking and big thinking seem somehow frowned upon or disregarded...at least as far as advocacy work goes. with all appropriate caveats in place (my friend circle from swat is not especially oriented toward traditional measures of achievement, so my sample is biased; i don't know everything that goes on among yale activists; etc., etc.) i think the following generalization holds, at least at the margins: swat is doing a pretty good job educating for citizenship, for difference-making, and yale is doing a reeeeally good job educating for success and prosperity.