Classroom Subjects

Social Studies

Iraq: The Promise of Freedom

Thousands of Iraqis risked everything to work for the U.S.-led occupation because they believed in democracy. Serving as interpreters, civil society experts and reconstruction contractors, they set out to build a new Iraq.

Today, they are targeted by insurgents as "traitors" and marked for death. Because their...

Unrest in the Uyghur Homeland

Four days before the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, the Chinese government faced an unexpected wave of violence in the heart of the country's restive Muslim homeland. On August 4, a small group of Islamic militants staged a daring attack on a police station near Kashgar in...

Sri Lanka: Endless War?

Sri Lanka is a byword for beauty and tragedy. Even the wholesale devastation of the Asian tsunami was not enough to halt a 25-year civil war between an ethnic Sinhalese-dominated government and a notorious separatist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, also known as the Tamil Tigers. But...

Vietnam: The Price of Rice

The doubling of the price of rice in Asia has given rise to what some have coined "the Asian Food Crisis." While some economists feel that this is a temporary price hike, others see that the devastation from the recent cyclone in the central rice growing region of Burma...

Syria and Jordan: The Iraqi Exodus

An exodus of more than 2 million Iraqis is reshaping the Middle East -- with ominous implications for the region.

Driven out of Iraq and into neighboring countries by sectarian violence, a once prosperous middle class is drawing down savings -- and fueling local resentments. The newcomers are blamed...

India: Conflicts Within

Today Maoist insurgents keen to exploit the state's enduring weaknesses stalk the Hindu heartland. They are waging their "people's war" in under-policed areas where conditions are most fertile.

Philippines: Mindanao's Frustrated Peace

Photojournalist Ryan Anson returns to Mindanao, southern Philippines to examine the pitfalls and successes of the peace process with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). His photographs also document how violent clan-based politics as well as the government's ongoing counterinsurgency campaign against the al-Qaeda linked Abu Sayyaf Group affect...

Ethiopia: Tainted Ally

U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops grabbed headlines in late 2006, invading Somalia to drive the Islamic Courts Union from power. Less known is the Addis government's massive persecution of its own people.

It is true that Ethiopia is at war — with itself. For more than a century Ethiopian...

Kyrgyzstan on the Brink

Home to the sole U.S. forward operating base into Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan maintains strong ties to Russia. With a compromised press, a bankrupted economy and intense religious tensions, the country is in danger of rolling back its few democratic advances.

Edil Baisalov, an activist who led Kyrgyzstan's 2005...

Mozambique: Paradise Lost, and Found?

Before the Mozambican civil war, Gorongosa National Park was among the top destinations in Africa, with a higher concentration of animals than on the famed Serengeti Plain. But during the war, soldiers and other poachers killed these vast herds, planted landmines and destroyed the park's infrastructure. By the 1990s,...

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez: Despot, or Democrat?

Andrew Cutraro and Guy Taylor uncloak the cult of personality surrounding the Bolivarian movement of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, and a policy of aggressive and orchestrated media relations.

Caucasus in Context

Pulitzer Center Director Jon Sawyer traveled to Russia and throughout the South Caucasus, reporting on a region marred by it's conflicted history and caught between East and West, North and South.

Weighing the Pros and Cons of Working Abroad

Students will read articles and watch videos as preparation to an empathy-building exercise that will help them understand why people choose to leave their families to seek out employment overseas.

Everyday Africa

A lesson guide to be used to in conjunction with the Everyday Africa curriculum, and visits with Peter DiCampo and Austin Merrill.

Language and Nationalism

This lesson will help students apply knowledge of language to understand how it functions in different cultures and contexts.