Dr.Hazel McFerson is currently a professor of the School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs in George Mason University. Her expertise is focused on International law and politics, racial issues and conflict, and social problems.
Professor McFerson's scholarly work has concentrated on the relationship of different races in a community and how they interact with each other. More importantly, the role of the state in different racial conflict, either within a nation or internationally. She also focuses on gender conflict and provide in depth insight of the problems and possible solutions under different social issues or conflicts about genders in different societies.
The work of Professor McFerson does not limit just on the analysis of different issues of gender, racial, or ethnic scale but she also lay out the possible solutions to it by pointing out the root of the problems. For example, in her work of "Blacks and Asians" she talked about some of the issues between minority races in America and she cleared out a lot of the misconception on the relationship between Asians and African-Americans in United States. She indicated that it is only the media that fill us with the information of the hatred between African-Americans and the Asians. By emphasizing the conflict between different races, the media can gain more popularity and viewing rates. But we are the people that has been filled up with misinformed information. She provided another aspect of the cooperation between those two races and explained the problem with overemphasizing the issue of racial problems. She believe that overemphasize racial conflict is a inappropriate approach to examine racial relations and must analyze through scientific facts. Her analysis pointed out the root of the problem of Asian and African Americans relations, with solid facts and reasoning.
Professor McFerson also focuses on International Politics, especially on Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. She analyze some of the key social and political problems of countries in these regions in a way that does not only focus on specific events in a specific period of time, but also focus on a specific group of people and examine the influence and interaction of the two. For example, Professor McFerson's work on "Women and Post-Conflict Society in Sierra Leone" talked about how women were treated and their rights during the post conflict period of time in Sierra Leone. Her research attains a very high academic standard, social issues usually change radically after certain social and political turmoil. Her analysis successfully pointed out the significance of the conflict in Sierra Leone and clearly indicated and explained the issues of women during the post-conflict period. Not only Professor McFerson can theoretically analyze the issues, she does have plenty of field experiences. As Professor McFerson did her research relating to issues of economic recovery in the Sub-Saharan area, she observed the massive amount of co-venture between China and African nations, especially in Angola. Angola is rich in resources and eager for economic and defense assistance after the end of its civil war in 2003, and China provided those assistance in the most efficient way possible to win influence in the area. Therefore, he research do include first hand sources which is extremely valuable as a professional researcher.
I think self-interest is the main source of conflicts. These self-interest differ form region to region. Some are based on economic interest and others are based on religion and power. Human beings in general want to maximize their self-interest without regard to others without proper institution that limit this self-interest. If the institutions that limit this self-interest don’t have upper hand over religion, political power, and economic interests, discrimination of women, the powerless, other religion, particular political party and so on arises and conflicts become unavoidable. Institutions don’t eliminate all these conflicts but having access to courts that answer to no one except interpreting the law minimizes the problem since there is known consequences.
ReplyDeletePhilip, I really like Professor McFerson's view that overemphasizing racial conflict is not the best approach for examining racial relations. Looking at the facts and objectively analyzing any type of relationship is the best way to solve problems. Racial conflict can be a very sensitive topic and dissecting this problem with facts is something all parties can do- this approach promotes a more positive approach, versus the usual negative and defensive/offensive we too often see. Talking about the negative aspects about a problem (racial conflict) usually takes away from the actual problem. In the case of Ferguson, for example, I see a community that is burning down stores in their own communities and standing in the road blocking traffic (in front of schools) as they protest. The media is lit with emotions on this trial and has been for months. There were 9 Caucasian men on the Jury and 3 Black men…the vote was unanimous. People get assigned jury duty when they are registered voters- a fact that matters because it can affect this population in a positive way to address this issue. This population should not be protesting on streets to the point where others are losing businesses, children are missing school, people’s safety is at risk, ect. Society is perpetuating the problem in this community and building a larger wall between races. I don’t think that boy deserved the ending that he got, and I think this is an issue that has to be fixed because it happens too often. There is a lot in this one case that I can say that emphasizes how much I agree with Professor McFerson. We need to discuss facts so individual factors can be addressed to stop the problem from perpetuating.
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