Beyond Aid:  Rethinking Approaches to International Development in Education
CIES Northeast Regional Conference Report

Iveta Silova, William C. Brehm, and Audree Chase-Mayoral
Lehigh University

On October 8-9, 2009, Lehigh University hosted the CIES northeast regional conference. It has been five years since the Washington Consortium for Comparative and International Education and Training (American University, George Washington University, and University of Maryland) hosted the last northeast regional conference in Washington DC.  Over two days in early October, Lehigh University brought together nearly 160 conference participants from the northeast region (from New York City to Ontario), from other regions in the United States (south and central), and far beyond (most notably, the Republic of Georgia). The conference program, which featured 70 faculty, students, and professionals from 27 different universities, NGOs, and a ministry of education, included 18 panels on topics ranging from the expansion of higher education in Africa to the role of NGOs in education development to foreign aid in post-conflict areas. 

Steve Klees, Gita Steiner-Khamsi, Sangeeta Khamat, and David Baker at the Northeast Regional Conference

The conference theme focused on a very popular topic: international aid. This heated debate over whether billions of dollars given for educational aid have contributed to educational improvement and equity around the world was the center of many presentations, hallway conversations, and a (provocative) keynote address by Steven J. Klees. During the two days, conference participants explored and critically analyzed the many facets of aid. While some panels revealed growing skepticism regarding the effectiveness of international aid, others argued for more aid. Some presenters explored the emergence of entrepreneurial philanthropists, celebrity donors, and various market driven approaches to international development, which have begun to alter the international aid landscape. The 30-minutes between each session left plenty of time for conference goers to discuss some of the most pressing questions in more detail: Can aid solve longstanding educational development challenges? Should we begin to think beyond educational aid by critically analyzing the larger picture of development and the underlying causes of global inequality? How can international educational aid be re-conceptualized with a more informed sense of social justice and participatory dialogue? Most of the conference panels were either video or audio recorded and will soon be available on the International Teaching Resource Center (iTRC), hosted by Lehigh University. For photos of the conference, please visit our Flickr account.

One of the conference highlights was a keynote address by Steven J. Klees entitled "Aid, Development, and Education." Klees examined various aspects of the debate over the utility of international aid and proposed a contested view that aid has been very successful, not in reducing poverty or stimulating growth, but in legitimating a very unequal world system that maintains and reproduces inequality. Klees said, "one would have hoped that 60 years of international aid would have led to a clear improvement.  However, the best that anyone can say is that the situation could have been a lot worse than it is now without aid." While the talk itself was informative (reviewing the main debates on aid effectiveness) and provocative (inviting conference participants to consider replacing the World Bank and IMF, as well as arguing that more research is not needed to address development problems, to cite only a few examples), the responses were equally controversial and compelling. 

Discussants of Klees' keynote address included CIES President Gita Steiner-Khamsi (Teachers College, Columbia University), Sangeeta Kamat (University of Massachusetts at Amherst), and David Baker (The Pennsylvania State University). Steiner-Khamsi agreed with Klees' critical analyses of the aid relationship. She added that aid is by definition asymmetrical. It is therefore important for researchers to examine how this hierarchical relationship is reflected in the professionalization and standardization of aid as well as in the definition of aid effectiveness as propelled by the 2005 Paris Declaration.  Kamat argued that the question of aid effectiveness is anachronistic when aid is increasingly defined by military and corporate objectives. In her comments she drew upon the work of Naomi Klein on the “rise of disaster capitalism” that illustrates how development aid serves as a pretext to launch full-scale market reforms in a variety of countries. Baker, alternatively, questioned Klees' assumption that educational aid is like other types of aid. He said he agrees with Dr. Klees' "concern over sloppy critiques of aid from the neo-conservative position, but [he] would also add that given the emerging evidence that mass education can positively impact social, political, health, and yes, even economic development, it strikes [him] as crucial not to lump educational aid in with critiques of other types of aid.”   The different opinions expressed by the discussants and conference participants displayed in one venue the "bleeding edge" of the debate on aid. 

                                                      CIES Northeast Regional Conference Participants

Hosting the regional conference this year could not have been possible without the help of fifteen students in the Comparative and International Education program and three professors of Lehigh's College of Education: Dr. Iveta Silova (conference chair), William C. Brehm and Audree Chase-Mayoral (program co-chairs), and Diane C. Boyle, Carol Ham, Megan Hauser, Dr. Daphne Hobson, Kelly Holland, Donna Johnson, Ilena Key, Matthew Kilbride, Ciara H. Lowery, Amanda Lowry, Calvin Reed, Michael C. Russell, Anuradha Sachdev, Dr. Jill Sperandio, and Morgan Volkart.  We are grateful to all the volunteers who helped run the conference, and offer our special thanks to Dean Gary Sasso of the College of Education at Lehigh University, who contributed generously to the conference. We would also like to extend our gratitude to CIES Board of Directors (especially N’Dri Assie-Lumumba who attended the conference) and CIES President Gita Steiner-Khamsi for providing seed funding for the conference.

As one of the youngest programs in the field of comparative and international education, we were very excited about this opportunity to introduce Lehigh University to the larger comparative and international education community while serving as a site for academic debate on a range of topics in our field. We were astounded by the turnout and diversity of people and ideas present at the conference and are grateful to all participants for their contributions. The overwhelming response we received reveals a great interest in regional meetings and suggests the northeast region should not wait another five years for the next conference.