2015-11-12 Case Study of TNKR by Columbia Teachers College

--New York, New York--

If TNKR can make it here, it can make it anywhere...

* Wanna know how good TNKR is? Even great people at Columbia University believe it is great. Teach North Korean Refugees is now being analyzed by graduate students at The Teachers College, Columbia University as part of a case study. TNKR wasn't even an official organization until May 2015, but we have already had many great things happen. With both the professor and students in the class analyzing us--yes, asking some pointed questions, too--then TNKR should be even stronger in 2016 in helping refugees find their way and tell their stories.

* Have you ever told someone that you were honored by something they were doing, and they try to convince you that they are even more honored to collaborate with you! That's what happened tonight with the professor at Columbia University who opened her classroom to me. She and the students were asking me plenty of pointed questions about TNKR. Based on their responses, I was giving them some unorthodox answers!

* I take it as a good sign that both the Teachers College at Columbia University and that professors and students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education also want to know about TNKR.

* Anyone who reads my column knows that I am easily bored by talkers who don't get to action items. Often I get questions that are pointless or irrelevant, based on the questioner's pre-conceptions that have nothing to do with TNKR (or what I might have just said in a speech). But the Teachers College students were asking questions that were connected to actual suggestions, rather than just curiosity or accusations.

* * *

Update, Day 2: We met again! They had a LONG list of questions to ask me.^^

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By Casey Lartigue, Jr. As interesting as Kookmin University professor Andrei Lankov’s writings are, there is nothing quite like attending one of his lectures. He can barely restrain himself behind the podium, often pointing and waving his arms. I also enjoy his unscripted speeches, but his answers in Q&A sessions are like the difference between watching Michael Jordan shoot baskets in warm-ups and an actual game. I have finally discovered the secret behind Lankov’s consistently solid analysis about North Korea: Use common sense. At an Asan Institute conference last summer, he argued that North Korea watchers should try to understand North Korea from its perspective. Don’t most people know that you must understand the mindset of others you are dealing with? Yet, common sense in theory gets ignored politically. From the North Korean perspective, nuclear weapons are the best thing they’ve got going. They will NOT give them up easily, even if President Obama ...

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Random photos from today

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