Program Highlights

The 4th Annual Khmer Studies Forum will be held at Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio, U.S.A. on
Friday, April 27, Saturday, April 28, and Sunday, April 29, 2012. The Khmer Studies Forum is an opportunity to facilitate discussion on topics including but not
limited to Khmer language, history, culture, economics, politics, education, and the arts. Faculty,
students and community members are invited to participate. Participation in the Khmer Studies Forum is free. This Forum is being organized
by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Ohio University, with primary support from the Ohio Humanities Council, Arts for Ohio, and the OHIO Center for International Studies, and additional support from the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, the College of Health Sciences and Professions, and the Contemporary History Institute.

Mr. Joel Brinkley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times, now serving as the Hearst Visiting Professional in Residence at Stanford University. At Stanford, Brinkley writes a weekly op-ed column on foreign affairs that appears in about 50 newspapers and Websites in the United States and around the world each week, syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He is also a foreign-affairs writer for Politico and maintains an active public-speaking career. His areas of research include American foreign policy and foreign affairs in general, as well as the future of the nation’s newspaper industry.

At The New York Times, Brinkley served as Washington correspondent, White House correspondent and chief of the Times Bureau in Jerusalem, Israel. He spent more than 10 years in editing positions including Projects Editor in Washington, Political Editor in New York and Investigations Editor in Washington following the September 11 attacks. He served as political writer in Baghdad during the fall of 2003. He also covered technology issues including the Microsoft anti-trust trial and was serving as foreign-policy correspondent when he left the Times in June 2006.

Over the last 30 years Brinkley has reported from 46 states and more than 50 foreign countries. He has won more than a dozen national reporting and writing awards. He won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1980 and in the following years was twice a finalist for an investigative reporting Pulitzer (for one, as a member of a team). He was a director of the Fund for Investigative Journalism from 2001 to 2006.

Rapper praCh (rhymes with “batch”) was born under the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. He escaped with his family to Long Beach, California. While America held great promise, the environments in which praCh found himself in California were those of guns, gangs, and violence. He found refuge in the arts – particularly poetry and music - and combined the two into an incredible hip-hop/rap that has since catapulted him to fame. He cut his first CD, Dalama: The End'n' Is Just the Beginnin', in his parents' garage. He didn't have a mixing board––he used a karaoke machine and sampled sound bites from old Khmer Rouge propaganda speeches to create what he calls an "autobiography," reciting stories he'd heard from his refugee family to deliver a blistering history lesson about Cambodia's genocide. His work resonates not only with the Cambodian American community, but with Cambodians in diaspora as well as artists across the rap and hip-hop industry. The following video provides some brief insight into praCh’s fascinating life:

Pete Pin is a documentary photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. He was born into a refugee camp after the Cambodian genocide and immigrated as a refugee to California in the mid-1980s, and grew up in the inner cities of Stockton and Long Beach. He received his BA in Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley, graduating magna cum laude, and was the recipient of the Outstanding Honors Thesis Award by his department. He also studied at the International Center of Photography in Manhattan in its renowned Documentary Photography and Journalism Program, where he was awarded the Allan L Modotti scholarship. Pin is the first recipient of a Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund fellowship, through which he created Displaced: The Cambodian Diaspora, and he has been designated an Emerging Talent Under Getty Reportage. Pin’s work captures the struggles of Cambodian Americans as they negotiate their lives in their new homeland, always with the Khmer Rouge horror as backdrop. www.petepin.com

The Khmer Studies Forum is pleased to announce a screening of The Trap of Saving Cambodia, by filmmaker Tim Sorel.

Every year since 1994, foreign donors have pledged typically between $600 million to $1.1 billion worth of donor aid to Cambodia, usually around half or more of its annual national budget. But where exactly does all this aid go?

This brief yet powerful film tells the story of Cambodia’s endemic corruption, and the massive foreign aid complex that hasn’t done much to improve the situation. More than 1,000 NGOs work in Cambodia to aid the poor, but these humanitarian efforts might best be described as 'one step forward, twenty steps back.' In addition to interviews with Cambodia watchers and scholars, Sorel follows the work of David Pred, an activist working against land evictions and the founder of Bridges Across Borders Southeast Asia, who expresses his struggles to help Cambodians given oppressive conditions and the absence of democracy. Incredibly poignant, The Trap of Saving Cambodia is rallying a cry for world leaders to wake up.

In 2004, Cambodian union president Chea Vichea was assassinated in broad daylight at a newsstand in Phnom Penh. As international pressure mounted, two men were swiftly arrested and convicted of the crime, each sentenced to twenty years in prison. Who Killed Chea Vichea? is the result of a five-year investigation by the filmmakers that reveals an elaborate cover-up that reaches the highest echelons of Cambodian society.

Winner of a 2011 Peabody Award among many other honors and banned by the Cambodian government, WHO KILLED CHEA VICHEA? is an incredibly telling film that uncovers the face of dictatorship behind the mask of democracy, in a country where knowing too much can cost you your life. Since the completion of the film in 2010, the police in Cambodia have stopped two attempts to screen it and the Cambodian authorities announced that it is "forbidden" to screen it publicly there.

The Khmer Studies Forum is honored to welcome the film’s producer, Mr. Rich Garella, who will answer questions following the film screening. Mr. Garella is a long-time Cambodia observer, having living in-country for many years, where he was the managing editor for the Cambodia Daily and press secretary for Cambodia’s main opposition party. He is a producer at Loud Mouth Films, and a Media and Communications Consultant based out of Philadelphia.

Participants are responsible for making their own travel plans to and from Athens, Ohio.
The closest airport is Port Columbus International Airport (CMH). The airport has kiosks for all of
the major car rental agencies (Hertz, Enterprise, etc.). We will have shuttles available to transport
you to Athens from the airport (if you are in need of shuttle transportation, please email us as
space is limited).

Ohio University is approximately a five-hour drive from the Washington, D.C. area, and a six-hour
drive from the Chicago area. If you are planning to drive to Athens, please let us know and we will
send you detailed directions from your starting point.

Housing

If you are interested in a homestay, members of the Southeast Asian Studies community
at Ohio University can provide weekend accommodation for some forum participants. For additional information on
transportation and housing, contact the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at cseas@ohio.edu.

What to do in Athens

The city of Athens has a lively arts and music scene, plus numerous eclectic
shopping and dining options. Spring is beautiful in Athens, and you can engage in various outdoor
activities, including kayaking, hiking, road cycling, and mountain biking. For more information on
what to do in Athens, visit http://www.athensohio.com/.