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HIR《哈佛国际评论》春季赛
5月31日提交截止！
同学们论文进度如何了？
本次春季赛主题有2个
同学们可以二选一
👇 👇 👇
▪ Theme A：VUCA世界中的不平等现象
Inequalities in a VUCA World
当今世界，可以用一个缩写词“VUCA”来定义，意味着不稳定性、不确定性、复杂性和模糊性。也正是基于这些特性，反过来进一步加剧了各种不平等现象，使得我们所处的当下，各类不平等问题变得更加突出和复杂。
全球范围的不平等造成了资源分配不均，包括军事力量、教育、财富、资本和自然资源。这些不平等存在于各个层面，并将世界依据地域、国家、城市等因素区分开来。
此外，也将人们基于性别、种族、民族、宗教信仰、社会阶层及取向等因素进行了划分。
▪ Theme B：全球挑战与集体行动
Global Challenges and Collective Actions
新闻报道往往以军事冲突为主导，比如乌克兰和以色列/巴勒斯坦问题。然而，“全球挑战”绝不限于战争，还包括了很多其他人道主义的危机，比如歧视、饥荒、自然灾害导致的人群流离失所以及疾病爆发等等。
解决这些宏观问题需要集体行动来应对，既需要多国联盟（例如联合国儿童基金会）支持，也需要民间活动/组织和其他社会运动参与其中。
有思路的同学赶紧开始吧！
HIR写作赛事的含金量
1. TOP大学背景加持
背靠世界顶级学府哈佛大学，哈佛大学国际专业的众多学者、编辑、学生投稿者参与了赛程的设计和评估，保证了比赛的含金量。
进入决赛轮的参赛者还有机会与评审团进行一对一的深度交流，并可为申请未来美国本科课程加持。
2. 选题自由度高，文理科“通吃”
哈佛国际评论写作竞赛鼓励学生选择任意感兴趣的话题领域(包括但不限于农业、商业、网络安全、国防、教育、就业与移民、能源与环境、金融与经济、公共健康、科学与技术、太空、贸易、交通)进行素材搜集。
对学科限制较小，无论是文科生还是理科生，都能找到自己擅长发挥的领域。
3. 有利于提高综合学术能力
参加学术类写作比赛，学生将需要完成多项学术任务，包括选题、独立研究和文字写作，有利于提高综合学术能力，获得相对全面的学术体验，提前感受本科阶段学术任务的类型和要求。
HIR春季赛参赛须知
1适合学生
9-12年级学生
2写作要求
▪ 字数：800-1200（不包括图表、数据表或作者声明）
需标注对书籍和文献的引用，符合引用规范，清晰体现出基于研究得出的观点和见解。
▪ 内容议题：提交的内容应针对某个不被关注的全球性主题，提出自己的观点并进行充分的分析论证。
▪ 注意：HIR竞赛禁止使用 ChatGPT！
3命题领域
HIR作为一个自命题学术论文，主题不需要出现在文章题目或内容中，只要选题角度和写作内容能够反映竞赛主题理念即可。
命题方向包含但不局限于：农业、商业、网络安全、国防、教育、就业&移民、能源&环境、金融&经济、公共卫生、科技、太空、贸易、交通运输等领域。
4时间安排
春季赛提交截止：2024年5月31日
春季赛决赛答辩：2024年6月29日
进入决赛的选手将被邀请参加 HIR 网上答辩。在决赛当日，学生将有机会向哈佛国际评论评委给出 15 分钟的演讲和答辩。
5奖项设置
金、银、铜奖
表彰奖、杰出写作内容/风格奖、高度赞扬奖
《哈佛国际评论》学术写作挑战
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官网推荐优秀范文
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Amid the noise of the United States' engagement with China, Japan and South Korea have recently engaged in their own trade war. On July 4 of this year, while Americans were celebrating their own independence and freedom, South Koreans were reminded of their own colonial history as their neighbor and former colonizer, Japan, began to impose new trade sanctions. What started off as a South Korean Supreme Court ruling has now escalated into a crippling economic war that threatens a key source of technology for Asia and the world.
Although this particular dispute is now only a few months old, the roots of colonialism began in 1910 when the Japanese Empire invaded and occupied the entirety of the Korean peninsula. Over the course of the next few decades, the Japanese Empire would aggressively expand and control most of South-East Asia and even parts of China, until its ultimate demise at the end of the Second World War. During Japanese occupation of Korea, Japanese companies, such as Mitsubishi and Nippon Steel, often times conscripted Korean men and women for forced unpaid labor.
Recently, however, the South Korean Supreme Court ruled in October and November of 2018 that Japanese companies must pay reparations for these historical injustices. Consequently, on July fourth, the Japanese government retaliated by imposing limitations on the trade of materials essential to the construction of microchips and technological products in South Korea. Incensed by South Korea’s lack of response, Japan reinforced its message by taking South Korea off its “white-list” of favored trading partners, leading to ramifications beyond the technology industry. South Korea reacted by removing Japan from their equivalent top tier of preferred trading partners. In this deep spiral of sanctions in response, South Korea and Japan have interlocked in a vicious and politically charged trade war. While many trade wars are understood as responses to unequal terms of trade, Japan and South Korea's trade war seems to be particularly coded in political motives, given that its impetus was about reconciling with Japan's colonial past.
And, there seems to be no clear end in sight. Public opinion in both countries are highly supportive of their respective government’s policies, so both Seoul and Tokyo have political incentive to continue their policies or even escalate. With federal elections occurring within the next year for both countries, neither country can afford to buck against public opinion.
Moreover, unlike other disputes like the nuclear threat of North Korea, no foreign power is willing to aid in diffusing the tension and mediate between the two neighboring countries. The United States has traditionally adopted the role of the mediator but with its own trade worries with China, Washington has no attention that it can spare to Japan and South Korea. Furthermore, the US has historically allied with both Japan and South Korea, so it has little incentive to be involved, lest it risk its relationship with either country.
Indeed, almost every country in the world has a vested interest in the swift resolution of this conflict. The world relies on South Korea for its technology products, ranging from microchips to completely processed smartphones. The Korean technology industry is a necessity even for Western giants, such as Apple and Dell. Korea supplies 60 percent of the world’s DRAM memory chips. However, the Korean technology industry conversely relies on Japan for its chemicals, such as fluorinated polyamides, as an intermediary product for the making of semiconductors and computer chips.
With stakes this high, it is crucial that the economic war be resolved with urgency. The highly politicized nature of this particular trade war clouds rational judgement of politicians. This is detrimental, especially when the chips in play are the economic outlooks of millions of Japanese and Korean citizens, as well as the global technology industry. There is not a trade-off between attention paid to the US-China trade war and that of Japan and South Korea. Both play a crucial role in the global economy and affect billions of people’s day-to-day lives. As some of the biggest economic powers in Asia spiral into economic warfare, international neglect could have ramifications that affect the world at large.
Elhacen, who force-feeds young girls for a living, takes pride in her work. “I’m very strict…I beat the girls, or torture them by squeezing a stick between their toes. I isolate them and tell them that thin women are inferior,” she says. This child cruelty is the horrific product of Mauritanian beauty standards, which idealize obese bodies. According to Elhacen, a woman’s job is “to make babies and be a soft, fleshy bed for her husband to lie on.” The force feeder even enjoys additional payments for stretch marks, hailed as a crowning achievement for any Mauritanian woman trying to gain weight.
This force-feeding practice is called “leblouh” or “gavage,” a French term that refers to “the process of fattening up geese to produce foie gras.” This dehumanization of girls and women extends far beyond semantics. Historically, Mauritania’s Moor population, which makes up two thirds of the country’s 3.1 million people, has viewed female obesity as a status symbol, with thinness being a sign that a woman’s husband could not afford to feed her. As a result, in order to display wealth, higher-income girls were fattened with milk to make them more desirable to potential suitors. Exemplifying this relationship between obesity and attractiveness, a Moor proverb asserts that “the woman occupies in her man’s heart the space she occupies in his bed.” By creating a direct relationship between weight and desirability, this beauty standard encourages extreme behavior.
Force-Feeding and Early Marriage of Young Girls
This extremity is evident in the abuse of young girls at the hands of force-feeders like Elhacen. Girls as young as five are sent to “fattening farms” to gorge on calorie-dense foods such as millet and camel milk. Force-feeding can also occur at home, often supervised by a girl’s mother. Activist Lemrabott Brahim describes how this mother-daughter dynamic perpetuates leblouh, explaining that the practice is “deeply-rooted in the minds and hearts of Mauritanian mothers, particularly in the remote areas.” Disciplined by their mothers or force-feeders, girls may be force-fed up to 16,000 calories daily, which can include up to five gallons of milk. Older female force-feeders or relatives who conduct the leblouh employ brutal tactics to keep their girls eating. For example, the “zayar” technique involves positioning a girl’s toe between two sticks and pinching it when she resists leblouh. The supervisor may also “pull her ear, pinch her inner thigh, bend her finger backward or force her to drink her own vomit,” and girls are further threatened with beatings if they do not finish their food. A 2013 study using survey data from 2000 found that “over 61% of those who had experienced gavage reported being beaten during the process and almost one-third (29%) reported having their fingers broken to encourage participation." In addition to these excruciating injuries, Mar Jubero Capdeferro of the U.N. Population Fund notes that leblouh is increasingly dangerous because some force-feeders have transitioned from using camel’s milk to force-feeding young girls “with chemicals used to fatten animals.”
In a 2018 Unreported World documentary, reporter Sahar Zand witnessed this cruelty firsthand, interacting with Mauritanian women to learn more about leblouh. She describes how girls are fattened during the rainy season, when food is more plentiful, gaining a targeted seven kilograms. According to Zand, about 25 percent of Mauritanian women endure leblouh, but the percentage could be as high as 75 percent in rural communities where women are especially vulnerable “because there are no distractions and no easy ways to escape.” Zand focuses on one particular group of rural nomads with two young girls undergoing leblouh. It takes them each two hours to finish a 3,000-calorie breakfast, followed by a 4,000-calorie lunch and a 2,000-calorie dinner. By the end of the feeding season, the girls will consume 16,000 calories every day. Zand tried the leblouh diet—after lunch, she could not continue, but the little girls were forced to keep eating. “It’s horrible,” she describes. A force feeder claimed that pushing her daughter through leblouh is an act of love. Trying to explain how mothers could inflict such “pain and torture” on their own daughters, Zand concludes: “This is a society where a woman’s biggest power is to be beautiful, and to be beautiful, you have to be fat.”
Zand could have easily re-phrased this statement as: “This is a society where a woman’s biggest power is to marry, and to marry, you have to be fat.” The 2013 study breaks down the centrality of child marriage to leblouh, for “the large size of these force-fed girls creates an illusion that they are physically mature and ready for marriage.” In creating this illusion, leblouh suppresses the marrying age of girls, perpetuating a child marriage crisis. Legally, Mauritanian women must be 18 years old to marry, but de facto, younger brides are common; a 2015 study concluded that “nearly one out of three girls aged between 15 and 19 gets married.” According to 2019 data, 37 percent of Mauritanian girls marry before age 18. Often, these young girls marry older men. One 29-year-old victim of child marriage began leblouh at age four, married at 12, and got pregnant at 13 “right after [her] first period.” These child marriages and pregnancies severely jeopardize the physical and mental health of the female Mauritanian population.
Long-Term Health Consequences of Leblouh
Even after marriage, women continue to suffer from extreme beauty expectations. Dr. Mohammed Ould Madene recalled a patient: “She was only 14, but so huge that her heart almost collapsed under the strain.” He worries about women’s risk of weight-related health problems such as diabetes and heart disease. Other long-term effects of obesity include hypertension, high cholesterol, stroke, osteoarthritis, poor mental health, decreased mobility, sleep apnea, and cancer. Due to leblouh, these national health concerns disproportionately impact women: as of 2016, 18.5 percent of Mauritanian women were obese, compared to only 6.6 percent of men.
These statistics are particularly alarming in the context of a global pandemic, for which obese individuals have higher “risks of hospitalization, intensive care unit admission admission, invasive mechanical ventilation, and death” from COVID-19. Considering barriers to healthcare access in Mauritania (the country has only 0.18 physicians for every 1000 citizens, compared to 2.59 physicians in the United States), obese Mauritanian adults are especially vulnerable to complications from the coronavirus. This additional risk underscores the fact that exacting beauty standards are severely limiting women’s health and lifestyle opportunities. One 26-year-old woman describes this dilemma: “I’m always tired, and I wheeze when I walk. I want to be slimmer so I can be more dynamic…I’d love to be able to wear jeans and high heels. I want to diet, but I’m scared men won’t like me anymore.” Her words exemplify the extreme pressures on women to sacrifice their mental and physical health to appease the male gaze, a practice especially detrimental during the COVID-19 crisis.
Medication Abuse and Black Market Drugs
However, obesity is not the only threat, for many women abuse medications and take black market drugs to become obese more quickly. These drugs include birth control, cortisone, and even livestock medications, such as “hormones used to fatten camels and chickens.” One 26-year-old woman, whose husband reportedly “didn’t like sleeping with a bag of bones,” has resorted to allergy drugs that peripherally boost weight gain at the risk of other complications. “I bought this one because the pharmacist told me it was the least dangerous,” she explained. These drugs are easy to purchase and not heavily regulated, which can—according to one pharmacist—be partially attributed to the profitability of black market drug sales to an eager female market. When Sahar Zand visited the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, she noted the openness and conspicuousness of these drug sales, remarking, “That was too easy. They weren’t even trying to hide it.” Such markets teem with feeders buying drugs for their girls and older women buying for themselves. Zand even met a family whose daughter died from taking weight-gain steroids, yet another daughter continues to take the same steroid. Dr. Madene’s words effectively summarize the crisis: Mauritania’s beauty standards are “a grave matter of public health.”
Backsliding After the 2008 Military Coup
Recent political events offer some insight into this crisis. By 2007, the obesity obsession appeared to be improving—the Mauritanian government was trying to bolster national public health and raise awareness surrounding the dangers of obesity. The New York Times even joked: “Until lately, a Mauritanian woman in jogging shoes was about as common as a camel in stiletto heels.” Beauty standards were evolving, and increasingly health-conscious. However, the murder of French tourists by al-Qaeda in 2007 resulted in fewer foreign visitors to Mauritania, and after a military coup in 2008 that ousted the democratic regime, the incoming junta began to revive traditional values under the leadership of General Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz. Aminetou Moctar, leader of the activist group Women Heads of Households, bitterly remarked, “The authorities want women to return to their traditional roles—cooking, staying indoors, and staying fat to keep men happy.” Aminetou Mint Ely, a member of the same organization, expressed similar sentiments:
"We have gone backwards. We had a Ministry of Women's Affairs. We had achieved a parliamentary quota of 20 percent of seats. We had female diplomats and governors. The military [has] set us back by decades, sending us back to our traditional roles. We no longer even have a ministry to talk to."
The government’s unraveling of cultural progress helps explain why Mauritanian law still fails to hold the perpetrators of leblouh accountable. Fatimata M’baye, a lawyer for children’s rights, laments: “I have never managed to bring a case in [defense] of a force-fed child. The politicians are scared of questioning their own traditions.” Therefore, the government actively perpetuates the brutal subjection of girls to leblouh, child marriages, and continuous pressures to fatten themselves.
Paths for Progress
However, amidst this regression, there is hope for progress. The success of pre-coup awareness campaigns indicates that Mauritanian women are open to prioritizing health and loosening the hold of beauty standards. After the government began to educate citizens about ethical treatment of children and physical health in 2003, rates of leblouh began to decline. Kajwan Zuhour, who worked in a female-only gym in Nouakchott, noticed more and more customers by 2009: “Women don't want to be fat anymore, they want to be thin,” she said. This changed outlook emerged from the work of women like Yeserha Mint Mohamed Mahmoud, who was involved in government information programs. She described how many women were unaware of leblouh’s extreme health risks: “The diet here is very rich—they eat couscous, pure lard…[and] don't know this food is fattening, so we explain to the women what to eat every day, so they don't put on weight and they can protect themselves from diseases.'' This observation indicates that future information campaigns must be multifaceted to cover various demographics; some women deliberately feed themselves—and force-feed young girls—fattening food to gain weight, while other women unknowingly consume similar foods. Perhaps, this difference can be partially explained by an urban-rural divide, in which rural women are more familiar with leblouh and the foods most conducive to weight gain. Although this variation underscores the need for additional specialized information campaigns, sweeping, nation-wide efforts to boost awareness of leblouh’s adverse health effects are still worthwhile. Aminetou Mint Ely of the Association of Women Heads of Households remarked that “the government even commissioned ballads condemning fattening,” demonstrating the creative extent of its efforts.
Since the new military junta began dismantling and reversing these governmental programs, the role of private sector organizations has become increasingly important. For example, May Mint Haidy founded an NGO to promote healthier habits among Mauritanian women: “We have carried out a campaign to convince these women to give up the habit of forced feeding. The reason we as an NGO are trying to spread the message is because this forced feeding can lead to dangerous diseases like heart attacks, blood diseases.” These messages are important to ensure adult women do not jeopardize their own health or that of their young daughters. With this mission in mind, NGOs can revive and build upon the work of prior governmental campaigns, counteracting traditional rhetoric glorifying obesity. They should also work to “empower women economically and politically, especially in rural areas, and…reduce illiteracy,” which would further promote physical and mental health. The primary motivations for leblouh and the consumption of weight-gain drugs are early marriage and male validation. If women feel secure and capable in their own right, they would be less likely to sacrifice their health for others. Empowerment and improved literacy would also battle child marriage, arm women against misogynistic government rhetoric, enable them to pursue careers, and help them not only avoid self-destructive practices, but actively take charge of their well-being.
In order to ensure that such efforts reach women in rural areas—a problem noted by Aminetou Mint Ely, May Mint Haidy, and Yeserha Mint Mohamed Mahmoud—larger NGOs will likely need to partner with local community groups and “traditional information sources.” Immediately before the coup in 2007, Haidy told the New York Times that only about 25 percent of Mauritanian women watched TV and even fewer tuned into radio programs; since this statistic aggregated all women across the country, it suggests that the rate of media consumption is even lower for women in rural areas. Given these limitations, NGOs should also consider forging connections with religious leaders, expanding the role of mosques to encompass both worship and education.
After all, many imams have already demonstrated their commitment to uplifting women and children through existing media channels. For example, the Sahel Women’s Empowerment and Demographic Dividend project (SWEDD)—which spans multiple African nations including Mauritania, Mali, and Niger—combats child marriage and uplifts women through radio. If imams involved in such efforts could spread these positive messages to rural mosques, ideally partnering with local religious leaders, women without access to radio could be empowered as well. Hademine Saleck Ely, an imam in the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott and a member of SWEDD, powerfully articulates Islam’s moral repudiation of practices that harm women: “Islam is a religion that honours human beings. Any action that harms an individual's physical or mental health is therefore forbidden.” Given this support, local community religious leaders may be critical in the fight to ensure messages about the dangers of leblouh reach women across Mauritania.
Mauritania’s beauty standards—manifesting in the force-feeding of young girls, child marriage, and the abuse of weight gain medications—are centuries-old. However, they are not immune to change. Information campaigns about healthy habits, the many dangers of force-feeding, and child advocacy are promising avenues for progress, especially with the assistance of religious leaders to spread positive messages in rural areas. Additional initiatives to empower women and increase literacy would help dismantle patriarchal gender relations and foster female independence. The tenacious advocacy of women such as Aminetou Mint Ely and May Mint Haidy prove that such solutions are entirely possible. With their help, the health and beauty of Mauritanian women can cease to be mutually exclusive.
Technological change has always been one of the largest dividers between developed and developing countries. The scientific heavy-hitters have traditionally included the most economically powerful nations. According to the World Bank, every year, the United States, Germany, and Japan all spend upwards of 2.8 percent of GDP on research and development. However, global economic development in the 21st century has spurred increased investment in research and development worldwide, as science and technology have become increasingly critical in the global economy. The African continent has begun to take part in this growing sector as well, at a time when new infrastructure in education has created a promising young scientific workforce. Leaders in academia and industry now seek to mobilize these bright young minds towards a unifying rallying cry: “African solutions to African problems.”
The historical disadvantages faced by Africa’s economic and educational systems are well-known. The political and economic withering of colonialism left most of Africa’s new independent states struggling with violent political upheavals and devastating resource scarcities, allowing little stability or development. In the 21st century, Africans across the continent are changing that narrative. Contemporary South African artist Mary Sibande, globetrotting Nigerian speaker and novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and millionaire Sudanese-British philanthropist Mo Ibrahim are carving out spaces for African players by claiming the spotlight. This new do-it-yourself strategy has certainly unified the continent economically and politically. Originally a mantra strongly associated with the African Union, “African solutions to African problems” has come to apply to science as well, bridging industries, academics, and political thinkers in a wave of professional development and educational investment.
Many leaders in academia and industry have taken an international and collective approach that seeks to mobilize a new generation of policymakers, scientists, and engineers towards solving Africa’s problems, from unemployment and limited education to the looming crisis of climate change and sustainable development. For decades, numerous institutions and initiatives have been working on the training and professional development of scientists and researchers on the continent, including the network of African Institutions of Science and Technology in Sub-Saharan Africa. Other such networks across the continent, including the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences and the African School of Fundamental Physics and its Applications, select and train small classes of African students at various locations across the continent, furthering the collectivization of Africa’s scientific assets.
However, due to the centralization of major journal readerships in the United States and similar countries, African researchers at these newer institutions receive little global exposure for their work. In an industry where patents and publications not only legitimize research areas but also make or break careers, invisibility is a large obstacle to professional growth. Economic and political opportunity ultimately drive many trained individuals to emigrate, contributing to brain drain on a massive scale.
In order to stem the outflow of trained talent, leaders in the scientific community are promoting the African solutions approach through action as well as rhetoric. The Scientific African, a pan-African peer-reviewed journal, was launched in 2018 to circulate, promote, and highlight African research within the continent and around the world. It is being published by the Next Einstein Forum (NEF), an initiative of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), which has worked to connect African science and policy with the global scientific community, particularly through the empowerment of young people. Recently, the organization coordinated an Africa Science Week to unify the continent in the pursuit of scientific development. These efforts continue to represent the energy growing on the continent for a scientific renaissance. In the words of the NEF: “We believe the next Einstein will be African.”
In addition to advocacy organizations, experts in various fields speak about untapped potential. In a 2019 interview about the latest IPCC global warming prediction report, Arona Diedhiou, Senior Research Director at the French National Research Institute for Development, argued that “For a long time, there has been a gulf between the sustainable development options suggested at the international level and the local African realities…. It is time for a paradigm shift in order to propose solutions for Africa, developed by Africans.” And describing the climate challenges that face the continent in the coming years, Diedhiou also stressed the possibility of educating and energizing young people.
While these institutions, organizations, and leaders have been instrumental in the growth of professional development, it is important to consider their drawbacks. By perpetuating the selection and elevation of “the best of the best,” these systems have the potential to exacerbate brain drain on a local level. Well-trained scientists cannot achieve progress without comparably valued support teams, laboratory facilities, and financial investments; they can easily relocate to where those resources are available. But all is not lost. To bolster R&D infrastructure, the African scientific community has a couple of unexpected advantages: a rapidly growing population of young people hungry for education and employment, and the pressure of climate change necessitating innovative solutions.
Despite what the rest of the world may believe, Africa’s scientific aspirations are only growing as the 21st century goes on. In spite of the political and economic hardships embedded in the fabric of the continent’s history, leaders are turning the page. The African Renaissance is upon us. What a wondrous world it will bring.
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