Earlier this week, we posted our first of two pieces discussing the impact of Angelina Jolie’s appointment at the London School of Economics. Today, we post a second piece by Njoki Wamai who considers both Angelina Jolie and William Hague’s appointments at LSE and the implications for humanitarianism as it perpetuates unequal power relations. We look forward to your comments!
By Njoki Wamai
On May 23, 2016 the London School of Economics announced the appointment of four Visiting Professors in Practice to teach in their new one–year MSc in Women, Peace and Security. The visiting professors are: Jane Connors, a retired humanitarian careerist and academic; Madeleine Rees, a British lawyer and current Secretary General of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Lord William Hague, a life peer, former British foreign minister and the co-founder of the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI), and Angelina Jolie Pitt, the Special Envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and co-founder of the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI). The PSVI is a campaign based at the Foreign Commonwealth office and Department for International Development (DFID) hoping to address the culture of impunity that exists for crimes of sexual violence in conflict by increasing the number of perpetrators held to account and promoting international co-operation and increasing the political will and capacity of states to do more.
Angelina Jolie-Pitt and William Hague’s appointments have elicited more reactions than those of Connors and Rees, both of whom have experience in academia. Hague and more so Jolie (a Hollywood actress who is the best-known of the four appointees), has been criticised and praised in equal measure for taking up the appointment. According to the LSE website, Jolie said, “I am very encouraged by the creation of this master’s programme. I hope other academic institutions will follow this example, as it is vital that we broaden the discussion on how to advance women’s rights and end impunity for crimes that disproportionately affect women, such as sexual violence in conflict. I am looking forward to teaching and to learning from the students as well as to sharing my own experiences of working alongside governments and the United Nations”. Jolie Pitt’s critics were surprised that a Hollywood actress with no experience on women, peace and security concerns save for her fly-by-night ambassadorial roles for UN agencies could be offered an academic appointment to teach even though the role is ceremonial, with only occasional lectures.
On the other hand, Jolie Pitt’s supporters, including liberal feminists, view her appointment as symbolic. They argue that her appointment affirms the knowledge and experience of non-academics, especially women whose knowledge gained from experience is often ignored by snobbish, mostly male academics in the ivory tower, who fail to acknowledge the structural challenges that prevent women from joining the academy with a dominant patriarchal culture. I agree with those sentiments that support Jolie’s appointment and as a black woman fully support democratisation of knowledge production by ensuring inclusion of marginalised voices that may not have followed the traditional academic path into the academy while earning a doctoral degree. I recognise the structural barriers that prevent many women, especially non-white women, from becoming academics through the traditional path, which involves studying for a costly full-time Ph.D., a path originally designed for monks with no other life apart from studying in monasteries. And before I present my criticism of these appointments, I want to state my great admiration for human beings like Angelina Jolie Pitt, who share their personal predicaments publicly for others to learn from or feel encouraged by. I was moved by how Angelina publicly talked about her choice to have a mastectomy after she discovered she had inherited cancerous genes. Given her stature, speaking out has undoubtedly raised awareness about breast cancer and reduced the stigma that surrounds mastectomy.
Nevertheless, despite the sacrifices Angelina Jolie Pitt has made for women in the fight against cancer, I find her appointment with William Hague as the co-founders of the sexual Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI) problematic, especially when analysed from the perspective of critical race and post-colonial theory.
My main concern with the appointments at LSE’s women peace and security programme — including Jolie Pitt’s — is that they perpetuate the colonial and saviour mentality: that black and brown women in conflict situations can only be saved by white men and women including fly-by-night celebrities, without requisite training on these critical issues. Jolie Pitt’s statements since co-founding the PSVI with Hague clearly demonstrate that her focus is on women abroad. Jolie Pitt and Hague are not thinking of saving British women and American women in conflict. No. It is women in far-off places where the Foreign Commonwealth Office and DFID that host them on their website work. This western saviour complex informs the PSVI and I presume the course at LSE which says that Jolie will be a “professor in practice” drawing on her work with the UN as a global negotiator, to help students better understand the impact of war on the world’s women. The women in Syria and Eastern DRC and elsewhere in conflict are now owned by the world. The ‘world’s women’ and everyone has a right to intervene in these “other” women’s lives, including Jolie Pitt, Hague and their students to save the ‘world’s women’ from war (with the probably assumption that they need to be saved from black and brown men, as Gayatri Spivak pointed out long ago) . This notion of the poor, helpless and mute women of the world who can only be saved by Jolie Pitt and Hague is the problem. I don’t expect that the women in conflict who have to think everyday about their existence, to attend the course or to teach in it. No. But it would have been better if the LSE appointed passionate women leaders and academics who are concerned about the state of women, peace and security in their own countries-in-conflict. There are qualified academics and activists at the national and community level from Syria, Afghanistan, Eastern DRC, Nigeria, and Uganda, who would make this programme richer, more diverse and of much better quality as full-time and occasional lecturers. I wouldn’t mind if Jolie Pitt and Hague’s roles were restricted to violence against women campaigns in United States and Britain, where they live and work, and where attention is also required.
Jolie Pitt and Hague’s initiative is commendable and well taken. However, the two co-founders and the LSE should challenge the unequal power relations between them and the women in conflict they represent by interrogating their own motives in speaking for others. They should continue supporting those causes they are passionate about, like women, peace and security, without necessarily appropriating that space for those women who legitimately need it to voice their concerns and educate others about how best to deal with these concerns. By stepping back and letting those brown, black and Muslim women speak for themselves, Jolie and Hague could help transform humanitarian initiatives into respectful relationships based on solidarity instead of the current relationship. This relationship takes advantage of unequal power relations to speak for women in conflict as mute victims, through the support of the LSE.
Njoki Wamai is a Gates Cambridge Scholar and an alumnus of the Africa Leadership Centre at Kings College London. She previously studied at the University of Nairobi and worked as a social justice activist in Kenya.