PSU Magazine Winter 2003

AROUND T H E PA R K Relating to the Arab and Islamic world Relations between the United States and the Arab/lslamic world are the concern of a new collaborative pro– gram at Portland State. PSU's Free Market Business Development Institute will encourage citizen involvement and public diplomacy with Arab and lslamic institutions and people in collaboration with the Portland-based Ground Zero Pairing Project. The Free Market lnstitute will focus on institutions such as universities and university business schools, while Ground Zero will center its efforts on private citizens, civic organizations, hospitals, schools, and cultural and science centers. The goal is to establish links that will lead to direct communi– cation and citizen exchanges, fostering a mutual understanding of respective business, economic, cultural, social, and political systems. Both efforts will draw on professionals in the Arab/lslamic world who are graduates of American universities such as Portland State. PSU has graduated thousands of Middle Eastern students over the past 30 years. The Ground Zero Pairing Project coordinated a similar nationwide citi– zen diplomacy effort between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in the early– l 980s under the directorship of Earl Molander, the original founder of the organization and now director of the Free Market lnstitute. This resulted in the formation of hundreds of U.S.– U.S.S.R. city-to-city and other institu– tional pairings. Citizen diplomacy efforts such as these were instrumental in ultimately resolving U.S.-U.S.S.R. Cold War tensions. "Over the past 20 years, thousands of Oregonians have found opportuni– ties to be citizen diplomats in meetings with their Russian counterparts as farmers, students, scientists, business managers, professionals of all kinds, and ordinary citizens," says Molander. "For the Arab/lslamic work we again will serve as a key link where individu– als in Oregon and the United States can contact us to learn where and how they can undertake citizen diplomacy roles in their communities." Peace poles given in memory of 9/11 2 PSU MAGAZINE WINTER 2003 The campus community remembered September 11, 2001, one year later with the dedication of three Peace Poles on campus. The poles bear the phrase "May There Be Peace on Earth" engraved in 24 different languages. Located in the grassy area north of the Graduate School of Education, the poles were a gift from PSU's Student Ambassadors, a group of outgoing and academically successful students who represent the University at special events. The peace phrase is engraved in English, Arabic, Spanish, Chinese, Persian, Hmong, Maori, Mohawk, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, French, German, Hindi, Indone– sian, Tibetan, Russian, Turkish, Sign Language, Hebrew, Swahili, Klamath, and Pakistani (Urdu). BLOCKS Campus building site reveals archaeology find Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a 19th century Portland neighborhood on the site of PSU's new Native American Student and Community Center, SW Jackson and Broadway. The nearly 5,000 artifacts recovered-including doll parts, medicine bottles, baby bottles, and fragments of French porcelain-will shed light on the domestic lives of Victorian-era Portlanders. During excavation in October, archaeologists from Applied Archaeo– logical Research, a Portland-based company, monitored construction. Almost immediately, a round brick– lined feature and a dirt-walled pit appeared in the center of the block. A few days later, a large brick– lined cesspool was found under the former home of Justus Strowbridge, one of Portland's early pioneers who lived with his family along Broadway between 1891 and the early 1900s. Before construction began, PSU consulted with urban archaeologist and recent graduate Julie Schablitsky on how to proceed with the project. Old documents and maps were stud– ied to determine who lived on the block and where old structures– such as outhouse holes , wells, and building foundations-would be uncovered during construction of the new center. "As a state agency, the law requires us to preserve and catalogue artifacts as they turn up on our construction projects ," says Burt Ewart, PSU archi– tect. "However, this activity has pre– sented an additional benefit for our own faculty and students to get involved in real archaeological work and to contribute to the history of our own neighborhood. " Artifacts from the site will be studied in conjunction with analysis of Victorian-era literature and later histories of that time in an attempt to better understand Portland's early society.