February 26 1999
Former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez, Nobel prize winner, and Paul Ehrlich, author and prize-winning biologist, are participating in KU's symposium on "Costa Rica: Democracy, Environment and Peace," April 1 to 3.
Arias, president of Costa Rica from 1986 to 1990, received a Nobel peace prize for promoting peace in Central America. He will speak at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 1, in Budig Hall.
Ehrlich, the Bing professor of human biology at Stanford University, will speak at 8 p.m. Friday, April 2, in Budig Hall. Both speeches are free and open to the public.
The symposium commemorates a more than 40-year exchange of scholars between the University of Costa Rica in San Jose and KU, said Charles Lee Stansifer, KU professor of history and chair of the symposium's planning committee. The two universities have the oldest surviving cultural exchange agreement between U.S. and Latin American universities in the Western hemisphere.
"We will have about 24 scholars exploring the reputation Costa Rica enjoys for success in three important areas: democracy, preservation of the environment and conflict resolution," Stansifer said.
Since winning the Nobel Prize, Arias Sanchez has continued to work for peace and human progress. In 1988, using the monetary award from the Nobel Prize, he established the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress in San Jose, Costa Rica.
This will be Arias Sanchez's second visit to the KU campus. He was a lecturer for Student Union Activities in 1994. Arias was a professor of political science at the University of Costa Rica after receiving a doctorate in political science from the University of Essex in England in 1974.
Ehrlich and his wife, Anne, also a biologist, are using some recent prize money received for their research to buy a tract of degraded pasture land in Costa Rica for restoration as tropical forest.
Since the publication of his book "The Population Bomb" in 1968, Ehrlich has been warning that the exponential growth of the human population will someday exceed the planet's capacity to support it.
Ehrlich received a Ph.D. in entomology from KU in 1957.
In the year 2000, the University of Costa Rica will hold a second symposium in San Jose. The Costa Rican event will focus on alternative political economic models and policy choices for maintaining democratic policies. A third symposium is being planned for 2001 at Kansas State University, which became a participant in the KU-University of Costa Rica exchange agreement in 1984.
The oldest cultural exchange agreement between a North American and a Latin American university began formally in December 1958, when KU Chancellor Franklin Murphy and University of Costa Rica Rector Rodrigo Facio signed a proposal.
Contracts to fund the program were signed in 1959.
Some results of the 40-year exchange include:
- KU's libraries, whose Latin American holdings were small in 1959, are now recognized as the world's major research resource for Costa Rica. KU's Central American collections are among the three largest in the nation, and its Latin American collection is ranked fifth in size in the United States.
- More than 1,200 North American students have studied in Costa Rica through KU's exchange program, and about 700 Costa Rican students have studied at KU.
- More than 100 master's theses and Ph.D. dissertations have been completed on Central America at KU.
- More than 100 KU faculty have conducted research, attended conferences, lectured or served as resident directors in Costa Rica.
- More than 50 University of Costa Rica faculty have received their advanced degrees from KU or Kansas State.
For more information see the Costa Rica symposium web site: http://www.kumc.edu/kuce/app/cr/cr.html
Story by Mary Jane Dunlap, University Relations, (785) 864-8853 or e-mail mjdunlap@ukans.edu