Not a Transitional Goal
If anyone thinks that a liberal arts education may not be "relevant" to the real world, they haven't talked to Angela O'Neal.
 |
Angela O'Neal |
In fact, O'Neal found her calling in the real world before she even started at Penn State. This happened while she took a "detour" after high school instead of immediately starting college, which was her original plan. That detour? The U.S. Army.
"I wanted to attend the Defense Language Institute and the only way I could do that was to join the army," she says. "Usually you have to already be in the service to take the test to get into the Institute. My recruiter let me take the test first. I passed it and immediately joined up."
At the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, the Army selects each student's language to study; O'Neal was assigned to learn Serbian-Croatian. Soon she was immersed in eight hours of language study per day taught by native speakers. Through her teachers—Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians—she learned about the war, first hand.
"It was so powerful talking and listening to real people who witnessed horrible events and had to flee their countries," she recalls. "That's when I started getting interested in international politics and specifically, war crimes."
With a focus on the war crimes tribunal in the former Yugoslavia, O'Neal discovered the rapidly thriving field of transitional justice, which is a relatively new area of study and is still being defined.
"'Transitional justice' is such a broad term—it encompasses criminal justice, war crimes tribunals, truth and reconciliation commissions, and many other modes of transition," she explains. "Political scientists are now realizing that the field needs more empirical research in order to better understand what works and what doesn't."
One of those scientists is Dr. Kathy Powers in the Department of Political Science. As Powers' research assistant, O'Neal is helping to amass the current research on transitional justice so that they can establish a working database. Empirical research is critical to leaders of new governments who are struggling to find the best process of democratization for their countries.
"What we've found so far is that no one model exists, but the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa is often proclaimed to be the most successful mode of transitional justice to date," she says. "So we're studying why it worked so well, and if it can be duplicated in other countries."
Right now, the database contains a summary of articles and books that exist currently in transitional justice literature and a list of all the various definitions of the term. In the next research stage, O'Neal will begin working on the typologies of transitional justice which will clarify the role the truth commissions, tribunals, and reparations.
"Besides the South African model, we are working to determine what other types of transitional justice have worked in the past," she explains. "By applying these successful models, we hope to help current and future post-conflict societies."
O'Neal is planning to go to law school after she graduates and hopes to work for a human rights organization or the United Nations.
"I've known my whole life that I want to make a difference in the world," she says. "Now, I 'm letting my experiences and education guide me in the right direction."