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Fountain Day at GW’s
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Faculty Focus
35 Years of Cultural (and Campus) Changes
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Professor Peter Klarén (right) with
President Alejandro Toledo of Peru in 2001
at GW.
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A high school Spanish class had a life-changing
impact on Peter Klarén, director of GW’s
Latin American and Hemispheric Studies Program,
who started his 35th year at the University this
fall.
“I went to college and continued to study
Spanish history, loved my Spanish civilization
professors, and after I graduated, I lived in
Spain for several months,” Klarén
says. He planned to continue Spanish studies as
a grad student at UCLA, but fate—and other
plans—shifted his focus.
“When I got out there, the Cuban Revolution
of 1959 had already happened, and this had a big
impact on our government, which had a paucity
of specialists on Latin America; they didn’t
really know what on earth to do about what was
happening there,” Klarén says. As
a result, a good deal of fellowship funds became
available, and so he began to focus on Latin American
history—which brought about personal and
professional growth.
“It was an understudied part of the world.
Nobody paid much attention to it, and there were
a lot of misconceptions about it,” Klarén
says. “I got into it because I thought I
could make a mark, and it turned out that I could.”
As the Latino population in the United States
rapidly grows, Klarén’s expertise
is becoming increasingly vital. “Who would
have thought that we would have so many Latinos
in this country, that the country would be ‘Latinized’
to this effect? I don’t think the Latino
population boom was anticipated; it just unfolded
and happened, although in retrospect, one can
see that the root cause of the phenomenon was
the ‘dirty wars.’” These were
state directed actions against revolutionary groups
in Argentina, Chile, and then Central America,
which indiscriminately targeted civilians and
brought about massive human rights violations,
as the number of so called “disappeared”
persons escalated and torture camps proliferated
in the 1970s and ’80s throughout Latin America.
Klarén credits the growth of GW’s
Latin American Studies Program to federal grants
that improved the quality of the undergraduate
program and the collaboration between the School
of Business and Elliott School of International
Affairs. He also says the collaboration of his
colleagues in the program contribute to its continued
success.
As public interest in Latin American affairs
is on the rise, so is the number of incoming students
eager to learn about the region.
“During the past six years, we’ve
seen an increased interest in the undergraduate
program, and we have many more majors and double
majors,” Klarén says. “At the
same time, we’re getting very good students
in the graduate program.”
Many incoming students also have traveled throughout
Latin America, Klarén says, or take his
classes as part of what he calls a “roots
phenomenon,” to learn more about where they
come from. Many of his students are second generation
Latinos whose parents immigrated to the East Coast.
Klarén is known for his ability to connect
with students, winning the Trachtenberg Teaching
Prize in 1995.
Outside the classroom, Klarén’s
scholarly contributions are significant to the
growing field. He is the author of three books,
the most recent of which was published in Spanish
for distribution throughout Latin America. He
also is a member of the international editorial
committee for the project “Historicizing
the Time of Troubles in Argentina, Chile, and
Peru,” that will produce an electronic publication
sponsored by the Ford Foundation.
In the past 35 years, Klarén has witnessed
great change in Latin American regions, his field
of study, and inside the classroom. The University,
he says, has undergone a transformation as well.
“When I came to GW, this was a very small,
largely undergraduate-oriented commuter college
with a scattering of graduate programs, and an
undersized infrastructure. I remember when the
library was in the old Lisner Hall.
“The campus really has changed dramatically,
particularly under President Trachtenberg. President
Elliott did a tremendous job getting funding at
the University in order, but Trachtenberg has,
as you can see, built up the University so it
is a very different and impressive place now,
visually and with the number and quality of students
that we have.”
—Maureen Ryan
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