On a particularly cold day in March, faculty, staff, students and friends of TC gathered for the Scholarship Luncheon in a warm room lined with bookshelves and a fireplace at the Columbia-Princeton Club.

Opening remarks were given by Darlyne Bailey, Acting President, and Jeff Peek, Trustee and donor of the Mr. and Mrs. Robert Taylor Scholarship Fund.

The student speaker was Tamo Chattopadhay, a doctoral student in International and Transcultural Studies and an Elihu Rose Scholar.

"I particularly want to thank one person: Elihu Rose," he said. "Without his generosity, it would have taken me at least two additional years to be where I am today with my research because I would have had no choice but to take up full-time employment, and slow down my studies. Thank you Mr. Rose for your support to me and my school."

He described a school in the city of Calcutta, a metropolis in Eastern India, where kids sit on mats in the midst of the stench of a local garbage dump and a million flies to learn to read and write. The children and their two dedicated teachers, whose monthly salary is $20, inspired him to come to TC. He hopes to use what he learns at TC to help those children get classrooms with big windows, fresh air and pictures on the wall.

His dissertation research is about the policy of after-school programs for vulnerable children and working children in Brazil, which has also led him to study these policies in New York City. "There is another profound connection I have made from my studies at TC: the link between poverty and peace," he said. "There is no doubt in my mind that a new generation of education and critical pedagogy has to weave a new culture of peace in every classroom, in every country. And it is my hope that one day, every citizen of the world, especially the little ones on the mat in the middle of the garbage dump, will enjoy the dignity and promises of the universal declaration of human rights."

Published Thursday, May. 1, 2003