Ambassadorial Scholar Adam Zarazinski

Today Adam Zarazinski gave the Club a report on his year studying abroad as our Club's Ambassadorial Scholar. Adam completed his year of academic study at the University of Nottingham in England last year.

Since his youth, Adam has had two main goals in his life, he wanted to understand the world as best as possible and he wanted to leave the world a better place when he leaves than when he entered. This was the reason he studied political science at De Paul University in Chicago and it was also the reason he chose to study human rights theory and policy at the University of Nottingham in England as a Rotary Scholar. He achieved the distinction of graduating at the top of his class at De Paul with a degree in political science. During his tenure at De Paul he worked in the Irish Parliament, the European Parliament and at the Chicago Council for Global Affairs.

The University of Nottingham sits just outside Nottingham City which is about two hours north of London. Nottingham really is the home of Robin Hood – they have a statue of him in the town center - and they really do have a Sherwood Forest as well. The University has a huge sprawling campus and Adam said it was the most beautiful campus he have ever seen.

Although England is an English speaking country, Adam felt he had an international experience because the people he hung out with and lived with. They came from Mexico, Ireland, Nigeria, Lebanon, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, China, Ukraine, India and Australia. There was one person from London thrown in the mix as well. Although everyone was from all over the world, almost every one of his friends was interested in human rights and development. Adam mentioned that he was always told that Rotary was a great place to meet new people, but he never expected to experience it to this degree. He felt that these will literally be the people that he will be working with for the rest of his life and it is all thanks to Rotary.

Adam said that his Rotary host councilor, Peter Halliday, was amazing as well. Over in the UK Adam represented Bretby Rotary Club District 1220 and he went to a Rotary event almost every weekend. He has many great Rotary stories from these events. For instance when a Rotary member took Adam to a premier league soccer game and he sat in the front row, or when a Rotary member and Adam tried to have an interest meeting for a Nottingham Roteract Club and no one showed, or the time he was made to square dance in front of his host club.

Over and above the Rotary events and camaraderie of his fellow students, Adam also worked hard at his studies. He learned a mixture of practical human rights policy and human rights theory. Adam felt the University did a stellar job at running its human rights program. He said that Nottingham is so respected when it comes to human rights that lecturers have flown in from all over the world to teach there. Right before he left to come home, a Professor from the University of Milan in Italy stopped by to teach Adam and a few other students about social trauma in post-apartheid South Africa.

Adam said that although the lectures were very interesting, the culmination of his work in the eyes of the University was his Masters Thesis. Adam studied how government run human rights commissions affect the human rights situation on the ground in developing countries. Adam said that essentially what is happening is that these commissions, which are funded by the government, act as legitimizers for state sponsored human rights violations. While there has been a bit of research done on this topic in general, there is almost none when it comes to commissions in the Middle East. Consequently, he left Nottingham and spent five months in Cairo, Egypt where he conducted his research and worked for the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, which is the largest human rights NGO in Egypt.

In Cairo, he had the opportunity to meet with some of the regions most important human rights activists. He also gave a speech at a local Cairo Rotary Club and, of course, he saw all of the sights.

After such a whirl-wind exciting year, he came back home to Chicago to complete his thesis. Just as he finished it, he was hired by Interpol to work in their Specialized Crime and Analysis Unit and once again headed back overseas – this time to the South of France. For the curious, Adam said that working at Interpol is nothing like being James Bond or Jason Bourne (although that is not what he tells the ladies). His job consisted of working on a program in the Trafficking in Human Beings Sub-Directorate, where intelligence officers work to stop sex traffickers and child traffickers from operating across borders. He just finished a 6 month contract with Interpol, and he is currently taking some time off to publish his Masters thesis and apply to law school.

Adam next hopes to work for the United Nations Human Rights Commission or an NGO such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. Adam thinks that some of the greatest possibilities for change can come through the law, so he hopes to work for these organizations as a human rights researcher, where he would be sent to countries in a specific region and look at what violations are occurring on the ground there, and then he would have the power to recommend policy initiatives to improve that situation through whatever organization he was working for.

Adam was very thankful for the great opportunity that Rotary gave him. He said that our Club has been so kind, generous and welcoming – and that this has only further entrenched within him his desire to work for human rights around the world.

He closed his presentation by thanking the Club for the opportunity to tell us of his experiences. He also said that he is going to do his best to represent our Club not only as a scholar alum, but also as an eventual Rotary member for the rest of his life.