The Cambodian ambassador to the United States, His Excellency Roland Eng, sat down to eat with a group of about 30 honors students in the James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence.
Eng was joined by William Itoh, the former U.S. ambassador to Thailand, and Sichan Siv, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Southeast Asia during the Bush administration.
This informal lunch was the first in a series of Food for Thought discussions, which are organized by the Honors Program Student Advisory Board.
"Our goal is to increase interaction throughout the student body regarding important issues," said Christian Sawyer, who is part of the organizational committee.
The students attending were well-informed about issues pertinent to Southeast Asia, and questions ranged from inquiries concerning this rainy season's severe flooding in Cambodia to problems with U.S. foreign policy. "I'm pleased to see everybody has done their homework," Eng said.
Siv said he had just arrived in the U.S. and was still recovering from the time change. He answered questions and discussed personal accounts of his travels in Cambodia. "People and animals came to live along the road (after the floods)," Siv said. "There were incidents where people were killed avoiding traffic."
Long Vo, a sophomore anthropology and history major, used information from a recent class lecture for his question about environmental issues in Thailand. "I learned that Thailand used to be 80 percent forested, and that number has been cut to 5 percent," Vo said.
Responses to this question led to discussion of the broader theme of cultural differences between regions, with Itoh saying family welfare often takes priority over social issues such as the environment. "In many places in Thailand, as in the whole of Southeast Asia, focus is on family and community - what needs to be done is to have environmental consciousness raised," Itoh said.
The speakers also told stories of their lives before they entered politics, including wartime losses of loved ones. "I lost my parents, five sisters and two brothers (in the Cambodian conflicts of the 1980s)," said Eng. "Always, I believed one family member to be alive."
