WASHINGTON, June 25, 2004
Suresh Gupta
Vivek Viswanathan of New Hyde Park,
N.Y. was awarded first prize in this year's National
Peace Essay Contest (NPEC), sponsored by the U.S.
Institute of Peace.
A student at Herricks High School, Viswanathan
received a $10,000 college scholarship for his essay
titled "Establishing Peaceful and Stable
Postwar Societies Through Effective Rebuilding Strategy."
In announcing the winner at the Institute's annual
NPEC awards banquet on June 23, Institute president
Richard H. Solomon commented on the high caliber of
all the essays, noting that their authors "are
already extraordinary ambassadors of peace.
David Leimbach of Jenks High School
in Tulsa, Oklahoma was awarded a $5,000 scholarship
for his second-place essay on "Attempts at Sustainable
Progress Following Conflict: East Timor and Cambodia.
Kevin Schaeffer, a student at the
Canterbury School in Fort Wayne, Indiana, won the
third-place award of $2,500 for his essay on "Political
Reconstruction: Planting Democracy and Stability for
the Next Generation"
More than 1,000 students from American
high schools across the United States and in U.S.
territories and abroad participated in this year's
contest, writing on the topic of rebuilding societies
after conflict. In his essay, Viswanathan drew upon
the 1947 U.S. Marshall Plan for post-World War II
Europe as a successful example of post-war reconstruction
and Somalia of the early 1990s as an unsuccessful
model. He argued that to be effective, reconstruction
efforts should be tailored to the specific post-war
situation, obtain a large commitment of resources
and assistance from the international community, and
involve "a nation's own people in a way that
allows them to ultimately control their destiny and
that eventually provides a clear exit strategy for
international actors.".
Vivek is a junior at Herricks High
school in New Hyde Park, New York. He is co-editor-in-chief
of the school newspaper, and serves on the executive
boards of both the Student Government and the
World Affairs Club. He is also a member of the varsity
basketball team and a trombonist in the jazz band.
A three-time national finalist in the National History
Day competition, Vivek recently completed a paper
entitled, "Fallout From Reykjavik: Reagan's Stand
and the Fate of Arms Control," for which he interviewed
former Secretary of State George Shultz and former
Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Vivek hopes
to pursue a career in law or politics upon graduation
from college.
Viswanathan, Leimbach, and Schaeffer
joined the other 49 state-level winners in Washington,
D.C. from June 19 through June 24 for an Institute
of Peace program that introduced them to senior U.S.
government and foreign embassy officials, members
of Congress, and other experts involved in the making
of American foreign policy. They assumed the roles
of diplomats, government officials, and members of
the international community in a special three-day
problem solving simulation focusing on the conflict
in Sudan. The purpose of the exercise was to encourage
the participants to closely examine the process of
post-conflict reconstruction.
