News about Haitian schools is still horrible and scarce. There is, however, a morsel of minimally goodish news about some Haitian students in The Chronicle of Higher Ed’s otherwise mildly insensitive Haiti article (”The biggest challenge,” says a U Wisconsin study abroad official, “may be getting the [UW] students, who were scheduled to depart this Friday, back to Madison”):
“The Haitian Education & Leadership Program, a Port-au-Prince based university-scholarship program that provides merit scholarships to top high school graduates from Haiti’s poorest areas, reported that the organization’s center, located near the downtown district, has been destroyed…[and] four staff members have been injured. But there were no reports of any deaths among students, with nearly all of the approximately 60 students affiliated with the program accounted for.”
After taking action (if you feel so moved), learn about the crisis at the Times’s expansive Haiti site, which posts this excellent list for further reading about Haiti:
- Haiti: The Breached Citadel. Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, 2004.
- Faces of the Gods: Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti. Leslie Desmangles, 1992.
- Avengers of the New World. Laurent Dubois, 2004.
- The Uses of Haiti. Paul Farmer, 1994.
- Voodoo. Search for the Spirit. Laennec Hurbon, 1995.
- The Black Jacobins. C.L.R. James, 1980.
- From Dessalines to Duvalier. David Nicholls, 1996.
- Haiti: State Against Nation. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, 1990.
