Sound The Alarm EP 1: Rosette, My Balkan Queen

The transcription is a conversation between two hosts and a guest discussing the establishment of the International Security Student Association at the University of Oklahoma. The guest, Rosette Hobesh, talks about the need for a bridge between students, faculty, and the job force in the field of security. They discuss the interdisciplinary nature of security and the importance of professional development for students. Rosette also shares her plans post-graduation, including working for think tanks and potentially pursuing graduate programs in Europe or the US. She talks about her diverse background, having lived in Greece, Lebanon, and the US, and her fondness for Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she studied abroad. Overall, the conversation revolves around the importance of bridging gaps in the field of security and providing opportunities for students in various majors. Okay, we're rolling. Oh, wait! Guys, I have to split up there because I forgot to actually do the screenshot. Dude, I feel like I've been shaking for like an hour and a half. Is it withdrawal? No. I don't think it could be. No. It can't be that. Okay, Jeff, you still can do the, kind of like, the fill section. If I may. Tell me when. You can just make my mic convenient. So, I'm here. Breathe. Okay. I hope those scratches are not... Do you see my face? I was holding my friend's German Shepherd puppy, like, on its tail, and I fell down with him, and there was some collateral damage. God. Okay, we're rolling. I'm going to slate next to where my mic is. Sorry for your loss. No problem. Alarm. Okay, go ahead. All right. All right. Welcome back, or welcome to Sound the Alarm. I am your co-host, Jeffrey Logan, joined, as always, by my co-host, Alex Reid. And today we have a very special guest, junior at the University of Oklahoma and president of the newly established International Security Student Association, Rosette. Hobesh. Hobesh. Rosette Hobesh. Nailed it. Exactly. Nailed it. How could I not nail it? Crushing shit. I needed it. Well, yeah. In English, it would be pronounced Hobesh. You said the same word. Yeah, I know. If I had to pronounce it again in Arabic, it would be Hobesh. Hobesh? Hobesh. Hobesh. Sure. Okay, wait. No, what did I get wrong about that? Oh, well, no, it's just kind of hard to connect the H and the B without a vowel. Hobesh. Yes. Yes. Interesting. You got it, though. Thank you. Okay, well, basically what we brought Rosette in to talk about today, our main topic, is why security? How did we get here? How did we get to this university? And why are we passionate about this? So, Rosette, I know you have some stuff you want to yap about, so please feel free. Commence the yap. Absolutely. So I guess us as students, we really came together because we felt as though there was this missing bridge between, you know, students and faculty, but also students and the broader job force at OU. And we felt like there needed to be some sort of bridge, some sort of connection, some sort of organization or association or student coalition that would establish that bridge and kind of work on that professional development aspect of our careers, especially because a lot of what we study in our major is very theoretical. And we usually come out of our degrees missing out on a lot of important professional development aspects. The practical stuff. Exactly, that we need to go into, especially since a lot of us are trying to move out into these big cities, these big competitive pools. D.C. Yeah, D.C. D.C., realistically. Not exclusively, but, you know. Pretty much. I mean, the world is our oyster with this major. It is international. It is international. You as an international student, too, have a very interesting path to that job market, I think, and once you get into it, you have a lot of interesting offers as well. Yes, I do think I have a very broad interest in a lot of things due to my background. So, yeah, again, security is such an interdisciplinary field. There are so many career paths you can go down, and it's good to keep your options open as well. And that's kind of what we were trying to get at with this club is we really want it to be interdisciplinary, and we don't only want to attract international security majors. Of course, we really want to target the international studies realm as well, but going further than that, we also wanted to show other majors on campus that there is a place for them in security, and security is a very broad field. Obviously, you have intersections with development work, with energy, with environmental issues. Engineering is stuff, too. Engineering. Yeah, I definitely want to have an outreach to the engineering department, social work, tech. As a political science major, I have found, like, having the main brunt of my coursework be, like, international area studies focus, it puts into perspective a lot more of – it just gives me a lot more applicable knowledge that I can take back to political science, too, which is something I think, you know, that could offer other majors as well, and I think, like, providing a lot of those, like, key insights that you normally, like, wouldn't hear, discussing, like, political theory and applying that to an everyday situation. Yeah. So that's been – yeah. That's very true. I also, honestly, am quite envious of political science major in the sense that they get a lot more exposure to practical, I guess, skills. Yeah. You get a really good chance, like I said, like, just to apply a lot of that knowledge, especially, like, you know, you're sitting in a lot of the political science classes and not everyone in there is focused on that, so you bring a different perspective to the table when you're engaging in those topics, too. I also know you guys engage a lot more in, like, classes with statistics. Oh, yeah. Things like that, and I know you guys have some required courses surrounding that. Yeah. I'll probably have to venture down at some point during my undergraduate career. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it's definitely – but, again, this is what this association is about. We are trying to bridge those gaps. We're trying to make sure that students are aware of the kinds of skills that they need upon entering the workforce, and not only that. If our undergraduates want to head out to grad school, they don't know where to start. We're trying to build bridges with universities. We're trying to bring in professionals and guests that are going to help us reach those places we want to go. So, yeah, although we're still very small and we're just starting up, I think we've had a lot of progress in a very, very short amount of time. I know. It's especially – I think it's hard just starting out in an admittedly very niche field. Agreed. To attract that wide range of students. But, I mean, I think y'all have been doing a really good job. I'm curious more on a personal level, what do you want to do with this post-graduation? Well, as an international student, it's a lot more complicated than just – well, first of all, if I do want to stay within the country, I will have to secure something. Some kind of visa or something? Yeah. But also, I do keep my horizons a lot broader in the sense that I am looking into graduate programs in Europe as well, alongside graduate programs in the U.S. I'm really not particular about it because I've lived in both and I've experienced both, and I'm comfortable moving regions enough to the point where I could see myself in a lot of different environments. But besides going into a graduate program, honestly, and getting a master's, I'm very interested in working for think tanks. I'm very interested in the research field. I'm very interested in moving out to D.C., I think, for most of us on this team. So, yeah, I guess. That is kind of the end goal, realistically, is to get there. Who doesn't want to pay $9,000 in rent? Who doesn't want to go to a crime-ridden city? Yeah. A swamp town. A swamp town, yeah. A swamp town. Yeah. I could say a lot about that. I lived in Florida for four years. It's quite swampy. I just can't believe, like, how many places have you lived in total? Just where are you from? Okay. Where are you from? So, originally, ethnically, I'm half Russian, half Lebanese. I was born in Greece. My father is Lebanese. My mother is Russian. They both immigrated to Greece. Well, my dad back in the 80s during the Lebanese Civil War, and my mom during the 90s post-Soviet Union collapse. Both looking for work. Both know where to go. Met each other. Greece. Greece. Greece was the place to go. I don't know why. No, it still is. For sure. Yeah. If any of you guys are in Athens during the summer, stop by. It's fun stuff. But, yeah, I was born there. Stayed there until I was three. Ended up moving back to Lebanon at that age or moving to Lebanon. My dad wanted us to move there and have us raised there, and I stayed there for a good, let's see, until I was eight. And then at that point, my family moved to the U.S. for two years in South Florida, Miami mainly, and then ended up moving back to Lebanon for three years, back to Florida for two years, and then back to Lebanon for a year. And then at that point. You just couldn't decide. No, we really. They had to feel the allure of both. It's nice everywhere. Yeah, I know. If you ever find me having difficulty making a choice, you know where that comes from. Very indecisive. But, yeah, eventually after being in Lebanon for a year, I applied to a boarding school program to go study abroad for two years, my last years of high school, and complete the international baccalaureate, and I was sent to Bosnia and Herzegovina to do that for two years. I lived in Mostar, which is a beautiful city in Herzegovina. Best two years of my life. I love that country. That's very interesting what you say about that place specifically. Can you kind of get into why some of that would remain so fondly with you? It's one of those places that people, I think they travel to, and it's very one-dimensional with a lot of people who are aware that it's there. They think of war, those sorts of things. That region has been filled with turmoil. It is interesting to say very fondly on that. Yes, and that is the general perception when you talk about the Balkans these days, especially within our field and especially how it's perceived through the media. Of course there's that leftover sentiment of the 90s and the war. Of course it is still considered a post-conflict society, and living there you do come face-to-face with those tensions every day and you feel it around you, especially if you're really immersed with the people around you and with the culture and you're not just there as a tourist for a month or a couple weeks or just a week or a couple days. But for me, the Balkan region in itself is a beautiful place. Of course I've lived in Greece for a while, which is a very different region to the Balkans, but nevertheless still considered the Balkans. Bosnia, honestly, well, I guess landscape-wise it's really beautiful, really mountainous. Geographically, that part of the Balkans specifically, that Bosnia, it's beautiful. Have you been? I have been to Serbia. I went to Belgrade, and I was about to say actually one very interesting thing about how they're very post-conflict oriented. Almost everywhere you go, like a public space in Belgrade, there is some remnant of like there's like relics of the Soviet Union all around that these people just like it's like a trading community. It's all around, and they do keep in touch a lot with their cultural past in that way, and it's never really talked about, and it's kind of a niche thing to put under a lens, but I thought it was really funny when I was there because you would never ever expect that there. Is it the Soviet Union? They had pictures of Lenin specifically almost everywhere, and that one picture of Tito where he looks like the happiest person on earth. Tito's picture follows you around everywhere. There is something about the portrait of that man that will, I believe, just stick through time. The seriousness and like the confidence conveyed in everything is crazy. I had the chance to visit the Tito Museum. I'm trying to remember where it was in Bosnia, but it was very interesting. I don't think it was in Sarajevo. It was somewhere out somewhere in the fields. That's just crazy. I may be in international area studies as a field. I've never been out of the country. I've never been out of the U.S. Where would you want to travel? Immediately. My minor is Japanese, so Japan. Japan. I think that would make the most sense. I'm looking at study abroad opportunities over there. You should. I think that would be really great. It would be sick. Jefferson. But yeah, Bosnia, to continue with the question answer, Bosnia is, well, I lived in Mostar specifically, which is in its own a very interesting case study. It's divided in half, and you can kind of see one part of the town shift to another based on the architecture. Obviously, a lot of the Bosniak Muslim side of the city, the architecture is very typified by this remnant of Ottoman Empire-style building and architecture. Very beautiful. And then you have the other side of the city, which both sides of the city are interconnected by a bridge, and this bridge has become very symbolic not only to Mostar, but also to the war because it was bombed and rebuilt after the war. And the other side of the city is very typified by these socialist era buildings, which is kind of what you would think of when you think post-Soviet country. If you walk into any small town in that country, the buildings are strictly that too. But it really depends where you're at, and it really depends how that region has come to develop. Obviously, if you go to Sarajevo, for example, you see a lot of remnants of architecture from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which you can really distinguish, and it's really interesting to just live in that and also see how Mostar specifically is one of the places where you still have that residential division of Bosniak Muslims in one part of the town, and then you have a largely Croat area living on the other side. For example, I would walk 25 minutes every day from the Croat area, which is where my residency was, all the way to the kind of middle point of the city, more so the Bosniak side where my school was located. And my school was an international school, obviously, was located in conjunction to a local school. So we had a lot of, I guess, face-to-face interaction with local students as well, which really helped with the integration part. So you got immersed in the culture. I definitely was. I mainly had a lot of Bosnian and Croat friends while I was over there, and yeah, it just really helped me get that, I don't know, immersed experience being there. And of course, I'm not saying I speak Bosnian or Croatian in any sense, but I do speak Russian, and I was able to pick up a lot of the language because of the Slavic background and Slavic bases that I have. So I did also, by being around or immersing myself, not only with the international students that were studying alongside with me, but also with the local people, I was able to really pick up some language and figure out the culture. I'm definitely going to need your help with Russian because I'm going to be honest. The extent of my ability to learn a language stops at the Danube River. You can go that far. I cannot go any further. I'm Frederick Barbarossa. I'll drown if I try to go through that river. You picked a great language for that. Yeah, yeah. Yes, absolutely. I also speak Arabic and Greek and a bit of French as well, growing up in Lebanon. Yeah, just to state the facts, put the facts on the table. Yeah, that's impressive. It's very impressive. Isn't that crazy? So would you say while you were in school in Bosnia-Herzegovina, is that when you kind of figured out that you wanted to pursue the security route, or did you really always know that this was something you were passionate about? Well, in terms of international affairs in general, I really fell in love, as many do, in your high school Model UN conference. Our producer is hitting the wall in the back. Lauren loves it. Lauren has a bit of a, I guess, Lauren, historical noted fan of high school Model UN. Model UN. Huge UN fan. Big UN fan. Yeah, so I have been doing Model UN. Recently I retired Model UN, veteran if you will. No. But I've been doing Model UN since middle school. My first Model UN conference I attended was in Lebanon at the Lebanese American University. Oh, how convenient. No, but it's a very big national competition for high school and middle school students in Lebanon. I mean, it's a tiny, tiny country, so you can imagine. We can all group in one part of the country pretty easily. It's like an hour bus ride away for all of us essentially. Not bad. Really not bad. Yeah, it's a multi-school kind of Model UN competition, and it's really highly encouraged by a lot of schools in the country. So that was my first encounter with Model UN. Didn't speak a word in my first conference. I was absolutely terrified. Flash forward to my second conference in high school. That's when I really realized, I don't know, kind of the domain of international affairs, international relations, was really something I wanted to step into in my career, in my future career. And yeah, after that I ended up moving abroad to Bosnia. I took global politics as a course for my international baccalaureate and kind of delved into the, yeah, you can take that as a course in high school. Dude. Well, it transfers over as a credit for, not here, but for a lot of universities. It's kind of like an AP credit. Oh, I see, I see. Essentially. Yeah, that's kind of what led me down that path of international affairs, and with international security in particular. And OU, what's really great with OU is OU is really unique in offering it as an undergraduate program because you tend to see a lot of graduate programs surrounding security but not a lot of undergraduate programs, which tend to be more broad in either affairs or relations. Or area studies. Or area studies, right. Or poli-sci, right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but I think OU is really particular in the fact that it offers this kind of program, and that's what really attracted me to OU in the first place, that and also the fact that it's a really big school. And I kind of wanted that big school experience, and that's how I ended up here. Nice. Yeah. That background seems like of the last person who would ever come to a Midwest U.S. university. Well, I also got here on full scholarship. That's a little bit, yeah. Football school. Football school. Football. Do you count this as the Midwest? I've heard a lot of debates about this. Oklahoma's absolutely the Midwest. I've heard a lot of. Because the other side of that coin is people say Oklahoma's the South, and that is so incorrect on various levels. Okay, here's the general consensus. Geographically. No, not even geographically. Texas could be geographically South because it's. Texas is. Pause. Texas is Texas. They can't be put into a region. They're Texas. Texas. Okay, they're kind of. Well, if we're doing a geographic analysis of, like, the Midwest and the South. Our producers. You know what the South are? Native Oklahomans, South. South, okay. See, that's where I put it. As a native Midwesterner, South. Let me tell you guys this. Here's the general consensus I've heard. If I ask an Oklahoman from kind of midpoint of Oklahoma, if I ask an Oklahoman from Tulsa, they will say absolutely Midwest. If I ask a person from OKC, they will probably also say Midwest. If I ask a person from the OKC metropolitan area, also probably Midwest. If I ask a person from any point South of that, they are much more likely to say South. Rural town is a good way to put it. Any rural town. I think it does. Look, I'm being completely impartial. Like, I'm from Dallas, and I've lived there all my life, and I don't even think Texas is the South like you said. But in that same way, I would never say that Oklahoma is the South, not culturally, not geographically, none of those. So for you, is the South the Southeast? You know, you're like Georgia. I would say from Texas to Florida and Florida up to Virginia if you want to do that. And then I would do, that's historical. That's historical. I guess so. I don't know if I would consider all of Florida the South. I like the South. Here's the weird thing. North Florida is the South. North Florida is the South. South Florida is an extension of Latin America. And I say that as a person from Miami. I think that's true. Do you do anything there? Well, alongside many other places. No, exactly. But I did reside in Miami for four years. Well, I can imagine, like, this feels very much, it makes sense just given that you've had such an international background. Right, yes. I would say, like, culturally, I would agree Miami, not the South at all. No. No, it has honestly never been. But every single other part of Florida, Fort Myers, Fort Lauderdale, Ocala, Orlando. I would argue that all the way up to Fort Lauderdale, like, there's Miami-Dade County, Fort Lauderdale's in Broward County. I would say that's still not quite South Florida, like, Florida as in the South. But the southern tip of Florida, I don't know. I mean, politically, it's also a lot. We could get into that, yeah. Yeah, okay. But I'm actually curious to reel it back to international realm. Are there, like, arguments like this on what is counted as part of a region in the other countries you live in? Yeah. Like, are people from Athens, like, arguing with other people about what their region is? Well, I think Greece is pretty, I guess there is a wider consensus that we are part of the Balkan region. Okay. But we're also in the European Union. So that's, I mean. Pakistanis and Indians actually having a very famous clash. That does tend to lead to some conflict. Right, yeah. I mean, I don't know. Maybe I'm not well-versed enough with Greek politics to be able to answer that question. Not even necessarily Greece, just, like, in general. Have you seen those kind of, like, arguments or divisions based on region? And anywhere you've lived. Oh, definitely. Yeah? I mean, like. I'm trying to think. I'm trying. I'm really trying. Because I feel like. Well, there's obviously that, like, there's always that argument of, like, is Turkey in Europe? Is Russia in Europe? Yeah. Are they Asian countries? Yeah. Right? But that's more so, like, because of the geographical split continent-wise. I mean, I think that gets lost in translation. So a great example of that getting kind of lost in translation is, like, to a lot of, like, people. Like, Europeans that study history refer to, like, I'm trying to think of a good country. So, like, they would refer to. Audio's rolling. Waiting. And we're back. Sorry. Can you pause the audio? All right. Sorry for that brief break. We had technical issues. Oh, perfect. Well, welcome. What? We are. So, Rosette, we know you have some expertise. You're passionate about the Balkan region. Do you want to discuss the ICTY for a bit? I mean, I could discuss the ICTY. I'd very much like that. Is that a request? I think it's a formal request. Formal request. We can talk about it. We can yap about the ICTY. We can talk about transitional justice all day. I love that term. Yes. It's a wonderful term. We are so ready for the midterm. Yes. We are so not. I'm not. Right. Well, what I find, having come to, I guess, haven't been able to study Bosnian Herzegovina a lot from an American lens more so, and kind of studying the Balkan region's conflict from an American lens as well, well, I feel like having gotten the experience on the ground, also getting to hear not only the local perspective from the time of the war, since obviously much of the generation that has experienced the war is very much alive to this day because this was only back in the 90s. Yeah. But also seeing kind of how the new generation, post-war generation, has grown up and has been able to absorb kind of the existing tensions in the region. I feel like a lot of academia can be, to this day, very removed from the situation and kind of not see what's happening on the ground. A lot of the readings we have discussed in class have talked a lot about the feasibility of truth commissions and whether that would be feasible or helpful within a post-conflict society. The ICTY itself was met with a lot of, I guess, I don't want to say contempt, but I guess there was a much higher expectation placed on it by a lot of people from different sides, both the ex-Croats and Serbs. They definitely expected a lot more prosecution of, I guess, not only just the higher-up individuals. I mean, I heard stories of people having to live amongst war criminals that have knowingly committed atrocities during the war, just having to live alongside them in the village every day. So I guess one of the things that the ICTY didn't meet in terms of public expectations was that. But obviously, the general public will not only want to prosecute this distant leader that only represented a population and not the doings of that population, but they also wanted the prosecution of the people committing these crimes, which wasn't always the case. Of course, the ICTY was a great space for individuals to…a lot of testimonies to… It did let the truth kind of be heard, at least from what we've researched about it. That was my main takeaway for the tribunals, even past convicting the criminals, because realistically, it's very difficult to catch all war criminals in a conflict. That is very true. There was one very recently, I believe, who was on trial. I want to say he was at the Hague. He was in the witness box, and he was a Bosnian war criminal. I don't recall his name, but he took a cyanide pill while he was in the booth. That is a very, very popular… Yeah, his name escapes me. I don't even want to try his last name. I will get back to you on that. Praljak? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He took a cyanide pill in the… He was in the box. He took… Confessing? Yes. Yeah. I think it was following the statement of his sentencing. Yes, it was. I think he was only in the witness box for like 20 minutes at that point. I think they had maybe asked him one or two formal questions, and then he just pulled the plug. Wow. That was a crazy, crazy event. Everybody there… I wasn't living there during that time. How long ago was that? I believe that was… That was only a couple years ago, I believe. Yeah, yeah. It was only like 2017. It's the first time that's ever been caught on camera. Yeah, I guess. It was in 2017, late 2017, I believe. Wow, seven years ago now. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. That's Lobodan Praljak. Yes, yes. Had the first name, did not have the last name. Yes. Wow. But, yeah, that was a crazy occurrence. All the Slobodans really went crazy during that whole thing. The Slobodans are a very specific group of people. Yeah, they're their own group. Wait, there's a stereotype of Slobodans? It's the name… There's a lot of gravity. When you name a child that, you want it to do certain things to groups of people that also live in your country. Alex is… I don't want to see a Slobodan read. That's a nightmare. That's kind of my final… Yeah. That's my endgame in all this, actually. If I can marry a woman who lets me name my child Slobodan, there will be no end in sight. I'm talking from… Not since the likes of, like, Alexander has it expanded so far. Possibly from Mongolia to, like, Spain, if you get a Slobodan read. You're trying to recreate… Do you know what Slobodan means? I would love to. He does not. I thought you were going to tell me. I was really excited for him. Wait, wait. I have an idea. I just don't want to get it wrong. Yeah, okay. So, svoboda in Russian means freedom. And dan or den in Russian is day. So, day of freedom? Freedom day. Well, now I actually, like, really want to name the kid Slobodan. Slobodan is a Serbo-Croatian masculine given name, which means free. So, freedom. And that he was. So, if you want a child of liberty and justice for all. That sounds good to me. Because that's, like. Add Slobodan to your baby name. That's in the book. Baby name. That's in my little notes. Slobodan, Sadam. My two sons. Make a trip with Slobodan, Sadam, and Joseph. Milosevic. Yeah, yeah. Produce a note to give them a middle name of something to the effect of grace or Thomas. A Gregory. Thomas Reed. This baby is more multicultural than I am. Yeah. I think. I don't think anything. Make a mark to edit that out at, like, 80. One second. I think this is a good one for the outtake. Let's do, like, a good closer. And then we're going to edit all this out. But let's just do, like, a good closer and pack everything in and disperse. We could. Yeah, I think that after the IDTY. I think a tangent is a good place. I'm usually Dean Bitts. We can close off any. Would you like to? What should I close off? Well, I can say a little spiel. Okay. So, that is all the time we have today on Sound the Alarm. We want to thank our guest, Rosette, for coming in and talking with us. It was a pleasure. Thank you. You have been great. And we hope to see all of you guys and everyone. I'm going to take that again. I'm going to take that again. And we hope to see all of you again on the next episode. We hope to see you all again on the next episode of Sound the Alarm.