Deepa Khosla

Deepa Khosla, a young and vital student of international responses to armed conflict in the Third World, died on November 21, 2005, shortly after beginning a tenure-track position at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. Johns. The immediate cause of her death was a brain aneurysm.

Deepa Khosla was born in Uganda in 1964 and, along with her extended family, was among the residents of East Indian descent who were expelled by the Idi Amin regime in 1972. Her family emigrated to Canada later that year. Deepa received her B.A. (1990) and M.A. (1992) degrees in political science from the University of British Columbia where she acquired a strong background in international relations theory and area expertise in Asia. She worked briefly for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and then entered the Ph.D. program at the University of Maryland in 1993 with a university fellowship.

In 1997 Deepa received a prestigious Peace Scholar Dissertation Fellowship from the U.S. Institute of Peace to pursue her doctoral research. Her central research question was whether and how intervention by foreign powers affected the level of violence in the ethnopolitical wars of the 1980s and 1990s. Her comparative empirical work on this topic was first published in a 1999 article in Third World Quarterly. This presaged her dissertation results which showed, for example, that interventions during the Cold War were more likely to lead to conflict escalation, whereas in the 1990s they were more likely to stabilize or reduce violence. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, she also found that competing interventions had no consistent effect on levels of rebellion.

By the time of her appointment at Memorial University, Deepa had worked for several years as a researcher at the University of Maryland's Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM), taught at Simon Fraser University, and held a one-year visiting position at Willamette University in Oregon. She also had a dozen publications to her credit plus had presented a half-dozen papers at professional meetings. Two of her contributions merit special attention. In 1995 I asked her to collaborate with me in a comparative study of domestic and international strategies for managing separatist conflicts in Asia, with support from the International Social Science Council's Conflict Early Warning Systems program. Deepa's detailed analysis of four such conflicts—two contained in Tripura and the Philippines, two continuing in Kashmir and Tibet—provided the basis for evaluating the effects of conflict-reducing initiatives taken in each case. We coauthored a lengthy chapter that reported the results of the study in Hayward Alker et al. (eds.), Journeys through Conflict: Narratives and Lessons (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001). Shortly before she left for Newfoundland she completed a global survey of “Self-Determination Movements and Their Outcomes” that was published in CIDCM's biennial report, Peace and Conflict 2005: A Global Survey of Armed Conflicts, Self-Determination Movements, and Democracy.¹

The full report is available at www.cidcm.umd.edu, Publications, Peace and Conflict 2005 by Monty G. Marshall and T. R. Gurr. Deepa Khosla is author of Chapter 5, pp. 21–7, and Appendix tables II, 2, and 3.

Deepa had admirable qualities of persistence, precision, and focus in all her work. As her dissertation advisor and collaborator, I found she worked with close attention to detail and nuanced interpretations. Her early death cut short her plans for a post-doctoral book project on how patterns and outcomes of intervention in armed conflicts are affected by changes in international norms about sovereignty and territorial inviolability.

In the months before her death Deepa asked Memorial University officials for protection against sexual harassment.²

Described in “The President's Dilemma,” p. 8 in Current magazine, www2.currentmag.ca/.

In response to her concerns and those raised later by her family, professional colleagues, and the media about her experiences, President Alex Meisen of Memorial University commissioned an external inquiry into the circumstances of her death and, more generally, the status of women students, staff, and faculty at the university. The investigation was conducted by Professor Shirley Katz of York University, a lawyer with extensive experience in harassment and discrimination issues. Professor Katz interviewed many people on and off campus who had some knowledge of these issues and completed her report on August 15, 2006.

Professor Katz's report says that “While some interviewed emphasized a positive environment, many … reported evidence of a serious malaise and masculine culture.”³

The Muse, MUN student newspaper, September 21, 2006, www.themuse.ca/view.php?aid=39373; see also the editorial at www.themuse.ca/view.php?aid=39428.

She made 12 recommendations for dealing with these issues, including the establishment of a crisis and risk management team and a Center for Human Rights and Equity.⁴

“Dr. Shirley Katz's Investigation into the Employment Experience of Dr. Deepa Khosla and Related Matters,” www.mun.ca/marcom/home/katz_report.php.

As of this writing the full report is being redacted to protect the identity of those interviewed and has not yet been made public. President Meisen has informed the university community that the report shows that everything possible was done for Deepa and that colleagues and administrators acted in good faith. At the same time, he acknowledged problems with the university's procedures and machinery for handling cases of harassment and discrimination, and has promised to implement all 12 recommendations by December 2006.

Those of us who knew and worked with Deepa Khosla hope that her death and the university's response will have lasting benefits for women at Memorial University.