ATWS conference held in 3rd world country for first time

Harold Isaacs, ATWS founder, attends

Carly Farrell

AMERICUS — In the early 1980s, Harold Isaacs, now a semi-retired professor at Georgia Southwestern State University, encountered a problem — which he would eventually solve — on an international level.

Third world countries had been studied on specific continents well — Asia, Africa and South America — but as a group, they hadn’t had any significant study whatsoever.

In 1981, Isaacs held a small conference, which brought together a few people who knew quite a bit about each continent’s problems. Isaacs wanted more, though — he wanted to know what each third world country across the world had in common.

He found it — and in 1984, he started the Association of Third World Studies Inc. (ATWS), which now has 350 members from places all over the globe.

“What connects them all seems to be a history of colonialism and anti-imperialism and have been historically dominated by the West,” Isaacs said. “Together, this gives them a sense of collective consciousness fed partly by the world’s capitalism system. It doesn’t treat (the third world countries) fairly. And they have many common characteristics — population growth, poverty, illiteracy, disease and dependency on the outside, just to name a few.”

When Isaacs launched ATWS, he wanted to make the academic world aware of the problems the countries had as a whole so society, as a whole, could have tangible issues to resolve.

“We’re doing our best to alleviate the problems,” Isaacs said. “Without knowledge, people won’t be aware and can’t even contribute money to help fight. We just want these countries to at least have a voice.”

For each season, a journal is published by ATWS, with reports about developing countries, to which the CIA, FBI, Harvard, Yale, Stanford and many other organizations and people subscribe.

Isaacs and his group recently held the 27th annual conference in Ghana — Nov. 21-24, in which 100 people attended. It was their first conference in Africa. Their 28th conference will be held from Oct. 7-10 in Savannah. Odd years, the conference is held in the United States, while on even years, the conference is held in a third world country.

Out of all the countries Isaacs has visited, he’s been most impressed with Costa Rica.

“Relative to the other countries I’d been to, they’ve got a pretty good economy,” Isaacs said. “For some reason, it just seems more progressive for some reason. But, I also liked the Dominican Republic and Ghana.”

Isaacs first was inspired to pursue a history degree at the University of Alabama when he took a history class from Alfred B. Thomas, who eventually became his advisor. He received his undergraduate degree, master’s degree and doctoral from the University of Alabama. He began his career at the University of Memphis, and came to GSW as a history professor in 1965.

AWTS is the largest organization of its kind in the world.

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