Educating young women, rebuilding Cambodia
Sharing a muddy crawl space with four roommates isn’t part of the traditional path to a law degree. But that’s exactly how Veasna Chea, a Cambodian woman, lived during law school in the mid-1990s — still managing to graduate first in her class. Speaking on Thursday night, Alan Lightman, adjunct professor of the humanities at MIT, described his serendipitous meeting with Chea during a 2003 visit to Cambodia as his inspiration to establish a foundation that helped build the first college dormitories for young women there. Unsettled by the fact that Chea was only the fourth woman in Cambodia to attain a law degree, Lightman vowed to help Cambodia’s women exercise greater power in the country.The barriers to women’s education in Cambodia have their roots in the nation’s tragic and bloody history. More than 30 years after the Khmer Rouge decimated the educated class as part of its campaign of...