People

Jendayi Frazer

Jendayi Frazer

Biography

Jendayi E. Frazer is known worldwide as a policy leader and expert on African Affairs. She joined the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University in 2009 as Distinguished Public Service Professor with joint appointments in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences, and in the H. John Heinz College’s School of Public Policy and Management. Her current research focuses on strengthening regional security cooperation and economic and political integration in Africa.  She is the Director of Carnegie Mellon’s new Center for International Policy and Innovation (CIPI) where she is particularly interested in utilizing technology and applying innovative solutions to core issues of development and governance in Africa. 

Ambassador Frazer was the leading architect of U.S.-Africa policy for nearly a decade, most recently serving as the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from August 2005 to January 2009.  She was Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from January 2001 until her swearing-in as the first woman U.S. Ambassador to South Africa in June 2004.  During Frazer’s government service, U.S. assistance to Africa quadrupled reaching an historic high of $6.7 billion by 2008.  She was instrumental in the decisions that established the Bush Administration’s signature initiatives, including the $15 billion President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the $500 million African Education Initiative, as well as the Millennium Challenge Account that committed $3.2 billion to well-governed African countries by 2008. 

Frazer is widely credited for designing the administration’s policies for ending the wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Burundi.  She was also instrumental in resolving the crisis following Kenya’s 2007 presidential election.  In recognition of her contributions, Secretary Condoleezza Rice presented Frazer with the Distinguished Service Award in January 2009, the highest award bestowed by the Secretary of State.  In July 2010, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia awarded Frazer with the distinction of Dame Grand Commander in the Humane Order of African Redemption in recognition to her contributions to end Liberia’s civil war and restore peace and democracy to the country.

Dr. Frazer received her B.A. degree in Political Science (honors) and African and Afro-American Studies (distinction) in 1985, and M.A. degrees in International Policy Studies in 1985 and International Development Education in 1989, and a Ph.D. in Political Science, 1994 all from Stanford University.

composed by Arswain
machine learning consultation by Anna Tskhovrebov
commissioned by the Berggruen Institute
premiered at the Bradbury Building
downtown Los Angeles
april 22, 2022

Human perception of what sounds “beautiful” is necessarily biased and exclusive. If we are to truly expand our hearing apparatus, and thus our notion of beauty, we must not only shed preconceived sonic associations but also invite creative participation from beings non-human and non-living. We must also begin to cede creative control away from ourselves and toward such beings by encouraging them to exercise their own standards of beauty and collaborate with each other.

Movement I: Alarm Call
‘Alarm Call’ is a long-form composition and sound collage that juxtaposes, combines, and manipulates alarm calls from various human, non-human, and non-living beings. Evolutionary biologists understand the alarm call to be an altruistic behavior between species, who, by warning others of danger, place themselves by instinct in a broader system of belonging. The piece poses the question: how might we hear better to broaden and enhance our sense of belonging in the universe? Might we behave more altruistically if we better heed the calls of – and call out to – non-human beings?

Using granular synthesis, biofeedback, and algorithmic modulation, I fold the human alarm call – the siren – into non-human alarm calls, generating novel “inter-being” sonic collaborations with increasing sophistication and complexity. 

Movement II: A.I.-Truism
A synthesizer piece co-written with an AI in the style of Vangelis’s Blade Runner score, to pay homage to the space of the Bradbury Building.

Movement III: Alarmism
A machine learning model “learns” A.I.Truism and recreates Alarm Call, generating an original fusion of the two.

Movement IV: A.I. Call
A machine learning model “learns” Alarm Call and recreates A.I.Truism, generating an original fusion of the two.

RAVE (IRCAM 2021) https://github.com/acids-ircam/RAVE