When former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo GRD ’81 arrives in New Haven this fall, one of his first students will be a high-ranking member of one of the Mexican political parties that worked successfully to remove Zedillo’s Institutional Revolutionary Party from power two years ago.

As a policy-maker for Mexico’s Party for Democratic Revolution, 28-year-old Pablo Amilcar Sandoval is one of Zedillo’s political opponents. But as a world fellow at Yale next fall, he will be a student in the fellows’ “Global Issues Seminar,” two weeks of which will be taught by Zedillo, the incoming director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.

The World Fellows Program, a new venture under the auspices of the globalization center, announced its first class of fellows yesterday. The 18-member class includes human rights activists, economists, political leaders, the mayor of Prague, and various other international policy-makers.

The program is designed for mid-career professionals in international policy areas, and allows them to come to Yale for a semester to take courses and participate in discussions of major issues among themselves and with the community at large. Although most of the fellows will stay in New Haven only for the fall, program Director Daniel Esty said, some may continue their studies during the spring semester.

Esty said that the fellows have spent, on average, five to 15 years in their respective professions, and were selected from a pool of several hundred nominees.

Although one of the fellows, Yanmin Cai, is the dean of a Chinese law school, Esty said that the program is not designed primarily for academics.

“It’s designed for people who are making a difference,” he said.

Esty described the “Global Issues Seminar” as the centerpiece of the program. In addition to Zedillo, one- and two-week sessions of the seminar will be led by history professor John Gaddis and law professor Harold Koh, as well as Esty and various other professors.

English language assistance will be available to fellows who need it.

“All of the fellows have a good facility with English,” Esty said. “Some of those who are closer to the borderline are being provided with some extra services.”

Esty added that he expects that the fellows will not only gain knowledge about world issues but also impart their experience upon Yalies, through both causal and formal contact.

“The point of this program is that it’s a two-way street,” he said. “We view it as an opportunity for them and a resource for the University.”

Joining Amilcar Sandoval and Cai as world fellows are Emelia Arthur, a woman’s rights activist from Ghana; Beatriz Boza, a Peruvian attorney; Mustafa Damdelen, a Cypriot businessman; Taalaibek Djoumataev, a banker from the Kyrgyz Republic; Philip Gain, a Bangladeshi journalist; Chetna Gala-Sinha from India, who is working to promote property ownership by women; Christine Hogan, the director for international policy and cooperation in Canada’s Environment Ministry; Rozina Mistry, a Pakistani physician; Adamu Musa, a journalist from Cameroon; Alonso Perez-Kakabadse, an economic adviser to the president of Ecuador; Henrique Pinto da Costa, who works for a non-governmental organization promoting sustainable development in Sao Tome and Principe; Neide Silva, a Brazilian anti-poverty activist; Abdul Tejan-Cole, a civil liberties attorney in Sierra Leone; Jan Wygnaski, a Polish activist; Zurab Zhvania, the founder of the Georgian Green Party; and Jan Kasl, the mayor of Prague, who has deferred his enrollment until 2003.