Last Friday, as I assume everyone remembers we had David Shorr of The Stanley Foundation speaking. The topic, of course, dealt with foreign policy and the role that the US should fill in the international community. I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Shorrs' call for a new and more relevant approach to internation events, both economic and military. It seems that as a nation we seem to be stuck in the age of "might makes right" and the voice of the international community doesn't seem to be a concern.

"The real crisis we face is not one of capitalism or American decline, but of globalization itself. As the problems spill over borders, the demand for common action has gone up. But the institutions and mechanisms to make it happen are in decline."

-David Shorr

With growing globalization the world really is becoming a much smaller place, one where states much come to a consensus on many actions before following through. That's not to say that goverments shouldn't be allowed to govern themselves, simply that any action with far reaching repercussions extending outside of the state should at least to some degree be influenced by those being effected. I would love to hear anyone's opinions on the US and our future role with the globalization of the world!

Next Friday at 11:30 am the doors open at the Anchorage Hilton to our speaker Dr. Karin von Hippel who will be discussing the "Root Causes of Terrorism". Dr. von Kippel is the codirector of the CSIS Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project and senior fellow with the CSIS International Security Program. Some of her more recent works include The terrorist exception: a response to Roger Scruton, A Counterradicalization Strategy for a New U.S. Administration, and Five Steps For Defeating Terrorism

Please excuse my brevity this week ladies and gentlemen, it is finals week and I have my final round of exams tomorrow. I hope to see you there this Friday!

John Darnall

Speakers for December

David Shorr
Program Officer in Policy Analysis and Dialogue at the Stanley Foundation
"Uncharted Waters -- Steering US Foreign Policy Through Turbulent Times"

Biography:

David Shorr is a program officer in Policy Analysis and Dialogue at the Stanley Foundation, currently focusing on national security strategy and the US role in the world. He is coeditor of Bridging the Foreign Policy Divide (Routledge), which collects the results of one of the foundation’s projects. From 1986-2000, Shorr worked in Washington on a range of subjects including arms control, humanitarian crisis response, conflict resolution, and human rights. Over those years, he was an advocate with Human Rights First, Refugees International, Search for Common Ground, British American Security Information Council, Arms Control Association, and Physicians for Social Responsibility. Shorr is a contributor to the foreign policy blog Democracy Arsenal. He has published essays in the journals Survival, Policy Review, Connecticut Journal of International Law, and Helsinki Monitor as well as opinion pieces in the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Des Moines Register, The Globalist, Cedar Rapids Gazette, Iowa City Press-Citizen, Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsday, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Houston Post.

Shorr received his B.A. from Brown University and masters in public administration from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He is also associate lecturer at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point, where he teaches US foreign policy. A lifelong fan of pop music, Shorr has played guest DJ twice on NPR’s World Café with his themed “Top 5” song sets.

Dr. Karin von Hippel

Co-Director of the CSIS Post Conflict Reconstruction Projectand Senior Fellow with the CSIS Inter'national Security Program

"Root Causes of Terrorism"

Biography:

Karin von Hippel is co-director of the CSIS Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project and senior fellow with the CSIS International Security Program. Previously, she was a senior research fellow at the Centre for Defense Studies, King’s College London, and spent several years working for the United Nations and the European Union in Somalia and Kosovo.

In 2004 and 2005, she participated in two major studies for the UN—one on UN peacekeeping and the second on the UN humanitarian system. Also in 2004, she was part of a small team funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development to investigate the development potential of Somali remittances. In 2002, she advised the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on the role of development cooperation in discovering the root causes of terrorism. Since then, she has participated in numerous conferences and working groups on the subject in Africa, Europe, and North America. She also directed a project on European counterterrorist reforms funded by the MacArthur Foundation and edited the volume Europe Confronts Terrorism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

She was a member of Project Unicorn, a counterterrorism police advisory panel in London. Additional publications include Democracy by Force (Cambridge, 2000), which was short-listed for the Westminster Medal in Military History; "Report on Integrated Missions: Practical Perspectives and Recommendations" (UN ECHA Core Group, 2005); "Counter Radicalization Development Assistance" (Danish Institute for International Studies, 2006); "Blurring of Mandates in Somalia" in Humanitarian Diplomacy: Practitioners and Their Craft (UN University Press, 2007); and "A Counterradicalization Strategy for a New U.S. Administration" in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social July 2008. She received her Ph.D. in international relations from the London School of Economics, her M.St. from Oxford University, and her B.A. from Yale University.

Speakers for November

November 14th, 2008

Qubad Talabani
Son of the President of Iraq
Kurdistan Regional Government's Representative to the United States
"The Other Iraq"

Biography:

Qubad Talabani serves as the Representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to the United States.
In that capacity, Mr. Talabani works closely with the U.S. Government, the media and research institutions providing critical analysis and up-to-date information about the situation in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.
In the aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom in spring 2003, he served for one year as a Senior Foreign Relations officer for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) (a leading Kurdish political party in Iraq), operating mainly out of Baghdad and Suleimani. In that position, he worked closely with the U.S-led Coalition Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), and was the PUK’s top liaison to the Coalition after it became the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). In addition, while in Iraq, Mr. Talabani was a key PUK negotiator during the drafting of the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), Iraq’s first post-Saddam constitution.
During the period 2001 - 2003, Mr. Talabani served first as a Special Assistant to the then PUK Representative in Washington and then later he served as the Deputy PUK Representative in Washington D.C.
Mr. Talabani is frequently interviewed by the popular press and other publications. He has appeared numerous times to discuss Kurdish and Iraqi issues on major television networks including: CNN, BBC, FOX News, and other American and international networks.
Mr. Talabani’s family has been involved in Kurdish politics for decades. His father, Jalal Talabani, is the President of the Republic of Iraq and Secretary General of the PUK.
Mr. Talabani studied in London and holds a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering.
He lives with his wife Sherri Kraham in Washington, D.C.

Speakers for October 2008

Friday, October 10th, 2008

Nadia Hijab

Senior Fellow at Institute for Palestine Studies
"Palestinian-Israeli Peace, an Agenda for the Next President"

Biography:

Nadia Hijab, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies. The Institute is an independent non-profit research organization whose flagship Journal of Palestine Studies, co-published with the University of California Press, is a leading resource on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Hijab is a frequent commentator on the media, including BBC World, and has appeared on the Lehrer Newshour. She is a regular public speaker and was recently the 2007 George F. Kennan co-panelist at the Wisconsin Institute for World Affairs. Hijabs first book, Womanpower: The Arab debate on women at work (1988) was published by Cambridge University Press. She co-authored Citizens Apart: A Portrait of Palestinians in Israel (I. B. Tauris 1990).
She was Editor-in-Chief of the London-based Middle East magazine before moving to New York in 1989 to join the United Nations, where she served as a senior development officer. She resigned from the UN in 2000 to establish her own consulting business on human rights, human development, and gender, Development Analysis and Communication Services. She is a past president of the Association of Arab American University Graduates.

Friday, October 17th, 2008

Dr. Michael Papazian
Chair, Department of Religion and Philosophy at Berry College
"After Nine Decades: The Enduring Legacy of the Armenian Genocide"

Biography:

Michael Papazian is associate professor of philosophy and chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Berry College. He has taught at Berry since 1998 and has also served as the director of Berry's Honors Program. He teaches the general education philosophy courses as well as several upper-level courses: Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, Modern Philosophy, Philosophy of Law, Symbolic Logic. He also teaches one religion course: New Testament Greek.
He received his bachelor's degree in 1987 from the Johns Hopkins University. He then got his master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia after completing a thesis on mathematical and modal realism. He went on to complete his Ph.D. in philosophy at Virginia in 1995 with a dissertation on the role of truth and intuition in rationality. In addition to his study of contemporary metaphysics and philosophical logic, he also pursued his interest in ancient philosophy at Virginia. In order to research the early Armenian translations of and commentaries on Greek philosophical texts, he studied the classical Armenian language at Oxford University. He received a Master of Studies degree in classical Armenian from Oxford in 1995.
Dr. Papazian has completed three books concerned with Armenian studies. His translation of the medieval theologian Eghishe's commentary on Genesis has been published by the Matenadaran Library of Ancient Manuscripts in 2004. A book on the history of Armenian Christianity as well as a translation of an eighth century Armenian commentary on the Gospels are in press. Dr. Papazian has also published numerous journal articles and given presentations on a range of topics including Stoic logic and metaphysics, the medieval Aristotelian commentary tradition, the medieval Armenian biblical commentary tradition, the morality of war, terrorism, and the theology of sin and redemption.

Friday, October 24th, 2008

A Panel Discussion
"Future of Korea"

Panelists are:

Embassy Rep: Chang-Hyun Yoon
First Secretary, Economic Section
Embassy of the Republic of Korea

Biography:

Chang-Hyun Yoon has been working in the Embassy of the Republic of Korea since February 2008. Before he came to this position, he worked in the Office of Korea-U.S Free Trade Agreement in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Republic of Korea. He also worked in the Asia-Pacific Trade Division, the Economic Cooperation Division, the Trade and Investment Promotion Division of the Ministry. Chang-Hyun Yoon earned Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from the Korea University in 1998 and Master’s Degree in International Relations from the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California in 2004.

State Department Rep: Sherri Holliday-Sklar
Republic of Korea Unit Chief
U.S. Department of State
Biography:

Sherri Holliday-Sklar began working on the Korea Desk in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the State Department in July 2008. Before coming to the Korea Desk she was Political/Economic Section Chief at the U.S. Consulate in Toronto. She has also served as Political Section Chief in Baku, Azerbaijan; Political Officer/Vice-Consul in Singapore; and General Services Officer in Sofia, Bulgaria. At the State Department in Washington, she has worked as Senior Benelux Officer, Pacific Islands Desk Officer, and Export Control Action Officer. She speaks Azerbaijani and Bulgarian. Sherri Holliday-Sklar earned Bachelor of Arts degrees in History and Political Science from the University of Kansas in 1985 and a Master of Arts degree in Public Affairs from the University of Minnesota in 1988. She also completed a Command and Staff College course of post-graduate study at the Naval War College in 2002.

Charles L. (Jack) Pritchard
Biography:

Charles L. (Jack) Pritchard is the President of the Korea Economic Institute (KEI) in Washington. Prior to joining KEI, he was a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC from September 2003 until February 2006. At Brookings, he focused on U.S. policy toward North Korea as well as the evolving nature of the United States-Japan foreign and security relationship. Ambassador Pritchard served as ambassador and special envoy for negotiations to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and United States representative to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization in the administration of President George W. Bush from April 2001 until September 2003. Previously, he served as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for Asian Affairs in the administration of President William J. Clinton. During the Clinton administration, Ambassador Pritchard was also the Director of Asian Affairs in the National Security Council and deputy chief negotiator for the Four Party Peace Talks, which aimed at reducing the tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Ambassador Pritchard is a former United States Army officer and attaché in Tokyo, Japan. He received a B.A. in political science from Mercer University, Macon, Georgia; an M.A. in international studies from the University of Hawaii; and a diploma from the Japanese National Institute for Defense Studies in Tokyo.

Friday, October 31st, 2008

Dr. Jim Murphy
Rasmuson Chair of Economics at University of Alaska Anchorage
"Natural Resource Management in the Developing World"

Biography:

Dr. James Murphy succeeds Nobel laureate Vernon Smith as the second Rasmuson Chair of Economics at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Dr. Murphy’s research focuses on the use of experimental methods to address environmental policy and natural resource management issues. His recent research includes:
+ A multi-year project conducting field experiments in Colombia to understand how rural communities manage small-scale natural resources
+An NSF-funded project to study subsistence harvests in Alaska and Far East Russia,
+A project funded by the USEPA to investigate issues related to enforcement of and compliance with environmental regulations
+Design of water markets in California
+A series of studies to investigate biases in non-market valuation techniques