November 10, 2014
The U-2 Incident, Preserving Cold War History, and Honoring Cold War Veterans
Date: November 10, 5:00pm
Location: Institute of World Politics, 1521 16th Street NW, Washington DC
In this lecture, Francis Gary Powers, Jr., Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Cold War Museum and son of the downed U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers, will dispel common myths about the U-2 incident and discuss the importance of preserving Cold War history. This lecture will be in honor of the veterans of the Cold War.
Copies of Operation Overflight, written by pilot Francis Gary Powers, will be available for purchase at the event.
Register here.
Rethinking Seminar: Ambassador Gallucci on Impact and Implications of Iranian Nuclear Weapons on U.S. and Regional Security
Date: November 10, 6:00pm
Location: Marriott Residence Inn, Pentagon City, 550 Army Navy Drive, Arlington, VA
Ambassador Gallucci is currently the Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service where he served as dean for 13 years. He left in 2009, to become president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Previously, he had 21 years of distinguished service in a variety of government positions, focusing on international security. As Ambassador-at-Large and Special Envoy for the U.S. Department of State, he dealt with the threats posed by the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction. Among other duties, he was chief U.S. negotiator during the North Korean nuclear crisis of 1994, and served as Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs and as Deputy Executive Chairman of the UN Special Commission overseeing the disarmament of Iraq following the first Gulf War. (Biography)
For the Rethinking Seminar, Ambassador Gallucci will discuss Iran and North Korea, their pursuit of nuclear weapons, as well as the current U.S. strategy to prevent nuclear proliferation. He will also share his thoughts on global zero, challenges to the paradigm, and the evolving thinking concerning the future role of nuclear weapons.
Register here.
Addressing Emerging Cyber Threats: A Discussion with Computer Scientist Dr. Costis Toregas
Date: November 10, 6:30pm
Location: Elliott School of International Affairs, 1957 E Street NW, Room B12, Washington DC
Join Delta Phi Epsilon: Professional Foreign Service Fraternity for a discussion with Dr. Costis Toregas, computer scientist and lead researcher at GW’s Cyber Security and Policy Research Institute.
Dr. Toregas will discuss cyber security issues and concerns, including:
the new framework for cyber security promulgated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology;
the concept of cyber insurance as a policy instrument to address cyber threats; and,
a recent agreement signed between US and German government officials that will organize a long term, sustained program of academic exchanges, seminars and collaborative research.
This event is part of “International Affairs Week”, a week-long series of events hosted by GW’s various international affairs related student organizations.
Register here.
November 11, 2014
The EU-Ukraine Association Agreement and its Geopolitical Meaning
Date: November 11, 4:00pm
Location: GMU School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, Metropolitan Building, Conference Room 5183, Arlington, VA
Often presented as being merely trade pacts, the Association Agreements that the EU has recently signed with Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia have a large meaning for the history, politics, and structure or Europe. If duly and fully ratified as well as consistently implemented, they will bring these three countries into the economic and legal sphere of the EU, and prepare them for membership. Given the size, culture, and location of Ukraine, the Ukranian Association Agreement will have large repercussions for the entire post-Soviet region, in that it could become a model for other former states of the USSR. Moscow undoubtedly understood this and reacted accordingly.
Europe’s Lost Decade and Its Strategic Consequences
Date: November 11, 6:00pm
Location: Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, 1619 Massachusetts Ave NW, Rome 806, Washington DC
Thomas Wright is a fellow at the Brookings Institution in the Project on International Order and Strategy. Previously, he was executive director of studies at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a lecturer at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago and senior researcher for the Princeton Project on National Security. Wright has a Ph.D. from Georgetown University, an M.Phil from Cambridge University and a B.A. and an M.A. from University College Dublin. He has also held a pre-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a post-doctoral fellowship at Princeton University. Wright’s writings have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Orbis, Survival, The Washington Quarterly, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, and the Washington Post, as well as a number of international newspapers and media outlets. His currents projects include the future of U.S. alliances and strategic partnerships, the geopolitical consequences of the euro crisis, U.S. relations with rising power and multilateral diplomacy.
Register here.
November 12, 2014
Chinese Foreign Policy: The Challenge for Beijing
Date: November 12, 11:00am
Location: Georgetown University, Edward B. Bunn, S.J. Intercultural Center, 302-P, 37th and O Streets NW, Washington DC
What are some of the most pressing issues in Chinese foreign policy today? In this presentation, Dr. Reardon-Anderson will review Chinese foreign policy decisions in the last few decades and discuss many new challenges faced by the government in Beijing, including the issues of Xinjiang, Tibet, island disputes, and energy.
Register here.
Cyber Warfare and Sino-American Crisis Instability
Date: November 12, 3:00pm
Location: International Institute for Strategic Studies-US, 2121 K Street NW, Suite 801, Washington DC
David Gompert and Martin Libicki will expand on the argument made in their recent piece in Survival: that while both Washington and Beijing recognize that an armed conflict between them will involve cyber warfare, there has been no systematic weighing of the tactical military advantages offered by cyber weapons against the strategic hazards they pose.
Register here.
Prospects for a Nuclear Agreement with Iran: A Discussion in Honor of Michael Adler
Date: November 12, 3:00pm
Location: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW, 6th Floor, Conference Room, Washington DC
The world’s major powers (the P5+1) and Iran have been negotiating since last January to convert an interim nuclear accord into a final agreement, and now face a November 24 deadline. As this critical date nears, please join us for this meeting to address the outcome of the negotiations—whether successful in yielding an agreement, extended to allow further negotiations, or at a point of breakdown. What are the implications for U.S. policy toward Iran moving forward, as well as for the broader global effort to forestall the proliferation of nuclear weapons? This event honors the late Michael Adler, distinguished journalist and Public Policy Scholar at the Wilson Center, whose illuminating work improved the quality of public discourse on this vital issue.
RSVP here.
The Ebola Crisis: U.S. Leadership and International Response
Date: November 12, 3:30pm
Location: Brookings Institution, Falk Auditorium, 1775 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington DC
The deadly Ebola epidemic currently unfolding in the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone is the most severe outbreak of the disease on record. The World Health Organization reports that more than 13,500 people have been diagnosed with the disease in those three African countries alone. Even as isolated cases emerge in the United States and Western Europe, the Ebola outbreak continues largely unchecked in West Africa, with the number of diagnosed cases increasing daily. The United States has responded to the Ebola crisis with the largest global health response in American history, providing immediate humanitarian assistance while also working to alleviate health, economic and social impacts of the outbreak in West Africa.
On Wednesday, November 12, the Brookings Institution will host a discussion on the current state of the Ebola crisis, featuring a conversation with USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, who will detail his recent trip to West Africa and the U.S. response to the crisis. Brookings President Strobe Talbott will moderate the discussion. Administrator Shah will also discuss USAID’s new effort, “Fighting Ebola: A Grand Challenge for Development,” the agency’s effort to generate new ideas to fight Ebola.
The discussion with the administrator will be followed by a panel discussion with Brookings Senior Fellows Elizabeth Ferris, Amadou Sy, Michael O’Hanlon and Oscar Bloh, who is chairperson of the Civil Society Organization Ebola Response Taskforce in Liberia and the country director of Search for Common Ground Liberia. The panelists will outline the humanitarian, economic, political and security dimensions of the crisis.
Register here.
Perspectives from Pakistan’s Changemakers
Date: November 12, 4:00pm
Location: Atlantic Council, 1030 15th Street NW, 12th Floor, West Tower, Washington DC
Youth are considered the asset of a country. With about half of the population under the age of 24, the country possesses an immense resource that will determine the success of Pakistan’s young democracy and future. The Emerging Leaders of Pakistan (ELP) fellowship supports and empowers the next generation of Pakistan’s leaders by creating a sustainable forum of collaboration to strengthen their engagement and impact in their communities. This year’s contingent of fifteen dynamic civil society leaders, who were selected through a highly competitive process, embody Pakistan’s ethnic, religious, and geographic diversity. They are educators, entrepreneurs, journalists, social activists, social innovators, and community organizers who are working to solve some of Pakistan’s most pressing challenges. The fellowship provides the opportunity to collaborate with each other, address misperceptions, and glean best practices from people and organizations they meet to foster creative ideas and lessons to apply in Pakistan.
We invite the DC community to meet the 2014 fellows, hear about their experiences addressing Pakistan’s challenges, and discuss outstanding issues facing their communities and country.
Register here.
November 13, 2014
Supporting Democracy Abroad
Date: November 13, 9:00am
Location: Freedom House, 1301 Connecticut Ave NW, 4th Floor Conference Room, Washington DC
Please join us for the release of Freedom House’s study on “Supporting Democracy Abroad,” which provides qualitative ratings and in-depth analysis on the democracy assistance policies of 10 countries—Brazil, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Poland, South Africa, Sweden, United States—and the European Union.
RSVP here.
Power or Promise: Do Online Health Campaigns Impact Offline Behavior?
Date: November 13, 12:00pm
Location: Carnegie Institution for Science, 1530 P Street NW, Washington DC
Twitter, Facebook and other digital platforms have forged a new frontier for public health campaigns, giving us many tools for promoting health communication initiatives that seek to encourage healthy lifestyles and move people to specific health behaviors. But how can we know if a digital campaign is actually affecting behavior?
The American Institutes for Research invites you to a conversation on how to evaluate digital communication’s impact on offline health behavior. What can such measures as page views, likes and other digital analytics tell us about online behavior, and how does that relate to offline behavior? Once people put their phones down and their laptops away, how can communicators know if Google ads, Twitter campaigns, Facebook memes or YouTube videos actually influence whether people cut down on sugar consumption, get tested for HIV or stop smoking? Our panelists will discuss these questions and share some groundbreaking private-sector work on understanding the relationship between digital communication and offline behavior.
Register here.
Combating the ISIS Threat: A Path Forward
Date: November 13, 12:30pm
Location: Elliott School of International Affairs, 1957 E Street NW, Lindner Family Commons, Room 602, Washington DC
Join GW’s Stephen Biddle and Marc Lynch for an in-depth discussion of the Obama administration’s current strategy toward the ISIS threat, the evolving security situation on the ground in Syria and Iraq, and next steps for regional and global stakeholders
RSVP here.
The Best of Times, the Worst of Times: Life in Biomedical Science
Date: November 13, 5:30pm
Location: Embassy of Canada, 501 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington DC
Fulbright Canada and the Embassy of Canada will host a public lecture by Dr. Shirley M. Tilghman. Dr. Tilghman is President Emeritus, Princeton University and will speak to the challenges facing the field of biomedical science.
The lecture is free and open to the public. Please RSVP to rsvp@fulbright.ca. Please include your name, title and affiliation.
November 14, 2014
Twenty Five Years Later: Memory Culture and Political Controversy over the Legacy of East Germany
Date: November 14, 10:00am
Location: Elliott School of International Affairs, 1957 E Street NW, Lindner Family Commons, Room 602, Washington DC
This symposium brings together two eye witnesses and two professors discussing East Germany, the Berlin Wall, and the East German secret police, the Stasi. In the morning, Mario Röllig (10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.) will discuss life in East Germany, his failed escape attempt and subsequent imprisonment by the Stasi, and Ralph Kabisch (11:00 a.m. -12:00 p.m.) will share his experience of being part of a group of university students in West Berlin who built a tunnel under the Berlin Wall which helped 57 people escape from East Berlin. In the afternoon session, Prof. Mary Beth Stein (12:40 p.m. -1:20 p.m.) will present her research on controversies surrounding the legacy of the Stasi, and the efforts by its victims and by historians to remember and educate the public at one memorial museum in Berlin. Prof. Hope M. Harrison (1:20 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.), who will have just returned from Berlin as a participant in the official celebrations surrounding the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, will discuss the evolution of Germany’s approach to the history and memory of the Berlin Wall since 1989.
RSVP here.
Ukraine’s Pivotal Parliamentary Poll
Date: November 14, 2:00pm
Location: National Democratic Institute, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room 608, Washington DC
On October 26, Ukraine held early parliamentary elections that international observers—including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe—assessed as largely positive, with the exception of the disenfranchisement of voters in Russian-occupied Crimea and southeastern Ukraine. The elections, which swept into power Ukraine’s most pro-Western parliament in history, represented a critical milestone in the country’s democratic evolution.
Experts from three major organizations with decades of on-the-ground experience in Ukraine will examine the conduct and results of the elections, as well as the potential for the newly elected parliament to confront the coming challenge of forging a democratic, secure, independent future for their strategically important country.
The following panelists are scheduled to participate:
Olha Aivazovska, Board Chair, Ukrainian citizen network OPORA
Katie Fox, Deputy Director, Eurasia, National Democratic Institute
Stephen Nix, Director of Eurasia, International Republican Institute
