A night with renowned New York Times columnist
Thomas Friedman will commence the eighth annual
Foreign Affairs
Symposium, a student-run series that each year brings
to the Homewood campus a celebrated group of high-powered
speakers to address matters of global importance.
This year's slate of lecturers — who hail from
the worlds of politics, academia and the media — will
address the topic Ideologies in Flux: Examining Divergent
Political Strains in Geopolitics.
Friedman will discuss "The Rising East: India and
China in the 21st Century," at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 28,
in Shriver Hall Auditorium. The author of the runaway
best-seller The World Is Flat, he will address the
emergence of India and China as powerful players on the
world stage and how America might compete or cooperate with
these powers.
The Foreign Affairs Symposium was founded in 1998 with
the merging of the Woodrow Wilson International Studies and
the International Studies Forum symposia. It seeks to bring
distinguished individuals to campus who can talk on matters
of global concern to a large and diverse audience.
Also on this year's slate is Chris Matthews, host of
MSNBC's Hardball, who will discuss "War and the Media." His
talk, which has been rescheduled from a previously
announced time, will be at 8 p.m. on Monday, April 3, in
Shriver Hall.
At 8 p.m. on April 11, in Levering's Glass Pavilion,
Francis Fukuyama, the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor in
International Political Economy and director of the
International Development Program at SAIS, will address
"America at the Crossroads: Finding America's Role in a
Changing World." Fukuyama is the author of
Nation-Building: Beyond Afghanistan and Iraq,
recently published by the Johns Hopkins University Press,
and America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power and the
Neoconservative Legacy, due out in March from the Yale
University Press.
Dennis Ross, Middle East special envoy under
Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, will discuss
"A Struggle for Peace: The Future of Israel and the
Palestinian People" at 8 p.m. on April 26 in Levering's
Glass Pavilion. Ross is now counselor and Ziegler
distinguished fellow of the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy, and he serves as the first chairman of a
Jerusalem-based think tank, the Institute for Jewish People
Policy Planning, funded and founded by the Jewish Agency.
He is also a foreign affairs analyst for the Fox News
Channel.
The 2006 Foreign Affairs Symposium is being run by
three student co-chairs — Adnan Ahmad, Carey Polis
and Marc Goldwein — and a staff of 12 other Homewood
undergraduates. The group began meeting over the summer to
schedule the speakers and raise the necessary funds, which
come from a variety of sources, including academic
departments, dean's offices and local businesses.
The chairs decided to take a slightly different
direction this year, opting for a mixture of speakers and
panel discussions. Last year's symposium, whose theme was
Enduring Responsibility: America and the Politics of
Conflict Resolution, featured panel discussions solely.
The organizers said they hit the jackpot with this
year's lineup.
"We have some very high-profile, highly intellectual
people who are academics in nature," said Goldwein, a
junior political science major. "These aren't just talking
heads."
Goldwein said the goal of all the talks and panels is
to stimulate a dialogue and shed some light on
international affairs for the audience, which is typically
a mix of Homewood students, faculty, staff and community
members.
"We want people, in a sense, to leave with more
questions than answers," Goldwein said. "To just get them
thinking and talking about the issues these speakers will
discuss."
Polis, a junior Writing Seminars major, agrees. "And
for someone like Thomas Friedman, just to have people come
out to an event like this who normally wouldn't will be
fantastic."
The first panel discussion will be "AIDS Crisis in the
Sub-Sahara," scheduled for 8 p.m. on March 15 in 110 Hodson
Hall. Participating will be Thomas Quinn, senior
investigator of infectious diseases at the NIH; Robyn
Munford, director of Student Partnerships Worldwide; and
Janean Martin, public health adviser for the Office of HIV
and AIDS at USAID.
"Prospects for Democracy in the Middle East" will
feature Eleana Gordon, vice president of the Foundation for
the Defense of Democracies; Barry Rubin, author of The
Long War for Freedom: An Arab Struggle for Democracy in the
Middle East; Salameh Nematt, Washington bureau chief of
Al-Hayat News; Christopher Preble, author of Exiting
Iraq: Why the U.S. Must End the Military Occupation and
Renew the War Against Al Qaeda and foreign policy
director at the Cato Institute. The March 29 event begins
at 8 p.m. in 110 Hodson Hall.
"Remaking Europe: Turkey's Role in the EU" will be
discussed by Erik Jones, professor of European studies at
the SAIS Bologna Center; Sabri Sayari, professor of
international studies, Sabanci University in Turkey; and
Sylvie Goulard, professor of European studies, Sciences Po,
in Paris, at 8 p.m. on April 18 in Levering's Glass
Pavilion.
For more information, go to
www.jhu.edu/fas, call
610-574-8004 or e-mail
fas@jhu.edu.
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