Feb. 8, 1999
VOL. 28, NO. 21
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Foreign Affairs Symposium Begins
Cesar Gaviria, Shimon Peres among speakers in 1999
student-run series
By Greg Rienzi The Gazette
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One day last May undergraduates Jay Suresh and Hari Chandra
found themselves at the entrance to the Organization of American
States in Washington. The two had gone to the nation's capital
not to sight-see but rather with a specific agenda: to recruit
speakers for the 1999 Johns Hopkins University
Symposium on
Foreign Affairs. As co-directors of the symposium, Suresh and
Chandra were on a mission to assemble a first-rate panel of
former heads of state and experts on world affairs.
Their quest this day was Cesar Gaviria, secretary general of
OAS and former president of Colombia. They had come unannounced,
and when they approached the entrance, they handed the security
guard an invitation to the symposium, which they had brought with
them. Both Suresh and Chandra thought that might be the end of
the encounter, but to their surprise they were told to wait.
Sometime later the guard told them that Gaviria's chief of staff
had to make some phone calls and they would have to continue to
be patient. Later still, a call came into the guard house. It
seems their patience had paid off.
"He told us that we were going to be allowed to speak to the
chief of staff in person," Chandra says. "It was more than we had
hoped for. Anytime you can get to meet with someone one-on-one in
these situations, it's great. It's better than simply sending an
invitation cold."
That 30-minute audience with Gaviria's chief of staff was
the clincher to lining up Gaviria himself, says Chandra, and the
catalyst for acquiring the other speakers for the symposium.
Since April 1998, Suresh, Chandra and the 12 members of the
symposium's executive board have been hard at work organizing the
second annual foreign affairs event, which begins tonight. The
topic of this year's symposium is "Approaching the Millennium:
The Changing Parameters of the International System." In addition
to Gaviria, the prominent international figures coming to the
Homewood campus include Shimon Peres, former prime minister of
Israel, and Sonia Gandhi, president of the Indian National
Congress.
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The Foreign Affairs Symposium, which brings
to campus prominent speakers, is completely run by
undergraduates. Among the 1999 staff are HaeLee Kim, Pooja
Makhijani, Hari Chandra, Nathan Miller, Jay Suresh, Hope Lyons,
Rumana Rahman and Michael Rossi.
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The event will run from Feb. 8 to March 10 and will feature
nine speakers, each of whom will address a topic related to his
or her area of work.
The symposium staff, comprised entirely of undergraduates,
was responsible for selecting the topics, recruiting speakers,
raising funds and publicizing the events.
Formed in 1997 by members of the International Studies
Forum, the Symposium on Foreign Affairs is intended to educate
the community at large on issues of global importance. Suresh
says there already existed on campus an interest in international
affairs, but the symposium has provided a forum through which
these issues can be addressed and debated.
"It's a chance to look at the international structure. What
are some of the new forces at hand, and how will they play a role
in global affairs?" Suresh says. "We all have a vested interest
in learning more about foreign affairs. In many ways, various
social, economic and technological facets of life today are
becoming more and more integrated on a global scale."
Chandra adds that the symposium is not intended just for
those who read the international section of the newspaper.
"These are issues that everyone is going to contend with at
some point," says Chandra, a junior studying biomedical
engineering and history. "Everyone on the staff is committed to
making this a community-wide event."
The inaugural symposium, held last spring, was "Superpower
or Supercop? The United States' Role in the New World Order" and
featured 10 speakers, including Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.);
Steven Chen, the ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan;
and Eliahu Ben Elissar, the ambassador from Israel. The goals for
this year's event were to bring in even more prominent speakers
and to attract a larger and more diverse audience.
Approximately 1,000 people attended last year's symposium.
In comparison, Chandra says he expects at least that number for
just Peres' Feb. 20 lecture.
To choose this year's speakers, the symposium staff had
brainstorming sessions in which they bounced around names of
people they would like to attract. The students wanted to touch
upon many aspects of international politics and bring in speakers
from a variety of fields.
"Our basic assumption was that there was nothing to stop us
from getting speakers we were interested in," Chandra says.
Getting Gaviria to accept early, and then Peres, helped them
attract other officials, Chandra says, including a U.S.
congressman, Korea's ambassador to the United States and the
director general of the World Health Organization.
Most of the speakers agreed to appear for free, which was
vital, as the staff had to work within a $25,000 budget. Funding
for the event came from the Student Council and 18 other
university organizations plus outside supporters.
Chandra says that for most of the students, putting together
the event has been a yearlong project. In addition to raising
money and luring the speakers, the staff had to deal with the
logistics of when and where each of them would arrive and with
promoting the event so that each lecture would be well-attended.
"None of us had done anything on this type of scale before,"
Chandra says. "Everyone has put a lot of time into this. We feel
this is quite an accomplishment."
Steven David, associate dean for academic affairs for the
School of Arts and Sciences, director of the International
Studies Program and adviser to the symposium staff, says that an
event of this size that is completely student-run and
-organized is quite unique.
"They've done a fantastic job," says David, who will
participate during the symposium in a policy debate on weapons of
mass destruction. "This is a first-class group of people that has
gotten some very exciting speakers, who will be speaking to
issues of central importance to international relations. My hat
goes off to them. This is the kind of thing where Hopkins
shines--students taking a lead role in organizing community
events."
The symposium hopes to attract all manner of students,
faculty and staff to the lectures, which are free and open to the
public.
"Our biggest concern right now is getting the audience,"
Chandra says. "But we're feeling very good about the way things
have turned out."
"Approaching the Millennium: The Changing Parameters of the
International System"
All events are on the Homewood campus. |
Monday, Feb. 8
8 p.m., Garrett Room, MSEL |
Cesar Gaviria, secretary general of the
Organization of American States and former president of
Colombia
"Regional Integration in the Americas" |
Wednesday, Feb. 10
8 p.m., Shriver Hall |
Lee Hong-koo, ambassador to the United States and
former prime minister of the Republic of Korea
"East Asian Balance of Power" |
Thursday, Feb. 11
8 p.m., Garrett Room, MSEL |
His Royal Highness Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein,
ambassador to the United Nations, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
"Norms of Justice and the International System" |
Saturday, Feb. 20
8 p.m., Shriver Hall |
Shimon Peres, former prime minister of Israel
"Solutions to Ethnic and Religious Conflict" |
Thursday, Feb. 25
8 p.m., Garrett Room, MSEL |
Professors Steven David and Jonathan Schell
"Policy Debate: Weapons of Mass Destruction" |
Monday, March 1
8 p.m., Garrett Room, MSEL |
Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R-N.Y.), chairman, House of
Representatives Committee on International Relations
"The United States Response to New World Order" |
Wednesday, March 3
8 p.m., Shriver Hall |
Gro Harlem Brundtland, director general, World
Health Organization, and former prime minister of Norway
"Social Transformation in the Developing World" |
Wednesday, March 10
8 p.m., Shriver Hall |
Sonia Gandhi, president, Indian National
Congress
"The Continuing Relevance of the Third World" |
More about the 1999
JHU
Symposium on Foreign Affairs and the speakers can be found on the
Web at
www.jhu.edu/~symposia. |
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