Iowa City Foreign Relations Council: Recent Episodes
City of Iowa City
Audio podcast of the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council meetings from the City of Iowa City's Community Television Service.
Vlora Konushevci is a poet, translator, and essayist from Kosovo whose work spans the literary, cultural, and linguistic bridges of the Balkan region. She is the author of the acclaimed poetry collection Lavdi Vetes, a bold exploration of selfhood and identity. As editor and translator, she has curated two notable bilingual anthologies Poetry Without Borders (Albanian-Serbian), which fosters dialogue across historical divides, and Magma (Albanian-English), introducing Albanian voices to a broader international readership. She also published a short-story collection Martesat, valixhet dhe ngarkesat e tjera (Marriages, suitcases and other burdens) in 2025, a spare, unsentimental portrait of post-war Kosovo. With quiet irony and tight, clear prose, Konushevci turns departures, waiting rooms, and half-open doors into acts of witness and stubborn survival. Her poetry and translations have appeared in a range of respected literary journals including The Common, Songs of Eretz, and European Literature Network.
Konushevci has received multiple literary awards for her original work and is a respected voice in Kosova's cultural press. Beyond her creative contributions, she serves as a certified translator for both national and international institutions, playing a key role in intercultural communication and diplomacy. Her participation in this program is made possible through the generous support of the University of lowa's Office of the Vice President for Research and the Graduate College.
Presented in partnership with Oaknoll.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org. To watch other ICFRC programs, please view our extensive collection at citychannel4.com/icfrc.
The United States is a nation of immigrants, or so the saying goes. Most people are familiar with this idea. Far fewer know that the United States has deported more people than any other nation. Join Dr. Adam Goodman and Dr. Lina-Maria Murillo for a conversation about the history of mass deportation during the past 150 years. How have public officials' used force, coercion, and fear to purge immigrants from the country and exert control over those who remain? Who has pushed for and profited from expulsion? What have been the human costs of deportation campaigns? And what have been the innovative strategies people have adopted to fight against removal and redefine belonging?.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org. To watch other ICFRC programs, please view our extensive collection at citychannel4.com/icfrc.
Anni Fjord, a Danish nurse with over 45 years of experience working in both Denmark and international crisis zones, shares insights from her extensive career with Médecins Sans Frontiéres (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders.
Her presentation explores the diverse roles and challenges faced by medical professionals in the field, including responding to natural disasters and conflict zones, collaborating with local health workers, and leading international teams under pressure. Anni will also reflect briefly on her recent 2025 mission to Gaza, offering a glimpse into the realities of delivering healthcare in one of the world's most complex humanitarian environments.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org. To watch other ICFRC programs, please view our extensive collection at citychannel4.com/icfrc.
The 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait, which separates the small democratic island of Taiwan from the People's Republic of China, has emerged as one of the world's most volatile geopolitical flashpoints. As tensions between China and the United States continue to rise, the risk of conflict-either deliberate or accidental-has become a subject of serious concern.
China views Taiwan as a breakaway province and has not ruled out the use of force to assert control. President Xi Jinping has directed the People's Liberation Army to be ready for a possible invasion of Taiwan by 2027. Meanwhile, the United States continues its long-standing "One China" policy, accompanied by a deliberately vague stance of "Strategic Ambiguity" -- a posture that has left key questions about American military intervention unanswered. Former President Biden publicly declared that the U.S. would defend Taiwan in the event of an attack, though those remarks were later tempered by his staff.
Adding to the stakes, Taiwan plays an outsized role in the global economy: a single Taiwanese company manufactures over 90% of the world's most advanced microchips-components that power everything from smartphones to artificial intelligence systems.
This presentation examines the underlying interests of the United States, China, and Taiwan; the potential pathways to conflict; and the far-reaching consequences for global security, diplomacy, and technology.
Featured speaker: Ron McMullen
Ambassador Ronald McMullen is a career diplomat with over 30 years of service as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer. He has lived, worked, or traveled in more than 100 countries and brings a wealth of global experience to discussions of international relations, diplomacy, and strategic conflict.
Known for his captivating storytelling and deep insight, Ambassador McMullen brings global complexity into focus and makes the most pressing international issues accessible and compelling for public audiences. He is a native of Northwood, lowa, and holds a doctorate in political science from the University of lowa.
Presented in partnership with Oaknoll.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org. To watch other ICFRC programs, please view our extensive collection at citychannel4.com/icfrc.
Since 2007, Frontier Co-op's Well Earth program has been the foundation of the co-op's responsible sourcing efforts, fostering long-term relationships with suppliers around the world. In this program, speakers share how the Norway, Iowa-based company ensures the long-term sustainability of its supply chain by investing in their partners and communities at origin to improve their social and environmental impact.
Presented in partnership with Frontier Co-op and 100 Grannies.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org. To watch other ICFRC programs, please view our extensive collection at citychannel4.com/icfrc.
Despite all the caveats about how much we do not know about the records practices of authoritarian governments, it is clear that they directly affect archives in a number of distinct ways: greatly increasing the production of some documentation; creating political climates that lead to self-censorship and, therefore, lack of records creation, withholding the release of current records, and tightly controlled access to archives. The continued public unmasking of authoritarian practices by journalists and researchers create important resources for those committed to a freer, more open view of the past.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org. To watch other ICFRC programs, please view our extensive collection at citychannel4.com/icfrc.
Researchers, sovereign tribal communities, and women farmland-owners will discuss how they are collaborating to foster climate resilience through the newly established Central Midwest Climate Opportunities and Learning Team (CM CO-Learn), funded by the NOAA Climate Adaptation Partnerships program, that supports Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri. This panel brings together a tribal community member, a woman farmland owner, and several project researchers to share what they are learning from each other, what tangible climate-wise action is underway, and how these strategies participate in global efforts to adapt to a changing climate.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org. To watch other ICFRC programs, please view our extensive collection at citychannel4.com/icfrc.
An inspiring panel discussion exploring the intersection of sustainability and design with Keith Porter (Stanley Center for Peace and Security), Sally Obernolte (Neumann Monson Architects), and Deb Schoelerman (Unitarian Universalist Society-Coralville). Together, they delve into the transformative role of sustainable building practices in addressing climate change. Highlights include a closer look at Stanley's International Living Building Challenge-certified facility and how people interact with these transformative green spaces.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org. To watch other ICFRC programs, please view our extensive collection at citychannel4.com/icfrc.
A new immigrant and refugee welcome center is opening in Polk County in 2025. The hub for refugees and immigrants, which has been designed with community input to create an inclusive environment, will feature professionals who provide confidential and sensitive spaces, services related to employment, housing and education, and transition programs for new Iowans living in the capitol. Mak Suceska, the Center's Manager of Operations, and Stephanie Moris, Director of the Refugee Alliance of Central Iowa, will share more about this first-of-its-kind hub in Iowa and the county's plans for supporting its foreign-born population, the largest growing demographic in the state.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org. To watch other ICFRC programs, please view our extensive collection at citychannel4.com/icfrc.
Historically, industrialized countries have created our climate crisis but have yet to take responsibility for the development dilemmas associated with climate change. The solutions proposed at the international level have largely prioritized technical fixes, including new cooking technologies and carbon credit accounting. Highlighting perspectives from below -- the lives and livelihoods of marginalized people -- illuminates several problems with these approaches.
Using feminist and anthropological methods to study biomass stoves and efforts to improve them in India, Dr. Khandelwal identifies problems related to carbon market solutions and their associated power dynamics to shed new light on the nexus of cooking technologies, biomass-based livelihoods, gender, and climate change and to expand the kinds of solutions we imagine as possible.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org. To watch other ICFRC programs, please view our extensive collection at citychannel4.com/icfrc.
Will China or the US lead the way in the Fourth Industrial Revolution?
To answer this question, leading thinkers and policymakers in both countries draw lessons from past technology-driven power transitions that center the moment of innovation -- the eureka moment that sparks astonishing technological feats.
In this talk, focused on his new book, Technology and the Rise of the Great Powers, Jeffrey Ding, PhD offers a different explanation of how technological revolutions affect competition among great powers. Rather than focusing on which state was the first to introduce major innovations, he investigates why some states were more successful than others at adapting and embracing general-purpose technologies at scale.
Presented by the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council in partnership with University of Iowa Departments of Political Science and Center for Asian and Pacific Studies.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org. To watch other ICFRC programs, please view our extensive collection at citychannel4.com/icfrc.
Since 2010, Viktor Orban has consolidated power as prime minister of Hungary, a central European country whose democratic institutions he has weakened primarily through a form of governance he terms "illiberal democracy" as well as through the nationwide advancement of Christian nationalism.
Iowa City Foreign Relations Council Executive Director Peter Gerlach talks with guest Ben Novak, a former reporter for the New York Times (2018-2022) who was based in Budapest, Hungary, and a research affiliate at the Central European University Democracy Institute. They discuss the intersections of modern Hungarian politics and religion, how the people there are impacted by Orban's autocratic policies, and why some here in America view Orban's leadership as a model for the United States in 2025 and beyond.
The Iowa City Foreign Relations Council presents this event as part of its Democracy Series. Watch other programs from this series along with over 250 other ICFRC programs at citychannel4.com/icfrc.
The Iowa City Foreign Relations Council is a community passionate about learning, connecting, and engaging with international issues that promotes understanding by hosting forums with diverse, global voices and perspectives. For more information, please visit icfrc.org.
Expectations for democracy in South Africa have been shaped by a longer history of citizenship linked to white supremacy. The concept of relational citizenship is an important way of thinking about political belonging which requires reflection on the different kind of political imagination people in places like South Africa have who have experienced sustained oppression and how we might learn from it in the United States.
Presented by Brady G'sell, Ph.D., and Thuto Thipe, Ph.D., and hosted by Sunday Goshit.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org. To watch other ICFRC programs, please view our extensive collection at citychannel4.com/icfrc.
Europe still lacks a "European" public sphere and a media system that serves it. As was the case during the 2019 EU parliamentary election, the 2024 contest exhibited regional differences in the themes covered by national media and their emphasis on European-wide issues. Most voters' choices of representative MPEs reflected national politics and perceived interests, and relatedly, the ideological divides that positively or negatively assessed European-wide problems. The dominant reliance on social media for news contributed both to reinforcing and enhancing the existing political and ideological polarization in most EU member nations. As such, unevenly across the continent, they also further splintered the national public spheres, diminishing the prospects of "manufacturing of consent" on several issues important to the European Union.
Peter Gross is professor emeritus and former Director of the University of Tennessee's School of Journalism and Electronic Media (2006-2016). His research focus is East and Central Europe society, media and journalism.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org. To watch other ICFRC programs, please view our extensive collection at citychannel4.com/icfrc.
During this panel discussion, several Mandela Washington Fellows shared insights about their work in their home countries, program experiences at the University of Iowa, and impressions of Iowa.
The featured Fellows were Adja Boudy Kante of Senegal, Gift Govere of Zimbabwe, Percy Fonge of Cameroon, and Vivian Anena of Uganda.
Established in 2014, the Mandela Washington Fellowship has brought nearly 5,800 young leaders from every country in Sub-Saharan Africa to the United States for academic and leadership training. The Fellows, between the ages of 25 and 35, are accomplished innovators and leaders in their communities and countries.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org. To watch other ICFRC programs, please view our extensive collection at citychannel4.com/icfrc.
Palestinian and Jewish Iowans share their personal stories and experiences of identity, oppression, solidarity, and hope from inside Palestine and in the US. The speaker panel includes Palestinians who grew up in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and from the diaspora. They are; Dr. Deema Tota, Yaser Abadagga, Mona Odeh, Dani Love Misyuk, and Samanth Brotman.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org. To watch other ICFRC programs, please view our extensive collection at citychannel4.com/icfrc.
"Mine has been a life of frequent moves. I grew up as an 'army brat', traveling across the US and Europe - graduating from high school in Frankfurt, Germany in 1977. Medical School (Uniformed Services University, 1986) and residency took place while spending 16 years in the Army. I considered myself a pretty savvy man of the world until the Army sent me to Haiti for 7 months. This deployment led to a profound awareness of lives lived outside our 'first world' bubble - eventually spurring me to join in the missions and activities of Doctors Without Borders."
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org. To watch other ICFRC programs, please view our extensive collection at citychannel4.com/icfrc.
This Iowa City Foreign Relations Council (ICFRC) event marks the end of a year-long series of events celebrating four decades of ICFRC's impact in the community, celebrating the past, and looking forward together to reach even more hearts and minds through diverse, inclusive, and timely topics on the most urgent issues facing our world and all of those in our community who call it home.
National Public Radio's (NPR) Frank Langfitt has reported from more than 50 countries and territories since the late 1990s. In a video and audio presentation, Frank recounts the history he's witnessed through the people he's met and how that history has shaped today's challenging geopolitical landscape. Frank explains what he learned driving a free taxi in Shanghai and tracking elephants in South Sudan. He also discusses reporting in Ukraine during Russia's 2022 invasion and covering the Israel/Gaza war.
Frank Langfitt is NPR's Global Democracy correspondent based on the Investigations desk in Washington, D.C. He covers threats to democracy at home and abroad. Previously, Langfitt spent nearly two decades as an international correspondent, reporting from more than 50 countries and territories. Based most recently in London, he covered the UK and Ireland, as well as the war in Ukraine and its implications in Europe.
Ben Kieffer joined Iowa Public Radio (IPR) in 2000 and is host of IPR's daily noon talk show, River to River, which he also helps produce. Prior to joining IPR, Ben lived and worked in Europe for more than a decade. He reported firsthand the fall of the Berlin Wall and covered the Velvet Revolution in Prague. Ben has won numerous awards for his work over the course of more than 30 years in public media.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org. To watch other ICFRC programs, please view our extensive collection at https://citychannel4.com/icfrc.
Aferdita Krasniqi, a widely recognized expert in international education, shares her extensive 24 years of experience fostering academic and cultural relations between the tiny nation of Kosovo and the influential United States. Her pivotal role in establishing Kosovo's institutions post-1999 war while working at the U.S. Embassy in Kosovo showcases her commitment to education in the region.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org. To watch other ICFRC programs, please view our extensive collection at citychannel4.com/icfrc.
The U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) presents the Women Building Peace Award (WBPA) annually to an extraordinary international woman peacebuilder. During this International Women's Day event, Dr. Kathleen Kuehnast, Director of Women, Peace, and Security at USIP, will discuss gender-inclusive peacebuilding and present the work of 2023's WBPA finalists.
Dr. Kathleen Kuehnast is the director of the Women, Peace, and Security portfolio at USIP, where she oversees the Institute's work on the gendered impacts of violent conflict, drawing upon U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325, emphasizing the critical role women play in all aspects of peacebuilding. Since 2012, Kuehnast has served as a founding partner of the Missing Peace Initiative, which is focused on ending conflict-related sexual violence by bringing a survivor-centered focus to research, policy, and practice. Since 2010, she has also spearheaded the U.S. Civil Society Work Group on Women, Peace, and Security, of which USIP is the secretariat.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
The root of the Russo-Ukrainian War is not geopolitical competition, but the multifaceted divergence between Ukraine and Russia over the past 30 years. In February 2022, Russian missiles rained on Ukrainian cities, and tanks rolled towards Kyiv to end Ukrainian independent statehood. What are the roots of this war, which has upended the international legal order and brought back the specter of nuclear escalation? How did these supposedly "brotherly peoples" become each other's worst nightmare?
Maria Popova is an Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University, Scientific Director of the Jean Monnet Centre Montreal, and Editor of the Cambridge Elements Series on Politics and Society from Central Europe to Central Asia. Her work explores the rule of law and democracy in Eastern Europe.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
Food Justice, a social movement ensuring universal access to nutritious, affordable, and culturally appropriate food for all, is a growing imperative today. Only by examining the structural disparities of food systems and by becoming prepared to accept a meaningful change can we address the urgency of food insecurity, particularly for communities of color and low-income communities. The Global Food Project in Johnson County is one example of how people in Iowa have come together for an inclusive, just, and sustainable way forward.
Featuring speakers: Will Kapp of the Global Food Project for IC Compassion, Ayman Sharif of Center for Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa, and Dr. Brandi Janssen in the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of Iowa.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) is a humanitarian nonprofit organization supporting individuals impacted by conflict and displacement. The IRC operates in 52 countries internationally and 30 offices in the United States. Sarah Terlouw, IRC's Executive Director in Iowa, will speak about her 15-year career supporting refugees and other conflict-affected populations. She will share her experiences overseas and the transition to working domestically, focusing on the opening of the IRC in Iowa in 2022 and the organization's expansion into Iowa City in October 2023. Aimerance Makunda, originally from the DRC and an Iowa City resident since 2012, also speaks.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
Digital democracy uses digital technologies to promote and strengthen democracy, including accessing information, participating in political discussions, and holding elected officials accountable. Young people increasingly use digital technologies to participate in democracy, using social media to organize protests, raise awareness, and contact their elected officials.
Jean-Desire Kouassi is a digital communications professional passionate about using technology to promote positive change. He has a bachelor's degree in English literature and linguistics from the University Alassane Ouattara in Bouake, Cote d'Ivoire, and a professional certification in social media marketing from Kirkwood Community College in the United States.
Kouassi also has experience developing and implementing effective digital communication strategies in various sectors, including health, the press, international relations, family planning, technology, and civil society. He deeply advocates for internet access, quality digital education, and democracy, actively participates in policy initiatives, and leads digital literacy projects to promote positive change in these areas. Kouassi has earned me numerous national and international awards and is a firm believer in the power of digital technologies to connect people, create change, and build a better future.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
In honor of this year's Hispanic Heritage Month theme, Elizabeth Bernal, Marcela Hurtado, and Paola Jaramillo will speak to the progress Latinos and Hispanics have made over the last fifteen years in the Iowa City Area their personal experience as Latinas in lowa, organizing wins, and recent work empowering Latinos through entrepreneurship and the power of social capital.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
Climate change is at the forefront of both foreign and domestic policy. While often discussed as an environmental issue, there are profound consequences for our national security, the military, and international relations. From an increase in severe weather events to food security and migration -- the complexities of climate have far-reaching implications for both Iowans and the nation.
Panelists:
Mike Franken, retired Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy
Rob Hogg, former Iowa State Senator, District 33
Sara McLaughlin Mitchell, Professor & Collegiate Fellow, University of Iowa
Moderated by:
Jessica Yllemo, Director, Climate Security Programs - The American Security Project
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
During the 2016 elections, refugees coming from Syria to the States were a topic that brought Syria back to the front page. But after that, it slowly faded into the background. That does not mean that all is quiet on that front. Living conditions have deteriorated poorly while the regime behind all the tragedies is still in power. We learn how Assad survived this, including becoming one of the world's top manufacturers and distributors of the drug Captagon.
Eyad came to Louisiana from Syria in August 2012 as a graduate student. He earned his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Louisiana State in 2018. A husband and a father of two, they all moved to Cedar Rapids, where he joined Mount Mercy University as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Statistics. He is now a Software Engineer at Collins Aerospace in Cedar Rapids.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
We note that the colonization of lands and Indigenous Peoples worldwide has resulted in the placement of foreign borders upon territories Indigenous peoples have inhabited since time immemorial. The results of these impositions adversely affect the nationhood and identity of Indigenous peoples everywhere. Colonial border-policy enforcement, coupled with settler-state immigration laws, are some critical factors in eroding Indigenous Peopless customs, traditions, and national identities through displacement, restriction of traditional movement, and ongoing encroachment on Indigenous territories.
Sikowis Nobiss is Plains Cree/Saulteaux of the George Gordon First Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada, and grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and is the founder and Executive Director of Great Plains Action Society. She has a Master's Degree in Religious Studies and Graduate Minor in Native Studies from the University of Iowa. In 2021, she received the Impact Through Advocacy Award from the Iowa Environmental Council. In June 2022, her dedication to the 2SLGBTQIA+ community earned GPAS the OneIowa Community Partnership Award. In March 2023, her work earned Great Plains Action Society recognition for being a women-led organization doing excellent work in the realm of sustainability from the Johnson County United Nations Association Chapter. Sikowis is also a commissioner on the Iowa City Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She also sits on the Midwest Environmental Justice Grant Advisory Committee, the Centering Equity in the Sustainable Building Sector Governance Team, and the Just Transition Power Force as a guest expert working to reduce harmful practices in corporate procurement processes.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
Foreign Relations Council 2023 marks the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On UN Day this year we are honoring that historic agreement by emphasizing the rights of youth, especially the right to quality education. We are joined by UNA Global Goals Ambassador Virgil Parker speaking about the importance of SDG #4, Quality Education.
Virgil Parker is a U.S. Fulbright Alum, community advocate, and Howard University graduate with a degree in Journalism and a minor in Afro-American studies. Virgil served as a White House HBCU Competitiveness Scholar for the White House Initiative on HBCUs. Currently, Mr. Parker is a television producer for News10NBC (WHEC-TV). Mr. Parker has moderated and participated in national and regional conversations regarding various topics such as The Future of HBCUs in the COVID-19 Era, Philanthropic Equity for Minority Serving Institutions, and Bringing Local Governments And HBCUs Together and more. Most recently, he executive produced two projects commemorating the 45th Anniversary of Education and Sharing Day and the 60th Anniversary of The Equal Pay Act of 1963. His work has been included in media outlets such as Forbes, The Hill, iHeartRadio, Blavity, HBCU Buzz, and Diverse Issues In Higher Education.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
The Ul International Writing Program and the Center for Asian Pacific Studies hosts a bilingual reading featuring 2023 Fall residents Kevin Chen (Taiwan), Tammy Lai-Ming Ho and Wong Yi Eva (Hong Kong), Li Kotomi (Taiwan & Japan), Shi Yifeng, Suo Er, and Wang Zhanhei (PRC), moderated by translator and poet Jennifer Feeley.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
Ebenezer Olamiposi Adeyemi is a PhD Candidate in the department of anthropology at the University of Iowa (UI), under the advisement of Professor Ted Powers. Ebenezer holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology and a Master's degree in Peace and Conflict Studies -- both from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. He also received a Master's degree in Anthropology from the University of Iowa in May 2021. Ebenezer's broad research interests center around medical anthropology, infrastructure, the intersection of urban landscape and public health, African studies, and survival strategies in marginalized urban communities. For his ongoing doctoral research, Ebenezer is exploring the strategies that residents of Makoko, a large informal settlement characterized by inadequate public infrastructure, including waste disposal systems, public hospital, in Lagos State, Nigeria, use to access healthcare to treat malaria, the most prominent public health issue in their community.
Different statistics show that malaria is the main public health issue in Nigeria, where it accounts for more causes of death than any other country in the world. However, people who live in marginalized communities, which the WHO calls 'malaria high transmission areas,' are more susceptible to malaria infection and death due to government marginalization and inadequate public infrastructure, including public hospitals. Adeyemi will explore the concept of "community-developed infrastructure" to explain several ingenious approaches, including the production of locally-made mosquito nets and coils, construction of makeshift waste disposal systems and hospitals, that residents of Makoko employ to reduce their exposure to malaria-causing mosquitos and to treat the disease whenever they are infected.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
From Lorna Goodison's third world woman as mystic healer to Reggae and Dancehall pulsing through Kingston nights, Jamaica moves to its own drum beat, making a dance out of its troubles. It is a textured land with its own struggles, secrets and yet an almost inexplicable capacity for lifting the spirit. Get into the vibe with this talk as we pull up the dance and take a closer look at Jamaica's dualities.
Yashika Graham [Poetry, fiction and nonfiction writer, visual artist, radio broadcaster; Jamaica] won the 2019 Mervyn Morris Prize for Poetry from the University of the West Indies, Mona, where she read for a Bachelors degree in Literatures in English and twice won the Poetry Clash Competition. An executive member of the Poetry Society of Jamaica, she has been awarded a Centrum Writer's Residency and has been featured on stages including the Dodge Poetry Festival (USA), Bristol Festival of Literature (UK), the World Festival of Poetry (Venezuela) and the Port Townsend Writers Conference (USA), where she has also delivered craft talks and taught cross-genre workshops.
Her poetry, prose and literary criticism have been published internationally including in Spillway Magazine, Magma, Cordite Review, PREE Lit, Bookmarked, Jamaica Journal, The Caribbean Journal of Social Work and others. Short films for her poems "Directions from the Border" and "Time Travel" -- for which she won a gold medal and the Noteworthy Writer award from the Jamaica Creative Writing Competition - premiered in 2016 and 2017 respectively. Her debut collection Some of Us Can Go Back Home is forthcoming from Blouse & Skirt Books.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
As an old saying has long held that, "Brazil is the country of the future - - and it always will be." But what future? Join Dr. Smith, an expert on both democracy and the environment in Brazil, to discuss Brazilians' hard work to control deforestation and shore up the country's democracy, before it's too late.
Amy Erica Smith is an associate professor of political science, as well as a Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean's Professor at Iowa State University. She is also currently an Andrew Carnegie Fellow. Professor Smith's research examines how ordinary people understand and engage in politics: from Latin America to Kenya to Oman. She is the author of three books and numerous articles, and her research has been recognized with awards including from Fulbright, the Luce Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the National Science Foundation.
From forest fires in the Amazon to a mob storming the presidential palace, scholars warn Brazil could be at a tipping point. Dr. Smith discusses these threats, but also Brazil's hopeful future.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
Meet members of the West Liberty Citizenship program. Carolyn Colvin an Associate Professor of English Education at the University of lowa, Dan Stevenson is an 8th grade social studies teacher and Erica Jennings is a high school English teacher. Nancy Gardner is a retired elementary principal in West Liberty and Jan Koellner is a retired West Liberty elementary reading teacher. Join us and meet two naturalized citizens who participated in the program.
This program is a result of a university-community collaboration in rural Iowa. For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
Cholera has been a global public health problem that resulted in 7 pandemics since 1961. The first cholera case was reported in North Lebanon on October 4, 2022 in an informal settlement followed by spread across the country; this is the first cholera outbreak in the country since 1993.
Despite the confinement of cases in North Lebanon early during the pandemic, the economic crisis in Lebanon and the weakened healthcare infrastructure exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic played a significant role in the emergence of the cholera outbreak.
Dr. Nada M. Melhem is a tenured Professor of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology (Virology and Immunology) at the Faculty of Health Sciences, American University of Beirut. Melhem is currently the Director of the Division of Health Professions and the Chair of the Medical Laboratory Sciences Program at the Faculty of Health Sciences.
With a unique background and training in virology, immunology and epidemiology, Melhem developed at AUB a transdisciplinary and translational research program focusing on viral immunopathogenesis and the epidemiology of viruses, and their impact on global human health. Melhem's research program focuses on human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), viral diarrheal diseases specifically noroviruses and COVID-19. Melhem is currently leading the SARS-CoV-2 National Surveillance Genomic Program for healthcare workers and hospitalized patients.
This talk is one of three public events made possible by a Major Projects Award from UI International Programs. Funding for the Major Projects Award provided by the generous support of the Stanley-University of Iowa Foundation Support Organization and UI International Programs.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
While watching the news, you often hear about Ukraine, a country invaded by Russia on February 24, 2022. Despite being located in the eastern part of Europe, a thousand miles away from the United States, this country is fighting for the values we all share: democracy and freedom.
Have you ever wondered what it is like to be Ukrainian? Have you ever been interested in learning about Ukraine's history and culture? 'Living in Ukraine: My Story of an Unbreakable Nation' is an invitation to join a conversation about the country and its people with a citizen and fellow Hawkeye.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
The Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders is the flagship program of the U.S. Government's Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI). YALI was created in 2010 and celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2020.
Established in 2014, the Mandela Washington Fellowship has brought nearly 5,800 young leaders from every country in Sub-Saharan Africa to the United States for academic and leadership training.
The Fellows, between the ages of 25 and 35, are accomplished innovators and leaders in their communities and countries..
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
Join us this Earth Day to learn about a beautiful Pacific Island Nation at the intersection of the international dateline and the Equator! This big oceanic sovereign state is where time starts and encompasses the 12th largest Exclusive Economic Zone in the world! However, with a land mass of less than 800 Sq. Km. and an average height of just feet above sea level, it is one of the smallest and most endangered countries in the world. Learn how a 20-year-old Peace Corps Volunteer fell in love with this country, how love turned into action, and how actions created global connections advocating for the nation, its people, and what you can do to help. Joining the presentation will be representatives from the Fiery Canoe Foundation, Tungaru Youth Action, and the upcoming feature film, Millennium Island.
Mike Roman, former Kiribati Peace Corps Volunteer, AmeriCorps VISTA (Central College - Pella, IA) Fulbright fellow, ghostwriter, and co-creator of the social media platform Humans of Kiribati, received his Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh in 2014. His dissertation topic, "Migration, Transnationality, and Climate Change in the Republic of Kiribati," was turned into a 2018 Sundance selection, "Anote's Ark," by Matthieu Rytz. In 2020, his second film assisting in creating "One Word," highlighting the Marshall Islanders' fight for climate justice and survival, was selected for the Lift-Off Global Network Film Festival. Collaborating with governments, international media, non-profit organizations, and citizens worldwide, he has spent the last 23 years raising global consciousness of the climate crisis by humanizing climate change from the frontlines. He currently sits on the Board of Directors for the National Peace Corps Association, works at the University of Cincinnati, and collaborates with congressional representatives to pass legislation for climate-displaced persons worldwide in his spare time.
Kea Rutherford
President Fiery Canoe Foundation
Kea Rutherford is a high school student from Scarsdale New York. Her mother's side of the family is from Tabiang and Tabwewa on Rabi and Banaba. She is currently a high school senior at Edgemont Junior Senior High School. Her efforts to aid the Banaban community initially began in the summer of 2021 when she created a fundly page to aid the Banabans in Fiji during COVID-19. From there, she was inspired to create a project to aid Banabans everywhere for education, culture, arts, and heritage projects identified as priorities by Banaban communities. So, she began the Fiery Canoe Foundation with the help of her mother, Maria, and her aunt, Katerina.
Dr. Maria Teaiwa-Rutherford
Secretary Fiery Canoe Foundation
Maria Teaiwa-Rutherford is a board-certified Obstetrician-Gynecologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Weill Cornell Medical Center. Born in Lautoka and raised in Suva, Fiji of Banaban, Tabiteuean and African American heritage, Dr. Teaiwa-Rutherford received her bachelor's degree from Santa Clara University and medical degree from Columbia University's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. Maintaining an office on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Dr. Teaiwa-Rutherford is deeply committed to Pacific Women's Health and has provided care to patients and teaching of registrars at Tungaru Central Hospital in Kiribati.
Lulu DeBoer
Filmmaker
Lulu DeBoer is a graduate of Stanford University. A daughter of an I-Kiribati mother and Dutch American father, she spent the majority of her developing years growing up in a small town in rural East Texas. Since an early age, Lulu developed a deep passion for filmmaking and an appreciation of how the medium can unite different cultures to express universal emotion.
Lulu's film work has spanned several nations including the Tribes of Northern California and Washington, Malaysia, Kiribati, Fiji, and Germany. She is currently a board member of a sustainable housing non-profit in Houston, TX. In her spare time, Lulu has a performance based web series chronicling different cultural perspectives on the mermaid symbol. Lulu currently resides in Houston, TX producing a feature documentary, "Millennium Island" under her production company, Lulu Lens LLC.
Ruth M. Cross
Founder, Tungaru Climate Alliance
Kiribati Order of Merit
Ruth M. Cross is the founder of the Tungaru Climate Alliance. She has created community programs and projects to address challenges in Tarawa relating to sanitation, the environment, health care, education, and business. The President of Kiribati recently awarded Ruth the Kiribati Order of Merit for her aid efforts and programs totaling more than $2 million to date. She is committed to creating positive change in Kiribati through meaningful collaborations and a "better together" approach, and she is particularly passionate about access to safe water and sanitation.
Baniti Semilota
President Tungaru Youth Action - Miss Kiribati 2022
Baniti Semilota is currently studying for a Bachelor of Laws at the University of the South Pacific. She founded the first youth-led organization in Kiribati, Tungaru Youth Action (TYA). As president of TYA, Baniti assists this group in empowering local youth. Baniti was crowned Miss Kiribati 2022, using this opportunity to raise awareness on domestic violence and the rights of women and children in Kiribati. Baniti has also represented the Kiribati delegation as their sole youth representative at the COP27 conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
She believes the youth in Kiribati have significant potential and need the right support and tools to succeed and make positive contributions to their families, communities, and country. Baniti is committed to advocating for their needs and concerns at the highest levels of government and society.
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Narratives play a central role in how nations imagine themselves and the 'other.' A central part of narrative making involves comparison, comparisons with other places and other people. These comparisons can, often, enable one nation to appear or perceive itself better relative to the other. Drawing on personal experiences and the oral histories she has documented in South Asia and Canada, Anam Zakaria discusses the limits of popular and mainstream narratives and highlight what gets lost in simplistic comparisons -- be it between India and Pakistan or the US and Canada.
Anam Zakaria is the author of 1971: A People's History from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India (Penguin Random House 2019), Between the Great Divide: A Journey into Pakistan-administered Kashmir (HarperCollins Publishers 2018) and The Footprints of Partition: Narratives of Four Generations of Pakistanis and Indians (HarperCollins Publishers 2015) which won the 2017 KLF-German Peace Prize. Anam is also the co-founder of Qissa - the home of storytelling and writes frequently on issues of violence, memory, narrative making and the construction of the 'other'. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, CBC, The Hill Times and Al Jazeera among other media outlets. She is currently based in Toronto.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
I turned 50-years-old at the 12-month mark of my 27 months of service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cambodia. Full of curiosity about this culture I knew little to nothing about when I was accepted to serve, I was quickly enchanted by the leftover vestiges of colonization and the omni-presence of dragons in Khmer architecture, whether is small rural villages or the King's Palace gardens. I grew to gain comfort from dragons - this symbol of power and protection that allows maintenance of treasures. It became and remains a metaphor for the power of commitment to the hard work of reaching across difference to be of service to the priorities of the other, rather than my own... on their terms, rather than my own. And how the treasure of one's own identity and sense of self-worth is strengthened in this releasing of ownership of the how of the service effort. "You're never too old to learn," is an understatement. Learning what I had practiced as a Clinical Psychiatric Social Worker and what I had taught as a Professor in the UT Austin School of Social Work, was actualized through both my Peace Corps Volunteer service and my subsequent work as a Peace Corps Country Director in Mongolia and Kosovo. Realizing that when I stopped blaming others for negative stereotypes held about Black people like me, I started more effectively engaging across our differences to combat those stereotypes and build the bridges necessary to make change happen.
In June 2020, Dr. Darlene Grant joined the Peace Corps Head Quarters Director's Office as Senior Advisor. From June 2022 to February 2023, she left her office in Washington, DC for Ha Noi, Viet Nam to lead, as senior advisor, in this newest (143rd) Peace Corps program. The program welcomed its first group of volunteers in October 2023. Dr. Grant served as Peace Corps Country Director in Kosovo from 2015 to 2019, and as Country Director in Mongolia from 2012 to 2015. From 2009-2011, she took a leave of absence from her tenured faculty position to serve in Cambodia's 3rd Peace Corps Volunteer cohort as a TEFL English Teacher and Teacher Trainer. After 10-years of social work practice in domestic violence shelters, drug rehab, and adolescent and adult psychiatric hospital facilities, Dr. Grant worked for 18-years as a professor of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. There she also served for five years as Associate Dean in the Office of Graduate Studies, overseeing university-wide recruitment for over 200 graduate degree programs. In this position she managed a multi-million-dollar fellowship program, mandated with increasing the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity in graduate degree programs. Dr. Grant taught graduate and undergraduate courses in social justice, clinical practice, research methodology, working with women with addiction and criminal justice involvement and at-risk youth. She has authored dozens of journal articles and book chapters. Dr. Grant was named 2006 Social Worker of the Year by the National Association of Social Workers.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
It is rarely known that Chinese students have long had a significant presence in institutions of higher learning in Iowa. As early as 1909, at least one Chinese enrolled at the University of Iowa. Following this forerunner, a significant number of Chinese students were enrolled in higher educational institutions in Iowa.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
Is misogyny part of Islam? In the Quran, the Prophet Muhammad took pains to address both male Muslims and female Muslims, because both have the same religious duties. The Five Pillars of Islam apply to both of them. The Quran states explicitly that men and women are equal before God.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
18 months after the fall of Kabul, we discuss how the Afghan community in Cedar Rapids has been doing in Eastern Iowa, sharing their challenges and their joys as well as their hopes and dreams for the future. Viewers will learn how they can support their Afghan neighbors and the agencies in Iowa serving our newest residents.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
In this presentation, Professor Gulnaz Sharafutdinova (KCL) presents the key ideas and arguments from her book The Red Mirror: Putin's Leadership and Russia's Insecure Identity (2020) about the political transformation that Russia has undergone over the past ten-fifteen years. Specifically, the focus is on the socio-psychological analysis of the central pillars of Putin's leadership including the propagation of ressentiment in the society by constructing the trauma of the 1990s and appealing to the main pillars of Soviet collective identity.
Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, Professor of Russian Politics and Director of Russia Institute at King's College London. She has recently published The Red Mirror: Putin's Leadership and Russia's Insecure Identity (Oxford University Press, 2020) that explores issues of authoritarian legitimation in Russia relying on social identity theory. She has a forthcoming new book: The Aftermath of the Soviet Man: Rethinking Homo Sovieticus (Bloomsbury Press). Gulnaz holds a PhD from the George Washington University, and speaks fluent Russian, Tatar and English. Gulnaz was born in Tatarstan, Russia.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
In conjunction with the Iowa Center for Research by Undergraduates (ICRU) and with the support of numerous UI faculty members, Yasmina Sahir and Asel Nasr have spent the last two years confronting racism, xenophobia, and other forms of violence against Southwest Asian, North African, and Arab (SWANA) members of the Iowa City community. This presentation highlights the main findings of their previous research and identifies ways in which both the University of Iowa campus and Iowa City residents can better support their SWANA peers and loved ones.
Asel Nasr is a dual degree student at the University of Iowa majoring in Global Health and pursuing a Master's in Public Health. Yasmina Sahir is a University of Iowa undergraduate majoring in Criminology and Social Justice.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
Grinnell College is a highly selective liberal arts college of 1700 undergraduates, located in Grinnell, Iowa. Nearly twenty percent of Grinnell's student body are non-U.S. citizens (350+ students from 60+ countries), ranking the school 11th among U.S. Baccalaureate Colleges for international student enrollment (IIE Open Doors) and 6th among National Liberal Arts Colleges for percentage of enrollment (U.S. News and World Report). Jon and Karen Edwards have been professional colleagues and partners, in admission and international student affairs respectively, for nearly 30 years. They talk about how their work has evolved; the valuable relationship between recruitment and retention; and current challenges and opportunities in their respective fields.
Karen Edwards, Dean of International Student Affairs at Grinnell College, has dedicated 30+ year to supporting international students. Since 2007, she has led Grinnell's Office of International Student Affairs (OISA) -- helping students navigate and find community in a new country; managing compliance with the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP); and helping to create an international-student-friendly campus infrastructure. Karen is an active leader and presenter in NAFSA: Association of International Educators and co-founder of the ACM/GLCA Advisors Roundtable. She has traveled in 30+ countries across five continents, holds a MA in Higher Education from the University of Iowa, and a BA degree from Luther College.
Jon Edwards is Director of International Student Admission at Grinnell. He began his career in international education in 1995 and has 26 years of experience in the recruitment, evaluation, and selection of international applicants at highly selective liberal arts colleges. He has served as a member of the Council of International Schools' Committee for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, organizing and leading admission recruitment trips in those regions. Over the years, Jon has led or participated in dozens of presentations at professional conferences around the world. His work with students, schools, and community-based organizations has taken him to 93 countries and counting. Jon earned his MA in German from the University of Illinois at Chicago and his BA from Luther College.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
The nexus of oceans, geopolitical tension, conflict, crime, and societal instability is becoming increasingly important. World Wildlife Fund is entering this space of research and applied conservation because a robust ocean conservation agenda must include natural resource conflict resolution, peace building, and law enforcement capacity building. This talk discusses the growing threat of conflict over fisheries, the consequences for geopolitical relationships between the world's major powers, the impacts on coastal fishing communities, and the potential solutions. Seemingly small incidents (such as a recent interaction between a Chinese squid fishing vessel and the US Coast Guard off the coast of South America) can escalate unpredictably. As fish populations decline and move due to climate change, overfishing, and habitat destruction, competition and conflict over this critical blue food resource will grow. Additionally, the fisheries sector provides an attractive option for organized criminal activity at sea, including trafficking in humans, arms, drugs, and wildlife. Finally, as fish populations decline, communities are destabilized through lack of employment and food security. Fortunately, the world's policy makers and conservation groups are increasingly paying attention to this emerging threat, and there are hopeful solutions in the novel application of satellite technology, big data analysis, interagency and international cooperation, and capacity building.
Dr. Sarah Glaser leads the newly formed Oceans Futures team for which she is developing programming around ocean and climate security. The Oceans Futures technology platform will engage maritime stakeholders around the security implications of climate change for marine ecosystems. She is interested in exploring--and preventing--conflict between marine resource users where it will be most likely or most impactful. She has experience working with a wide range of stakeholders, including those in international militaries, foreign government ministries, academic institutions, and coastal fishing communities. Her geographic expertise is in coastal East Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the California Current.
Sarah joined World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) from One Earth Future, a peacebuilding foundation, where she directed the Secure Fisheries program. Secure Fisheries worked on fisheries conflict prevention in Somalia, and Sarah led their efforts at establishing conflict-sensitive fisheries co-management, collecting fisheries data, and quantifying IUU fishing in the Horn of Africa. Her favorite accomplishment was starting a university engagement project in Somalia that brought together students at four universities for online marine science courses and field-based fisheries data collection. Before working at OEF, she had academic appointments at the University of Denver, College of William and Mary, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, the University of Kansas, and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Sarah was raised in Kansas but fell in love with sharks through the books and TV series of Jacques Cousteau. She earned her PhD from Scripps Institution of Oceanography where she studied the food web ecology of North Pacific albacore, racking up hundreds of (seasick) hours aboard commercial and recreational fishing vessels.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
Over the last twenty years, there's been an explosion in the number of people who are checking the so-called "Indian box." More than 9.7 million people in the United States self-identified as Native American or Alaska Native in the 2020 census, twice as many as in 2000 when the number was just 4.1 million. And while there have been some changes in the way things are measured or defined, nothing can explain the astronomical rise. Rather, the story over the last twenty years is one of more and more people claiming -- perhaps for the first time -- to be Native.
As more and more people claim Native-ness, the irony is the fewer and fewer people are able to clear the tribal membership "hurdle." That is, fewer people are able to prove either lineage or DNA that is sufficient to formally enroll in a tribe. In The Indian Card, University of Iowa Associate Professor Carrie Schuettpelz (Lumbee) explores this issue by weaving together history, policy, and storytelling.
Carrie Schuettpelz is an Associate Professor of Practice, University of Iowa School of Planning and Public Affairs, focusing primarily on social policy, homelessness, and poverty. In addition to serving on the Board of Directors for the Iowa Balance-of-State Continuum of Care, she works with communities across the state to create plans to prevent and end homelessness. She also serves as the Vice President of the Native American Council.
Prior to joining SPPA, Carrie was a homelessness policy advisor in the Obama Administration from 2009-2016. She was a Fulbright Scholar in 2006, which was awarded by the U.S. Department of State to study the East-West divide of the European Union in Copenhagen, Denmark. She is a trained storyteller and teaches digital storytelling at a variety of levels. She is also at work on a nonfiction book about Native identity. She is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. She has a MFA degree in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison 2016, and a MPP degree from Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government 2009.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
In reviewing Iowa's remarkable agricultural and humanitarian heritage, 1979 stands out as a time of exceptional global moral leadership. Republican Governor Robert D. Ray was at the forefront of related efforts: to rescue the Vietnamese "Boat People" refugees who were drowning while seeking to live in freedom as well as to rush desperately needed food and medicine to starving and dying Cambodian victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide. Both humanitarian life-saving efforts featured significant involvement by Iowans and Iowa institutions across the state, thus making them a clear example of "citizen diplomacy." That same year also saw the visit of Pope John Paul II to Living History Farms in Urbandale, which provided a powerful moral underpinning to refugee assistance programs. While on "loan" from the U.S. State Department to the Governor's staff in Des Moines, Ambassador Kenneth Quinn, then a young Foreign Service Officer, was directly involved in both historic endeavors, which drew Iowans together across sharp political differences just four years after the conclusion of the deeply polarizing Vietnam War
Dr. Kenneth Quinn served for 32 years as an American diplomat, including: as ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia; as a Rural Development advisor in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam; on the National Security Council staff at the White House; and as Director of Iowa SHARES, the humanitarian campaign formed by Iowa Governor Robert D. Ray that sent lifesaving aid to Cambodian genocide victims. Following his Foreign Service career, he served for 20 years as president of the World Food Prize Foundation located in Des Moines, retiring in January of 2020. Established by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Norman Borlaug, under the Ambassador's leadership, the World Food Prize came to be referred to by global leaders as the "Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture." During his tenure, individuals from 19 countries, including six Laureates from Africa, received the $250,000 annual award for their breakthrough achievements to reduce hunger and malnutrition. Amb. Quinn, was presented the State Department Award for Heroism and is a recipient of the Iowa Medal, that state's highest citizen honor. He served as Chair of the Iowa committee that raised the funds for, and selected the artist to create, the statue of Dr. Borlaug that stands in Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol. A graduate of Loras College in Dubuque, he holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Maryland.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
The Nile is the longest river in the world. It is shared by 11 countries. For thousands of years, the river watered Egypt, the lowest riparian state in the Nile basin and one of the oldest civilizations in the world, without much competition from the upper riparian states. However, in the twentieth century things started changing. The upper riparian states started making plans to utilize the waters of the Nile River which once flowed to Egypt in its entirety. Presently, the biggest challenge for Egypt's claim to the Nile waters is coming from the largest hydro-electric dam on the African continent being built by Ethiopia, the upper riparian state providing more than three-quarters of the waters flowing into the Nile River. Egypt claims the Nile waters belong to it as a matter of historic right. Ethiopia argues the waters flowing from it to Egypt belong to Ethiopia as a matter of national sovereignty. The presentation discusses this dispute from the perspective of international law. Specifically, it addresses the issues by discussing the various treaties signed by the Nile basin states. The presentation also discusses international law principles relevant to the dispute.
Daniel Teshome Teklu is a second-year Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D.) student in International and Comparative Law at the University of Iowa College of Law. He is currently writing a dissertation on the Nile water dispute. Daniel is from Ethiopia. He came to the US as a high school junior. In 2012, he graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a B.S. in Engineering and worked as an engineer for a few companies, including Messier Bugatti and Ford Motor Company, before turning to the study of law. In 2019, he graduated from Wayne State University Law School (Detroit) with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree. In 2021, he graduated from Indiana University-Purdue University School of Law (Indianapolis) with a Master of Laws (L.L.M.) degree in International and Comparative Law. He wrote his master's thesis on the Nile water dispute.
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Professor Ando introduces his Sicilian home to an American audience by applying his long experience as a professor of comparative law and a student of different cultures to bear on the questions of Sicily's role in the current world. Sicily is undeniably an island and that fact entails a certain degree of insularity though modern forms of information technology may be overcoming some of the isolation due to geography. But islands can also be meeting points, and Sicily's position in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea has made it an important meeting point throughout recorded history. It has served and will continue to serve as an important meeting point for Europeans, Africans, and Middle Easterners. It is, however, also being overwhelmed by waves of refugees fleeing Africa and the Near East. Professor Ando will seek to acquaint us with Sicily by exploring these multiple meanings of Sicilian "insularity."
Professor Biagio Ando earned his basic law degree and his Ph.D. in law at the University of Catania. He is currently a professor of comparative law at the University of Catania and is visiting Iowa's College of Law as a visiting research scholar during this fall semester (2022). He has deepened his understanding of islands through several stints as a visiting lecturer at the University of Malta and research stays at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. He has also conducted research at the Max Planck Institute in Hamburg, at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and at the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
Sustainability is inherently interdisciplinary. The technical skills necessary for developing a more sustainable society draw from multiple disciplines including the natural and social sciences, engineering and beyond. Technical skills, however, are not sufficient and developing a more sustainable society will require additional skills including communication and cultural competency to translate training outcomes to communities and the public at large. As such, sustainability focused training programs cannot thrive within the traditional structure of academic silos. The University of Iowa recently launched a new MS degree program built around the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This presentation will introduce the SDG MS program at the University of Iowa and talk more broadly about the skills and competencies needed to turn the SDGs into reality.
Dr. David Cwiertny is the William D. Ashton Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Iowa, as well as the Director, Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination; Director, Environmental Policy Research Program, Public Policy Center; Researcher, Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Institute; Researcher, Environmental Health Sciences Research Center; and Faculty Research Engineer, IIHR--Hydroscience & Engineering.
For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.
Election misinformation is a global problem that involves various actors and actions that contribute to both the spread of misinformation and responses to it. To better understand election misinformation requires examining the broader political and socio-cultural context as well as citizens' "everyday" experiences with misinformation that occur outside election contexts. Looking at the case of Kenya, this presentation will contextualize election misinformation and share insights from a variety of studies conducted in the past five years.
Dr. Melissa Tully is the Interim Director, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, at the University of Iowa. She is also an Associate Professor and Easton Professor of Research. She studies news literacy, misinformation, global media with a particular focus on African media studies, and engagement. She has a particular interest in media produced in and about Africa and has conducted research in multiple Sub-Saharan African countries. She is currently working on research about misinformation and news literacy in Kenya and Senegal.
For more information, visit icfrc.org.
Since 2000, the Kremlin has been waging a relentless information war against the U.S., NATO, the European Union, democracy, and liberal values. Russian disinformation and propaganda, disseminated to one extent or another on every continent, achieved hyper status as Vladimir Putin prepared to invade Ukraine. It continues in its varied, preposterous ways as the conflict endures. The presentation examines the nature, goals, and consequences of these ongoing struggles for the hearts and minds of audiences and the West's late arrival on this bloodless, nonetheless perilous battlefield.
Peter Gross, Ph.D., is professor emeritus and former Director of the University of Tennessee's School of Journalism and Electronic Media (2006-2019). Before his tenure at the UT, he held the Gaylord Family Endowed Chair (International Communication) at the University of Oklahoma, where he also served as Director of the Institute for Research and Training at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication. He is now an adjunct faculty member at the University of Iowa's School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
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Coups d'etat are dramatic events that can have major and lasting implications for states. Negative effects include destroying democracies, spurring repression, and inviting warfare. Coups may also have more positive effects like ending civil wars and providing opportunity for democratic governance to emerge. The recent spike in coups aligns with a burgeoning scholarly interest in these events. The purpose of this talk is twofold. First, the nature of coups will be discussed along with the scholarly literature that examines causes and consequences of coups. Second, original research will be presented that explores an overlooked aspect of coups: education. While the bulk of coup research focuses on elite actors, the original research presented in this talk will focus on one important aspect of the civilian population, expecting that coups will be unlikely in highly education populations. As such, this talk will be interesting to a wide variety of audiences, including students who have rarely thought about coups, scholars who study coups as a primary research interest, and those who are concerned about future coups.
Clayton Thyne is a Professor in the Political Science department at the University of Kentucky. He currently serves as the Department Chair, having previously held positions as Director of Graduate Studies and as the co-founder and Director of the Peace Studies certificate program. Dr. Thyne 's research currently focuses on domestic conflict/instability, coups d'etat, regime types and democratization, and international education policy. His most recent work focuses on coups d'etat, civil war onset, and civil war duration. His book, How International Relations Affect Civil Conflict: Cheap Signals, Costly Consequences, was published by Lexington Books in 2009. Other published work can be found in The Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Social Science Quarterly, International Studies Quarterly, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Comparative Political Studies, The Journal of Peace Research, Foreign Policy Analysis,and Conflict Management and Peace Science. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa (2007); M.A., University of Iowa (2004); M.Ed., University of Saint Thomas-Houston (2003); B.A., University of Nebraska-Kearney (2001).
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at https://www.icfrc.org/.
Zaza Muchemwa, born, raised and making her artistic practice in Zimbabwe, looks at and shares the experiences of living in a country of constant transition, of being in fear and rising despite that fear, of holding onto hope amid despair and, what it means to stay alive in Zimbabwe today.
Zaza is a poet, playwright, and arts administrator. She is a 2022 Fall Resident in the University of Iowa's International Writing Program.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at https://www.icfrc.org/.
Music that was originally played during this presentation has been removed due to copyright issues. You can find the music here:
Forward Kwenda plays Tadzungaira: https://youtu.be/_0bwj580VwI
WINKY D-KASONG KEJECHA: https://youtu.be/eZsxXJy6_sY
The war in Ukraine has sent prices for food and energy spiraling, plunging millions into hunger and threatening energy security across Europe and Asia. But did fuel prices play a role in precipitating the conflict in the first place? In his talk, Dr. Cullen Hendrix will discuss the roles of oil and gas exports and prices in emboldening leaders of petrostates - states that derive significant export and government revenue from oil and gas exports - to behave aggressively in the international arena. The talk will conclude with thoughts about how the global transition to renewable energy systems will shift the locus of geopolitical competition from oil and gas to the critical minerals that will fuel the energy transition - and what can be done to ensure sustainable energy security moving forward.
Cullen Hendrix is senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, nonresident senior research fellow at the Center for Climate & Security, and a specially appointed research professor with the Network for Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability (NERPS) at Hiroshima University. He is currently on leave from the Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. He is the author of over 30+ peer-reviewed articles on the relationships between international markets, natural resources, and conflict, as well as the economic and security implications of climate change. Dr. Hendrix has authored reports published by or consulted for organizations including the Asian Development Bank, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the National Intelligence Council, Oxfam America, USAID, and the World Food Programme, among others. He was a contributing author to the 2022 IPCC report, for which he assessed the implications of climate change for threats to peace and human mobility.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at https://www.icfrc.org/.
In an era when the Islamic Republic of Iran is vilified and poorly understood, Dr. Asaadi talks about the possibility for political change in and reformation of the Islamic Republic. He discusses the evolution of postrevolutionary Iran's formal and informal institutions from 1979 to the present and explore the possibilities for change embedded in its constitutional order.
Robert Asaadi is an Instructor in the Department of Political Science at Portland Community College in Portland, OR. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, and a B.S. in Political Science from the University of Iowa. His research and teaching interests include: international relations theory; international security; modern and contemporary Iranian politics; and U.S. Foreign Policy. His first book, "Postrevolutionary Iran: The Leader, the People, and the Three Powers", was published with Rowman & Littlefield in April 2021 and was just released in paperback in September.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at https://www.icfrc.org/.
Many have been surprised by Ukraine's fierce, and effective, resistance to Russia's invasion. What these observers missed was how strongly Ukrainians are attached to an independent national identity. That attachment is not new; a long cultural history sustains it. Dr. Oleg Timofeyev will examine this crucial background for understanding today's Ukraine, including its Viking and Cossack roots, the role of Ukrainian epic songs as oral history, Ukrainian Jewish life, and how contemporary Ukrainian art reflects folk traditions.Oleg Timofeyev is a musicologist, guitarist, composer, and documentary film director. The world authority on the Russian 7-string guitar tradition, he has recorded and released over twenty solo and ensemble albums to critical acclaim worldwide. The recipient of two IREX Fellowships, two Fulbright Research and Teaching Fellowships, he has won the coveted Noah Greenberg Award for his CDs "Music by Princesses at the Court of Catherine the Great." His book, which will be the definitive work on the history of the Russian guitar tradition, is forthcoming with Cambridge Scholars in 2022. Dr. Timofeyev holds an M.A. in Early Music Performance from the University of Southern California, and a Ph.D. from Duke University. He has taught at universities and conservatories in the US, Russia, and Ukraine, including the University of Iowa where he is an Adjunct Assistant Professor.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at https://www.icfrc.org/.
The ICFRC has just released its report on the series we conducted earlier this year focusing on refugees and immigrants in Iowa. As we write in the executive summary, the ICFRC "recognizes that our state is at an inflection point, wherein collective prosperity requires truly open, public, and engaged conversation about the many and layered ways that our communities reorganize when new arrivals come, particularly in these challenging and fast-paced times. For everyone to thrive, we must be intentional in how we talk about our rapidly diversifying cities and towns to ensure that we all know how to welcome and support refugees and immigrants as well as (re)create our communities to be the kinds of places we all want to live for a long time to come." To begin our fall 2022 lineup of programs, project director and board member Dr. Peter Gerlach and executive director Kathryn Wittneben will discuss the inspiration for the series, its intended impact across the state, as well what it represents for the nature of ICFRC programming going forward.
Dr. Peter Gerlach is Visiting Assistant Professor in the International Studies Program at the University of Iowa. He received his BA and MA degrees in English from Ripon College and the University of Northern Colorado, respectively. After serving in the US Peace Corps in Mongolia, he earned a PhD in Cultural Foundations of Education from Syracuse University where he conducted dissertation research on the lived experiences of international students at Grinnell College. His teaching areas include international studies, international education, refugee and immigrant studies, and community engaged learning. Dr. Gerlach serves on the International Studies Academic Advisory Board and the Fulbright Committee at The University of Iowa and on the Board of Directors at the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council (ICFRC), Global Ties Iowa, and the Refugee and Immigrant Association.
Kathryn Wittneben is Executive Director of the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council. She returned to the Iowa City area in the fall of 2020, after having served for four years as Vice President of Advancement at the University of the West of Scotland near Glasgow, Scotland. Previously she was Director of Development at the College of Public Health, University of Iowa Center for Advancement. She has taught International Politics and Economics at the University of Umea in Sweden, Washington State University and George Washington University in the U.S. She has worked as a Senior Economist on international economic and trade issues for two Congressional Committees (Banking, Small Business) in the U.S. House of Representatives; led an international policy institute at Middlebury College; and helped to develop two grantmaking foundations -- Eurasia Foundation which supported economic reform and democratization projects in the former Soviet Union, and The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund (U.S.) which addressed challenges facing marginalized youth. Kathryn spent most of the 1990s working on economic reform and private sector development projects in the former Soviet Union and has addressed the Parliament of Ukraine and the CSCE on these issues. She has a B.G.S. degree with majors in Political Science and Economics from The University of Iowa; and a M.A. in International Studies from The American University. She received the Scottish Women's Award for Services to Education in 2018.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at https://www.icfrc.org/.
Following the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), permitting the president to use force against those responsible for the 9/11 attacks and those who harbored them. Since then, four presidents have utilized this AUMF to justify using force against an array of groups -- many of whom did not exist on 9/11 -- in over half a dozen countries around the world. These post-9/11 wars have resulted in over 929,000 people killed, including over 387,000 civilians, and have cost over $8.9 trillion. While President Biden declared to the United Nations in September 2021 that "the United States is not at war," the Biden administration continues to rely on the outdated 2001 AUMF to conduct lethal strikes and other operations that continue our forever wars. This presentation discusses the 2001 AUMF, its origins, and how it has been stretched by successive administrations, as well as efforts being made to repeal it and bring an end to U.S. forever wars.
Heather Brandon-Smith is Legislative Director for Militarism and Human Rights at the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) in Washington, DC. She leads FCNL's work to repeal outdated war authorization, promote respect for human rights and international law, and reduce U.S. armed interventions around the world. Prior to joining FCNL, she served as the Advocacy Counsel for National Security at Human Rights First, where she worked to advance U.S. national security policies that are consistent with human rights and the rule of law. Ms. Brandon-Smith is an Adjunct Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. Her writing has appeared in The Hill, Lawfare, Just Security, and Intercross (the blog of the International Committee of the Red Cross). She holds an LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center and a B.A. in Politics and International Relations, an LL.B., and an LL.M. from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
This talk discusses the challenges to a zero carbon transition posed by the simultaneous crises of the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As the world emerges from the pandemic, disruptions in global supply chains and pent up demand have caused inflation not seen since the oil crisis of the late 70s. This in turn has lead to increased commodity prices from oil to food staples, as well as scarcity in the materials necessary for renewable technology deployment (chip shortages and rare earths). The ongoing Russian Invasion of Ukraine has further destabilized energy markets, supply chains and raw materials procurement. The geopolitical energy landscape has at once been transformed, with Europe redoubling efforts to wean itself from Russian energy through accelerated clean hydrogen R&D, as well as other clean energy targets. At the same time, the US has doubled down on shale oil production and LNG export, while it remains to be seen how we will respond through accelerated renewables R&D. What do all these changes portend for our efforts to address climate change? How does this affect the commitments made at COP(26) in Glasgow? How will this catalyze our energy transition? How will it undo progress?
Stratis Giannakouros is the Director of the UI Office of Sustainability. He comes to the UI from Arizona State University, where he served as project manager and program manager for the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability. Prior to that, he was the assistant director at the Center for Sustainable Communities at Luther College and sustainability outreach coordinator at Colorado State University. Mr. Giannakouros has a bachelor's degree in Economics from Loras College and a master's degree in Environmental Politics and Policy from Colorado State University.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Reading, for people around the world, has been one of the primary ways to better understand the uneven global landscape of immigration. Yet immigration is not simply an abstract subject of study, not simply headlines flashing on our smartphone screens about distant events, not simply a topic for (often heated) policy debates. When it is, empathy and our ability to understand and appreciate the ways in which we are all interconnected are lost or diminished. Immigration, we cannot forget, is peoples' lives.
Books like 'The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives', edited by Viet Thanh Nguyen and 'We the Interwoven: An Anthology of Bicultural Iowa, Vol. I, II, and III', edited by Andrea Wilson, then, are important and necessary counterweights. In them, refugee and immigrant writers bind us together through the power of storytelling and the sharing of personal experiences. Empathy deepens and understanding grows. Perhaps, too, a call to action -- for us, the impetus to welcome and support new neighbors to Iowa.
In this session, the panel discusses what it has been like for them to write and share their migration stories, why they chose to do so, and maybe offer some insights about the craft of writing personal narratives.
Jesus 'Chuy' Renteria is an artist, writer, dancer, and teacher, but above all, he is a storyteller. Born in Iowa City and raised in West Liberty IA, both sides of his family are from border towns in Mexico that transplanted to meatpacking towns in the Midwest. Growing up in West Liberty, he oscillated between the Mexican, Laotian, and small-town cultures that made up Iowa's first majority-Hispanic town. Chuy tells stories celebrating the spaces between cultures, of mangled Spanglish and generational clashes, of the messiness of people finding themselves. In addition to his writing, Chuy is an Assistant Director for the University of Iowa's Inclusive Education and Strategic Initiatives Unit. He is the host of The Englert's Writers of Color Reading Series podcast. His first full length publication, a memoir titled 'We Heard it When We Were Young' was released in November 2021 from The University of Iowa Press. He spends his free time with his wife Darcy and their first born Marisol Alana.
Andrea Wilson is the founder and Executive Director of the Iowa Writers' House, a nonprofit supporting the creation and publication of literature in Iowa. She is the founder of the Bicultural Iowa Writers' Fellowship, and the editor and publisher of 'We the Interwoven', the first series of essays by immigrants, first- and second- generation Americans in Iowa. As a trained narrative therapy practitioner, she develops programs and workshops which use story as a method to support mental health, psychological healing and empowerment. Her most recent workshop, 'Reframing the Past & Writing the Next Chapter', was taught in Panama. Andrea has a BFA from Iowa State University and a Master's in Narrative Therapy from the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Antonia Rivera was born in Distrito Federal, Mexico. At age six, she crossed the border and spent her youth in California. Eventually, she received temporary protection and a work permit through DACA. She writes about migration and what it means to be part of the 1.5 generation. She now lives in Des Moines, Iowa and works at Grassroots Law Project.
Eyad Said was born in Damascus, Syria. He lives with his family in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He earned a master's degree in banking and finance from the University of Damascus, Syria, before getting a PhD in mathematics from Louisiana State University. A husband and father of two, he is an assistant professor of mathematics at Mount Mercy University.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
This talk examines bitcoin enthusiasts' arguments about the viability of bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador. It raises specific concerns about bitcoin adoption in a context of growing authoritarianism, a history of unstable monetary policy, and limited technology.
Presenter Dr. Eric V& aacute;zquez is an assistant professor in American Studies and Latino Studies at University of Iowa. His scholarship emphasizes the cultural, political, military, and economic bonds that link populations and institutions in the United States to Central America.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Corruption lowers economic growth, increases poverty and inequality, and is one of the biggest complaints of ordinary people around the world. The international development community has tried for twenty years to fight corruption, but there is a general consensus that these efforts have not been successful. Dr. Monica Prasad aims to give a better understanding of corruption and examines a new strategy to control it.
Dr. Prasad has received the Fulbright award, the National Science Foundation Early Career Development Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and several other grants and awards. She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago in 2000. Her new book, Problem-Solving Sociology, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Across the globe and here in Iowa, education is seen as a ticket to a better future. The knowledge one acquires and the credentials a degree confers have the power to open previously closed doors and lead to opportunities previously not possible. For refugees and immigrants, navigating the complex systems of higher education in the US are overwhelming and promising. In some ways, the realities are akin to most first-generation families. There may be a steep learning curve about school types and the similarities and differences between them, about the FAFSA, applications, and costs for each school, about existing scholarships and other funding sources, and about the resources available to students new to the tertiary landscape. In other ways, there are realities which are unique to first-gen families newer to the US.
In this session, the panel discusses the lived experiences of refugee and immigrant students and their families as they pursue admission to and persist through Iowa's colleges and universities. They explain some of the support programs and resources available in the state. And they share how increasingly diversifying campuses of all types are more vibrant for everyone, particularly in learning spaces, with the inclusion of the voices, ideas, and contributions of students from all cultural and national backgrounds.
Mallory Petsche has served alongside refugee and immigrant communities in Iowa for nearly a decade. Mallory currently serves as the Director of Kirkwood Community College TRIO Student Support Services - ESL Program. The program provides culturally-specific academic support, social engagement, and career planning for first and second-generation immigrant students who are the first in their families to attend college, low income, or have a documented disability.
Rocio Lopez Riveros is currently a sophomore at Kirkwood Community College studying sociology. Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, she is now living in Coralville, Iowa. As a work study student at TRIO, Rocio works closely alongside other TRIO students with the goal of making connections and spreading information about the program and its resources. For her future, she plans to transfer to the University of Iowa and pursue a career involving student support services.
Dr. Anne Kiche is adjunct assistant professor in the Global Health Studies Program at The University of Iowa and an adjunct instructor in English Language Acquisition (ELA) at Kirkwood Community College. Her teaching interests include education, immigrant and refugee health, and the connections among migration, diversity, and pandemics on both the physical and mental health of populations. She is the chair of the African Communities Network of Iowa and will be the diversity co-chair of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) in Linn and Johnson counties starting July 1st, 2022.
Vinh Nguyen recently retired from Des Moines Public Schools after thirty-four years of service. He is now Refugee Education Coordinator at Lutheran Services in Iowa. As a former refugee, one of the Boat People from Vietnam, he found many difficulties and challenges in adjusting to his new life in 1980s America. With no English language skills, he struggled to communicate and often relied on others to interpret and to help find jobs. He was the recipient of the Passport to Prosperity Award from the Iowa Council for International Understanding in 2004. He is very active in Des Moines's language minority communities and currently serves as the president of the Vietnamese American Community in Iowa. He serves as a storyteller, speaker, and consultant for topics related to Vietnam, Southeast Asia, refugee and immigrant issues, the refugee resettlement process, and second language acquisition.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
This presentation addresses global food security issues as they affect both the U.S. farming/food systems as well as those systems in other countries. As we look forward to the challenges of feeding a global population of nearly 10 billion and dealing with the extremes of climate change, it is clear that farming/food systems everywhere will face new pressures. Ms. Simmons highlights the roles that women today play in food systems -- as farmer/food producers, in agrifood businesses, in research and technology development, and in making family food choices -- and the issues that they will face in the future.
Emmy Simmons is an independent consultant on international development issues with a focus on food, agriculture, and Africa. She is currently a member of the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition, the Board of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, and the Board of DevWorks International. She serves as a non-resident senior adviser for food security programs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). She has previously served on other Boards and advisory groups, including as a co-chair of AGree, an initiative that brought together a diverse group of interests to transform U.S. food and agriculture policy, and as a co-chair of the Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability at the National Academies of Science. She completed a career of nearly 30 years with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2005, having served since 2002 as the assistant administrator for economic growth, agriculture, and trade, a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed position. Prior to joining USAID, she worked in the Ministry of Planning and Economic Affairs in Monrovia, Liberia, and taught and conducted research at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria. She began her international career as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines from 1962 to 1964. She holds an M.S. degree in agricultural economics from Cornell University and a B.A. degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee..
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Given Russia's aggressive conflict behavior, it is difficult to not fear Russian cyber operations. Much of the knowledge we do have about Russian cyber operations is simply because of their reliance on dramatic action to try to signal displeasure with the international system. Lacking other capabilities, Russia leverages cyber power because it can do little else to affect the shape of bargaining in the international system beyond dramatic mobilization. Russian actions tend to fail to have a coercive impact, but still gather attention and provoke fear. Their willingness to escalate compared to other states makes Russia a potentially dangerous cyber power. This talk covers past Russia cyber actions, dissects the Russia strategic developments in cyberspace, and covers recent actions in Ukraine highlighting the potential for cyber war.
Brandon Valeriano (PhD Vanderbilt University) serves as a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Foreign and Defense Policy and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Marine Corps University. He was most recently the Donald Bren Chair of Military Innovation at the Marine Corps University at the Krulak Center and a Senior Advisor for the Cyber Solarium Commission. Dr. Valeriano has published six books and dozens of articles for such outlets as the Journal of Politics, International Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Peace Research. His two most recent books are Cyber War versus Cyber Reality (2015) and Cyber Strategy (2018), both with Oxford University Press. Dr. Valeriano has written opinion and popular media pieces for such outlets as the Washington Post, Slate, Foreign Affairs, and Lawfare. He has provided testimony on cyber conflict before the United States Senate and the Parliament of the United Kingdom. His ongoing research explores conflict escalation, big data in cyber security, and repression in cyberspace. Dr. Valeriano is the Area Editor in International Relations for the Journal of Cybersecurity and the Series Editor of Disruptive Technology and International Security for Oxford University Press.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
This session provides an overview of the upcoming UI Provost's Global Forum on "Teaching Anne Frank," the Anne Frank tree planting ceremony, and the exhibit. This forum brings together a multi-disciplinary panel of experts from Iowa and across Europe between February 28 - March 2, 2022, to highlight the educational value and continuing relevance of Anne Frank's story. UNESCO'S 2014 publication, Holocaust Education in a Global Context, outlines the role Holocaust education can play in tackling difficult issues of the past in diverse national and cultural contexts.
This program addresses: How did Anne's story surface in Iowa in the first place and what are its larger goals and implications? How do we envision the Anne Frank tree to "grow" and "branch out" on our campus and in our community? What is the purpose of the Provost's Global Forum? What events lead up to the planting ceremony on April 29 and how can you participate?
Kirsten E. Kumpf Baele, Ph.D. is Lecturer and Outreach Coordinator of German in the Division of World Languages, Literatures & Cultures at the University of Iowa. In addition to teaching courses on German literature, language, and culture, she created and annually teaches the popular seminar Anne Frank & Her Story. It is her proposal that successfully brings the 13th Anne Frank house chestnut tree to the University of Iowa and by extension larger Iowa City community. For this reason, she is collaborating with numerous campus and city organizations to put forward programming that connect with the anticipated sapling including her role as co-awardee of the Anne Frank Initiative 2022 (with the upcoming Provost's Global Forum). In the classroom, Dr. Kumpf Baele combines learning goals and community service projects in ways that enrich student growth and the common good. Specifically, in Anne Frank & Her Story, she makes more accessible difficult (hi)stories and the impact these have on post-secondary students. With the support of an Iowa Center for Undergraduate (ICRU) full-year fellow, the Iowa Women's Archives (IWA), and the Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio, she is spearheading a project that will implement an interactive digital map and coinciding app to shed light on Jewish history in the Iowa City and larger Corridor area. A similar civic initiative has been her work with the Oakdale Community Choir which takes place inside the Oakdale prison, a medium-security prison in Coralville, Iowa. She has recently published in Amsterdam University Press, McFarland, and LIT Verlag.
Waltraud Maierhofer (Dr. phil., equivalent to Ph. D. Regensburg, Germany 1988) is professor of German and also in the Global Health Studies Program at the University of Iowa. She loves to get students excited about another culture, learn what we have in common and what differentiates us, and explore human nature through narratives of human striving and accomplishments in its diverse forms. Her research and teaching interests include German literature and culture from the eighteenth century to the present. She is especially interested in representations of health and Human Rights issues (contraception, abortion, disabilities), in intersections of historiography and fiction, ego-documents and biography, but also book illustrations and text-image relations, and she has edited several historical documents and translations including nineteenth-century illustrations of the Reynard-the-Fox epic and Lion Feuchtwanger's 1948 play The Devil in Boston about the Salem witchcraft trials. A translation of the novel The Child Witches of Lucerne and Buchau by Swiss author Eveline Hasler is forthcoming with Lehigh University Press.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
In this final session of the 6-part Refugees and Immigrants in Iowa series, the panel discusses how perceptions and policies about diversity and inclusion at the local level have evolved, and the part refugees and immigrants have played in this evolution.
Panelists also offer their views on how policymakers in Des Moines might look to Iowa's most diverse towns to help create new welcoming and inclusive policies to support the state's growing reputation as a place refugees and immigrants seek to call home.
Art Cullen is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, editor of The Storm Lake Times (a family-run weekly newspaper in small-town Iowa), and author of the new book, Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper. Art has made it his life's work to ask the big questions, speak truth to power, and share the struggles and successes of his unique community of Storm Lake, Iowa (Census pop. 10,076). In politically divisive times, when Americans from Red States and Blue States often feel estranged from each other, Art Cullen's book attempts to show an optimistic way forward -- that there is still abundant hope in the Heartland.
Caleb Knutson was born in Tegucigalpa (Honduras) and grew up in rural Iowa. He has most recently served as the City Planner for the city of Marshalltown. Caleb and his wife also operate their family's startup coffee shop in Story City. At Iowa State University, he studied Criminology and Criminal Justice, as well as Community and Regional Planning. Presently Caleb serves on the Empower Rural Iowa Grow Task Force, Iowa Commission of Latino Affairs, the Iowa American Planning Association (APA) Board and the Iowa APA DEI Committee for which he is the Co-Chair. He resides in rural Hardin county with his spouse Anjuleah and their three children, three cats, one Chinese Dwarf hamster, one chocolate lab, and 0ne Fish (RIP Lightning). When Caleb isn't working he enjoys coaching his children in various sports, introducing them to "new" music, and building Star Wars Lego sets. His motto comes from Kawhi Leonard: Board man gets paid.
Cristina Ortiz is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota Morris where she also contributes to the Latin American Area Studies and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies programs. Her research interests began as an effort to understand her own heritage as the grandchild of Mexican-American migrant workers who settled in the Midwest. She is broadly interested in issues of rurality, belonging, ethnic identities, labor, and migration. Her research explores the everyday experiences of rural Midwesterners with a particular focus on communities with Latinx and immigrant residents.
Cara McFerren is an artist, business woman, wife, mother, elected official, and third generation Mexican-American. Born in the Midwest, she grew up in Davenport Iowa. In 1992, McFerren received her BFA from the College of Design at Iowa State University in Ames In 1997, she and her husband moved to West Liberty, thereby beginning their journey into small-town rural living. Presently, they have been very busy raising a son and operating their own business, Cardinal Sign & Graphics, a vinyl graphics company. In 2015, McFerren was the first Mexican-American woman to be elected to West Liberty's city council. In 2019, she was elected for a second term. She is one of five council members, all at-large, and, as of 2021, a member of Iowa's first city council to have a majority of Latino members.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Film is a universal language. This talk explores the ways in which foreign films are perceived and presented with a primary focus on Latin American and refugee/immigrant cinema. Based on his experience as a programmer for one of the longest running and largest Latin American film festivals in the country, Mr. Delgado discusses how borders heavily factor into the film's presentation as well as preview FilmScene's own festival plans.
Ben Delgado is the Programming Director at FilmScene, Iowa City's premiere art house theater. He holds a Masters degree from The Ohio State University in Arts Policy and a BA in Communication and Culture from Indiana University. Ben began his programming career at Coral Gables Art Cinema in 2013 where he helped to develop artists' services programs to aid local filmmakers and curated a diverse film selection featuring award-winning filmmakers in person for Q&As and workshops. In 2017 he joined the programming team of the American Film Institute's Silver Theatre and Cultural Center playing an integral role in presenting over 800 annual offerings with film festivals, repertory, and first-run films. While at the AFI Silver, he also co-founded and co-hosted the Silver Streams podcast. In his current role at FilmScene, Ben has overseen the return of several beloved programs alongside special events, repertory offerings, new films, filmmaker guests, and more. This year will see a ramping up of programming including the launch of a new film festival.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Since early 2020, the pandemic has had wide-ranging effects on communities across Iowa. A confluence of factors related to the Covid-19 virus have created particular health and wellness challenges for refugees and immigrants in the state. Early during the pandemic, limited reliable information was available to newer Iowans in languages other than English about how to prevent exposure to and spreading of the virus, creating uncertainties about staying safe and protecting others. Along with the destruction from and chaos due to the derecho storm of summer 2020, individuals and families have been faced with new and compounding hardships: dire employment, financial, and childcare concerns, requirements to restrict contact with family, friends, and others in their communities, as well as increasing and often unaddressed mental health stressors related to and separate from the ongoing pandemic.
Erin Hayward, MD is a clinical assistant professor of Family Medicine at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics and the medical director of the International Family Medicine Clinic. Prior to obtaining a medical degree at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and completion of her Family Medicine residency at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Dr. Hayward completed an undergraduate degree in International Studies at Kenyon College. She has been employed by Lutheran World Relief and was involved at the inception of Tiyatien Health (now known as Last Mile Health). She served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal, West Africa. Dr. Hayward practices outpatient family medicine at the Scott Boulevard Clinic of UICOM and is a rotating faculty member on the family medicine inpatient service at UIHC. She currently serves on the board of the Congolese Health Partnership of Johnson County.
Adrián Silva is the lead medical interpreter at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics and Stead Family Children's Hospital. He has been interpreting for Spanish-speaking patients and families for the last 11 years and as such, has been in thousands of medical encounters spanning all aspects of patient care. An immigrant himself, his family moved to the United States from Mexico when he was 8 years old, Adrián can relate closely to the struggles many of his patients deal with as Limited-English and non-English speakers. He comes to us today with a unique perspective as one of the only staff in a healthcare team that truly gets to see a patient's full scope of care from beginning to end.
Lata D'Mello (she/her) is a Director of Programs at Monsoon Asians & Pacific Islanders in Solidarity, an organization serving victims/survivors of gender-based violence in Iowa. She is based in Iowa City and oversees victim services in the Eastern, Northeastern and Southern parts of the state; trains and supervises advocates; edits Monsoon's communication materials; and conducts outreach and education. Lata was born and raised in Mumbai, India. She has had about 22 years of experience as a journalist in newspapers in India, Singapore and the United States. Her interests are social and economic justice, gender studies, community health, and arts and culture.
Alyssa Clayden is a mental health therapist, community educator and doctoral level researcher who specifically focuses on decreasing mental health inequities in refugee and immigrant communities. Alyssa has more than two decades of professional experience living on five continents supporting innovative curriculum and best practice interventions for displaced individuals, families and communities. She runs her own community agency and supports refugee and immigrant mental health locally, nationally and internationally through telehealth services.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
For months, Russia has been amassing troops and weaponry along its border with Ukraine and, more recently, in Belarus to Ukraine's north. A Russian military incursion of some sort seems increasingly close at hand. Three specialists on international conflict and Russian foreign policy address pressing questions about the situation, including what international and domestic factors could be motivating Russian actions, what tools might still be available to deter a Russian attack, and how a new conflict in Ukraine would alter the security situation in Europe and beyond.
William M. Reisinger is Professor of Political Science at The University of Iowa. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and joined the University of Iowa faculty in 1985. His research concerns politics in the former communist states, especially Russia. His publications include Energy and the Soviet Bloc (Cornell University Press, 1992), Can Democracy Take Root in Post-Soviet Russia? (Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), Constitutional Dialogues in Comparative Perspective (Macmillan, 1999), The 1999-2000 Elections in Russia (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Russia's Regions and Comparative Subnational Politics (Routledge 2012), as well as over 50 articles or book chapters. He travels frequently to Russia and has conducted research as well in China, Georgia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. He teaches courses on democratization, authoritarian politics and the politics of the post-communist countries.
Sara McLaughlin Mitchell is the F. Wendell Miller Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science at Michigan State University in 1997. She is Co-Director of the Issue Correlates of War Project (http://www.paulhensel.org/icow.html) and an Associate Editor of Foreign Policy Analysis and Research & Politics. She is coauthor of Domestic Law Goes Global: Legal Traditions and International Courts (Cambridge University Press, 2011), Guide to the Scientific Study of International Processes (Wiley-Blackwell 2012), The Triumph of Democracy and the Eclipse of the West (Palgrave Macmillan 2013), and Conflict, War, and Peace: An Introduction to Scientific Research (CQ Press/Sage 2013), she has edited several special journal issues, and she has published more than thirty journal articles and book chapters. Her areas of expertise include international conflict, democratic peace, international organizations, diversionary theory, international courts, conflict management, territorial, maritime, and river issues, and time series analysis.
Professor Mitchell is co-founder of the Journeys in World Politics workshop, a mentoring workshop for junior women studying international relations (http://www.saramitchell.org/journeys.html). Mitchell serves on the editorial boards of a number of academic journals including American Political Science Review, Conflict Management and Peace Science, Journal of Politics, International Studies Quarterly, International Interactions, and Political Analysis.
Paul van Hooft is a Senior Strategic Analyst at the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS) and the Co-Chair of The Initiative on the Future of Transatlantic Relations. He was a postdoctoral fellow from 2018 to 2020 at the Security Studies Program (SSP) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), including as a 2018-2019 Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow. He attained his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Amsterdam (UVA) and was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute (EUI) from 2016 to 2018. Dr. Van Hooft received the 2016 prize from the Dutch and Flemish political science associations for his dissertation on the impact of experiences with war on postwar grand strategy.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Change is ubiquitous in the international business environment and reflected in the increasing number of employees embarking on international assignments, and the high-paced flow of information around the globe spurring innovation that connects business partners across national borders. The aincreasing complexity and dynamism of the international environment requires that future business leaders develop cultural intelligence (CQ) in order to successfully establish relationships and accomplish their goals. Cultural intelligence is defined as "a person's ability to function effectively in a variety of contexts -- both internationally and domestically" (Cultural Intelligence Center, 2022). Study abroad programs have long been a preferred mechanism by which many university students were able to develop CQ. However, even before the COVID-19 pandemic led to the cancellation of study abroad programs, rising costs and other factors prevented a large number of students from pursuing these opportunities.
Through a project of creating podcasts in her International Business Environment course, Professor Erin Johnson fosters the development of her students' cultural intelligence by leveraging technology to engage students with this experience. Working in small groups, students conducted field research and interviews, analyzed their findings, and crafted a series of persuasive podcasts.
Dr. Erin Johnson is an Associate Professor of Instruction at the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa. Dr. Johnson teaches courses on negotiation, leadership and international business. She has a long-standing interest in global business and cross-cultural collaborations. She has partnered with universities in Poland, China, and Kosovo to create global virtual collaborations for her students in the context of their coursework. Most recently, students in her International Business Environment course participated in a short-term global virtual teams' project with students at the University of Business and Technology (UBT) in Pristina, Kosovo. Professor Johnson plans to continue this collaboration in the Spring 2022 semester and is hoping to travel to Kosovo to meet her colleagues later this year.
Dr. Johnson will be joined by UI students:
Hannah Gorslin is a senior at the University of Iowa studying Marketing, with a minor in Rhetoric and an International Business Certificate. She is involved in various student organizations on campus, including Delta Sigma Pi, the Professional Business Fraternity, Women in Business, and the Marketing Institute. She also serves as a Senator within Tippie Senate, alongside a dozen other Tippie students. She is passionate about finding ways to increase herr cultural intelligence and is very grateful for the opportunity to share their findings from their podcast in Professor Johnson's course.
Allie Zucker is a Marketing Management major at the University of Iowa with a physical activity and nutrition science minor as well as an international business certificate. She is also involved in multiple organizations on campus such as Women in Business, American Marketing Association, and Marketing Institute. She loves to travel and enjoyed learning how to enhance her cultural intelligence this past semester!
Grace Nelson is a marketing sales major at the University of Iowa with a certificate in international business certificate and a minor in communications. She is involved in the American Marketing Association and has a position on the fundraising committee through the University of Iowa. This summer, she is planning on interning globally in Dublin, Ireland. Throughout her experience at Iowa, she has worked very hard in expanding her cultural intelligence, and hopes to expand it even more in the future.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Since 1975, when Governor Robert Ray facilitated the resettlement of thousands displaced by the Vietnam War, Iowa has been a welcoming new home for refugees. Today, the crisis in Afghanistan requires Iowa's continued leadership to resettle 695 people from the war-torn Middle Eastern country. In partnership with agencies and nonprofits across the state, this effort will also require the support of individuals, organizations, and communities to receive these newest Iowans and to help them feel at home in their new neighborhoods. In this session, the panel will explain the complex global process of refugee resettlement, offer historical context about immigration to the state, as well as provide an insider's perspective on and an update about how the State of Iowa and the eastern Iowa region is responding to the Afghan crisis. Attendees will hopefully see the talk as a call to action, with insights offered about next steps and encouragement given to enlist others to get involved. Questions about how to welcome and support refugees from Afghanistan and countries around the world are most welcome, both during and after the presentation.
Mak Suceska serves as the Bureau Chief for the Iowa Bureau of Refugee Services alongside his role as the State of Iowa Refugee Coordinator through ORR (Office of Refugee Resettlement). Mak originates from Sarajevo, Bosnia and was transplanted to Des Moines, Iowa in 1993 as a refugee, fleeing from war-torn Yugoslavia with his family. Mak's professional career has been devoted to advocating and supporting refugees across the state to promote a more equitable community for all. With over 12 years of experience in non-profits and state government, it is Mak's life journey that has provided a unique and necessary perspective in guiding his work. Mak completed his political science undergraduate studies at the University of Iowa with a double minor in religion and history. He achieved his MPA degree through Drake University with an emphasis on public policy, and he will pursue his doctorate degree in Educational Leadership at Drake University. In Mak's words, "Education, accessibility and opportunity are the keys to success".
Sara Zejnic is Director of Refugee & Immigrant Services at Catherine McCauley Center (CMC) in Cedar Rapids. After obtaining a B.A. in International Relations and Religion from Wartburg College and a M.A. in Intercultural Service, Leadership and Management from SIT Graduate Institute, Sara has dedicated her career to providing and leading supportive services to refugees as they work to find stability and safety in their new communities. In her role at the CMC, Sara is committed to ensuring that community members, partners, and local employers have the information and resources necessary to work effectively with diverse populations.
This program is the first of six programs that we will be presenting on "Refugees and Immigrants in Iowa" through May 2022. These programs are made possible by a grant from Humanities Iowa along with financial support from our members, donors, and sponsors. If you would like to make a donation to support this project, please go to: https://www.icfrc.org/donate.html to make an online donation or you can mail a check to our address below:
Iowa City Foreign Relations Council
308 E Burlington St, #282
Iowa City, IA 52240-1602
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Since 1975, when Governor Robert Ray facilitated the resettlement of thousands displaced by the Vietnam War, Iowa has been a welcoming new home for refugees. Today, the crisis in Afghanistan requires Iowa's continued leadership to resettle 695 people from the war-torn Middle Eastern country. In partnership with agencies and nonprofits across the state, this effort will also require the support of individuals, organizations, and communities to receive these newest Iowans and to help them feel at home in their new neighborhoods. In this session, the panel will explain the complex global process of refugee resettlement, offer historical context about immigration to the state, as well as provide an insider's perspective on and an update about how the State of Iowa and the eastern Iowa region is responding to the Afghan crisis. Attendees will hopefully see the talk as a call to action, with insights offered about next steps and encouragement given to enlist others to get involved. Questions about how to welcome and support refugees from Afghanistan and countries around the world are most welcome, both during and after the presentation.
Mak Suceska serves as the Bureau Chief for the Iowa Bureau of Refugee Services alongside his role as the State of Iowa Refugee Coordinator through ORR (Office of Refugee Resettlement). Mak originates from Sarajevo, Bosnia and was transplanted to Des Moines, Iowa in 1993 as a refugee, fleeing from war-torn Yugoslavia with his family. Mak's professional career has been devoted to advocating and supporting refugees across the state to promote a more equitable community for all. With over 12 years of experience in non-profits and state government, it is Mak's life journey that has provided a unique and necessary perspective in guiding his work. Mak completed his political science undergraduate studies at the University of Iowa with a double minor in religion and history. He achieved his MPA degree through Drake University with an emphasis on public policy, and he will pursue his doctorate degree in Educational Leadership at Drake University. In Mak's words, "Education, accessibility and opportunity are the keys to success".
Sara Zejnic is Director of Refugee & Immigrant Services at Catherine McCauley Center (CMC) in Cedar Rapids. After obtaining a B.A. in International Relations and Religion from Wartburg College and a M.A. in Intercultural Service, Leadership and Management from SIT Graduate Institute, Sara has dedicated her career to providing and leading supportive services to refugees as they work to find stability and safety in their new communities. In her role at the CMC, Sara is committed to ensuring that community members, partners, and local employers have the information and resources necessary to work effectively with diverse populations.
This program is the first of six programs that we will be presenting on "Refugees and Immigrants in Iowa" through May 2022. These programs are made possible by a grant from Humanities Iowa along with financial support from our members, donors, and sponsors. If you would like to make a donation to support this project, please go to: https://www.icfrc.org/donate.html to make an online donation or you can mail a check to our address below:
Iowa City Foreign Relations Council
308 E Burlington St, #282
Iowa City, IA 52240-1602
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
The ICFRC is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a grant by Humanities Iowa and the National Endowment for the Humanities to carry out a project on Iowa refugees and immigrants from December 1, 2021, to August 30, 2022. This project will consist of six free public educational programs with expert speakers from across Iowa addressing specific relevant topics. Overall, the project's goal is to raise the voices and share the stories of refugees and immigrants who come to Iowa. The programs will aim to give Iowans and their communities a deeper understanding of other cultures and countries, and how engaging with refugees and immigrants can not only increase our empathy and understanding but can benefit and help our communities to thrive as diverse people living together.
Dr. Peter Gerlach, Project Director, discusses the project and provides an overview of the six upcoming programs. He is the Summer Institute Coordinator at the UI International Writing Program. He received his BA and MA degrees in English from Ripon College and the University of Northern Colorado, respectively. After serving in the U.S. Peace Corps in Mongolia, he earned a Ph.D. in Cultural Foundations of Education from Syracuse University. Since 2004, he has taught university students in composition and literature, English as a foreign language, qualitative research, and international education. Dr. Gerlach is also an adjunct assistant professor in the UI International Studies Program. He teaches a UI undergraduate course, "Community Engaged Learning with Refugees and Immigrants in Iowa" which helps to inform this project and which will also draw on the project's learnings for future classes.
We are grateful to Humanities Iowa and the National Endowment for the Humanities for their support for this project. One of the grant's requirements is that we must match this funding. If you would like to make a donation to support this project, please go to: https://www.icfrc.org/donate.html to make an online donation or you can mail a check to our address below:
Iowa City Foreign Relations Council
308 E Burlington St, #282
Iowa City, IA 52240-1602
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Dr. Joshi provides an overview of the Intra-Afghan peace process, compares it to peace processes elsewhere, and examines the missed opportunities by key actors involved in the negotiation process. He then assesses the challenges in protecting and promoting women's rights in the Taliban's Afghanistan.
Madhav Joshi is research professor and associate director of the Peace Accords Matrix (PAM) at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. He oversees the data coding on the implementation of peace agreements worldwide for the PAM project and leads the research initiatives on peace agreement design, implementation, and post-implementation political and economic developments.
Dr. Joshi earned his PhD in comparative politics and research methodology from the University of North Texas in 2010. His research and teaching focus on civil wars, mediation, post-civil war democratization and democratic survival, peace duration and peacebuilding, quality peace, and the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. He has published on these topics in Social Science Research, the British Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, the Journal of Peace Research, International Studies Quarterly, Democratization, Global Governance, and many other journals. Dr. Joshi has authored and co-authored over 70 policy briefings to facilitate ongoing negotiations on issues related to peace accord contents and implementation challenges for the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (Philippines), Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nepal Transition to Peace, the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace (Colombia), the United Nations Development Programme, and many civil society organizations involved in peace processes around the world.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Dr. Marcella David discusses how the Black Lives Matter movement can be understood through the lens of international human rights, and how the global response shows how connected we are.
Dr. Marcella David is senior vice president and provost and professor in the Business and Entrepreneurship Department at Columbia College Chicago. In her role as senior vice president and provost, David serves as the college's chief academic officer and provides leadership for all academic planning and review including academic diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, advancement of faculty scholarship, research, and creative work, global education, online learning, student retention and persistence initiatives, and the allocation of financial resources in accordance with academic priorities.
Before joining Columbia in 2019, David was a visiting professor of Law at Florida State University and previously served as the provost and vice president of academic affairs at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), one of the nation's top historically black colleges and universities with almost 10,000 students across a broad range of disciplines. Prior to FAMU, David held administrative leadership roles at the University of Iowa, including associate dean of the College of Law and special assistant to the president for equal opportunity and diversity. Her research interests include the use of economic and other sanctions, international criminal law, and questions related to international organizations. David received her BS in Computer Science and Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and her JD magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
For the last three years, the energy world has been fixated on the fits and starts of the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, as changes in EU regulations and regulatory competencies, as well as pressure from key stakeholders, have kept the project under a big question mark. A July 2021 agreement between the US and Germany seemed to give a green light to the project. This presentation discusses the following issues:
1) What makes Nord Stream so complex from a regulatory and governance perspective, and how is this related to the specific materiality characteristics of natural gas as related to other fossil fuels?
2) What is the Russian context of the project, and how do Russian governance issues affect it?
3) Up to which point do the July 2021 agreements really mean the pipeline will be put in use?
4) What perspectives and challenges does the new "status quo" open for Ukraine?
Margarita M. Balmaceda is a political scientist working at the intersection of international relations, the political economy of authoritarianism and democracy, and technology, with a special expertise in energy politics (oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, renewables), and commodities -- especially steel and the metallurgical sector-- in Ukraine, the former USSR, and the EU. She has a PhD in Politics from Princeton University and is Professor of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University. Concurrently, she heads the Study Group on "Energy materiality: Infrastructure, Spatiality and Power" at the Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg (Germany) and is an Associate at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard. Capitalizing on her Ukrainian, Russian, Hungarian and German skills, in addition to her native Spanish, she has conducted extensive field research in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, Hungary, Germany and Finland. Her new book, Russian Energy Chains: the Remaking of Technopolitics from Siberia to Ukraine to the European Union (Columbia University Press, 2021) analyzes how differences in the material characteristics of different types of energy can affect how different types of energy may be "used" as sources of foreign and domestic power. She is currently developing a project on metallurgy, conflict and political development and struggling through courses at the World Steel Association's Steel University.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Each winter for the past 16 years, a Miles of Smiles team travels to conduct medical missions in the remote Western Highlands of Guatemala. In partnership with Rotary, Iowa MOST has been able to dramatically impact the health and quality of life of hundreds of families through cleft lip/palate and cataract surgeries. Project leader Deb Dunkhase discusses how Iowa MOST embodies Service Above Self to change the lives of some of the most vulnerable, poverty-stricken families in the world.
For over thirty years, Deb Dunkhase has dedicated herself to education in the state of Iowa. Her work has involved direct teaching with elementary level students and leadership roles working closely with parent and teacher groups to bridge the gap between formal and informal education.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Dr. Jerry Schnoor discusses the upcoming United Nations Glasgow Climate Conference, also known as COP26. There, the world will try to agree on greater cuts in nationally-determined greenhouse gas emissions, more funding for the most vulnerable nations (The Green Climate Fund), ending oil exploration and production, constraints on international financial transactions, and limits on international travel.
Jerald Schnoor is the Allen S. Henry Chair in Engineering, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Co-director of the Center for Global & Regional Environmental Research.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Journalist Sanam Maher spent several years investigating the murder of Pakistan's first social media celebrity, Qandeel Baloch. Questions arising from Maher's investigation - What kind of woman is the country's culture willing to tolerate? And how did Qandeel encourage a generation of Pakistani women to inhabit the same online spaces she was viciously trolled in - broaden into larger questions of how sex is being talked about, and, as importantly, how it isn't.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Dr. Marilyn Seiber will discuss what is happening today in Cuba, reviewing the "perfect storm" of the U.S. embargo, Cuban Government policies, and Covid 19. She will describe U.S. policies toward Cuba through recent Administrations, as well as the actions of The Presbyterian Church (USA) and its ecumenical partners in Cuba to address the humanitarian crisis that Cubans are now suffering.
The Presbyterian Church (USA) has been a partner with the Presbyterian-Reformed Church in Cuba since issuing a joint Mission Statement in 1986. Since then, over 90 U.S. Presbyterian churches have joined with counterparts in Cuba forming strong, active bonds, working together in mission, sharing each other's stories, becoming friends and family, participating in celebrations and holidays, learning of each other's challenges and joys. These U.S. church partners have been the eyes on the ground for 35 years, observing the impact of the U.S. embargo on Cuba and the results of Cuban Government policies that have affected how Cubans live and struggle daily -- for food, medicines, toiletries, and equipment of everyday life.
Marilyn J. Seiber has been involved with Cuba since 2004, traveling there 21 times. She chairs the Cuba Partners Committee for The New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. that has a partnership with First Presbyterian-Reformed Church of Havana. Dr. Seiber has served on the Steering Committee of the Cuba Partners Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA), and currently is a member of the Network's Advocacy Committee. She has organized a similar Cuba network for National Capital Presbytery.
Dr. Seiber is an international economist retired from federal service on Capitol Hill and the Executive Branch. Her expertise on international trade, finance, and monetary policy has enabled her to serve at the highest levels of government. She was Senior Economist on the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Banking and Financial Services and Chief Economist on the Committee on Small Business working for the Ranking Member and Chairman, respectively. In the Executive Branch, she served as Director of International Economics at the National Security Council; Special Assistant and Economic Advisor to the Under Secretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs and to the Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade; advisor to the General Counsel at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative; and Deputy Director of the Rent Advisory Board for the Cost of Living Council during federal wage and price controls. She has served as an economic consultant to the World Environment Center, and has been an Adjunct Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Government and the University of Maryland University College. She has written and published two books on developing-country debt. She received her Ph.D. in International Relations and International Economics from The American University in Washington, D.C.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Ambassador Charles Ray discusses the challenges of race, diplomacy and national security, including the challenges of being Black in the U.S. State Department.
Ambassador Ray has over 50 years of experience in international affairs, with 20 years in the U.S. Army, and 30+ years in the U.S. Foreign Service. His military experience included assignments in Unconventional Warfare Planning, Psychological Operations, Intelligence and Public Affairs. During his Foreign Service career, he managed troubled organizations in Asia and Africa, and was instrumental in reestablishing a mil-to-mil relationship with Cambodia after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As deputy chief of mission in Sierra Leone, he managed the military training program and oversaw USAID's humanitarian assistance effort. He was also instrumental in brokering democratic elections in Sierra Leone, which saw a peaceful transfer of power from the military junta that had taken over the country the year before his assignment; this election took place during an externally-supported rebel war. He encouraged the government of Cambodia to take a more active role in combatting human trafficking, and implemented a successful Muslim outreach program in that country, which reversed the negative views the small Islamic community had about the United States.
He has served as deputy chief of mission in Sierra Leone, was the first post-war consul general in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, served as ambassador to Cambodia and Zimbabwe, and was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs and Director of the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO), during which time, he oversaw development of the US government interagency policy on personnel recovery, working with the Department of State, FBI, DEA, and USAID to develop a comprehensive plan to provide proactive and reactive support to USG personnel working abroad.
Since retiring from government service in 2012, Ambassador Ray has consulted with DOD, participating in the development of a training continuum for Defense Attaches in support to chiefs of mission during personnel recovery operations, and provided training support to the US Army as an SME on interagency matters, preparing army units for deployment abroad in noncombat operations. He also conducts a workshop on professional writing for Rangel foreign affairs scholars.
A prolific writer, he has published more than 60 books of fiction and nonfiction, including works on ethics, leadership, and diplomacy. He works with the Potomac Institute for Public Policy, developing a program on the use of diplomacy as a tool to combat terrorism and violent extremism.
He has a B.S. in business administration from Benedictine College, an M.S. in systems management from the University of Southern California, and an M.S. in national security management from the National War College of the National Defense University. He speaks Thai, Vietnamese, and Mandarin, and is a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy and the Association of Black American Ambassadors. Ambassador Ray is chairman of the board of the Cold War Museum, at Vint Hill, VA, and chairs the board of advisors of the Institute of Science, Technology, and the Arts (ISSTA), an international boarding school, planned for construction in Orlando, Florida.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
This panel comprised of different generations of experts, including three university students, will discuss how Gen Z differs from previous generations regarding their views on international issues and American foreign policy and how those differences will shape public policy in the future.
Panelists:
Dr. Michael D Hais
Carolina Herrera
Amelia Thoreson
Amna Haider
Moderated by Dr. Brian Lai.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Dr. Sara Mitchell and Yufan Yang discuss how climate change and natural disasters influence the chances for war and peace between countries. They review what we know about this important topic, connect to their ongoing research, and discuss the policy implication of their findings.
Dr. Sara M. Mitchell is the F. Wendell Miller Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa. She is the author of six books and more than 55 journal articles and book chapters. She has received over 1.1 million dollars in external grants. Her areas of expertise include international conflict, political methodology, and gender issues in academia.
Yufan Yang is a doctoral candidate of political science at the University of Iowa. She studies international relations and political methodology. Her areas of expertise include political violence, environmental politics, and text analysis. She is the author of a journal article in Defense and Peace Economics and a book chapter in What Do We Know About War (Third Edition).
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Assistant Director Craig Kafura and Research Assistant Brendan Helm of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs will discuss the results of their 2020 annual survey, as well as the results from bi-national surveys conducted in January 2021. With the unrest and upheaval of this past year, how have Americans changed-or not changed-their views on key foreign policy issues? And, data from Iran and Russia provide striking insights into how the people of those countries view domestic and international problems.
Brendan Helm is a research assistant for the Lester Crown Center on US Foreign Policy and Public Opinion teams on the Council. After earning his undergraduate degree in international relations from the College of William and Mary, he worked at Teaching, Research, and International Policy - a survey project which examined the gap between academia and policymaking.
Craig Kafura is the assistant director for public opinion and foreign policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project, and a Pacific Forum Young Leader. At the Council, he coordinates work on public opinion and foreign policy and is a regular contributor to the public opinion and foreign policy blog Running Numbers. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, and The Diplomat, among others. Kafura holds an MA in Political Science from Columbia University and a BA in Political Science from Yale University.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Dr. Christine Petersen, an expert on vaccines, epidemiology and the pandemic, is the director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases and a professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Iowa College of Public Health. The focus of this center is to bring together trans-disciplinary research teams to lessen the burden of emerging zoonotic infectious diseases across health settings. These efforts bring together immunologists, vaccinologists and computational biologists/biostatisticians to attack the problem of vaccine-intractable infections through statistical hierarchical modeling of protective immunity. CEID-based efforts have led to published collaborative studies.
Dr. Christine Petersen's scholarly work has focused on the recognition and prevention of zoonotic diseases, primarily the epidemiology and immunobiology of vector-borne and parasitic diseases and like almost everyone in these fields in 2020, also now SARS coronavirus 2. Dr. Petersen is the scientific program chair for the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Dr. Petersen is the US/non-vector borne disease region representative to the international veterinary group that provides recommendations regarding treatment and prevention of infection with the zoonotic protozoan parasite, Leishmania infantum; Leishvet. Dr. Petersen's collaborative group works in Brazil, India and Ethiopia via NIH/Fogarty International Center and NIAID-funded focused on understanding transmission routes and host species immune susceptibility for vector borne zoonoses including tick borne and sand fly borne diseases. This work has been predominantly evaluating dogs for their role in these infectious disease ecologies, but has spanned work in domestic ruminants (goats, cows and water buffalo) to small rodent reservoirs of Borrelia. Dr. Petersen's published and patented work demonstrates the ability to target reservoir species for immunologic and parasitologic control of chronic infections to promote disease elimination.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Professor Ana Rodriguez presents and discusses the exhibition she recently curated in Spain, staged by the Cervantes Institute and Spain's National Library, and which also has an online version, where Spain's female writers' lives are celebrated and their works displayed.
Ana M. Rodriguez-Rodriguez is an Associate Professor specializing in Early Modern Spanish Literature. She has published many articles on a variety of topics such as Christian-Muslim relations in the Mediterranean, women's writing, and the Asian Spanish empire. In 2013, she published a book exploring Spanish captivity writings during the 16th and 17th centuries (Letras liberadas. Cautiverio, escritura y subjetividad en el de la epoca imperial espanola. Madrid: Visor Libros), and she is currently writing a monograph about the Philippines during Spanish colonial rule of the archipelago. Rodriguez-Rodriguez completed a Ph.D. on Spanish Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2007 and a second PhD in Philology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) in 2021. In 2015 she received the M.L. Huit Faculty Award for her teaching and research, and in 2020 she also received the International Engagement Teaching Award, awarded by International Programs and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Iowa.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
This week Michael Zmolek speaks to us on "Impeachment and Empire".
The United States of America is a signatory to the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions yet routinely transgresses these and other treaties and agreements comprising our system of international law. Why then are presidents not held accountable or impeached? This talk will address this question in light of the 'informal empire' that the United States has managed since 1945 and the violations of human rights and international law which have occurred. In sharing personal experiences of helping draft articles of impeachment against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Dr. Zmolek will attempt to help us connect the dots between the assault on civil liberties and the escalation of violence in US foreign policy post-9/11 and the January 6th assault on the US Capitol by a mob incited by Donald Trump. While this resort to violence in attempting to subvert the outcome of a democratic election has been rightly viewed as an assault on domestic political norms, use of the same tactics by parties supported by the United States has been a routine part of managing the US's informal empire. The fact that impeachment as a mechanism for upholding accountability to the law obviously remains hostage to the partisan politics of America's two-party system leaves the door open to future episodes involving the turn to the use of force against democracy.
Michael Andrew Zmolek teaches World History, International Studies and Development Studies at the University of Iowa. His book Rethinking the Industrial Revolution (Brill 2013; Haymarket 2014) explores five centuries of English/British history and is part of a broader effort to understand the nature and origins of capitalism. Mike received a BA in Linguistics and a Certificate of African studies at the University of Iowa before going on to complete his PhD in Political Science at York University in Toronto, where he served as an executive of the Graduate Students' Association for four years. As a legislative assistant in Congress, his work focused on addressing the plight of Gulf Coast survivors of Hurricane Katrina and on drafting articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for representatives Cynthia McKinney (GA) and Dennis Kucinich (OH). As an activist he has worked on the campaign to abolish apartheid in South Africa; opposing tuition hikes for students in Canada; and opposing the bombing, sanctions against, invasion and occupation of Iraq.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Join us for a discussion with three University of Iowa Mandela Washington Fellow Graduates: Valeria Adzo Adzatia, Edgar Munatsi, and Sandra Ejang. This Iowa City Foreign Relations Council program features a panel discussion, moderated by Dimy Doresca, Director of the International Business Institute at the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business.
These three young entrepreneurs are eager to share with you how their ventures have progressed since they left Iowa City. In addition to discussing their successes, the discussion will include conversation around the current health, political, and economic contexts within their respective countries.
The U.S. State Department's Mandela Washington Fellowship, started in 2014 as part of the Young African Leaders Initiative created by President Obama, empowers young people from Sub-Saharan Africa through academic coursework, leadership training, and networking. Each year the Fellowship provides 1,000 young ambassadors with the opportunity to hone their skills at U.S. higher education institutions. Over the years, the Iowa delegations of Fellows spend six weeks in Iowa taking entrepreneurial classes and touring the state.
Each year ICFRC hosts a program featuring the Mandela Washington Fellows visiting the University of Iowa. This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are bringing you a virtual discussion from three former fellows. You won't want to miss this new twist on our annual Mandela Washington Fellowship spotlight!
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
Join us online for a program with Eric Hirsch, who speaks to us on "Three Faces of Growth: Development and the Politics of Abundance in Peru's Andes".
This talk presents some of the key findings from Hirsch's current book project. It is based on long term fieldwork in the Peruvian Andes during the 2010s, an era when Peru's economy saw astronomical aggregate growth due to simultaneous booms in extractive industry, gastronomy, and tourism. Hirsch explores the question of growth: in rural villages at the Andean margins of Peru's economic boom, what does it mean to experience economic growth as a daily fact of life? What does it actually look like? How does it feel? How, in other words, are people supposed to know that their country is growing? Hirsch follows three distinct development projects that are invested in recruiting rural villagers to the collective enactment of Peruvian economic growth as its newest entrepreneurs: one from the Peruvian Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, one from a non-governmental organization, and one from a mining corporation.
Eric Hirsch is an environmental and economic anthropologist whose research focuses on climate change, development, and how marginalized communities build their livelihoods. Most of his field research has taken place in Peru, particularly the southern Andean Colca Valley, and the cities of Arequipa and Lima. Hirsch has conducted additional research in the Maldives and the US. His current book project, Acts of Growth: Development and the Politics of Abundance in Peru (under contract with Stanford University Press) investigates economic growth as a shared understanding that comes alive through face-to-face interaction in rural Peru.
Hirsch's second major project delves more directly into the issue of climate change as a fact of daily life. In collaboration with the Barcelona-based project "Local Indicators of Climate Change Impacts," the project works to center how non-Western scientific observations in rural communities contribute to those communities' responses to climate change. Hirsch has published his research in journals including Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Geoforum, and Global Environmental Change.
For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.
After withdrawing the United States from the Iran Nuclear Deal, former President Trump waged a failed and reckless "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran. This dangerous policy brought the two countries disturbingly close to the brink of war, shortened Iran's "breakout time" to build nuclear weapons, and caused Iranian civilians to suffer needlessly. It's time for a policy reset and a swift return to diplomacy. While there's much reason for optimism regarding the prospects for peace as the Biden administration, our European allies, and Iranian leaders all appear to be eager to turn the page and restore the JCPOA, saving the deal will not be without difficulties.
The JCPOA was always meant to be a starting point. While there are a myriad of issues that should be resolved diplomatically between the United States, Iran, and other governments in the region, the nuclear issue is the most pressing. A full return to the nuclear deal should serve as a foundation for future talks to address these issues. In this discussion we will learn about the history that brought us to this moment, the political dynamics shaping this conversation around the JCPOA, and show ways for citizens to engage with their members of Congress to support diplomacy with Iran.
Hassan El-Tayyab is FCNL's lead lobbyist on Middle East policy. He is also responsible for representing FCNL with the various coalitions that work on these issues. Prior to joining FCNL in August 2019, he was co-director of the national advocacy group Just Foreign Policy, where he led their lobbying work to advance a more progressive foreign policy in the Middle East and Latin America. He played a major role in the successful passage of the War Powers Resolution to end US military aid to the Saudi-UAE coalition's war in Yemen.
Hassan's passion for foreign affairs is rooted in his desire to make life better for people in the Middle East, including his extended family in Jordan. He is convinced that advancing a more peaceful and diplomacy-based foreign policy in the Middle East is critical, not only for the family he loves, but for peace and stability worldwide. His writings and commentaries have been featured in numerous news outlets, including BBC World News, The Hill, Al Jazeera, The Huffington Post, The Intercept, and more.
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Xinjiang, China, is the home of the Uyghurs, a Turkic people who practice Islam. Although most Uyghurs are not mobilized for a violent independence movement, their homeland has seen its share of violence. This presentation presents an introduction to the Muslim Uyghur region and discuss the relationship between nationalism and ethnic conflict.
Born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, Sarah holds a BA in International Affairs from George Washington University. Sarah later received her PhD in Geography from University of Colorado Boulder. She completed three years of dissertation fieldwork in Xinjiang, China. Her PhD work specializes in territorial conflict, governance and development in China. Trained in political geography, she has expertise in state-building and geopolitics, especially in China's governance of its minority borderlands.
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Judy Polumbaum and Mark Sidel were two of the earliest young Americans to arrive in China to teach after the Cultural Revolution, and each have remained closely engaged with China as researchers, teachers and writers ever since. Each provides a perspective on where China-US relations may be headed as we enter the Biden era, based on where we've come from over many decades, with lots of time for discussion and dialogue.
br>Mark Sidel serves as Doyle-Bascom professor of law and public affairs at UW-Madison and taught at Iowa from 2000-2011. He focuses on civil society in China and on China-US relations, as well as on India and Vietnam. He served in Beijing, Hanoi, Bangkok and New Delhi n program positions with the Ford Foundation before moving into academic life.
Judy Polumbaum is a University of Iowa professor emerita of journalism and mass communication. Much of her scholarly career focused on mass media in China. She now lives and writes in the southwest. Her latest project is a biography of her goofy Greatest Generation social activist photojournalist father -- All Available Light: The Life and Legacy of Photographer Ted Polumbaum, forthcoming this fall from McFarland Press. NOTE: the cablecast version has been edit for time. The full 66 minute program is available on our website.
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This program touches briefly on the science of climate change and the events of 2020- including the California drought and wildfires, the unprecedented number of hurricanes which made landfall in the US, and the midwestern derecho. Then, Professor Schnoor addresses updates on the Biden administration's plans to uphold the Paris Climate Agreement. Policies in China and the EU are also discussed, together with the lack of funding for vulnerable and affected nations.
Jerry Schnoor is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (elected in 1999) for his pioneering work using mathematical models in science policy decisions. He testified several times before Congress on environmental protection, including the importance of passing the 1990 Clean Air Act. From 2003-2014, he served as the Editor-in-Chief of the leading journal Environmental Science and Technology and of ES&T Letters in 2013-2014. He chaired the Board of Scientific Counselors for the Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development from 2000-2004; and served on the EPA Science Advisory Board and the National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences Council for NIEHS (2007-2011).
In 2010, Schnoor received the Simon W. Freese Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the Athalie Richardson Irvine Clarke Prize from the National Water Research Institute (NWRI) for his research and leadership in water sustainability and climate change. In 2013, he was awarded an Einstein Professorship from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and in 2015, the Perry L. McCarty AEESP Founders' Award for sustained and outstanding contributions to environmental engineering education, research, and practice. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) presented to Jerry the 2016 Dixy Lee Ray Award "for outstanding achievement in environmental protection through improvements in technology, science, and policy". Most recently, the American Chemical Society bestowed the 2019 Creative Advances in Environmental Science & Technology national award for pioneering phytoremediation. In summary, Schnoor's mathematical models of acid deposition and water quality and his research using plants in phytoremediation have been foundational to the field of environmental engineering.
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This presentation illustrates the challenges with malaria elimination efforts while responding to the threat of COVID 19 in Cambodia.
William Etienne is a medical doctor with 15 years of experience in humanitarian medicine. He has worked for Doctors without Borders, the International Community of the Red Cross and the World Health Organization. His areas of expertise are health in conflict, health in detention, response to outbreaks, decentralization of care, primary health care and malaria elimination. From 2016 to 2019 he was involved in malaria elimination in Cambodia. He has recently relocated to Iowa City where he works in Infection Prevention at the University of Iowa Hospital.
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The "Tumultuous Decade" brings together nearly a decade of Zogby Research Services (ZRS) public opinion polling in Arab countries, Turkey, and Iran-a period of great tumult across the Middle East and North Africa. Through polling, ZRS gives people a chance to speak for themselves - people who are often "spoken for" by governments or elites who think they know what the "local" people think, or even what they should think. The danger of not listening is most acutely illustrated by the series of near-blind decisions that preceded and accompanied the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, but also rears its head in international decisions and actions in many Middle Eastern arenas, from the Israel-Palestine conflict to the Russian intervention in Syria. International policymaking toward the Middle East, while it considers matters of energy, security, trade, and the like, must always keep in view-front and center-the opinions and priorities of the people concerned.
James Zogby co-founded the Arab American Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based organization which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American community, in 1985 and continues to serve as its president. He is Director of Zogby Research Services, a firm that has conducted groundbreaking surveys across the Middle East. In September 2013, President Obama appointed Dr. Zogby to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. He was reappointed to a second term in 2015 and concluded his service in May 2017. He was twice elected Vice Chair. He writes a weekly column published in 12 countries. He is featured frequently on national and international media as an expert on Middle East affairs. In 2010, Zogby published the highly-acclaimed book, Arab Voices. His 2013 e-books, Looking at Iran: The Rise and Fall of Iran in Arab Public Opinion and 20 Years After Oslo, are drawn from his extensive polling across the Middle East with Zogby Research Services.
Dr. Zogby has also been personally active in U.S. politics for many years; in 1984 and 1988 he served as Deputy Campaign manager and Senior Advisor to the Jesse Jackson Presidential campaign. In 1988, he led the first ever debate on Palestinian statehood at that year's Democratic convention in Atlanta, GA. For the past 3 decades, he has served in leadership roles in the Democratic National Committee. In 1995, Democratic National Committee Chairman Don Fowler appointed Zogby as co-convener of the National Democratic Ethnic Coordinating Committee (NDECC), an umbrella organization of Democratic Party leaders of European and Mediterranean descent.
In 1975, Dr. Zogby received his doctorate from Temple University's Department of Religion, where he studied under the Islamic scholar Dr. Ismail al-Faruqi. He was a National Endowment for the Humanities Post-Doctoral Fellow at Princeton University in 1976 and is the recipient of a number of honorary doctorate degrees.
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