Bruce Jones: The Brookings Institution

Are we in a new Cold War? To be sure, tensions are rapidly rising in Asia, and we are well launched into a new, global naval arms race. The US has agreed to transfer to Australia the most closely guarded technology in the US arsenal, nuclear submarines, and is deepening collaboration with allies and partners from Japan to India. China has launched nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles, is engaged in a huge naval build up, and has flown its flying its largest ever air sorties through Taiwan’s airspace; and the world’s navies are engaged in massive war games in the Western Pacific. All while global trade is entangled in supply chain problems. Will these tensions take us to war in Asia? Or is it still possible to keep the peace? Will climate change be a zone of cooperation; or will changing weather patterns actually intensify competition? Bruce Jones will address these and related questions, drawing on his new book “To Rule the Waves: How control of the world’s oceans shapes the fate of the superpowers”.

Bruce Jones is director and a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy of the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution; he also works with the Center for East Asia Policy Studies. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at Yale University. Jones previously served as the vice president and director for the Brookings Foreign Policy program for five years.

Jones’ research expertise and policy experience is in international security. His current research focus is on U.S. strategy, international order, and great power relations. His most recent book on the topic is the bestselling “To Rule the Waves: How Control of the World’s Oceans Shapes the Fate of the Superpowers” (Scribner, 2021). Earlier works include “The Marshall Plan and the Shaping of American Strategy,” (Brookings Institution Press, 2017); and “Still Ours to Lead: America, Rising Powers, and the Tension between Rivalry and Restraint” (Brookings Institution Press, 2014). He is also co-author with Carlos Pascual and Stephen Stedman of “Power and Responsibility: Building International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats” (Brookings Institution Press, 2009). 

Jones has appeared in The Wall Street Journal; the Washington Post; the New York Times; Foreign Affairs; Foreign Policy; Survival; CNN; BBC World Service; Los Angeles Times; NPR; The Huffington Post; Nikkei Asian Review; Project Syndicate; Noema; “The Tavis Smiley Show”; Al Jazeera English; Reuters; Voice of America; CCTV; and Sky News.

Jones has extensive experience and expertise on peacemaking and crisis management. He served in the United Nations’ operation in Kosovo, and was special assistant to the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process. He is co-editor with Shepard Forman and Richard Gowan of “Cooperating for Peace and Security” (Cambridge University Press, 2009); and author of “Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failures” (Lynne Reinner, 2001). He has also served in advisory positions for the U.S. State Department and the World Bank on fragile states, including as senior external advisor to the World Bank’s “2011 World Development Report on Conflict, Security and Development.”

He holds a doctorate from the London School of Economics, and he was the Hamburg fellow in conflict prevention at Stanford University.

Sarah Chayes: Afghanistan: The Peril of Neglecting Democracy and the Rule of Law

Internationally recognized for her innovative thinking on corruption and its implications, Sarah Chayes has uncovered the unrecognized reality that severe and structured corruption often prompts international crises -- including violent religious insurgency. From covering the fall of the Taliban in 2001, to living in their former heartland for a decade and advising the highest ranks of the U.S. military, Chayes will speak from her remarkable perspective to help us draw crucial lessons from the Taliban's triumphant return to power.

Former special advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Author, NPR correspondent, and former senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Sarah Chayes's remarkable trajectory has led her from reporting from Paris for National Public Radio and covering the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan to running a soap factory in downtown Kandahar in the midst of a reigniting insurgency. She went on to advise the topmost levels of the U.S. military, serving as special adviser to two commanders of the international forces in Kabul and then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen. She left the Pentagon for a five-year stint at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she extracted the broadly relevant core from those experiences.

Internationally recognized for her innovative thinking on corruption and its implications, she has uncovered the unrecognized reality that severe and structured corruption can prompt international crises, such as revolutions and other uprisings, violent insurgency, and environmental devastation. Corruption of this sort is the operating system of sophisticated networks, which weave together government officials, business magnates and private charities, and out and out criminals, and represents, in Sarah's view, the primary threat to democracy in our lifetimes.

She is the author of On Corruption In America: And What Is at Stake, Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security (winner of the LA Times Book Prize), and The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban.

She lives in Paris and Paw Paw, West Virginia.

Virtual Event in collaboration with World Denver. Register at https://secure.worlddenver.org/np/clients/worlddenver/eventRegistration.jsp?event=197

Trita Parsi: US-Iranian Relations: After the Election, Will There be War or Peace?

"The rise of Iranian ultra-conservative President Ebrahim Raisi is the latest example of how the economic hardship imposed on civilian populations through sanctions tends to favor the very political entities the United States views as most problematic." ~ Trita Parsi

On June 18th, Iran elected new leaders. What does this mean for US/Iran relations? 

Trita Parsi is the co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, as well as the founder and former president of the National Iranian American Council. He is an award-winning author and the 2010 recipient of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. 

His first book, Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States (Yale University Press 2007), won the silver medal winner of the 2008 Arthur Ross Book Award from the Council on Foreign Relations. His second book, A Single Roll of the Dice – Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran (Yale University Press) was released in early 2012 and was selected by Foreign Affairs journal as the Best Book of 2012 on the Middle East.

Parsi’s latest book – Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy (Yale University Press, 2017) – reveals the behind the scenes story to the historic nuclear deal with Iran.

Parsi was born in Iran but moved with his family at the age of four to Sweden in order to escape political repression in Iran. His father was an outspoken academic who was jailed by the Shah and then by the Ayatollah. He moved to the United States as an adult and studied foreign policy at Johns Hopkins’ School for Advanced International Studies where he received his Ph.D. under Francis Fukuyama and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

U.S./China Relations: Challenges and Opportunities for the Biden Administration

Robert Daly directs the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Wilson Center. Before coming to the Wilson Center he was director of the University of Maryland China Initiative and American Director of the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies in Nanjing. He began work in U.S.-China relations as a diplomat, serving as Cultural Exchanges Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in the late 80s and early 90s. After leaving the Foreign Service, he taught Chinese at Cornell, worked on television (北京人在纽约) and theater projects in China as a host, actor, and writer, and helped produce the Chinese-language version of Sesame Street. His views are regularly featured on NPR, C-Span, and the Voice of America. He has lived in China for 12 years and has interpreted for Chinese leaders, including Jiang Zemin, and American leaders, including Jimmy Carter.

Dr. Suisheng Zhao is Professor and Director of the Center for China-US Cooperation at Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. Zhao is the founding editor of the Journal of Contemporary China, one of the highest-ranked international scholarly journals on modern China. He received his Ph.D. degree in political science from the University of California-San Diego, M.A. degree in Sociology from the University of Missouri, and BA and M.A. degrees in economics from Peking University. He is the author and editor of more than ten books, including China and East Asian Regionalism: Economic and Security Cooperation and Institution-Dr.Suisheng Zhao is Professor and Director of the Center for China-US Cooperation at Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. Zhao is the founding editor of the Journal of Contemporary China, one of the highest-ranked international scholarly journals on modern China. He received his Ph.D. degree in political science from the University of California-San Diego, M.A. degree in Sociology from the University of Missouri, and BA and M.A. degrees in economics from Peking University. He is the author and editor of more than ten books.

This program will be moderated by Richard Mueller, former US Consul General to Hong Kong.

Registration information will be sent to members in May.

Lisa Curtis: Managing Great Power Competition in the Indo-Pacific

Lisa Curtis is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). She is a foreign policy and national security expert with over 20 years of service in the U.S. government, including at the NSC, CIA, State Department, and Capitol Hill. Her work has centered on U.S. policy toward the Indo-Pacific and South Asia, with a particular focus on U.S.- India strategic relations; Quad (U.S., Australia, India, and Japan) cooperation; counterterrorism strategy in South and Central Asia; and China’s role in the region.

Ms. Curtis served as Deputy Assistant to the President and NSC Senior Director for South and Central Asia from 2017-2021 under three successive National Security Advisors. During her tenure at the NSC, she coordinated U.S. policy development and implementation of the South Asia Strategy approved by the President in 2017 and was a key contributor to the Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework, which included expanding Quad security cooperation. She coordinated policies designed to strengthen the U.S.-India defense, diplomatic, and trade partnership, resulting in a widely recognized elevation of the relationship. Ms. Curtis also coordinated development of the U.S. Strategy toward Central Asia, to include facilitating new partnerships with Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

From 2006–2017, Ms. Curtis was Senior Fellow on South Asia at The Heritage Foundation, where her responsibilities included research, writing, regular media appearances, and frequent Congressional testimony. She also served as Professional Staff Member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, handling the South Asia portfolio for former Chairman of the Committee, Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) from 2003–2006. Before that, she worked as a Senior Advisor in the South Asia Bureau at the State Department, where she developed and coordinated U.S. policy on India-Pakistan relations. In the late 1990s, she worked as a senior analyst on South Asia at the CIA, and from 1994–1998 served at the U.S. Embassies in Pakistan and India.

Ms. Curtis has published commentary in Foreign Policy, The National Interest, CNN.com, NPR.org, and other media outlets and made multiple appearances on CNN, Fox News, BBC, PBS, MSNBC, and C-SPAN.

Ms. Curtis received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Indiana University in December 1990.

Mark B. Taylor: Modern Slavery: Combating Trafficking in Persons

Tuesday, March 8, 2021 6 PM.

 Mark B. Taylor is an international expert on human trafficking  issues in Asia and the world, with over 22 years of experience working on the issue in a variety of roles including diplomacy, program design and management, research, and technical advice. As part of his 27 years in the U.S. Department of State, he was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India, where he helped start the first U.S. anti-trafficking in persons (TIP) projects in South Asia.

He went on to an assignment in Nigeria, where he did similar work – starting a large anti-crime assistance program that included addressing human trafficking. Subsequently and for ten years, Mark led the Reporting and Political Affairs Section of the State Department’s Trafficking in Persons office, coordinating the production of 10 annual Trafficking in Persons Reports and managing diplomatic   engagement efforts on human trafficking issues around the world. 

In 2013, he moved to Thailand to become the Team Leader of a $50 million Australian government-funded program to fight human trafficking in the ASEAN regional – the Australia-Asia Program to Combat Trafficking in Persons. Most recently, he served as the senior technical adviser to the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery, assisting this newly establish fund in designing and managing strategies and projects in the Philippines, Vietnam, Bangladesh and India. Mark lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand and is an independent consultant to anti-trafficking donors and programs.

Gen. Wesley Clark and Gov. Larry Hogan: Rebuilding Civility in US Politics

Gen. Wesley Clark is founder and CEO of Renew America Together. Clark retired as a four star general after 38 years in the United States Army, having served in his last assignments as Commander of US Southern Command and then as Commander of US European Command/ Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. He graduated first in his class at West Point and completed degrees in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University (B.A. and M.A.) as a Rhodes Scholar. He also worked with Ambassador Richard Holbrooke in the Dayton Peace Process, where he helped write and negotiate significant portions of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement. His final NATO assignment was as Supreme Allied Commander Europe

His awards include the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Defense Distinguished Service Medal (five awards), Silver star, bronze star, purple heart, honorary knighthoods from the British and Dutch governments, and numerous other awards from other governments, including award of Commander of the Legion of Honor (France). He has also been awarded the Department of State Distinguished Service Award and numerous honorary doctorates and civilian honors.

Governor Lawrence J. Hogan, Jr. was sworn in as the 62nd governor of the State of Maryland on January 21, 2015. In 2018, he was overwhelmingly re-elected to a second four-year term, receiving the most votes of any Maryland gubernatorial candidate and becoming only the second Republican governor to be re-elected in the 242-year history of the state.

In his first inaugural address, Governor Hogan reminded citizens of Maryland’s history as a state of middle temperament and pledged to advance the best ideas, regardless of which side of the political aisle they come from. He is recognized nationally as a strong, independent leader who consistently delivers real results and achieves common sense, bipartisan solutions. 

After being elected by his fellow governors, Governor Hogan recently completed a successful term as chairman of the National Governors Association, and he consistently maintains one of the highest job approval ratings in the country.

This virtual presentation, moderated by special guest KOAA news anchor Rob Quirk, is in cooperation with WorldDenver and the Colorado Springs World Affairs Council and is free to all Colorado Foothills World Affairs Council members.

To register, members will receive an email with link to click on and you will be asked enter to code “WACMEMBER” and it will be self-explanatory from there.

Jovan Jovanovic: DEMOCRACY VS GEOPOLITICS: WESTERN (UN)INTENTIONAL SUPPORT FOR AUTOCRACY

Jovan has been a pro-democracy activist since early 1990s, when he fought the autocratic regime of Slobodan Milosevic. After the regime change in 2000, he has participated in a democratic transformation of Serbia in different capacities. Jovan decided to enter politics after he was recalled early as Ambassador to Indonesia, as a result of the political retaliation by the new government, mostly comprised of the prominent figures of the Milosevic regime. 

He successfully ran for the parliamentary seat in 2016. In 2017, he became the President of the Civic Platform, a new political organization advocating for the establishment of a democratic and modern state with free market, anchored in the EU and the West, based on the rule of law and full respect of human and minority rights.

During the 2016-2020 legislature, for more than a year and a half, Jovan was the President of the Parliamentary Group of the Independent MPs. Both in that capacity, and in the capacity of the President of the Civic Platform, he has participated in all major Serbian opposition activities, including signing, along with other opposition leaders, three important opposition agreements related to free and fair election. Jovan was also a member of the Serbian Parliament’s Permanent Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the continent's leading international organization in the field of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. Due to his consequent struggle for democratic values, Jovan was frequently attacked and threatened by the ruling majority MPs, as well as their nationalist allies in the parliament. After finishing his MP term in August 2020, he and his Civic Platform continued their political struggle for democratization within the United Opposition of Serbia, a major opposition block comprised of the political forces that boycotted the June 2020 unfree and unfair election.

The worrisome trend of an increasing number and solidification of competitive autocracies has been particularly evident in Eastern Europe. In some countries, such as Poland and Hungary, although having a limited reach, European Union instruments prevented some of the worst consequences of government autocratic policies. In other countries, such as Serbia, these instruments are lacking and are mostly related to the EU-membership perspective, which seems ever-increasingly distant. 

This distant and growingly intangible perspective has created an opportunity for several global and regional geopolitical players with autocratic regimes, such as Russia, China, and Turkey, to try to fill in the widening void and increase their influence in the region. The space for such actors further widened due to the initial uncoordinated EU reaction to COVID-19. Such circumstances, paired with the Trump administration’s predominantly transactional foreign policy and tolerance for undemocratic practices around the globe, made some leaders in Eastern Europe, particularly in Serbia, believe that the winning formula for staying in power was strengthening an autocratic, Putin-like regime, along with trying to exert maximum benefit from playing major geopolitical actors (U.S., EU, Russia, and China) against each other. In such a way, Western countries have been frequently sacrificing democratic values for the sake of their geopolitical interests in the region.

Jim Loi: US-China relations in the Biden Administration

Jim Loi is Partner and Chief Operating Officer at The Asia Group and a member of the Executive Committee. Prior to joining The Asia Group, Jim spent 22 years in the Department of State as a career Foreign Service Officer and member of the Senior Foreign Service. Abroad he served in a range of economic, political, and security related policy and management positions at U.S. embassies in Singapore, Beijing, Pretoria, and Bucharest.

In Washington, Jim was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asian & Pacific Affairs, Director for East Asian Affairs at the National Security Council (NSC), Director for China & Japan at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), and visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) – Freeman Chair in China Studies.

Throughout his career, commercial diplomacy and trade policy have been central themes in Jim’s work. At USTR he worked closely with private sector stakeholders on insurance and agricultural trade issues and at the NSC he was responsible for APEC and played a leading role in the development of the Obama Administration’s U.S.-China Strategic & Economic Dialogue. In China, he led Embassy Beijing’s Trade Policy Office, served as Mission coordinator of the Treasury Secretary Paulson’s Strategic Economic Dialogue, and sat on AmCham Beijing’s trade policy committee. He and his staff played a critical role in the tracking and enforcement of China’s WTO accession commitments and were among the first to raise early alarm bells on, and analyze the trade policy challenges posed by China's then emerging indigenous innovation policies. In Singapore, Jim and his staff monitored and led enforcement of the U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement and were instrumental in facilitating negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) FTA. Jim served as a non-voting board member of AmCham Singapore, supporting the interests of the over 3,700 U.S. companies resident there.

Jim is a former U.S. Navy enlisted sailor and surface warfare officer with over 15 years of active and reserve service, including active duty tours onboard a destroyer and frigate in the Pacific Fleet. He left Naval service with the rank of Commander and is a veteran of Operation Desert Storm. Jim received a Bachelor of Arts in international relations from Cornell University. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children and reside in Falls Church, VA.

Jim Loi is Partner and Chief Operating Officer at The Asia Group and a member of the Executive Committee. Prior to joining The Asia Group, Jim spent 22 years in the Department of State as a career Foreign Service Officer and member of the Senior Foreign Service. Abroad he served in a range of economic, political, and security related policy and management positions at U.S. embassies in Singapore, Beijing, Pretoria, and Bucharest.

In Washington, Jim was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asian & Pacific Affairs, Director for East Asian Affairs at the National Security Council (NSC), Director for China & Japan at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), and visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) – Freeman Chair in China Studies.

Throughout his career, commercial diplomacy and trade policy have been central themes in Jim’s work. At USTR he worked closely with private sector stakeholders on insurance and agricultural trade issues and at the NSC he was responsible for APEC and played a leading role in the development of the Obama Administration’s U.S.-China Strategic & Economic Dialogue. In China, he led Embassy Beijing’s Trade Policy Office, served as Mission coordinator of the Treasury Secretary Paulson’s Strategic Economic Dialogue, and sat on AmCham Beijing’s trade policy committee. He and his staff played a critical role in the tracking and enforcement of China’s WTO accession commitments and were among the first to raise early alarm bells on, and analyze the trade policy challenges posed by China's then emerging indigenous innovation policies. In Singapore, Jim and his staff monitored and led enforcement of the U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement and were instrumental in facilitating negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) FTA. Jim served as a non-voting board member of AmCham Singapore, supporting the interests of the over 3,700 U.S. companies resident there.

Jim is a former U.S. Navy enlisted sailor and surface warfare officer with over 15 years of active and reserve service, including active duty tours onboard a destroyer and frigate in the Pacific Fleet. He left Naval service with the rank of Commander and is a veteran of Operation Desert Storm. Jim received a Bachelor of Arts in international relations from Cornell University. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children and reside in Falls Church, VA.

U.S.-China Relations: Beyond the 2020 Elections

Dave Rank retired from the US Foreign Service in 2017 as the Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy to China. In this capacity, Mr. Rank ran the Embassy’s day-to-day operations, worked closely with his counterparts in Washington and Beijing, and served as the Chargé d’Affaires for the six months prior to Ambassador Terry Branstad’s arrival in Beijing.

Throughout his 27-year career in the US Foreign Service, Mr. Rank performed with excellence in various postings around the world. In addition to his final assignment in Beijing, Mr. Rank served in five other positions in the region: two prior posts at the US Embassy in Beijing, two at the America Institute in Taiwan, and one at the US Consulate General in Shanghai. He has also served at the US Embassies in Afghanistan, Greece, and Mauritius. Mr. Rank’s domestic assignments included Director of the State Department’s Office on Afghanistan Affairs, Senior Advisor to the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and the Desk Officer for the Republic of Korea.

From 2012 to 2013, Mr. Rank served as a Dean and Virginia Rusk Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. In 2015, Mr. Rank was awarded the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award for his role in the release of the only American service member held by the enemy in Afghanistan. He is also the recipient of the American Foreign Service Association’s Sinclaire Award for the study of languages and cultures.

In addition to his role at The Cohen Group, Mr. Rank is a Senior Fellow at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. Mr. Rank speaks Mandarin, French, Dari, and Greek. A native of Chicago, Mr. Rank attended the University of Illinois. He is married with three children.

Inta Morris and Mark Hallett: “Foreign Student Contribution to Higher Education and the Impact of COVID-19”

International students are a crucial element in the quality of U.S. education and research, and for the pool of talent in U.S. industry. Foreign students contributed $45 billion to the U.S. economy in 2018 and 458,000 jobs. including $400 million and 6,000 jobs to the Colorado economy.

Columbia University estimates that 30-40% of the 1.1 million foreign students in the U.S. might not attend this year due to COVID-19, a loss of 400,000 students and $15 billion. Most foreign students pay the full cost of their education, in essence subsidizing the cost for local students.

Inta Morris joined the Department in 2007 and since then has served in several senior positions. In 2018, she took over the role of Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial officer. She also developed and continues to run StudyColorado, an initiative of the state, its institutions of higher education and the business community focused on promoting Colorado as a higher education destination to international students.

Mark Hallett is responsible for management of staff, budget, programs and services for international students and scholars. CSU had 2300 foreign students and over 225 foreign scholars from over 110 countries in 2019 at its Fort Collins campus, with a total of over 34,000 students enrolled last academic year.

Dr. Jody Olson: The Peace Corps: Today and in the Future during the Age of COVID

Dr. Josephine “Jody” Olsen began her Peace Corps career in 1966 as a volunteer in Tunisia. She has since served the agency in multiple leadership positions—as Acting Director in 2009, Deputy Director from 2002- 2009, Chief of Staff, and previously as Regional Director for North Africa, Near East, and Asia Pacific.

Prior to returning to the Peace Corps in 2018 Dr. Olsen was a Visiting Professor at the University of Maryland-Baltimore working on global education and global health projects in numerous areas.

It is a trying time for the Peace Corps. The global novel coronavirus pandemic has required volunteers to be recalled from the field and numerous other international challenges require fresh thinking about the most effective mission for the Peace Corps in the future.

Dr. Olsen will share her thoughts and ideas with the Colorado Foothills World Affairs Council members and guests via an interactive Zoom format and answer some of our questions.

BRAZIL TODAY AND IN THE FUTURE: A Conversation between two experts

Brazil, a country in the world’s top 10 in population and GDP, is in the midst of three destructivecrises: the country is second only to the US in infections and deaths from COVID-19, many observers see President Jair Bolsonaro as putting democracy at risk, and Brazil’s economy has been badly damaged by the pandemic, with consequences for the whole region. To analyze these crises, the Colorado Foothills World Affairs Council will sponsor a conversation between two prominent authorities on Brazil via Zoom.

Dr. Robert Muggah co-founded the Igarapé Institute, an internationally recognized independent and non-partisan think tank devoted to bringing attention to the challenges of violence and insecurity across Brazil and Latin America. Igarapé works with other Brazilian and international organizations such as the United Nations and the Inter-American Development Bank to encourage changes I government policy. Muggah has a PhD from Oxford University and has presented numerous “Ted T alks”.

Andrés Schipani is the Brazil correspondent for the Financial Times of London. He has graduate degrees both from Oxford University and the Columbia University School of Journalism and has long been a keen observer of Brazilian politics, economics and culture, including time as BBC correspondent for South America.

Keith Luse: New Threats from North Korea: What does it mean?

In recent weeks North Korea has again been making threats of military action against South Korea, and indirectly against Seoul’s allies, including the United States. President Trump seems to equivocate- one time publically stressing his good personal relationship with North Korea’s President Kim Jong Un and another time being more bellicose. What is happening?

There is none able to better address this dichotomy than Keith Luse, Executive Director of The National Committee on North Korea. The National Committee on North Korea is a non-governmental organization dedicated to fostering mutual understanding and trust between the governments and peoples of the U.S. and North Korea. Its mission is to promote peace on the Korean Peninsula through education, information-sharing, and relationship-building.  

Luse has a long career in public service in international affairs. He was Senior Policy Advisor for Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar from 2002-2013. He is a specialist on North Korea and has been a frequent visitor to Pyongyang and participant in various negotiations. He has also worked with the World Bank and the Asia Development Bank.

SHAYMA JANNAT, Hong Kong Desk Officer Office of Chinese Affairs United States Department of State

This program will be presented on the Zoom platform. Colorado Foothills World Affairs Council Members will receive Zoom instructions and the meeting link shortly before the program

Shayma Jannat is a recognized leader, scholar, and keen observer of the Asian geopolitical scene. Ms Jannat is graduate of The College of William and Mary, with her graduate degree in Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy Center at Harvard University. Prior to her current responsibilities in Washington, she has had Foreign Service assignments in Burma, Kenya and Colombia, particularly working in peace and conflict management, human rights and US security interests. 

She was recently recognized as a one of the ten “young rising stars” in the State Department by Parade Magazine.

Meeting off the record. No media coverage.

Beth Payne: A Diplomat's Guide to Building Resilience

Online program in collaboration with WorldDenver.

Ambassador Christopher Hill: “Iran and Iraq, Where Do We Go From Here?

Christopher Hill is currently the Chief Global Advisor and professor of the practice in diplomacy at the University of Denver. Prior to this position, he was the dean of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies from September 2010 to December 2017. 



A four-time ambassador nominated by three presidents, Hill's last post was as ambassador to Iraq April 2009 until August 2010. Prior to Iraq, Hill previously served as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs during which he was also the head of the U.S. delegation in six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear issue. Earlier, he was the U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Korea (2004-05), Poland (2000-04), the Republic of Macedonia (1996-99) and the special envoy to Kosovo (1998-99). 



Ambassador Hill is author of Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy: A Memoir, a monthly columnist for Project Syndicate, and a highly sought public speaker and voice in the media on international affairs.

Alfredo Corchado: Homelands

Alfredo Corchado is the Mexico Border correspondent for the Dallas Morning News and author of Midnight in Mexico: A Reporter’s Journey Through a Country’s Descent into Darkness. Born in Durango, Mexico, he was raised in California and Texas. His career in journalism includes the El Paso Herald-Post, the Wall Street Journal, and The Dallas Morning News. He is a Nieman, Woodrow Wilson, Rockefeller, Lannan, USMEX and IOP fellow, and the winner of the Maria Moors Cabot Prize and Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for Courage in Journalism. He was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2018. Corchado lives between El Paso and Mexico City but calls the border home. His latest book, HOMELANDS, was relaunched in September in Spanish and English paperback version with a new epilogue

Homelands

The border is not just a geographical place, but a mindset. It’s not a no-man’s land over run by criminals in need of a wall to separate us from them. For millions it’s just a dynamic, vibrant place surrounded by some of the safest communities anywhere; It’s also a piñata for politicians and a target for White Supremacist. Whether demographics, or economic integration, the border is a peek into the future. Join us for a conversation with Alfredo Corchado, a renowned author and reporter, about the epicenter of our Homelands, the border.

“This personal, moving tale illuminates the very heart of the polarizing immigration debate that is roiling America today.” – David Axelrod, Former Senior Advisor to Barack Obama