Events
Lecture Series:
Exposure to professionals who work on international security issues is viewed as a vital building block to a student's academic foundation. With this in mind, ISSP annually attracts a wide range of domestic and foreign senior-level government and non-government officials, military leaders, and academics to the Fletcher School. These experts address a broad spectrum of timely defense and conflict issues on the international security agenda and give students their individual perspectives on life outside the classroom.
It is often possible for students to meet one-on-one with these speakers, who represent the highest levels of military and diplomatic service as well as some of the most widely respected academic programs in international relations and foreign policy. Series speakers have included members of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Regional/Functional Commanders in Chief, senior U.S. government officials, ambassadors, senior foreign officials, and academicians/scholars from the academic community. Each academic year the program sponsors a guest lecture series on international security issues. Some of the many speakers sponsored this year include:
Ambassador Takeo Iguchi, Professor Emeritus of Shobi University; Dr. Andreas Vogt (F’03), Program Director, Training for Peace (TFP) in Africa, (NUPI); Professor Chuck Freilich, Former Deputy Israeli National Security Adviser; Dr. Daniel I. Fine, Research Associate, Mining and Minerals Resources Institute, MIT; Dr. James F. Miskel, Consultant in Defense Policy and Homeland Security; The Honorable Henry A. Crumpton, Ambassador at Large, Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Department of State; Ambassador Elizabeth Jones, Executive Vice President, APCO Worldwide; His Excellency András Simonyi, Ambassador of Hungary to the United States of America; Robert D. Walpole, Principal Deputy Director, National Counterproliferation Center; Admiral James G. Stavridis, Commander, United States Southern Command; Her Excellency Eva Nowotny, Ambassador of Austria to the United States of America; R. Daniel Mc Michael, Secretary, Sarah Scaife Foundation; Douglas Farah, Consultant and Freelance Writer, IBI Consultants; MG John W. Libby, Adjutant General, Maine National Guard; Dr. Ahmed Hashim, Associate Professor of Strategic Studies, US Naval War College; Professor Geoffrey Steven Corn, South Texas College of Law; Mr. Edward Gistaro, National Intelligence Officer for Transnational Threats, Central Intelligence Agency; Admiral William T. Pendley, USN (Ret).
Lecturers Bios
Geoffrey Corn is currently Assistant Professor of Law at South Texas College of Law. His previous positions include Special Assistant to the Judge Advocate General for Law of War Matters and Chief of the Law of War Branch, Office of the Judge Advocate General, U.S. Army; Chief, International Law and Operations Division, Office of the Judge Advocate, U.S. Army Europe; and Professor of Law, U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s School, Charlottesville, VA.
Professor Corn received his LL.M. from The Judge Advocate General’s School, U.S. Army as a Distinguished Graduate in 1997. He graduated George Washington University Law School in 1992 as a J.D. with Highest Honors; and he received his BA from Hartwick College (Oneonta, NY) in 1983, receiving a BA (Magna Cum Laude) with a major in History.
Professor Corn regularly gives lectures and presentations to various groups. He is the author of US Army Europe International and Operational Law Deskbook, and he has also published book chapters and monographs. In addition, he has published numerous articles in prominent law and military journals.
Henry A. Crumpton was sworn in as Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the Department of State with the rank of Ambassador at Large on August 2, 2005. Ambassador Crumpton joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1981 and served as an operations officer both at headquarters and abroad. He has served in several foreign field assignments, two as Chief of Station. In Washington, he held senior management positions, including a one-year assignment at the Federal Bureau of Investigation as Deputy Chief of the International Terrorism Operations Section, 1998-1999. Ambassador Crumpton was also Deputy Chief (Operations) of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, 1999-2001, and led the CIA’s Afghan campaign, 2001-2002. He served as Chief of National Resources Division from August 2003 until June 2005.
Ambassador Crumpton was born in Athens, Georgia. He received a B.A. in Political Science from the University of New Mexico and a Masters in International Public Policy, with honors, from John Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. He is a contributing author to Transforming U.S. Intelligence (2005).
Ambassador Crumpton is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Intelligence Commendation Medal, the George H. W. Bush Award for excellence in counterterrorism; the Sherman Kent Award, in recognition of an outstanding contribution to the literature of intelligence; the Donovan Award; and the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the Agency’s highest award for achievement.
Douglas Farah is a consultant on terrorism issues, author, and the co-editor of the Counterterrorism Blog. He is a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, a fellow at the NEFA Foundation, and regularly briefs the military, Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice on terrorism-related issues. He is the author of Blood From Stones: The Secret Financial Network of Terror (Broadway, 2004) and Merchant of Death: Guns, Planes and the Man Who Makes War Possible (John Wiley, August 2007). His work has appeared in numerous publications and he has lectured at universities across the country on failed states, organized crime and Islamist terrorism.
In 2004 he worked for nine months with the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence, studying armed groups and intelligence reform. For the two decades before that, he was a foreign correspondent and investigative reporter for the Washington Post and other publications, covering Latin America and West Africa.
Born to missionary parents on July 22, 1957, he moved to the Amazon basin in Bolivia when he was 18 months old. He graduated from the American Cooperative School in La Paz in December 1974. In 1985, after graduating with honors from the University of Kansas (B.A. in Latin American Studies and a B.S. in Journalism), he was named UPI bureau chief in El Salvador, covering the civil war there and the U.S.-backed Contra rebels in Honduras. In 1987 he left UPI to freelance for The Washington Post, the Boston Globe and US News & World Report. He 1988 he won the Sigma Delta Chi Distinguished Service Award for Foreign Correspondence for a Washington Post series on right-wing death squads in El Salvador. In 1990 he moved to Bogota, Colombia, to cover the exploding drug war. Working in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia he chronicled the rise and fall of the Medellin cartel and its leader, Pablo Escobar and the rise of Cali cartel.
In 1992 The Washington Post hired him as staff correspondent for Central America and the Caribbean. He continued to cover the drug wars in Colombia, but also the 1994 U.S. occupation of Haiti, post-war Central America and the rise of drug trafficking and HIV/AIDS across the region. He traveled more than a dozen times to Cuba to write about the changing revolution on that island. In 1995 he was awarded the Maria Moor Cabot Prize by Columbia University for outstanding coverage of Latin America. In 1997, Farah was named the Post’s international investigative reporter, covering drug trafficking and organized crime. He covered Russian organized crime groups in Latin America and the Caribbean, the growth of Mexican drug cartels and drug-related banks in the Caribbean. In 1997 he was honored by Johns Hopkins University for a Washington Post Magazine article on how the Cali cocaine cartel bought the 1994 presidential elections in Colombia. In March 2000, Farah was named West Africa bureau chief for The Washington Post. Based in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, he extensively covered the brutal civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
In November 2001 Farah broke the story of al Qaeda's ties to those diamond and weapons networks. Later that month Farah and his family were evacuated from West Africa because of threats against his life, resulting from the diamond stories. He continued to travel there and elsewhere around the world to report on the financial network of bin Laden. In June he joined the investigative staff in Washington.
Dr. Daniel Fine is a Research Associate at the Mining and Minerals Resources Institute, MIT. Dr. Fine is also a current Policy Adviser on Non-Conventional Oil and Gas. He is co-editor of Resource War in 3-D: Dependence, Diplomacy and Defense, and has contributed to Business Week, the Engineering and Mining Journal and the Washington Times. Dr. Fine participated in the Atlantic Council Workshop on Central Asian Policy and the Hudson Institute Russia-United States Relations Project. He has given testimony on strategic natural resources before the U.S. Senate Committees on Foreign Affairs and on Energy and Natural Resources, and is a contributor to the Washington Times on international oil and gas issues. He is currently developing energy infrastructure protection and security research and programs.
Prof. Chuck Freilich was Israel's Deputy National Security Adviser. He is now a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center at Harvard's Kennedy School, where he is writing a book on Israeli national security decision making. Chuck's primary areas of expertise are US-Mid East policy and Israeli national security policy. He teaches political science at Tel Aviv and Hebrew Universities and also co-directs a Middle Eastern affairs consultancy.
Chuck was a Senior Analyst at the Israel Ministry of Defense, focusing on strategic affairs, Policy Advisor to a cabinet minister and a Delegate at the Israeli Mission to the UN. He was the Executive Director of two non-profits and served in the Israel Defense Forces for five years (reserve major). Chuck earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University. Born in New York, he immigrated to Israel in his teens.
Ted Gistaro was appointed National Intelligence Officer for Transnational Threats in November 2006. He had joined the Central Intelligence Agency’s Counterterrorism Center shortly after 9/11, in November 2001, and served as Chief of several new analytic and operation units until his assignment to the NIC.
After joining the CIA in 1989, Mr. Gistaro worked on political and security issues in sub-Saharan Africa. In 1997 he served on the presidential Daily Briefing staff, briefing top U.S. government officials each day. From mid-1999 until Summer 2001, Mr. Gistaro served as Chief of West African analysis.
Mr. Gistaro attended The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service.
Dr. Ahmed Hashim, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, is an Associate Professor of Strategic Studies at the U.S. Naval War College. His areas of interest include Middle East security, security affairs of Western Europe, South Asia and Asia Pacific. He has published widely in the areas of strategic cultures of the Middle East and South Asia, asymmetric warfare, the revolution in military affairs outside of the United States, terrorism, and counterterrorism. Previous positions include director of the Middle East Regional Security Program Search for Common Ground in Washington, DC, where he focused on Track II Diplomacy; defense analyst at the Center for Naval Analysis; fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and research analyst at the International Institute for Strategic and International Studies, London. He has taught at Holy Cross College, Salve Regina, and Roger Williams universities. Hashim holds a PhD in political science and defense studies from MIT. Hashim has served in the U.S. Army and returned from service in Iraq in 2005. He is currently finishing a book on the Iraqi insurgency.
Ambassador Takeo Iguchi is Professor Emeritus of Shobi University. He has also been a Visiting Professor at the University of Virginia and taught at the International Christian University in Japan.
Ambassador Iguchi entered the Diplomatic Service in the Foreign Ministry of Japan and served many posts in that capacity. His most notable post was that of being the first Consul-General from Japan to Boston from 1980-1983.
Ambassador Iguchi received a B.A. in Political Science from Tokyo University, Faculty of Law (1953) and an M.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University (1958). He gives presentations regularly on the topic of the Pearl Harbor Crisis.
The Honorable A. Elizabeth Jones, Executive Vice President, APCO Worldwide, has extensive international experience in Europe, Eurasia, South Asia and the Middle East. She spent 35 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, where she achieved the highest rank of Career Ambassador.
As Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasia for the U.S. Department of State, Ambassador Jones designed U.S. policies for NATO and European Union countries, Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia. She supervised 54 U. S. Ambassadors and their embassies.
She held numerous other high-ranking government positions including: U.S. Ambassador to Kazakhstan; Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Near East Bureau; Senior Advisor for Caspian Energy Diplomacy; Executive Assistant to Secretary of State Warren Christopher; Deputy Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassy, Bonn, Germany; and Deputy Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassy, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Ambassador Jones received her Master of Arts in International Relations, Strategic Studies from Boston University’s Berlin Campus and a Bachelor of Arts in History from Swarthmore College. She speaks Russian and German and has a basic knowledge of Arabic. She is married to Donald A. Ruschman and has two grown children.
Major General John W. Libby assumed his duties as the Adjutant General, Maine National Guard on January 15, 2004.
Major General Libby is employed by the Maine Department of Defense, Veterans and Emergency Management as Commissioner. The Department of Defense, Veterans and Emergency Management coordinates and administers the discharge of the Maine state government’s responsibility relating to military matters, veterans, and civil emergency preparedness. It is responsible for the federal recognition and continuation of the federal forces structure, manpower, maintenance, fiscal operation and overall readiness of the Maine National Guard which is composed of over 3400 troops.
General Libby began his military career upon commissioning from the ROTC program at the University of Maine in June 1966 and held a variety of active duty command and staff positions in both Vietnam and the Federal Republic of Germany before resigning in July 1975 to join the Maine Army National Guard. Prior to his current position, he has served as the Commander of the 240th Engineer Group and Task Force Commander, Fuertes Caminos 94-North (Guatemala).
Dr. James F. Miskel is a consultant in the areas of defense policy and homeland security. His two main clients are Alidade Inc., a defense consulting company in Newport, RI and the state of Rhode Island. For the state, he develops and conducts tabletop exercises on homeland security and disaster management for the cities and towns. He is also the editor of the Information Age Warfare Quarterly and teaches online courses in the Master’s Degree programs at Norwich University and the Naval War College. He is widely published in the field of national security and has an extensive background in security affairs. His book Disaster Relief and Homeland Security: What Works and What Doesn’t (Praeger) was published in September 2006. Another book that he co-wrote, A Fevered Crescent: Security and Insecurity in the Greater Near East (University Press of Florida), will be coming out in December 2006. Dr. Miskel is a former Professor of National Security Affairs and Associate Dean of Academics at the U.S. Naval War College. Prior to joining the Naval War College faculty in 1993 he had senior positions at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Security Council. He was a Director of Defense Policy and Arms Control at the NSC under two presidential administrations.
Her Excellency Eva Nowotny is the official representative of the Republic of Austria in the United States and is responsible for all aspects of the relationship between the two countries. On December 4, 2003, she presented her credentials to President George W. Bush at the White House. She is also permanent Representative of the ObserverMission of Austria to the Organization of American States (OAS) and Ambassador to the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.
Ambassador Nowotny received her degree in Primary and Secondary Education in Vienna and her PhD in History and German at the University of Vienna. She served as an Assistant Professor at the University of Vienna, followed by various positions in the Austrian Foreign Service. Ambassador Nowotny has served as Ambassador of Austria to the United States of America since September 2003.
Admiral William T. Pendley graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958. As a Naval pilot he commanded both an aviation squadron and wing. As Navy Planner and later as Director of Strategy, Plans and Policy (OP-60) on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Pendley helped develop the Maritime Strategy which was the foundation for the 600 ship navy and a key element in U.S. Cold War strategy. He also served as principal advisor to the CNO during the development of the Goldwater-Nichols Act. As Senior Member of the United Nations Military Armistice Commission at Panmunjom, Admiral Pendley conducted several negotiations with North Korea on sensitive security issues along the Korean DMZ. His efforts were recognized by a personal award presented by the President of the Republic of Korea. As Director, Strategy, Plans and Policy (J-5) on the staff of USCINCPAC, Admiral Pendley developed the first post-Cold War regional security strategy and established the Joint Task Force organization for the CINCPAC area of responsibility.
After retirement in 1991, he became the Director of Strategic Studies and Resource Allocation in the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. In that position, he directed the development of a major review of U.S. strategy and military requirements for the future, which he briefed to the Secretary of Defense and the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1992 he was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia and Pacific Affairs and from January-July 1993 he served as Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. From July 1993 until June 1998 he was Associate Professor of International Relations and Asian Studies at the Air War College. He is the author of numerous articles in professional journals and co-author of Nuclear Coexistence: Rethinking U.S. Policy to Promote Stability in an Era of Proliferation.
His Excellency András Simonyi is currently Ambassador of Hungary to the United States of America and represents the Hungarian Embassy Washington. In addition to his presentation on the “American Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution,” Ambassador Simonyi can also report on his political-diplomatic role taking Hungary into the NATO Alliance and its importance to Hungary which is now facing political-economic issues shared with its Central European neighbors, all now EU members since 2004.
Ambassador Simonyi graduated from the Karl Marx University of Economics (now Budapest Corvinus University) and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science. In addition to his many official government positions, he also ran his own consulting company (Danison Ltd.). On a lighter note, Ambassador Simony is a long-time supporter of rock and roll music. He played lead guitar in his band in his youth. On arrival in Washington, he formed a band called the “Coalition of the Willing.” They have performed on various occasions and recently at the House of Blues in Cleveland, Ohio, raising $150,000 for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Ambassador Simonyi has lectured on security issues and has also published numerous articles on the accession process to NATO, trans-Atlantic relations, European security and the war on Terror. He is married and has two children.
Admiral James Stavridis assumed command of the United States Southern Command on October 19, 2006. Admiral Stavridis is a 1976 distinguished graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a native of South Florida.
A Surface Warfare Officer, Admiral Stavridis commanded Destroyer USS Barry (DDG-52) from 1993-1995, completing deployments to Haiti, Bosnia, and the Arabian Gulf. Barry won the Battenberg Cup as the top ship in the Atlantic Fleet under his command.
In 1998, he commanded Destroyer Squadron 21 and deployed to the Arabian Gulf in 1998, winning the Navy League´s John Paul Jones Award for Inspirational Leadership.
From 2002-2004, Admiral Stavridis commanded Enterprise Carrier Strike Group, conducting combat operations in the Arabian Gulf in support of both Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.
Ashore, the Admiral has served as a strategic and long range planner on the staffs of the Chief of Naval Operations and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At the start of the Global War on Terror, he was selected as the Director of the Navy Operations Group, DEEP BLUE. He has also served as the Executive Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy and the Senior Military Assistant to the Secretary of Defense.
Admiral Stavridis earned a PhD and MALD from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in International Relations in 1984, where he won the Gullion Prize as outstanding student. He is also a 1992 distinguished graduate of the National War College.
He holds various decorations and awards, including the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Defense Superior Service Medal and five awards of the Legion of Merit. He is author or co-author of several books on naval shiphandling and leadership, including Command at Sea.
Dr. Andreas Vogt is Programme Director for the Training for Peace (TfP) in Africa Programme at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) in Oslo, Norway. Fully funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), and in cooperation with numerous African institutions, the main aim of TfP is to contribute to the establishment of a self-sustaining, multi-functional peace operation capacity in Africa through research, policy development and training activities. Prior to joining NUPI, Dr. Vogt was Programme and Research Coordinator of the Fletcher School’s International Security Studies Program (ISSP).
Before receiving his BA, Summa Cum Laude, at Arizona State University (1995), Vogt served one year in the Royal Norwegian Army (1987-88), and one year as a military peacekeeper with the Norwegian UNIFIL contingent in Lebanon (1988-89). In 1995-96 he was part of the first ground troop NATO (IFOR) intervention effort in Bosnia-Herzegovina. After serving in IFOR, Vogt obtained a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy (MALD) (1998) and a PhD in International relations from the Fletcher School (2003). While writing his PhD on UN and NATO’s experiences from peace-enforcement operations in the Balkans, Vogt served as a forward air controller with NATO (KFOR) in Kosovo (1999-2000).
Vogt frequently holds presentations world wide, and writes articles and policies on peace operation experiences and other security-related issues. He also serves as a consultant to the Norwegian MFA and other governmental bodies on issues related to peace operations, African peace and security, and other defence- and security-related issues. Currently, the main focus of Vogt’s work is to support the African Union’s ongoing efforts to establish a multidimensional continent-wide PSO African Stand-by Force (ASF).
Robert D. Walpole was appointed Principal Deputy Director of the Center in December 2006, having served since February of that year as one of the Center’s four deputies. Prior to that, he served as a National Intelligence Officer (NIO), for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Proliferation (2004 to 2006), and for Strategic and Nuclear Programs since (1998 to 2004). Before joining the National Intelligence Council, Mr. Walpole served as the Special Assistant to the DCI for Persian Gulf War Illnesses Issues, where he earned the Distinguished Intelligence Medal. Mr. Walpole served from 1992 to 1997 as a Deputy Director of the DCI Nonproliferation Center. Four of those years were on a rotational assignment from the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs at the Department of State. At State, Mr. Walpole served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Defense and Arms Control from 1989 to 1992. He was Acting Office Director in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) from 1988 to 1989; Chief of INR’s Strategic Forces Division from 1985 to 1988; and a senior analyst in INR from 1984 to 1985. Mr. Walpole served at CIA as both an intelligence analyst and an imagery analyst from 1978 to 1984.