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PUBLICATION After the cancellation of AUP’s annual Ecole de Guerre practicum with the French war college, Professor Susan Perry instead developed a collaborative academic student publication exploring humanitarian responses to the global pandemic.
The Covid-19 pandemic upended classes and curricula all across The American University of Paris, leading to the unavoidable cancellation or modification of events, projects and assessments. Faculty members had to think quickly to come up with new, exciting collaborations – in many cases encouraging students to engage directly with the global health crisis unfolding around them. When Professor Susan Perry’s annual Ecole de Guerre practicum was called off on short notice, she put together a proposal for a collaborative publication that would bring students together to consider how humanitarian organizations were responding to the evolving pandemic. 20
AU P M AGAZ I N E
The Ecole de Guerre practicum is a multiday simulation of a pan-European military crisis, in which students take on the roles of international humanitarian organizations responding to events as they unfold. The practicum is immensely popular with students, and former participants often return to assist with subsequent sessions. Perry notes that managing student disappointment after the cancellation was a challenging task. “The question was: how can we replace a very meaningful experience that also had career implications?” The publication emerged as a way to allow students to continue the role-play aspects of the original course. Participants had the option of either writing an academic
The Ecole Militaire war college in Paris’s 7th arrondissement