SFS Magazine 2018 by Washingtonian Custom Media

Walsh School of Foreign Service

ALUMNI on the frontlines of journalism and diplomacy

FACULTY teaching in a changing world

STUDENTS in a new era of activism

WORLD ORDER

02 Dean Hellman Reflects

04 Fast Facts

Walsh School of Foreign Service

GEORGETOW N UNIVERSITY • 2018-2019

SFS is published regularly by Georgetown University's WALSH SCHOOL OF FOREIGN SERVICE , in conjunction with Washingtonian Custom Media, a division of Washingtonian Media (washingtoniancustommedia.com).

We welcome feedback and suggestions for future issues. Please contact Jen Lennon, Director of Communications, Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Intercultural Center, 37th and O Streets, NW, Washington, DC 20057; by phone at 202-687-5736; or by email at jll87@georgetown.edu. Website: sfs.georgetown.edu

06 Reporting the Change Alumni journalists talk about a profession under attack.

11 The Candidates SFS alumni stepped up in the 2018 midterms.

24 Tomorrow’s Diplomats Meet the Pickering and Rangel fellows.

26 In the Archives of Strife Alumni remember the 60s and 70s.

36 Faculty Updates

38 Events Political and thought leaders at SFS in 2018.

40 A Century of Service to the World Celebrating 2019 when SFS turns 100.

—JOEL HELLMAN, Dean, School of Foreign Service

12 This Global Moment

SFS faculty discuss shifting global politics—and how they are preparing students for a radically changing world.

18 Diplomacy at a Crossroads

As decades of precedent are upended, the SFS diplomatic community shares thoughts, worries and hopes for the future.

30 SFS Students Engage

During a turbulent political era, SFS students are seeking ways they can respond, be heard and take action.

 facebook.com/georgetownsfs

 twitter.com/georgetownsfs

 instagram.com/georgetown_sfs

 linkedin.com/georgetownuniversity-walsh-school-offoreign-service

COVER Photograph by Jeff Elkins. HERE Michele Oenbrink/Alamy

A CHANGING GLOBAL ORDER

In this issue we look at how SFS faculty, alumni and students are responding to a rapidly shifting world.

When I started as dean in 2015, few were predicting that the values of this institution—the first and finest school of international affairs in the United States—would soon face serious challenges, worldwide. Less than four years later, the situation is clear and urgent: the SFS commitment to building peace and prosperity through global understanding, diplomacy and service, with a focus on the global order forged after World War II, is under attack.

of course, online through social media. Students are engaged in debate and action across a range of issues, with a particular focus on dialogue on the meaning of free speech, especially on a university campus.

During this semester, free speech, academic freedom, activism and campus security have been a focus of particular concern, as an SFS professor’s private political expression became the focus of national media attention and concern well beyond the Hilltop. President DeGioia and I have both addressed the situation in letters to the community. My view is clear: “Incivility begets incivility and often degenerates into threats and even violence.” In defending the rights of our community members to free expression, we also have a duty to condemn hateful and offensive speech and model constructive discourse. This is not an easy balancing act, and our choices will undoubtedly provoke debate. But we must recognize the unique role of the university campus in balancing the freedom to inspire new ideas with the responsibility to model civil debate.

“I can assure you that SFS remains committed to educating students for service to the world."

This issue of SFS Magazine looks squarely at the reaction of our faculty, students and alumni in the face of this remarkable shift. What emerges is a complex portrait of a community that is diverse but also generally united in a mission that was made clear when the school began almost a century ago. In announcing the founding of SFS in 1919, Father Walsh called the people of the world “one huge family, whose interests are common and whose members are interdependent.” Today, we remain devoted to a truly global perspective and believe that such an approach to commerce, security, human development and understanding is essential. Inside these pages, you will learn how SFS faculty, students and alumni are reacting to the questions being raised about such a global shift. Our faculty are finding that the challenges to the post-war order require changes in their classroom teaching and their research. As debates about the very value of globalism are part of the news and domestic political rhetoric, faculty have found the need to shift what they talk about in the classroom to address the changing world and to facilitate conversations with students over difficult topics. They’re also discovering that new research avenues are opening up, and that there is increased interest from outside media for them to weigh in on the top issues of the day.

The SFS student body is also different today outside the classroom. We have seen a distinct rise in student activism on campus, in the community and,

SFS alumni, of course, work in every field, domestically and around the globe, and are encountering a world that is questioning SFS values. We highlight two communities in particular, journalism and diplomacy. One feature includes thoughts from current and former officials in the Department of State about the role of diplomacy in international affairs, including an interview with Ambassador David Hale (SFS ’83), the under secretary of state for political affairs. In another article, we feature SFS Rangel and Pickering fellows who are just about to begin their careers in diplomacy.

We also check in with SFS alumni who work in the media and do the job of reporting on our changing world. How has the shifting global debate impacted their jobs, and what is it like to strive for accuracy and objectiveness in an environment where “fake news” has become an accusation used by both sides?

Looking to history, SFS alumni from the 1960s to the 1970s recall another time when the nation was divided and debating the future. What was it like to be in D.C. during the 1968 riots? How does the current debate compare to that of an earlier generation?

This issue also previews our Centennial Celebration in the coming year—please see the details on our exciting activities ahead! Join us November 15–17, 2019 for our Centennial Gala weekend, which will culminate with a dinner at the National Building Museum.

I can assure you that SFS remains committed to educating students for service to the world. For nearly a century, that impulse has never wavered. As the values of SFS are debated, we will remain a voice for understanding across nations and borders, parties and people.

Thank you for your support of the education that remains our daily purpose at SFS.

Joel S. Hellman Dean, Walsh School of Foreign Service

Current Members of Congress

FEEDER SCHOOL to the U.S. FOREIGN SERVICE

Current U.S. Ambassadors

U.S. Ambassadors Since SFS Founding

More than Alumni

30,000

2 Secretaries of State FACULTY HAVE INCLUDED

2 Presidents Kings ALUMNI HAVE INCLUDED

SUPPORT SFS

Here are a few ideas on how to make an impact and support SFS:

Update Contact Information for yourself and your classmates by emailing current biographical and contact information to alumnirecords@georgetown.edu.

S uggest additions t o the “Prominent A lumn i List” at sfs.georgetown.edu/ p rominent-alumni/. E ma il Eleano r.Jones@ georgetown.edu with suggestions.

I ntroduce SFS to Your Network such a s f o undations, corporations, o r organizations that might be match ed to SFS priorities through Be c k y P fordresher (beck y.pfordresher@georg e town.edu) in the Office of C o rporate & Foundation Relations.

S ponsor an SFS Commu ni ty Event such as a dinne r, recepti on , or lecture in y o ur area. Email: Eleano r.Jones@georgetown.edu.

J oin Hoya Gateway , connecting stude nt s a nd alumni fo r individual conversations ex p l oring students’ prof essional aspi rati ons: hoyagatewa y georgetown.edu.

J oin Hoya Gateway , connecting stude nt s a nd alumni fo r individual conversations ex p l oring students’ prof essional aspi rati ons: hoyagatewa y. georgetown.edu.

J oin the SFS Friends Program , a netw ork of BSFS alum ni based in the D.C. a r ea who volunteer as mentors and career strategists f or undergraduates, b y e mailing M.D. Murphy (Murphymi@Georgetow n.edu).

Provide Career Help to Students by posting a student internship or job opening—or offering to serve as a career resource through resume reviews, mock interviews, site visits, or career panels. Email: Anne Steen at sfsgcc@georgetown.edu.

V olunteer for the Alum ni Admissions Program , which cond ucts the i nterview process for applicants to Georgetown: uadmi ssions.georgetown. e du/alumni.

J oin a GUAA Career Services webinar on p rofessional development trends i ncluding timely industry topics. Lear n about the scores o ffered every year at alumni.georgetown.edu/careers.

Apply t o joi n the B o a r d of G overnor s of the Geo rgetown University Alumni A s s o c i ation. E m a i l : g u aa@georgetown.edu or g o to b og.georgetown.edu to l e a r n m o re.

Work with the Advancement Office to develop a giving opportunity through SFS Director of Development Waffiyah Mian. Email: wmm5@georgetown.edu

Work with the Advancement Office to develop a giving opportunity through SFS Director of Development Waffiyah Mian Email: wmm5@georgetown.edu

Work with the Advancement Office to develop a giving opportunity through SFS Director of Development Waffiyah Mian. Email: wmm5@georgetown.edu

Alumni journalists speak out about threats to a free press, “fake news” and their belief that an SFS education will help journalists ride out the current storm, and even flourish in the future.

by M c CAFFREY BLAUNER

REPORTING THE CHANGE

NPR Weekend Edition Sunday producer Monika Evstatieva records host Lulu Garcia-Navarro (SFS’94) as she conducts a phone interview at the Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, on September 19, 2018.

CNBC ANCHOR TANIA BRYER (SFS’84) REMEMBERS HER arrival at Georgetown. A sweltering day in August, the temperature must have been 102 degrees. “My parents said goodbye, good luck, left me a fan and left me to it!” She laughs. But her tone turns serious when she discusses the values imparted to her from her time at the School of Foreign Service. Diplomacy, intercultural understanding, the importance of working together in a global world. These, she says, are the foundational qualities that led her to a career that has spanned the globe, hosting numerous network TV shows and interviewing famous leaders like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Kofi Annan.

“Georgetown prepared me beautifully,” she says, adding that an SFS education can be an excellent launch pad for future grads considering careers in journalism.

At a time when the profession is frequently under attack, SFS graduates looking to enter the world of journalism have an intim-

idating task before them. The business model that had long supported the industry faltered and is now evolving. The craft is being transformed, and some might suggest weakened, by technology and social media. Journalists must work in an increasingly polarized world, and many countries are cracking down on the free press. According to the human rights watchdog organization Freedom House, only 13 percent of the world’s population lives in countries that have a free press. As the landscape of the industry changes, both in the U.S. and abroad, many journalists are asking hard questions and coming up with new ways to do their jobs in a highly dynamic field.

James Politi (SFS’99), who recently took over as world trade editor for the Financial Times after 18 years spent working for the paper (most recently as head of the Rome bureau), says the growing public distrust towards the legitimacy of the traditional media is worrying. “It’s becoming much more difficult to re-

CONTINUED

port,” he says. “There is much more skepticism about things we report, and in a sense that can be healthy at times.” But he adds, “The persistent questioning of basic facts has big consequences for public policy, which can be very troubling.”

This rising antagonism towards journalists, he says, is present on both sides of the Atlantic. He describes the leaders in Italy’s new populist government as “pulling from the Trump playbook” and warns that there is considerable threat to freedom of the press in Italy. “It’s part of a whole rising threat to democracy across the Western world,” Politi says.

Lulu Garcia-Navarro (SFS’94), host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday and former head of NPR’s Baghdad bureau, reflects on coming back to the United States after 11 years spent as a foreign correspondent. “I have worked and lived in places all over the world, many of them conflict zones, and I feel that many of the things that I witnessed in other countries are now present [in the U.S.]: incredible polarization, the demonization of the other side… I think this is a very perilous time for America and American democracy.”

CNN Senior National Correspondent Alexander Marquardt (SFS’04) tells a similar story, having returned to the U.S. last year after spending eight years as a foreign correspondent for ABC in Moscow, Beirut, Jerusalem and London. “I loved being a foreign correspondent,” he says, “and getting to see some of the most interesting places, and meeting some of the most interesting people in the world.” He didn’t think he’d ever come back, but then “Trump got elected, and suddenly he—and America—became the biggest story in the world.”

“What we are doing now is trying to be a lot more transparent about how we get the news we get, [and] what are the ways we fact-check that news...”

Marquardt also notes a parallel between the places he covered—including Cairo during the revolution, Syria, Gaza and Ukraine during the Russian annexation—and the current climate in the U.S., pointing to a growing sense of tribalism, distrust and authoritarian tendencies.

“I’ve been at Trump rallies where I’ve seen signs and t-shirts that talk about hanging journalists,” he says. “I’ve seen the anger that the President unleashes towards the press and it is downright scary.”

Growing skepticism among the American public has also become a significant challenge to the work many of these SFS alumni do. “The Trump Administration has done a very effective job at convincing millions of people not to believe what they hear and see in the press, to the profound detriment of American society,” says Marquardt.

Garcia-Navarro echoes this worry about the erosion of trust. “When I travel around the country I see the anger and the fear

and mistrust in every single institution—not just the media. What makes me really concerned is not just the rhetoric coming out of the White House or Congress or both parties, but really how that rhetoric has been internalized in regular citizens.”

So how are these SFS alumni coping with this challenging new world they have found themselves in? “What we are doing now is trying to be a lot more transparent about how we get the news we get, what are the ways in which we fact-check that news, and what are the consequences if we get that news wrong,” Garcia-Navarro says. “We are having a much more open and honest conversation with our listeners and readers and viewers about that. I think that is only to the good. I think possibly we should have done that a long time ago.”

Sheherazade Semsar (SFS’89, MSFS‘90), CEO of Politico

PHOTO: NICKY DE BLOIS

Top: Alexander Marquadt (SFS’04), senior correspondent for CNN, reports on the 2014 Israeli-Gaza conflict.

Below: Tania Bryer (SFS’84), executive producer and host for CNBC, interviews Melinda Gates. James Politi (SFS’99), world trade editor of the Financial Times.

Europe, sees SFS as having anticipated many of the transitions journalism is undergoing now. She recalls taking a class about the “information society” and discussing how technology was going to impact culture. The class made an outsized impression on her. Semsar says this and other courses at Georgetown predicted the radical technology transition of the past few decades. That trend, she says, has presented unforeseen challenges to journalists, who now have to deal with a greatly accelerated 24-hour news cycle in order to remain competitive.

As an example of the problems modern journalists confront, Semsar refers to the dilemma of separating real documents from inauthentic ones, noting that it has become easier than ever to produce fakes. She points to the recent example of fake documents seeded in with real ones and then leaked from French President Emmanuel Macron’s campaign. “My thirteenyear-old son can fabricate a document that looks like it came from the White House. It can spread on social media before a media outlet has a chance to confirm it, and by the time they have rebutted it, people have already moved on.”

There is a greater pressure than ever in newsrooms, she says, to be the first one to get “the scoop” on a new story, which is exacerbated by an atmosphere of competition between traditional journalism outlets and independent individuals posting on social media platforms. These posters, lacking the same fact-checking protocols that exist within journalism, can often get a story out much more quickly than traditional media outlets that use rigorous fact-checking. The key for journalists moving forward, says Semsar, is going to be adaptation. The journalism outlets of the future must develop systems for fact-checking stories, while still keeping up with the breakneck pace of modern information distribution.

Asked about how the training for future journalists should change, Semsar suggests that young journalists should become more tech savvy, and in particular become comfortable using data to tell stories. The tension between data collection, innovation and even civil liberties will be a big story in the future, she suggests. “Can we really continue to teach about trade without talking about data as a commodity?” she asks. Data, she points out, will allow China to become more advanced in artificial intelligence, due to the unregulated ease with which they can access people’s data. “I think there are a lot of questions surrounding what data is allowing governments and corporations to do, which is impacting citizens’ lives,” she says. “How do we integrate that into understanding international affairs?”

In terms of format, she speculates that journalists should consider creating pieces meant to be heard rather than read, rather than long-form written pieces, as readers seem to trail off around 300 words. The oral storyteller, or the town crier, she muses, may be poised for a comeback.

However, according to some SFS alumni, the most important

CONTINUED

skill set going into a new era of journalism is already the linchpin of the SFS education: critical thinking. Semsar describes the development of critical thinking skills and “proper discernment” as the central pillar of the curriculum she experienced at SFS. Garcia-Navarro agrees, saying that one of the most important aspects of her education at SFS was gaining a comprehensive critical framework, within which to contextualize her subsequent international work.

“I think there are a lot of questions surrounding what data is allowing corporations and governments to do, which is impacting citizens’ lives.”

Historical context, Semsar says, may be key to understanding the current era. “We must not let go of the humanities,” she says, speaking on how to best prepare future journalists. Studying history in particular is essential to understanding that “the changes we are experiencing are not that extraordinary; they are just going on at a faster pace.”

Semsar is not particularly taken with the concept of fake news. “There have always been different sides of who writes history.” She refers to the famously inaccurate but widely influential Greek clas-

Sheherazade

Semsar (SFS’89,

MSFS’90), CEO of Politico Europe.

sical historian Herodotus, or the initial public mistrust of the printing press as early examples of “fake news.” This is not a new threat, she insists, and an education in history is critical in having the perspective to recognize that.

Politico reporter Lili Bayer (SFS’12) worked as a correspondent in Budapest, garnering accolades for her groundbreaking reporting in the face of open hostility from the Hungarian government, led by authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. “We do see a bit of that [anti-journalist] rhetoric in the U.S., but in Hungary it is not only anti-journalistic rhetoric, but actual concrete steps, to the point where there are very few critical outlets left in the country.”

Bayer describes how many Hungarian news outlets have come under pressure from the Hungarian government, with some forced to close down. She says she attended town hall meetings with Hungarian citizens from the country’s more rural areas, where townspeople were largely oblivious to the crackdown on independent institutions, because their own local news sources had been taken over by the country’s pro-government oligarchs.

CNBC anchor Tania Bryer has a more optimistic take than many. The CNBC host suggests that heightened rhetoric has obfuscated the most significant difference between this era of journalism and the ones that preceded it. The change, she suggests, is technological, not political.

Perhaps, she muses, these divides that seem so new and so threatening now were, in fact, always there. The rapid spread of technology and social media, she suggests, has not worsened the dissonance and or added to the distance between people’s beliefs, but rather revealed what has been there all along.

“Because of the transparency of technology ... everyone’s opinions are seen,” she says. This, in her view, presents new opportunities for the next generation of leaders, and a new generation of journalists, to communicate more effectively with and be more responsive to the people they serve. Those who have attended SFS, she says, will be well equipped for this new era. “I think SFS trained us to be global citizens. The mutual respect, the intercultural understanding, diplomacy, peace … We need to keep to those core values.”

The Candidates: SFS Alumni Run in the 2018 Midterms

Twelve SFS alumni ran for state and national office in the 2018 Midterms. The candidates were a diverse group who graduated from Georgetown across five decades. The electoral hopefuls competed in 10 different states and the U.S. Virgin Islands, representing both major parties. SFS congratulates the candidates for contributing their ideas to important public debates and striving to make a difference in the world.

01 Henry Cuellar (SFS’78) won re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives representing the 28th District in Texas. He began serving in Congress in 2005. Before that he was a Texas State Representative for 14 years.

02 Debbie Dingell (SFS’75, S’98) won re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives representing the 12th District in Michigan. Congresswoman Dingell worked for General Motors Company for more than 30 years, where she was president of the GM Foundation and a senior executive responsible for public affairs.

03 Dan Feehan (SFS’05) ran for the U.S. House of Representatives open seat in the 1st District in Minnesota. Feehan served on active duty in the Army and National Guard as an engineer officer, including two combat tours in Operation Iraqi Freedom, having been inspired to military service in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks in 200. He is a former official of the Department of Defense.

04 Mike Gallagher (SSP’12) won re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives representing the 8th District in Wisconsin.

Congressman Gallagher, who was first elected in 2016, joined the United States Marine Corps the day he graduated from college and served for seven years on active duty as an intelligence officer and regional affairs officer for the Middle East and North Africa. Previously, he served as the lead Republican staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

05 Stephanie Murphy (MSFS’04) won re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives representing the 7th District in Florida. Congresswoman Murphy was a businesswoman and college instructor after serving as a national security specialist in the office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense where she received numerous awards for her distinguished service, including the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Civilian Service.

06 Stacey Plaskett (SFS’88) won re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives representing the U.S. Virgin Islands. Congresswoman Plaskett was first elected to Congress in 2014. She previously worked as an assistant district attorney in the Bronx, New York before returning to Washington, D.C., where she served as counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Ethics Committee, the Department of Justice, the Terrorism Litigation Task Force, and the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. She also was one of the lead attorneys on U.S. v. Phillip Morris.

07 Bill Schuette (SFS’76) ran for the governorship of Michigan. He is currently the attorney general of Michigan, and previously served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1985-1991), as Michigan state senator (1994-2003), and as judge on the Michigan Fourth District Court of Appeals (2003-2009).

08 George Scott (SFS’84) ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 10th District of Pennsylvania. Scott served 20 years in the U.S. Army, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. His tours included operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm and Enduring Freedom. He is a Lutheran minister.

09 Xochitl Torres Small (SFS’07) was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for the 2nd District of New Mexico. She is an attorney with Kemp Smith Limited Liability Partnership and previously worked as a law clerk for the federal district court in New Mexico, and as field representative for Senator Tom Udall from New Mexico.

10 Nancy Soderberg (MSFS’84) ran for the open U.S. House seat in Florida’s 6th District. She is an American foreign policy strategist who served as the third-ranking official on the Clinton Administra-

tion’s National Security Council from 1993 to 1997 and as an alternate representative to the United Nations from 1997 to 2001.

11 Corey Stewart (SFS’91) ran for the Virginia seat in the U.S. Senate held by Senator Tim Kaine. Stewart is currently the at-large chairman of the board of county supervisors in Prince William County and is an international trade attorney with his own practice. Stewart previously served as the Virginia state chair of the Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign.

12 Lori Trahan (SFS’95) was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives representing the 3rd District in Massachusetts. Trahan is currently the CEO of Concire Leadership Institute. Previously, she has held senior executive roles in a digital advertising firm and served as chief of staff to Congressman Marty Meehan for ten years.

THIS GLOBAL MOMENT

Professor Daniel Byman hosts a “coffee chat” with special guest Sarah Margon (MSFS’05), the Washington director at Human Rights Watch, giving SFS students a chance to connect with professionals in a casual environment.

FUELED BY AN EXPLOSION OF HEADLINE-GRABBING developments—from rising nationalism and the migrant crisis to presidential Twitter rants, new security concerns (and more)—the dynamics of global politics are shifting in unprecedented and fast-moving ways. At the School of Foreign Service, faculty are responding with new courses, new class content, new research, new interactions with students and, often, a new media presence.

“In many respects, if the School of Foreign Service didn’t already exist we’d have to invent it for this moment,” says Jeffrey Anderson, professor and former director of the BMW Center for German and European Studies. “As we approach the school’s 100th birthday, this is the perfect time to be looking out from the Hilltop and trying to project the school’s values and influence. There’s a new urgency in international relations—you can’t take the stability of our partnerships in Europe and around the world for granted now.”

Despite 24/7 news cycles and nonstop social media updates, faculty experts across a wide range of specialties say their work in the classroom and beyond remains grounded in SFS’s mission. “The school has a strong voice that’s especially important now, at a time of short-termism, self-interest and isolation,” says Abraham Newman, professor and director of the Mortara Center for International Studies. “We need to think about and understand the world. In the midst of radical subjectivity, we say there are truths. There are ways people should behave, values such as the global perspective, understanding and respect that matter more than ever. That’s a guiding light as SFS promotes the next generation of global leaders.”

Responding in the Classroom

As current events claim attention, they aren’t taking over. “One of the great things about a degree from SFS is that it’s not a current events degree,” says Matthew Kroenig, associate professor. “The name Trump actually doesn’t come up that often in my classes. What my colleagues and I try to do is to give students the fundamentals to understand international politics for the rest of their lives. Some of the theoretical approaches we teach go back 2,000 years. We’re trying to look more deeply.”

SFS faculty prepare students for a radically changing world.

by SARI HARRAR

MOMENT

At the same time, SFS has always evolved its curriculum to give students opportunities to learn and think critically about shifting events. In this spirit, Daniel Byman, professor and vice dean for undergraduate affairs, offered a new one-credit course during the spring of 2017 called Trump’s Foreign Policy. In five sessions, the course covered domestic politics, counterterrorism, Asia and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, migration and Russia. One of five interdisciplinary professors taught each session, bringing his or her unique expertise and scholarship to the issues. The course format featured a subject overview followed by small discussion groups giving students opportunities to analyze the issues. The course was so popular that SFS offered it again in spring 2018.

“A big debate right now is, can and will Trump change everything?” Byman says. “I’m asking everyone to address three overlapping questions: 1) What are the world problems any president would have to address right now? 2) How did Obama and Bush deal with these issues? and 3) What have Trump and his senior advisors done so far? I want the class to figure out the scope of what’s really possible—what can any president change.”

Others are encouraging their students to make a shift in perspective. Assistant Professor Shareen Joshi, who teaches international development, says, “One thing I’ve needed to think hard about and change over the last two years has been helping our students recognize that the issues they are facing here are not unique. Working class people across the world are facing similar challenges. Some parts of this country stagnated and others got wealthy. But that’s also true in Russia, China and Brazil. People are directing their anger toward country-specific grievances—but what they are not realizing is that they are much more similar than they are different.”

She adds, “I want students to realize that these are broader issues, not just as Americans, but citizens of a new world order. Globalization moved technology and capital around much quicker than it has moved people. We don’t talk to one another as much as the people who own the capital. Solutions to polarization of ideas in the current moment have to come not just from country-specific laws or leaders but a more educated and aware global citizen.”

Fraying Partnerships, Superpower Competition and the New Normal

in place after World War II—has been ruptured,” says Newman. “Over issues such as NATO and conflicts about the Iran nuclear deal, we are in new territory with Europe. For example, Germany has had to consider the very small but real probability they could find themselves in a direct conflict with the U.S. You can’t just put that back in the bag. This is the challenge of diplomacy for the next generation—what the international order will look like.”

According to Kroenig, international developments are bigger drivers of foreign policy shifts than erratic presidential tweets or the America First ethos. “One of the real reasons for changes in international politics is the return of major power competition. I see this as one of the biggest developments in my field,” he says. “We haven’t worried about great power competition since the end of the Cold War. But with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China taking territories in the South China Sea, things have changed.”

“...international developments are bigger drivers of foreign policy shifts than erratic presidential tweets or the America First ethos.”

Indeed, global developments are shifting the content and dialogue within courses across the SFS curriculum. For example, in 2017, record numbers of students signed up for a Russian foreign policy course taught by Angela Stent, professor and director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies (CERES). “I can only attribute it to all the news coverage of Trump and Russia,” she says. The course examines Russia’s relations around the world, including the war in the Ukraine. It also addresses puzzling, current questions about the U.S. “We’re in a very unusual situation,” says Stent. “We’re sending mixed signals. If Congress imposes more and more sanctions over election interference and the Russian use of banned nerve agents, Russia will continue to move closer to China. There are also questions about the Trump Organization’s financial relationships in Russia. And what’s fundamentally at stake for us is the security of our elections after Russia’s massive and unprecedented interference in 2016 elections through social media and less visibly through cyber interference.”

Newman, who teaches courses on European international affairs and global competitiveness, says U.S. allies are deeply pessimistic about the weakening of the transatlantic partnership with Europe. It’s the new normal—a challenge SFS students will confront in their future work in government, private industry or with NGOs.

“The 2016 election revealed fundamental truths about our society and the conflicts within it. And now, what people call the international architecture—the international liberal order put

These recent developments have led Kroenig to change his course content. In the past, he says, his international security class looked a lot at insurgency, counterinsurgency, ISIS and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Now I focus on great power competition. It’s our biggest military issue.” In contrast, he says Trump’s brusque style masks a U.S. foreign policy that’s “much more consistent with the

mainstream of U.S. foreign policy than many appreciate. For example, his policies around the Iran deal are something every Republican nominee promised to do.”

Military development of weaponized artificial intelligence and the rising threat of nuclear war are also getting new attention in Kroenig’s courses. “I’ve been teaching a class on nuclear weapons for 10 years at Georgetown,” he adds. “At the end, I always ask students how many think there will be a nuclear war in their lifetime. Ten years ago, it was almost no one. Last year, half the class raised their hands.”

Newman also notices that students are internalizing the turbulence going on around them. “Current events can usually be used to motivate discussions about critical thinking, analysis, theory and historical precedent in class. But events now can be so jarring, so counter to how humans should treat each other, that discussions can become very emotional.”

Africa, India and Latin America

Recent developments that impact nations and relationships in Africa, Latin America, India and elsewhere are also gaining new prominence in SFS classrooms.

India Initiative and the Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor of Indian Politics in the Asian Studies Program at SFS.

Nooruddin noted the complexity of Prime Minister Narendar Modi’s relationship with the U.S. He gained legitimacy in the U.S. only after rising to India’s top office in 2014; after that, Obama made a much-publicized visit to India and wrote about Modi for Time magazine. But now, Nooruddin says, there’s uncertainty. “Important diplomatic talks took place last summer, but America’s rhetoric about nationalism and economics and immigration have been matters of real concern in India—in part due to hate attacks against Indians here and changes in the availability of H-1B work visas.”

India’s strategic relationships with Russia, China and Pakistan are of great interest to the U.S., but Nooruddin is troubled by the weakening of the press, the courts and the election process in India. “That’s what we talk about the most in my class on domestic policy— challenges to democracy that go beyond elections. Threats to civil liberties and press freedom are not unique to India. These challenges are happening all over the world, from Myanmar to Central America to Western Europe and the U.S. We talk about what this tells us about settled norms and what’s accepted behavior in a democratic system.”

For Fr. Matthew Carnes, S.J., associate professor and director of the Center for Latin American Studies, conversations in his Comparative Political Systems class no longer assume that

“We are in a big moment for India and the United States, the first since 2007,” notes Irfan Nooruddin, director of the CONTINUED

•

Above: Professor Irfan Nooruddin in Mumbai, India with a group of SFS undergraduates from the India Innovation Studio. Left: Professors Lahra Smith and Matthew Kroenig.

A Conversation with Madeleine Albright

In her new book, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright traces the rise of fascism in the 20th century—and finds troubling signs of an authoritarian resurgence around the world today. Dr. Albright, the Mortara Distinguished Professor of Diplomacy at SFS, recently shared her views about international relations, current events and the enduring value of diplomacy.

Q: In your new book Facism: A Warning, you call yourself a “lucky and grateful refugee.” Your family fled Czechoslovakia twice—in the Nazi occupation of 1939 and in 1948 after a Soviet-backed coup, when your parents sought asylum in the U.S. How has that experience shaped your views on immigration?

A: It influences me in every single way. As I think about what the role of the U.S. can and should be in the world, it is always based on the fact that when the U.S. is not present, bad things happen, as they did for Czechoslovakia after the Munich

Agreement in 1938. My father, who was a Czech diplomat, always says that when we came to the U.S., people said, “What can we do to help and when will you become a citizen?” America has always welcomed refugees. I feel a special duty now to speak out against President Trump’s immoral, repugnant and un-American refugee policy.

Q: What led you to write Fascism: A Warning now?

A: I was going to write this book no matter what happened in the 2016 election. There’s a lot happening in the world that disturbs me,

and I believe that if you see something, you say something—even better, you do something. I had been studying as a political scientist what was going on in my own country and abroad, and I saw increasing divisions between people along economic, educational, political and other divides—and I saw leaders exacerbating those rifts instead of finding common ground. I am worried that there are conditions out there that provide the petri dish for something terrible to happen. Fascism in some form could take hold.

Q: What about President Trump? You call his politics “dark.” He recently told the United Nations that the U.S. rejects globalism and embraces patriotism. What did you think of that?

A: The president is not a fascist. But I consider him the most undemocratic president in modern American history. He has a lack of respect for the judiciary, for the press, for the rule of law. His U.N. speech was appalling, embarrassing and runs counter to everything the U.S. has stood for since WWII. It’s a given that every country represents its own interests. But we are a country that has always cared about what happened

to others. Our own security is based on understanding and reaching out to the rest of the world. Foreign policy is not a zero-sum game. You look for common purpose. When I teach diplomacy, it’s really based on putting yourself in the other guy’s shoes.

Q: What do you see happening in the world since your book came out?

A: In the book, I use Mussolini’s famous quote: “If you pluck a chicken one feather at a time people don’t notice it.” Since I finished the book more feathers have been plucked— with increasing control by Orban and his government in Hungary, Poland in terms of how they’re regulating their judiciary, more dictatorial actions in the Philippines, violence in Venezuela, the rise of extremist parties in Germany and Italy, Putin in Russia, constitutional changes in China so Xi Jinping can be the lifelong leader of the party and developments in Brazil. I also see new warning signs in this country.

Q: How did students from your SFS class America’s National Security Toolbox help shape this book?

A: I get a lot of inspiration and optimism from teaching. In the fall of 2017, I had my graduate students over because I was interested in their views on what fascism is and what America’s role in the world is now. They were very helpful in framing and answering questions. I learn a lot from them. As Robert Frost says, “Now when I am old my teachers are the young.” In recent years, students are asking if a career in foreign service still matters, whether they should still pursue it if they disagree with the current administration. I tell them it matters more than ever. — SH

PHOTOGRAPH OF CARNES: KULA MALIK HAMAD

nations support the concept of globalization. “We’re in a different space now as nations and regions compete with each other,” he says. This is one reason he developed a senior-level course Citizenship in a Global World. “We want seniors to think about how they’ll live in a complex world, dealing with questions of inclusion and exclusion, and facing conflicting trends, with growing income inequality on the one hand, and improved equality between nations on the other. How will they participate locally and globally? It’s an important question.”

“The 2016 election revealed fundamental truths about our society and the conflicts within it.”

And then there’s immigration, a major student concern. “We feel a strong desire here to stand on our values,” Carnes says. “Migrants have made our communities stronger, smarter and more innovative. We feel solidarity.”

In her classes on African politics, governments and migration, Lahra Smith—an associate professor in the African Studies Program at SFS—says there’s a growing need to make a point the news often misses in coverage of migrants and refugees: “The largest share of the world’s refugee burden arises from the displacement of Africans within and between African nations. Eighty-five percent of the world’s displaced people are hosted by developing nations and most are in Africa—for a large part in Ethiopia, Uganda and Sudan. Students come in, having heard about the refugee crisis affecting Europe but knowing little about Africa. They want to learn in response to this global crisis.”

Shareen Joshi emphasized the importance of getting students beyond the classroom. “At Georgetown we are really making an effort for students to do more experiential learning. We are defi-

L to R: Fr. Matthew Carnes; Professor Jeffrey Anderson (meeting with a student). Professors Shareen Joshi (in India), Abraham Newman and Angela Stent.

nitely ramping that up in this era. We think there is real value in going out of your comfort zone—whether it is a slum in Mumbai or elsewhere—and using the globe as where you draw your inspiration to address problems. This is exactly the core of the Jesuit pedagogical method. This is what Jesuits did. They left their comfort zones; they went to other places and tried to learn about themselves through others. You go learn somewhere else about who you really are.”

New Research Directions

For many faculty members, changes in the world have led to shifts in their own research. In her latest project, Smith is collaborating with a geologist to assess the environmental impact of a long-term Zambian refugee camp. She is also trying to trace the routes of women migrants moving through Djibouti to domestic work in the Gulf States. Nooruddin is building on his book Elections in Hard Times: Building Stronger Democracies in the 21st Century (2016, with T.E. Flores) by looking at how democracy is being weakened in the years between democratic elections. Anderson is tracing the roots of the European Union’s current crises back to the recession of 2008. Kroenig is tracking the rise of military artificial intelligence. In her new book, Putin’s World, due out in February, Stent addresses how Russians see their place in the world. Many SFS professors also find themselves being called on by the media, at home and abroad, to explain U.S. policies. “I think a lot of faculty feel a growing need to be public voices in debates where we have expertise,” Newman notes. “It’s more important than ever to be engaged in public commentary and civic education.”

DIPLOMACY AT THE CROSSROADS

At this unique moment in history, the Trump Administration’s America First approach has upended decades of precedent. The SFS diplomatic community—whether alumni or faculty—have been profoundly affected. In a series of interviews, they shared their thoughts, worries, and hopes for the future. And they sounded a call to arms for developing a new generation of diplomats. by JOSEPH GUINTO

Had things worked out differently, Jeffrey DeLaurentis (SFS‘76) might be the U.S. ambassador to Cuba right now—the first in nearly 60 years. DeLaurentis was appointed to that post by President Obama in 2016 after serving for two years as the chargé d’affaires to Havana. But the Republican-controlled Senate declined to hold confirmation hearings for DeLaurentis, and when President Trump won the 2016 election, he came to office with a promise to close the door Obama had opened with the island nation. “I took that as a good sign to move on,” DeLaurentis says.

In 2017, he resigned from his diplomatic role after serving in several key posts over a 27-year career. He was not alone in doing so. Some 60 percent of the nation’s highest-ranking diplomats have left their jobs since President Trump’s inauguration. That exodus of experience, along with the Trump Administration’s “America First” slant on international affairs, has many fretting that the U.S.’s ability to conduct diplomacy has been weakened and the country’s standing in the world has been compromised. But amid those worries, there is also hope. DeLaurentis and

many other former diplomats are now working to train a new generation of foreign service leaders. They believe this new generation can and will rebuild in the aftermath of the storm that has tossed the ship of State.

“I’ve been promoting a message of the importance and nobility of the foreign service,” says DeLaurentis, now a distinguished resident fellow in Latin American studies at the SFS Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD) and an SFS Centennial Fellow this year. “I think it is a very worthwhile profession, and I think those of us who are committed to the foreign service have an obligation to try and encourage others to take up the same profession.”

Departures

Dramatic change came to the State Department shortly after Rex Tillerson was confirmed as Secretary of State. The former CEO of ExxonMobil froze hiring, slashed jobs and proposed a 31 percent cut to the department’s budget. That, along with volun-

CONTINUED

tary departures, led to a major loss of experienced State employees.

In a press conference he gave in November 2017, Tillerson said, “There is no hollowing out” at State. He insisted his overall objective was simply “to bring the budget numbers back down” to historical norms. But some longtime diplomats saw something else at work—something inspired by a negative attitude toward many civil servants.

“You couldn’t help but have the impression that there was a total mistrust and lack of understanding about what diplomats do,” says Uzra Zeya (SFS’89), who joined the foreign service in 1990. She has worked in South Asia and Europe, including a 2014-2017 assignment as chargé d’affaires and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Paris.

Zeya resigned her diplomatic post in 2018. Like several SFS alums, her decision to resign stemmed from personal concerns both about the direction in which the State Department was headed and about the Trump White House’s overall approach to international relations—its plans for a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, its bans on travelers from several Muslim-majority countries, and what she describes as an “overall rejection of multilateralism.”

ton Post op-ed titled, “Why I could no longer serve this president.”

Taken together, Zeya, Feeley and DeLaurentis have more than 80 years of combined experience. That kind of loss is a major concern to many who have served in the foreign service. “A majority of the foreign service may have less than 10 years of experience by 2020,” says Feeley, who also works as a political consultant and Spanish-language commentator for Univision. “That’s a problem, because you don’t grow an ambassador overnight.”

“Our national security is directly dependent on effective diplomacy, and in today’s world of continuous disruptive change, diplomacy is even more vital.”

Other diplomats who left voluntarily did so partly over concerns about domestic issues. John Feeley (SFS’83), a 27-year veteran of the State Department, decided to leave his ambassadorship to Panama last year after President Trump was slow to condemn the neo-Nazis behind the deadly protests in Charlottesville. “The oath we swear is to be the faithful personal representative of the president,” says Feeley. “But after Charlottesville, I just felt like I could no longer be the president’s personal representative.” In March 2017, Feeley drove that point home by authoring a Washing-

Barbara Bodine, who spent much of her 30-plus year career in the Arabian Peninsula—she was deputy chief of mission in Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion in 1990 and ambassador to Yemen when the USS Cole was bombed in 2000—says it can take decades to train people for ambassadorships and other key posts. “We are very much of an oral tradition tribe,” says Bodine, now director of the SFS Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. “You start off by being the fly in the room on a wall, and you watch the big people. By getting rid of the people at the top, you’re destroying that generational flowthrough. That is almost impossible to rebuild.”

A Trusted Confidant Takes Over

Most of the former diplomats interviewed for this article said they’re cautiously optimistic about current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The former CIA director and former member of the U.S. House officially took over for Tillerson in April 2018. Feeley says, “It seems like he genuinely values the input of his career professionals.” Pompeo has abandoned the big budget cut proposals promoted by Tillerson and lifted the hiring freezes. He’s been a visible, public presence in major U.S. diplomatic initiatives, including several personal visits to

North Korea. And the Washington Post recently called him one of President Trump’s “most trusted confidants.”

If that’s true, it could signal a shift for a President who has not typically spoken positively about the influence diplomats can have.

“It’s clear the secretary himself believes in the mission of the State Department and I’d like to believe he believes in U.S. global leadership,” DeLaurentis says. “So perhaps things have turned a corner. But I’d say the jury is still out. There are still a lot of key vacancies in the department.”

As of the fall of 2018, 46 ambassadorial nominees were still awaiting Senate confirmation while 22 countries had no U.S. ambassador or ambassadorial nominee. Those countries included Australia, Mexico, Pakistan and Egypt. When serious problems erupt in the world, those vacancies can be problematic. For instance, when an international incident exploded over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, the U.S. had no ambassador in place in either Saudi Arabia or Turkey. That left Pompeo having to travel to Saudi Arabia himself, all while President Trump alternated between threatening Saudi Arabia with reprisals and accepting the kingdom’s denials of involvement.

“Less diplomacy and fewer diplomats in the field dramatically drives up the risk of crisis and conflict,” says Nancy McEldowney, Director of Georgetown’s Master of Science in Foreign Service. “Our national security is directly depen-

dent on effective diplomacy, and in today’s world of continuous disruptive change, diplomacy is even more vital.” McEldowney resigned her post as director of the U.S. Foreign Service Institute in protest over Trump administration polices, ending a 30-year career that included postings in Turkey and Azerbaijan as well as an ambassadorship to Bulgaria. Bodine and Feeley say that, even as Pompeo looks to rebuild, diplomats today are still struggling to get clear directions from their higher-ups, sometimes because those higher-ups had resigned or been removed under Tillerson.

Add to that President Trump’s sometimes contradictory tweets on foreign policy, and diplomats have sometimes found themselves uncertain about how to proceed on any number of issues. “A year ago, we were going to incinerate the entire country of North Korea,” Bodine says. “Now we’re praising North Korea’s president. These tweets are not the normal evolution and change of policy. They are a sign that there is a lack of coherence. So, as a diplomat you don’t know what you’re supposed to say, you don’t know what you’re supposed to do, and you don’t have people in place in the State Department who can give you that kind of guidance.”

Re-emphasizing Diversity

Beyond filling vacancies and stabilizing policy direction, some former diplomats would like to see Pompeo’s State Department focus more on immigration and diversity.

The diplomatic corps has been uncharacteristically outspoken since Trump’s inauguration—especially on the adminis -

Left: Ambassadors Jeffrey DeLaurentis (SFS’76) and Nancy McEldowney. Above: Assistant Secretary Anne Richard (SFS’82) and U.N. Secretary General António Gutteres visit refugees from Mali, in Burkina Faso, 2012.

tration’s policies that relate to race or religion. For instance, in January 2017 when the White House drafted an executive order titled Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States—often referred to as the Muslim ban—more than 1,000 working diplomats wrote a letter criticizing it.

Anne Richard (SFS’82), who served a cumulative 21 years in various U.S. government roles before leaving last year, had been recruited by Hilary Clinton to serve as an assistant secretary in the State Department. She knew she would lose her position overseeing refugee programs under Trump. After she left, the administration nominated an immigration critic to lead refugee programs that Richard once oversaw. In a New York Times essay this past May titled “Is the United States Losing its Humanity?” Richard declared the nominee to be “virulently anti-immigrant.”

In addition, the Trump Administration recently slashed the number of refugees it will allow into the country, setting a maximum of 30,000 in the current fiscal year. This is the lowest number in 40 years, with the actual amount likely to be even lower. For comparison, over the last 20 years, the annual ceiling ranged between 70,000 and 85,000, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

“We have had decades of bipartisan support for refugee assistance, and that all has been thrown out the window now,” Richard says.

For Uzra Zeya, the concern is not just what’s been thrown out the window, but what’s been brought back into the State Department. Zeya says there has been a significant decline in representation of persons of color at top levels of the State Department, marking a return to a past era when the diplomatic field was dominated by white men.

In September, after she left behind her 27-year diplomatic career, Zeya penned an essay for Politico called “Trump is Making American Diplomacy White Again.”

She noted there that the three most senior African-American career officials and the top-ranking Latino career officer in the State Department were either removed or resigned. All had white successors. Looking at data from the American Foreign Service Association, Zeya found that 64 percent of Trump‘s ambassadorial nominees as of this past fall had been white non-Hispanic males—7 percent more than during Obama’s two terms. She also notes that “African American women have been excluded completely from Trump’s 119-plus ambassadorial nominees. By comparison, African American women made up 6 percent of President Obama’s ambassadors, and 5 percent of ambassadors under President Bush.”

A New Hope

“...if you do not go into the foreign service, then your voice will not be heard. If you cede the territory, then you cannot complain about who is running it.”

“It’s a downward slide and a reversal of what I had viewed over my career as being a continual effort by Democratic and Republican administrations to build a State Department that looks more like America,” Zeya says.

SFS students are now having the opportunity to learn about diplomacy first hand from many former State Department officials. After leaving her government role, McEldowney was named director of the Master of Science in Foreign Service Program at SFS. Zeya is now a senior nonresident fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. Feeley is a fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Latin American Studies. Richard teaches at the SFS Institute for the Study of International Migration and was a Centennial fellow last year.

DeLaurentis is a current Centennial fellow.

These recently resigned diplomats, along with Bodine, say they’ve pursued roles in academia and education because they perceive diplomacy as an important calling, a way to give back to the nation, and they want to encourage others to respond to that calling—regardless of the current political storms.

“I would still encourage young people to consider a career in the State Department,” says Zeya. “Only by talking about these issues openly can you really generate a movement to improve.

Left: Ambassador John Feeley (SFS’83) and Uzra Zeya (SFS’89).

Below: Under Secretary David Hale (SFS’83) left with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

That’s the first step to remaking a department that looks more like America.”

Still, given the number of top-level diplomats who have left their jobs because they could not square their service with the Trump Administration’s actions, how can diplomats-turned-instructors make the case for careers in foreign service today? Bodine suggests making it personal.

“I came into the foreign service in the 1970s when we had an extraordinarily unpopular president and a very unpopular war,” she says. “It was a war that I deeply, deeply opposed and actually demonstrated against. And I had a lot of questions from my friends as to how I could go work for the government with that president and that war. I explained there was a longer view to what I wanted to do. I’ve also explained to students that if you do not go into the foreign service, then your voice will not be heard. If you cede the territory, then you cannot complain about who’s running it.”

Q&A with Under Secretary of State David Hale (SFS’83)

IN AUGUST 2018, DAVID HALE was confirmed as the under secretary of state for political affairs, making him one of the State Department’s highest-ranking officials. The following month, President Trump appointed him to the top rank of career ambassador, obtained by only a handful of other diplomats since the ranking was created in 1955. In his 34 years of foreign service, Hale has held numerous titles, including director for Israel-Palestinian affairs and deputy assistant of state for Israel, Egypt and the Levant. He also served as ambassador to Jordan, Lebanon and Pakistan.

What has working for the State Department been like with Secretary Pompeo at the helm?

Secretary Pompeo’s approach puts a very strong emphasis on leadership in the depart-

ment. Here’s an example: This year, at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Secretary Pompeo took not only himself up there, but also the deputy secretary, two undersecretaries, and all the relevant assistant secretaries. This was a very cost-effective opportunity to engage all day and most of the night with leaders from all across the world on all the issues we care about, whether it’s North Korea denuclearization, our troubled relationships and challenges with Russia and China, building a coalition on Iran—you name it. That’s the level of activity and energy Secretary Pompeo’s brought to us and inspired us with.

Was there a part of your SFS education that has been especially helpful in your career?

It’s not just what you learn there, but also the relationships you develop. I had a tre-

Bodine sees a crucial role for future American diplomats. Last year, after the U.S. pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership, several Asian countries got together and renegotiated the deal on their own. This past May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that Europe can no longer count on the U.S. to provide global leadership. And the Chinese government has ramped up its spending on global diplomacy including in Latin America, which both DeLaurentis and Feeley believe is aimed at filling the gaps in current American diplomatic efforts.

“When President Trump leaves office, if there is a decision to go back to engagement with the world, we will have to understand that the world will have moved on,” Bodine says. “The Europeans will have figured out how to work without us. Others will, too. We’ll have to figure out where we fit in that new context. So I’ve told a number of students that, ‘Look, go in, learn the trade, get your experience, because when the cycle moves we will need people in place who at least know the basics of what they’re doing. We will need you to move forward.’”

mendous opportunity to take a course taught by Madeleine Albright. She later hired me as her executive assistant when she was Secretary of State. There are also still people from my class who are in government whom I work with. And there are foreign leaders who were in my class or near it. When I was working in Jordan, the head of the royal court, the foreign minister, the finance minister, and the planning minister

were all Georgetown grads. We all knew each other. That was a tremendous asset.

What’s your advice for people considering careers in the foreign service?

For those who are interested in the world, it is the single most fascinating career you can have. There is tremendous diversity. If you’re a foreign service officer, you have a new assignment every two to three years.

Q&A With Tomorrow’s Diplomats

Each year, the U.S. State Department provides fellowships to prepare outstanding young people for careers as diplomats. As the oldest school of international affairs in the United States and the largest feeder school into the U.S. foreign service, the Walsh School of Foreign Service is a destination of choice for many Pickering and Rangel fellows, the premier graduate fellowship programs in international affairs. There are currently 24 students in SFS graduate programs with Pickering or Rangel fellowships, a testament to the school’s rich legacy of training young women and men committed to service to the world.

The Pickering and Rangel fellowships aim to promote greater diversity and excellence in the U.S. foreign service. They offer scholarships to finance a two-year master’s degree program, along with internship opportunities, mentorship programs, and other professional development opportunities. Upon completion of their degree, fellows agree to a minimum five-year service commitment in the U.S. foreign service.

What inspired you to join the foreign service?

Sarah Brokenborough (LAS’20)

RANGEL « PISCATAWAY, NJ

My time as a Fulbright English teaching assistant in Laos inspired me to join the foreign service. I had the amazing opportunity to learn about the work and life of a foreign service officer. I also had the opportunity to collaborate with public diplomacy officers and locally engaged staff to facilitate cultural exchange programming, ESL classes, and Education USA workshops. [01]

Sin Yan Lau (MSFS’20)

RANGEL « BOISE, ID

My family decided to immigrate to the U.S. when I was young, and we had such a positive experience at the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong that I was ultimately inspired to become a foreign service officer myself. [02]

Ashley Inman (MSFS’20)

RANGEL « NAPLES, FL

I believe the world can best be changed by building relationships and cultivating mutual respect and understanding between countries—and joining the U.S. foreign service, serving on the front lines of diplomacy, will allow me to play a role in doing just that. [03]

Maggie Samuels (MAERES’20)

PICKERING « SEARSMONT, ME

I wanted to take my experiences as the daughter of a fisherman in rural Maine and show the world

that U.S. diplomats can come from any background and help model just how diverse our country is.

Kalif Robinson (MSFS’19)

RANGEL « VIRGINIA BEACH, VA

The opportunity to lead a life of global public service was one of the most attractive aspects of obtaining a career in the foreign service. I am deeply honored to be able to serve my country and show the world the many faces of American diplomacy. [04]

In which region would you be most excited about working?

Stephanie Myers-Irizarry (MAERES’19)

PICKERING « PUERTO RICO

I would love to work in Central Asia. I am interested in energy trade and environmental policy, and this region presents many related unique challenges and opportunities. [05]

Caroline Lanford (MSFS’20)

PICKERING « JACKSON, MS

One of the joys of being a U.S. foreign service officer is the wide range of places you could be stationed. I’m grateful for the flexibility of the MSFS program in that it allows me to be a generalist, and, so far, my plan is to learn as much about as many parts of the world as I can. [06]

Erik Angamarca (MSFS’20)

RANGEL « QUEENS, NY

I would love to work in Latin America or East Asia due to my academic and professional background.

Nonetheless, I am flexible and would be excited to serve anywhere in world. The opportunity to work and experience cultures, customs and people of different nations is truly a career unlike any other, and I am willing to do that anywhere. [07]

Jacob Dietrich (SSP’19)

RANGEL « LA GRANGE, KY

I definitely hope to work in Middle East/ North Africa once my career in the foreign service kicks off. I was lucky to spend a lot of time in places like Oman, UAE and Morocco during my Fulbright fellowship and I am eager to return.

Hawi Tilahune (MSFS’19)

RANGEL « ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA AND MINNEAPOLIS, MN. Although I have always had a passion for Africa, every region has something unique and challenging to offer; I am open to these transformative experiences.

Why did you choose Georgetown for preparation for the foreign service?

Katie Garay (SSP’19)

RANGEL « ALEXANDRIA, VA

I wanted to study security policy in a program that was more practical than theoretical; that was focused in preparing its students for real world application; and that looked at security more broadly than the traditional idea of security.

Manuela Hernandez (MSFS’19)

RANGEL « MEDELLIN, COLOMBIA AND FLORIDA

The MSFS program is ranked

number one in the world for my field of interest, and I wanted to learn from the best practitioners and classmates before starting my diplomatic career.

Eric Chu (GHD’20)

PICKERING « ST. PAUL, MN AND HSINCHU, TAIWAN

I chose Georgetown’s Global Human Development (GHD) program because it has the right balance of multidisciplinary curriculum, practical experiences and cohort size for me. The SFS also provides the opportunity for graduate students to take language courses, which, combined with my courses and internship requirements will make me a more effective foreign service officer. [08]

Miguel Boluda (MSFS’19)

RANGEL « BOWIE, MD

In preparing myself for entry into the U.S. foreign service, I hoped for an environment in which I could be both academically and professionally nurtured—through intellectual discourse with instructors in the classroom, as well as experience-based discussions with practitioners from all employment sectors across Washington, D.C.

What has been your favorite part of your Georgetown experience so far?

Nicole Roberts (SSP’19)

RANGEL « MILFORD, MA

My favorite part of my Georgetown experience has been meeting and interacting with the other students in the SSP program. They all come from a variety of backgrounds and have unique professional experiences that make class discussions lively and engaging.

Zinna Senbetta (MSFS’19)

RANGEL « WHEATON, IL

Small-group discussions and coffee chats with practitioners have been a highlight of my Georgetown experience because they give me and fellow students the opportunity to engage and challenge our classroom knowledge and personal professional experiences through intimate and open discussions about current issues. [09]

Sophia Meulenberg (MSFS’20)

PICKERING « SANDPOINT, IDAHO

My peers in the MSFS program continue to amaze me with their passion, insight and dedication to making the world more just and peaceful. Whether during guided conversations in class, spontaneous debates in the MSFS

lounge, or energetic discussions during a happy hour, I can always count on SFSers to thoughtfully engage tough questions, provide much-needed support, and teach me something new. [10]

Ashley Jones-Quaidoo (SSP’20)

PICKERING « PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MD

Georgetown offers so many events outside of the classroom. I have listened to former Secretary of State John Kerry, attended programs relating to the Middle East, and have had coffee chats about foreign policy.

Tyra Beaman (MSFS’19)

RANGEL « RICHMOND, VA

My favorite part of Georgetown has been the opportunity to work with practitioners and academics in the field. As many of our professors remind us, the millennial generation is the future of diplomacy, so it is vital that we build hard, soft and smart skills, while being empowered to challenge opinions of global leaders and together arrive at a collective solution. [11]

What hopes do you have for the future of the foreign service?

Anastasia Burnett (MSFS’20)

PICKERING « DURHAM, NC

I hope the foreign service continues its efforts to embrace the diversity of the United States in its workforce. Programs like the Pickering and Rangel fellowships have shown me truly how powerful our government can be when we leverage our many voices and experiences. [12]

Brittany Orange (MSFS’20)

RANGEL « ORANGE COUNTY, VA

Judging from the group of fellows here at Georgetown, the fellows I spent the summer with and the foreign service officers I’ve met so far, the future of the foreign service is bright and I am excited for the future!

Kate Shafer (MSFS’20)

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I believe in the resilience of the foreign service, as well as its ability to continue to find new and innovative ways to promote diversity and inclusivity, champion American values abroad, serve American citizens and further U.S. foreign policy. It is for all of these reasons and more that I am honored and excited to be a part of the foreign service’s future as an FSO.

IN THE ARCHIVES OF STRIFE

Alumni share memories of campus during the 1960s and ‘70s. by

ANTOINETTE MARTIN

Tihe Vietnam War raged, Washington burned and President Richard Nixon’s policies and misdeeds engendered partisan fury. The School of Foreign Service itself was embroiled in a debate over its future. Yet, alumni interviewed five decades later say the Georgetown campus and the School of Foreign Service, with its globalist perspective, was the safest and simultaneously the most stimulating place they could be during the tumult—an ideal environment for developing their own thinking.

Four alumni—each of whom went on to remarkable achievement following their time at SFS—compared that moment in history with the current era. They are biographer Bob Colacello (SFS’69); Retired U.S. Army General George Casey Jr. (SFS’70); Retired Washington, D.C., Superior Court Judge Cheryl Long (SFS’71); and career government official Frank Murray (SFS’72). Each have very differing views of the global and political scene today. But none of them expresses any comfort with the extreme partisanship on display, or what they see as a general decline in intelligent discussion of national and international matters. And each of them noted that one major difference between then and now was that people were not constantly bombarded by media.

“We had more time to think and consider personal experiences and how they fit with global events,” says Casey—whose father served as a general in Vietnam. Casey, Jr. eventually followed in his footsteps becoming a commanding general during the second Iraq war. He recalls breathing in tear gas for the first time as a bystander to a demonstration in front of the White House where Nixon was presiding.

Murray—who later became a fixture of Democratic administrations in Washington and New York—says he got his first whiff of gas in 1970, when it wafted over the campus gates during a demonstration protesting Nixon’s expansion of the war into Cambodia. Georgetown was no “hotbed” of protest, he says, but the student government did vote for a boycott of classes that spring, based on a series of demands related to university issues and in protest of the war. Then, after the National Guard fired into a crowd of antiwar protestors on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio, killing four unarmed students, Georgetown faculty voted to cancel finals.

That same year, Colacello remembers being chased off a city bus by a group of men spraying shaving cream at him and his rock

Fr. Richard McSorley demonstrates for nonviolence on the steps of Healy Hall, ca. 1971.

musician friends because they had long hair and beards. “At Georgetown, though, I don’t remember any of my fellow students giving me a hard time about it,” he says. Colacello, who eventually navigated between sharply different cultures as President Reagan’s biographer and renegade artist Andy Warhol’s trusted editor at Interview Magazine, recalls that at Georgetown, “People who were different were still nice to each other.”

Cheryl Long says she was “stodgy and never looked like a hippie” during her student days. Her most vivid memories are not of war protests, or culture wars, but of campus protests concerning the future of the school. Father Robert J. Henle became president of Georgetown in 1969, with a vision to elevate Georgetown’s reputation. He engaged in contentious struggles over curriculum, staffing and defining of the core mission of the university, while also searching for a new dean for SFS. Students protested to have more of a say. “It was generally a time when students were discovering their voices, and how to use them,” Long says. Still, she recalls the debates and demonstrations as “dignified,” and remembers standing in complete silence at another demonstration as faculty passed through a corridor filled with students on their way in to take a crucial vote concerning curriculum. The overall climate inside the gates of Georgetown was “conservative, but moderate” in Long’s view.

Casey asserts that the socio-political battles of the ‘60s were more destructive and disturbing than the modern-day flame-throwing tweets and “debates.” He recalls standing on the roof of Loyola Hall, and watching big black clouds of smoke billow across Washington during riots in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination. “Have I ever seen things as crazy as they are today? Well,” he answers his own question dryly, “nothing’s on fire.”

Above: Georgetown students protest the Vietnam War.

Clockwise: Frank Murray (SFS’72), Cheryl Long (SFS’71), George Casey, Jr. (SFS’70), Bob Colacello (SFS’69).

Career public servant Murray says the turmoil now is worse. “The challenges today are far more dangerous in terms of the health of the country,” says Murray, who worked in Congress, in the Clinton White House and for three New York governors, including Mario and Andrew Cuomo. “Richard Nixon—despite the justified criticisms of him and his policies—never questioned the basic premises of the Constitution. The criminal activities of the Nixon era never raised themselves in my mind to the level we have right now.” Murray believes the Vietnam War split the country, but the current divisions cleave more deeply.

Long, who continues to practice law and dispute resolution, evinces stoicism in the face of turbulent times—then and now. “I

have been upset about what is going on for a long, long time, but I am a practical person,” says the judge who presided in the District of Columbia from 1988–2000. “I focus on the bottom line. What can anybody do about all this? They can vote. I am a dedicated voter, even though as a resident of D.C. we don’t have full representation in Congress. I’ve lived here all my life. We must do what we can.”

Colacello was briefly a member of Students for a Democratic Society while at SFS, but subsequently became a GOP loyalist. “I think it’s rather frightening what’s going on today, the vitriol and tribal partisanship,” he says, adding “Trump-ism is a very direct reaction to identity politics and political correctness.” Colacello, a prolific and respected biographer, closely followed the Senate hearings on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the protests involving accusations that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted women. In his view,

Democrats deliberately ratcheted up “high-pitched hysteria.”

So, none of these four is precisely on the same page now—nor were they then. Yet each expresses deep concern about the current stark divide. In the words of Colacello, “Whatever happened to due process and civil discourse?”

When Colacello first arrived as a freshman from Long Island, he was dazed to discover himself suddenly surrounded by preppies with impeccable pedigrees. One of his classmates in 1965 was Matthew Baudoin, nephew of the King of Belgium. “I remember he had all these different colognes and fragrances on his dresser, which seemed odd, but very glamorous,” says Colacello. On each floor of the dormitory, there was a priest living there who heard weekly confessions from the jacket-and-tie-clad boys under his purview.

Soon enough, Colacello became friends with a small sub-strain of Bohemians existing on campus. The musicians among them formed a band called the Brave Maggots, and the group hung around R&B and jazz bars where older musicians “turned us on to pot.” Colacello recalls that they would bury the stuff in a jar along the banks of the canal to

keep it safe before returning to campus to do their homework.

“I loved what I learned at Georgetown,” he says. “I loved the Jesuits, the way they taught us to think, how they would argue with an open mind, always considering other ways of looking at an issue.” Colacello spent his junior year in Madrid and missed the sight of Washington in flames. In the first election in which he could vote in 1968, he wrote in Andy Warhol for president—because, he says, he couldn’t stomach Nixon or Lyndon Baines Johnson. (He was then newly enchanted by Warhol’s edgy, provocative art films.)

While Colacello was in Madrid, Casey was in class, occasionally getting razzed for wearing his ROTC uniform, bringing home buddies from school when his dad was home so they could join in the heated – but open—dinner-table discussions of the war. Casey’s father was at home the night in April 1970 when Nixon announced the expansion of the war into Cambodia—which it was clear he would be the one to lead.

“ ...gas wafted over the campus gates during a demonstration protesting Nixon’s expansion of the war into Cambodia.”

“My fellow Americans,” said Nixon in his speech as Casey Sr., his son, and his son’s friends from Georgetown watched together on live TV, “we live in an age of anarchy, both abroad and at home. We see mindless attacks on all the great institutions which have been created by free civilizations in the last 500 years.” When Nixon said the “forces of totalitarianism” threatened free people everywhere, Casey Jr. recalls that he believed him. Casey Jr. did not lose faith in the country’s mission in Vietnam, even after his father died when his helicopter was shot down over Vietnam later that year. “Looking back, I might have asked more hard questions about why we were there,” he says. “My friends were asking them, though, and my father respected their right to do it.”

Casey thinks about the overwhelming flood of change going on then—“free love, people making choices about their sexuality, women taking on new roles”—and says the intense discussions about core issues were generally good for individuals, and for the country. Today’s version of “discussion”? Not so much. His response has been to take up meditation and yoga, in search of “mindfulness” amidst an environment of strife.

Colacello, on the other hand, says he still enjoys argument with people who think differently than he does. “I am a fan of iconoclasts, people who break the mold and don’t follow political correctness,” says the man who has chronicled the lives of superstars and drag queens, and is at work on his second book about Ronald Reagan. He reveled in the mix at Georgetown, which enrolled everyone from Bill Clinton of Arkansas to Saudi princes, and he says that he continues to seek that variety in life.

“It would be boring to have people just going into their own corners,” Colacello says. “Should dentists spend all their time talking to other dentists? No, the worst qualities in us come out when we settle into tight little groups. We have to keep talking to each other, or we’re really lost.”

LSFS STUDENTS ENGAGE

During a turbulent political era, students seek ways to respond, be heard and take action. by

ike so many of her classmates, Anna Landre (SFS ‘21) enrolled at the School of Foreign Service because she wants to change the world for the better. She knew she’d face some unique obstacles.

Shortly after arriving on campus in 2017, Landre— who gets around campus in a motorized wheelchair—wrote an oped in The Hoya, calling for improvements in accessibility across campus buildings. A disability rights activist since high school, she is now chair of Georgetown’s student accessibility policy team where she continues to advocate on behalf of the disabled.

“Academia is seen as incompatible with disability because historic campuses are often inaccessible to students with physical disabilities, ” she says, noting that one in four Americans have a disability, and if more voices like hers were in leadership positions, campuses would change. More disabled students would enroll. And their visibility would challenge the notion that people with disabilities don’t belong on campus—or elsewhere in the country.

Recently, Landre was inspired to step up her own visibility and expand her activism to D.C. politics. In November, she won an uncontested seat on one of the city’s 40 Advisory Neighborhood Commissions (ANC) where she will represent the interests of the Georgetown student body to an eight-member ANC and ultimately to the District of Columbia. She is enthusiastic about

VICTORIA MARIN

building coalitions with students from other underrepresented communities and hopes to further common goals, such as campus reform, sustainability and access to transportation.

“The current political climate makes me braver to take on issues and fight for structural change,” she says, referencing discriminatory health care policies in her home state of New Jersey and at the national level. “There’s something about blatant injustice sitting right in front of you that makes it easier to be bold and unapologetic about fighting for what you deserve.” Landre says she is also inspired by the record number of women who ran for office in 2018.

Since the 2016 election, college students across the country have become more politically engaged than at other any time in recent decades. As contentious battles over immigration, healthcare, gun laws, reproductive rights, nationalism and climate change have played across the global political landscape, SFS students are seeking ways to respond, be heard, and take action.

Dean Joel Hellman is not surprised. “SFS has always attracted students who are passionate about global affairs and committed to service. I expect to see them on the front lines of debate and activism on the issues that most impact our world,” he says.

Hunter Estes (SFS’19) addresses the crowd at the 2018 Cardinal O’Connor Conference on Life, at Gaston Hall.

“Our school was formed in an era of unprecedented global uncertainty. And now, we find ourselves in a time when many of the foundations of the post-war global order as well as our national political consensus are being challenged,” says Hellman. “We expect our students to throw themselves passionately into the most difficult, but consequential, conversations. These conversations may sometimes test our comfort levels, but they are central to the SFS education. We want SFS students to live out the very lessons and values they are discussing in the classroom.”

Being Heard

When President Trump moved to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, as well as when he imposed a country-based ban on travel to the U.S., Georgetown President John J. DeGioia and the university voiced strong support for the rights of undocumented and foreign-born students.

Georgetown, along with 18 other universities, submitted a brief to the Supreme Court, arguing in favor of DACA.

The brief included individual stories of student experiences. One of those stories belonged to Juan Martinez Guevara (SFS’20). Guevara also went to Capitol Hill to speak with senators about his immigration experiences to pressure lawmakers on votes that impact undocumented people. He believes that by sharing their stories and increasing their visibility on campus, undocumented students are correcting false narratives that, too often, inform national discourse and public policy.

He has since become president of the Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA). One of the first actions he took was to create a Department of Student Activism. While in office, he is committed to reaching and maintaining representative diversity in the student senate. He also wants to prioritize student wellbeing and mental health. According to Guevara, nationalist rhetoric and uncertainty are taking an emotional toll on students across campus, especially immigrant students. “It creates a lot of fear for students to not know whether their family will be there the next time they go back or not.”

“The 2016 election completely impacted my life and it continues to impact it. I personally saw that as a chance to get into activism,” says Guevara who began working with United We Dream, an immigrant youth-led organization, the day before the 2017 inauguration.

Left: Anna Landre is fighting for structural change.

Aly Panjwani joined The Bridge Initiatve to convey how Islamophobia affects real people.

Right: Juan Martinez Guevara felt he had to share his immigration story.

Juan Moreno (SFS’19), who was raised in the Bronx by “a hard working immigrant mother who sacrificed everything to give me a better life,” participated in protests against child-family separations at the Mexican border because he felt it was necessary to fight for what he felt passionate about. “Being that the Bronx has been a historically neglected and discriminated community in the U.S., I feel that the immense privilege of becoming a Georgetown student is an opportunity to remind my peers that the world is not the bubble in which many of them grew up,” he says. “This has inspired me to become socially active in issues concerning the human rights violations of undocumented immigrants.”

International student Toya Silva (SFS‘19) notes that Georgetown’s commitment to making students feel like they belong on campus, and have an active role in civic society, is apparent in all aspects of campus life—including in the classroom. In January 2017, during the first iteration of the travel ban, she recalls that in her Islamic Thought and Practice class, the professor encouraged Arabic-speaking students to go to local airports and use their skills as translators, if they were so inclined.

For Silva, this is a reflection of the university’s Jesuit value of serving others at work. “I feel like Georgetown, not only through events and through student action, but also through classes and the incredible professors we have, is always engaging a form of activism where we’re questioning—What is right?

What are the actions being taken? And we’re being given the platform to do so and to call attention to issues of humanity.”

“The university is listening more to what students have to say, and taking it into account, especially minority students’ views on topics, which I think is really important so that every student on this campus feels like they belong here,” said Julia Friedmann (SFS’19). Ricardo Mondolfi (SFS‘19) noted that the school’s LGBTQ Resource Center—which was founded in 2008, a first for a Catholic university—is a reflection of Georgetown’s commitment to making all students feel welcome on campus.

Protest

says that the debate over free speech stops when the speaker ventures into hate speech—using language or supporting causes that make people feel unsafe and unwelcome. Panjwani believes that line was crossed when Georgetown’s College Republicans invited the Egyptian born Nonie Darwish to speak on campus in March 2017. Darwish, the founder of Former Muslims United, is frequently criticized for her anti-Islam activism.

“When a Georgetown student group invites speakers like her to come present ideas like ‘Islam must be destroyed,’ they are in a way legitimizing the fact that’s a point to contend with—that we can have an academic and moral argument about whether or not Muslims can practice their faith without discrimination,” he says. “There just aren’t two sides to this question.”

In an effort to share facts and real stories about Muslim life in America, Panjwani helped organize an event called Muslim Responses to Islamophobia, featuring Wajahat Ali, an influential journalist and lawyer who helped launched Al Jazeera America. The event took place during Darwish’s visit. Since then, Panjwani and other SFS students have worked with the Bridge Initiative, an ongoing Islamophobia research program sponsored by Georgetown’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, on projects like “My Bridge Stories,” a collection of first-person narratives conveying how Islamophobia affects real people.

“We expect our students to throw themselves passionately into the most difficult, but consequential conversations.”

On a few high-profile occasions over the past two years, SFS students have taken issue with controversial public figures who were invited to campus (usually by student groups) to speak at events. Coalitions of Muslim, Jewish and LGBTQIA students protested the events and demanded that the university rescind invitations. Despite their protests, Georgetown and SFS maintain that letting a wide range of voices be heard and allowing peaceful protest in the spirit of civil discourse reflects the Jesuit value of assuming the good intentions of others.

Student organizations behind the events defended them on the basis of free speech. But protestor Aly Panjwani (SFS‘19)

Julia Friedmann, who is majoring in regional and comparative studies and pursuing a certificate in Jewish civilization, feels similarly about the university’s decision to allow Sebastian Gorka—a former deputy assistant to President Trump—to speak on a Georgetown cybersecurity panel in April 2017. Gorka has expressed strong anti-Islam views and is reportedly a member of the Order of Vitéz, a Hungarian group accused of allying with Nazis during World War II. Friedmann (whose ancestors were killed in the Holocaust) and a group of Jewish and Muslim students organized a meeting with Georgetown administration to push back on the invitation. In a statement, Dean Hellman clarified that “the invitation of any speaker to the campus does not reflect an endorsement by Georgetown or the School of Foreign Service of their views,” but also expressed the school’s obligation to foster dialogue, even if unpleasant, rather than censorship. The students organized a peaceful protest outside the event, which was scheduled on Holocaust Remembrance Day, a point that Friedmann pressed in an op-ed she later wrote in The Hoya.

During Gorka’s cybersecurity panel, students repeatedly challenged Gorka’s ideas, asking him tough questions. While Friedmann was unhappy with the university’s decision to stand by the invitations to these controversial speakers, she appreciated the support she felt in freely protesting them.

•

CONTINUED

According to Jesus Rodriguez (SFS‘19), the principal research assistant on Georgetown’s Free Speech Project, an organization that researches and analyzes the condition of First Amendment values, it’s important to consider the intentions of invited speakers to understand whether their presence is truly reflective of free speech. “The majority of students are just not going to want to engage with [Islamophobia and anti-LGBTQ views], or with personal attacks,” he says.

Rodriguez says it is not about wanting to suppress conservative thought, pointing to a recent visit from Senator Marco Rubio that packed Lohrfink Auditorium. “The fact that the event was standing room only showed that people were really interested in his perspective. He’s a traditional conservative, and even if there is a liberal bias on campus, there is space here, and even a desire, to engage with conservative thinking.”

Dean Hellman agrees. “If SFS is to play its role as a genuine forum for debate on global issues in the country’s most important global city, we must maintain an environment where all ends of the political spectrum can be heard.” He notes that the SFS faculty draws from Republican administrations as well as Democratic administrations. Speakers come from across the political spectrum.

“The college campus is a truly unique space,” says Dean Hellman. “It is a veritable cauldron of discovery, engagement and commitment. Yes, sometimes it boils over, and that’s natural as students test the borders and boundaries of their own approaches and those with whom they disagree. But I believe that this is part of an SFS education and helps students test their own strategies of how they can effectively impact the world.”

Hellman says he has had to make tough calls, and at times people from all ends of the political spectrum have been angry with him.

“I welcome that. If both sides are having issues, then I must be doing something right.”

Social Media Raises the Stakes

But that’s not to say students are protected from the consequences of the current era. Aly Panjwani’s activism against Darwish’s event was covered by outside media, which, he says, distorted his intentions. “They said that we were trying to keep [Nonie Darwish] from speaking to her true personal experiences …that we were just more liberals trying to limit free speech and that Nonie was going to need security guards because we were going to do something violent. In reality, the most confrontational thing we did was hand out fact sheets dismantling her talking points to people that were going into the event.”

“If SFS is to play its role as a genuine forum for debate on global issues... we must maintain an environment where all ends of the political spectrum can be heard.”

Tanner Larkin (SFS’20) also faced social media name-calling and attacks after his involvement in the Gorka event protest. A photo of him at the event dressed in his tallis, a Jewish prayer scarf, circulated on Twitter, along with bitter accusations of him using it as a prop. In an interview with the Jewish publication The Forward, Larkin explained. [I] “wore my tallis because as a Jew it is incumbent on me not only to fight anti-Semitism,

but to do so as a Jew. Another Jewish student (who preferred to remain unnamed) saw his image circulated on social media along with attacks for “dress[ing] up as an Orthodox Jew (yellow Star of David!).” This student told The Forward that he is, in fact, Orthodox and normally wears religious garb.

Presuming Good Intentions

Some feel that the current political climate is making it difficult to engage in civil discourse on campus. Erica Lizza (SFS‘19), the president of Catholic Women at Georgetown, recalled one debate in her Religion and American Politics class when one student “launched into a tirade about Republican opposition to abortion and religiosity being inherently anti-woman.” Another student agreed, saying that he had no obligation to even consider the anti-abortion perspective because it was harmful.

Lizza, who identifies as pro-life and believes in many conservative principles, finds this instinct to disengage with different perspectives frustrating. “Without substantive engagement in terms of listening and talking with people who think differently—I don’t think that bodes well for our development as students or really as people who are going to go out in the world and try

KEVIN DURHAM

and embody the spirit of being women and men for others,” says Lizza. “I don’t think we can be women and men for others if we assume that others who think differently than us are bad people.” The key to overcoming this divide, Lizza says, is to be found in the Jesuit value of presuming that the people you disagree with have good intentions. “We as a university pride ourselves on being a community of politically engaged and intellectually curious people, so I think we have to cultivate a healthier way to exchange ideas and actually listen to others expressing them.”

Daniel Byman, professor and vice dean at the School of Foreign Service, sees this kind of willingness to engage with multiple perspectives as being vital to not only discourse on campus, but to civil society beyond. “Service is more important than ever in a time when America is this divided and the world is turning inward. I want our students to be part of this mission.”

Rethinking the Future

With continuing global turmoil ahead, graduating seniors are facing a future nothing like what they expected. As a result, some are rethinking their plans.

“There is a deep sense that we should take our Georgetown education forward in order to aid the development of solutions. Many students arrive at Georgetown and SFS interested in government and politics, yet personally, I think the last two years have made me less interested,” says Hunter Estes (SFS’19), who describes the current vitriol in politics as “a real turnoff.”

“As I approach graduation, I find myself intrigued by other ways of serving my community and my nation.” Estes recently applied for Teach for America and is also considering the Peace Corps or military service. He believes that other students on campus feel the same way and also are turning to models outside of government.

that I will separate myself from [current affairs] and sort of take a step back and see the shifting global order as something that’s interesting, but without a personal stake.” However, he sees his own experiences as vital to telling many of these stories, because he understands them from the inside. “My background gives me a unique perspective in that I can see the damage these shifts can do to certain communities. I think that of course the 2016 presidential election changed a lot of things. And it made me want to tell stories of people who are being affected by these changes.”

School of Foreign Service students are indeed on the frontlines of a critical time in history—simultaneously on campus, in the country and on the world stage. Reflecting on her upcoming new role on the Advisory Neighborhood Commission early next year, Anna Landre says, “It’s important to know how to change our institutions for the better from the inside. And if I don’t do it, who will?”

Julia Friedmann (left) peacefully protested at a campus event.

Some feel pulled toward home. When Toya Silva first enrolled in the School of Foreign Service, she focused on the Middle East, taking Arabic classes and visiting Jordan on a spring break. But over the last two years, as nationalism and far-right politics have gained popularity around the world, Silva’s plans have changed. Most recently she’s watched the rise of Jair Bolsonaro in her native Brazil, and this worries her. Bolsanaro, who has said that Brazil should return to a dictatorship, won the presidency in an election runoff at the end of October. Silva says she now plans to go home to Brazil and get to work. “SFS has equipped me with the tools to understand both what’s happening on the ground as an activist and what’s required to effect change on a constitutional level, too.”

Jesus Rodriguez, the Free Speech Project research assistant who has also worked as an editor for The Hoya, says he has been deeply influenced by the current era, which continues to push him toward journalism.

He believes he can contribute a needed voice. “As a reporter, it’s expected of me

Jesus Rodriguez plans to contribute “a needed voice,” through journalism. Erica Lizza (center) wants her classmates to cultivate respectful civil discourse on campus, assuming good intentions of others.

01 Katrin Sieg, who first joined the Georgetown faculty in 2002, was named the new director of the BMW Center for German and European Studies, starting July 2018. Sieg’s research focuses on performance practices in modern Germany and connections to social power relations. She succeeds Professor Jeffrey Anderson and says she hopes to build on his progress. “I want to continue the mission of the center to train the next generation of transatlantic leaders and give our students an excellent preparation for maintaining and nurturing transatlantic relations.” Under Sieg’s direction, the theme of the center’s events series this year will be “A Century of Women’s Struggles: From the Franchise to #MeToo.”

Michael Green, professor and Chair in Modern and Contemporary Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy, has succeeded Professor Victor Cha as the director of the Asian Studies Program. Green has three priorities for the program. He hopes to increase Georgetown’s level of engagement with the region, open up new research and scholarship opportunities for students and enhance the program’s intellectual rigor. Green joined the SFS faculty in 2006, prior to which he served on George W. Bush’s National Security Council as senior director for Asian affairs.

03 Shareen Joshi, assistant professor, conducted and published a World Bank study on caste and income inequality in India. Joshi’s study challenges the traditional understanding of the Indian caste system from an economic perspective, by demonstrating that inequality within castes may, in fact, be greater than differences between them. The study focuses on scheduled castes and “other backward classes” understood to be at the bottom of Hindu social order, and the enormous differences between subcastes within these groups.

Mohamed Zayani, professor of critical theory and director of the Media and Politics Program at Georgetown University in Qatar, published a book on the effects of information and communication technologies social movements. The book, Networked Publics and Digital Contention, provides original research and a theoretical framework for understanding social movements in the internet age. It won four prizes: The Global Communication and Social Change Best Book Award from the International Communication Association; The Sue DeWine Distinguished Award for a Scholarly Book from the U.S. National Communication Association; The Communication, Information Technologies and Media Sociology Book Award from the American Sociological Association, and The Toyin Falola Best Book Award from the Association of Global South Studies.

Kathleen McNamara, professor of government and foreign service, has been awarded the International Studies Association’s 2018 Distinguished Scholar Award in International Political Economy. This award is granted to academics whose “path breaking intellectual work” promises to impact their field for years to come. McNamara’s research focuses on the Euro -

pean Union and the emergence of cleavages in modern political culture. McNamara joined the Dean’s Leadership Team on July 15, 2018 as the new vice dean for graduate and faculty affairs.

06 Irfan Nooruddin, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Indian Politics and director of the India Initiative, published an analytical report for the Organization of American States, which reports on the validity of the 2017 Honduran Presidential Election. The discrepancy between an early report suggesting a coming opposition victory and the final tally, which provided a win for the governing party, raised questions. Nooruddin concluded that doubts about the veracity of the result are valid. Dr. Joel Simmons, associate professor, assisted with the analysis.

07 Victor Cha, D.S. Song-KF Endowed Chair in Government and International Affairs, co-published “The Gathering Health Storm Inside North Korea,” for the Center for Strategic & International Studies. Cha and his co-authors posit that instability in the shuttered country could prompt a mass exodus of North Koreans carrying multidrug-resistant tuberculosis to neighboring South Korea and China. Cha warns that North Korea has an exceptionally high incidence of this disease and is woefully unprepared for an impending health emergency, as the Pyongyang government has consistently neglected health priorities in favor of its nuclear weapons program.

08 Sarah Stewart Johnson, assistant professor, was awarded a $7 million grant from NASA for an interdisciplinary study, entitled the Laboratory for Agnostic Biosignatures (LAB). The grant, which is the largest ever allocated to a junior professor at Georgetown, will be used to further the search for life beyond Earth. Johnson and her team are attempting to depart from assumptions traditionally held about life, in order to search for organisms with a set of general characteristics key to life that would allow them to exist in environments totally alien to anything on Earth.

BOOKS

Abraham Newman co-authored Voluntary Disruptions with Elliot Posner, looking at the global economy through international soft law, globalization, and financial regulations in the U.S. and Europe as they attempt to govern markets and reform.

Jessica Roda published Se réinventer au présent. Les Judéo-espagnols de France. Famille, communauté et patrimoine musical, an examination of French Judeo-Spanish life and how music played an integral role in reviving community and culture.

Marko Klasnja, assistant professor in the Walsh School of Foreign Service, co-published “Political Corruption Traps,” an article that develops models that characterize the political nature of consistent corruption. Published in Political Science Research and Methods, the article departs from the traditional understanding of endemic corruption as a result of mutually enforcing expectation. Instead it focuses more on the strategic interests of each set of actors and the interrelations between politicians, voters and behavior.

Natividad Fernandez

Sola authored Fronteras Del Siglo XXI: ¿Obstáculos o puentes? In memoriam Professor Ángel Chueca Sancho, in memory of Ángel Chueca Sancho who worked throughout his life for immigration rights and human rights for refugees and immigrants.

Joseph Sassoon wrote Trying for Peace: Self-Actualization and World Federalism, the third book in a trilogy that attempts to map out a new political system based on humanism and human nature, a humanist democracy made permanent.

John Tutino published The Mexican Heartland How Communities Shaped Capitalism, a Nation, and World History, 1500-2000, which provides a new history of capitalism from the perspective of the landed communities surrounding Mexico City.

An impressive array of political and thought leaders visited SFS in 2018.

Hillary Clinton Presents Human Rights Awards

FEBRUARY 5, 2018

Former Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton presented the annual Hillary Rodham Clinton awards to two extraordinary women: Nadia Murad, a former captive of the Islamic State, who is now a human rights activist and United Nations Goodwill Ambassador

for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking, and Wai Wai Nu, a Rohingya woman and former political prisoner, who is a committed civil society advocate for human rights, democracy and peace in Myanmar. Clinton also discussed the importance of women’s participation and leadership in advancing human rights, justice, and peace. The ceremony was hosted by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security.

Inaugural Lloyd George Lecture Contemplates Meaning of 1919 in 2018

FEBRUARY 12, 2018 SFS hosted the inaugural Lloyd George Centennial Lecture on the Future of the Global Order with generous support from the Lloyd George family. Georgetown President John J. DeGioia and Robert Lloyd George, great-grandson of U.K. Prime Minister David Lloyd George, both gave introductory remarks. Margaret MacMillan, author of Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World , delivered the keynote address. John Ikenberry, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, and Erez Manela, a professor of history at Harvard University, also joined MacMillan for a panel discussion following the lecture. SFS Professor Charles Kupchan moderated the discussion. The four theorized about domestic consent in the making of international treaties, the significance of the year 1919 and the nature of bargaining during the Paris Peace Conference.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright Receives Diplomacy Award

FEBRUARY 13, 2018

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was awarded the J. Raymond “Jit” Trainor Award for Excellence in the Conduct of Diplomacy, presented annually by the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD). This honor is given in memory of Jit Trainor, the much-admired former registrar of the School of Foreign Service. Following the presentation of the award, Albright joined Ambassador Barbara Bodine, director of ISD, for a discussion about defending democracy, bipartisan cooperation and strengthening institutions.

Georgian President Margvelashvili Discusses Georgia’s Western Path at Georgetown

MARCH 16, 2018

Georgetown University hosted Dr. Giorgi Margvelashvili, president of Georgia, for a conversation on Georgia’s struggle to secure its place among Western nation states. During the audience Q&A session, Margvelashvili expressed optimism for Georgia’s economic development, saying “We have found our niche in economical geopolitics: We are a transit country. Now we have to add to this niche.” The event, which was sponsored by the BMW Center for German and European Studies and the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies, also celebrated of the centennial year of the Georgian republic’s founding in 1918.

Former Puerto Rico

Governor Luis Fortuño (SFS‘82) Speaks on Puerto Rico’s Future

MARCH 23, 2018

The Center for Latin American Studies hosted former Governor of Puerto Rico Luis Fortuño (SFS’82), for a lecture on the future of Puerto Rico’s economy post-Hurricane Maria. Fortuño characterized the aftermath of the hurricane as an “opportunity” for the island to rethink its economic policies and contribution to de-

velopment. Hurricanes “are events that occur suddenly, and when they do, they can change the course of a community, or in this case, the island,” he said. “And I see it as an opportunity to do exactly that.”

Former Liberian President

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Discusses the Future of Democracy in Africa

MARCH 26, 2018

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former president of Liberia from 20062018, visited Georgetown to discuss her experience with Liberian democracy and the future of democracies on the African continent. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who served as U.S. ambassador to Liberia from 2008-2012, moderated a Q&A following Sirleaf’s remarks. This was a return for Sirleaf who also visited Georgetown in December 2017 when she spoke to SFS students and faculty about Liberia’s recent elections, her upcoming transition of power, and women’s political leadership and participation in Africa.

Sirleaf led Liberia into the consolidation of its democracy through economic growth, institution-building and a progressive and optimistic approach. Despite facing major challenges during her presidency, including institutional corruption, the 2008 financial crisis and the 2011 Ebola crisis, she helped facilitate a peaceful transition of leadership in January 2018. She said that although Liberia is still young and fragile, this transfer of power and the elections that preceded it demonstrate a democratic commitment in the country that is increasingly prevalent throughout the African continent.

SFS Celebrates Alumnae Who Were Among First Women on the Hilltop

APRIL 21, 2018

SFS first opened its doors to women as full-time students in 1954. Four of these first women pioneers came back to Georgetown to talk about their experiences. Helene Gettler Mallett (SFS’59), Barbara Berky Evans (SFS’58), Barbara Hammes Sharood (SFS’58) and Paula Wiegerd Tosini (SFS’60) sat down with female student leaders for tea, followed by a public event. They joined Ambassador Melanne Verveer (I’66, MS’69), executive director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, for a moderated panel. SFS Dean Joel Hellman introduced the panel, which was followed by Lulu Garcia-Navarro (SFS’94), host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, who reflected on the role of women in leadership today.

U.N. Human Rights High Commissioner Al Hussein and the State of Human Rights Around the World

APRIL 25, 2018

Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, U.N. high commissioner for human rights came to campus to discuss human rights issues occurring globally, with Anne Richard (SFS’82) former assistant secretary of state for Populations, Refugees and Migration, and a 20172018 SFS Centennial fellow.

The event was Al Hussein’s second recent visit to campus. In February 2017, he received the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy’s Raymond ‘Jit’ Trainor Award for Excellence in the Conduct of Diplomacy. In his remarks, Al Hussein noted the high priority that the United Nations’ Charter places on human rights. “The U.N. Charter Preamble references human rights before peace and security and before development,” he said. Therefore, “human rights are absolutely critical.”

Foreign

Minister of Japan

Taro Kono (SFS ‘86) Returns to Georgetown to Deliver Lloyd George Centennial Lecture

SEPTEMBER 28, 2018

SFS welcomed back alumnus Taro Kono (SFS’86), foreign minister of Japan, for the second Lloyd George Centennial Lecture on the Future of the Global Order. Kono delivered remarks and engaged in a conversation with Dr. Michael

Green, director of the Georgetown University Asian Studies Program, after which he took questions from the audience. Kono discussed challenges facing the world and his country, as well as the current state of Japanese relations with the United States, North Korea, China, Russia and the Middle East. Regarding the relationship between China and Japan, he said the two countries “share a responsibility to promote peace, stability and prosperity” in the region. He also spoke about his time on the Hilltop, where he learned the importance of having “the heart of a citizen” but also a “bird’s-eye view,” tackling global challenges by striking the right balance between “what it should be” and “what it can be.”

Former Secretary of State John Kerry Visits Campus for a Discussion on Democracy

OCTOBER 5, 2 018 Former Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry visited Georgetown to talk about his new book, Every Day is Extra, with retired Rear Admiral John Kirby, who teaches a course called National Security and Communications for Georgetown’s Master of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) program.

In his remarks, Kerry shared his belief that democracy is “in trouble” because of “an absence of leadership to hold people accountable.” He also called for getting big money and gerrymandering out of politics.

A CENTURY OF SERVICE TO THE WORLD

SFS turns 100 in 2019

At the conclusion of World War I, the leaders of the United States, Great Britain, France and Italy met in Versailles to imagine a world in which greater global cooperation, commerce and cross-cultural connection could ensure peace and prosperity. At the same time, leaders in the United States imagined a school to train young people for the task of serving the world in this very way—the first American school of international affairs. And, appropriately, its home would be at Georgetown

University, with its foundation of Jesuit values, including international engagement and service. For the last 99 years, SFS has created the modern study of international affairs, educating thousands of undergraduate and graduate students whose positive impact on the world has been immense. From presidents and foreign ministers, to filmmakers, ambassadors, college presidents, human rights workers and technology experts, SFS graduates have risen to the challenge issued by the school’s founder to “effectively solve the problems of tomorrow.”

“The peoples of the world constitute one huge family, whose interests are common and whose members are interdependent ... Unprepared as we were for war, we have highly resolved that we shall not be unprepared for the peace.”

Father Edmund A. Walsh November 25, 1919, “The Aims of the School of Foreign Service”

A CALL FOR NOMINATIONS FOR ALUMNI CENTENNIAL HONORS!

During the Centennial Celebration year, SFS will be honoring alumni who embody the spirit of service that is central to our mission. We are now soliciting nominations for these SFS Centennial Honors. In a single short paragraph, please identify an SFS alumnus or alumna (by name, degree, and graduation year) whose service and impact on the world deserves the highest recognition.

SEND Your nomination to: will.layman@ georgetown.edu or visit sfs100.georgetown.edu to fill out an online form.

Top: The leaders from the Big Four (Great Britain, Italy, France, and United States) at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Left: Georgetown President Edward B. Bunn and President Eisenhower at the dedication of the Walsh building in 1958. Above: Alumnus King Felipe VI of Spain (MSFS’95).

THE SECOND CENTURY

As SFS prepares for the Centennial, it has set four goals for the future:

During the 2019-2020 academic year, we will celebrate the SFS Centennial, convening our community for a series of celebrations, conversations, lectures and gatherings. Join us as we look back at our legacy and ahead to the next century, which will redefine the study and practice of diplomacy, global service and cultural connection.

Celebrations

NOVEMBER 15-17

2019 SFS Centennial Gala Weekend featuring substantive discussions with alumni and faculty about the greatest issues confronting the world, followed by a gala dinner at the National Building Museum.

MARCH 2020

The Ultimate Diplomatic Ball which will discuss and celebrate the SFS impact on world diplomacy with students, faculty and luminary members of the extended diplomatic community.

01 Engaging the Challenges of the 21st Century: SFS faculty expertise and curriculum will reflect the new challenges facing the global order, including the role of business in global affairs and diplomacy, the impact of science and technology, the importance of human development and poverty reduction, and the role of culture, religion and narrative arts in international relations.

02 Making SFS Even More Global: By increasing international financial aid, SFS will attract an increasingly internationally diverse student body. By making a global experience available to every undergraduate, SFS will teach students how to effect change in a global context and test their skills beyond the Hilltop.

03 Educating a New Generation of Problem Solvers: The world faces serious problems, from climate change to global conflicts, which demand new skills and approaches that will integrate theory and practice across disciplines. SFS has created the Centennial Labs, a new program of applied learning that puts students in real world situations where they can develop and implement solutions.

04 Designing a Collaborative and Inspirational Home for International Affairs at Georgetown: Reimagining SFS's physical space in the nation's capital will encourage collaboration across Georgetown, unifying the campus and creating a renovated home to inspire the SFS mission.

Top left : Healy Hall Top right: Professors Charles Kupchan and John McNeill lead discussion in Healy Hall. Bottom left: Professor Cynthia Wei and students in Examining Crises Through the Lens of Science class. Bottom right: Fatima Salman (MSFS’18) climbing the ruins of Wadi Rum in Jordan.

SAVE THE DATE for a weekend of special events concluding with the WALSH SCHOOL of FOREIGN SERVICE

CENTENNIAL GALA

Saturday, November 16th, 2019

National Building Museum • Washington, D.C.

OTHER WEEKEND ACTIVITIES TO INCLUDE:

Friday, November 15, 2019

A stage performance by Oscar-nominated actor David Strathairn of My Report to the World, honoring Jan Karski

Saturday, November 16, 2019

A day of on-campus lectures, discussions and master classes hosted by esteemed alumni and faculty

REACH OUT TO US AT sfsevents@georgetown.edu WITH ANY QUESTIONS.