Tara Kangarlou is an award-winning global affairs journalist who has previously worked with news outlets such as NBC, CNN, CNN International, and Al Jazeera America. She is a frequent on-air contributor for various international news outlets covering the MENA region and global affairs and writes regularly for TIME magazine as well as other news platforms. She has also spent much time covering the rise and fall of ISIS, the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, as well as other pressing humanitarian issues worldwide. Born out of her extensive reporting and firsthand knowledge of the global refugee crisis, in 2016, she founded Art of Hope, the first American nonprofit that strictly focuses on supporting the mental well-being of war-torn refugees and IDPs in vulnerable host communities. She is also the author of the award-winning book "The Heartbeat of Iran", which is the first book available to the western audience that provides an unprecedented insight into the many nuances, textures, and complexities of real life in today's Iran - as told through the stories of ordinary people living inside the country. She is currently an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service teaching at the intersection of journalism and public diplomacy. Tara was born and raised in Tehran, Iran until she moved to the States in her late teens. At the moment, she splits her time between London and Washington. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature from UCLA and a Master’s Degree in Journalism from USC. Copies of Ms. Kangarlou's book, The Art of Hope, will be available for purchase and signing after the program.
Boston Public Library - Rabb Lecture Hall
David Allen is a historian of U.S. foreign relations. He was most recently a fellow in the International Security Program at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. David earned a PhD in History from Columbia University in 2019, with distinction. Before that, he took an MPhil in Historical Studies, with distinction, as well as a BA in History, with a double first, from Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Previously, David has held appointments as an Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at the Belfer Center; an Eisenhower Roberts Graduate Fellow at the Eisenhower Institute at Gettysburg College; a History and Policy Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation; and a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Project on Grand Strategy, Security, and Statecraft, appointed jointly by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program and Belfer Center. David taught as a core Lecturer at the Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs in Spring 2021. David has published academic articles in the International History Review, the Historical Journal, the Journal of Cold War Studies, the state-of-the-field volume Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, and an edited volume on international organizations. His work has received grants and honors from the Friends of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Previously a resident tutor at Leverett House, Harvard University, he lives and works with his family in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Outside academia, David has been a freelance classical music critic at The New York Times since 2014. He tweets on music, mostly, at @fafnerthekite.
Boston Public Library - Rabb Lecture Hall
Dr. Michael E. O’Hanlon
Boston Public Library - Rabb Lecture Hall
Ambassador Jorge Heine
Boston Public Library - Rabb Lecture Hall
Dr. Karen Jacobsen
Boston Public Library - Rabb Lecture Hall
Ambassador Audra Plepyté Ambassador Kristjan Prikk Ambassador Maris Selga Ambassador Paula Dobriansky
Boston Public Library - Rabb Lecture Hall
Kimberly Flowers and Alex de Waal
Virtual
David M. Lampton is Senior Research Fellow at the SAIS Foreign Policy Institute and Professor Emeritus at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies—SAIS. For more than two decades he was Hyman Professor and Director of China Studies at SAIS. Lampton is former Chairman of the The Asia Foundation in San Francisco, former President of the National Committee on United States-China Relations in New York, and former Dean of Faculty at SAIS. His many publications, academic and popular, deal with US-China Relations, Chinese Foreign Policy, Chinese Leadership, Chinese Politics, and Chinese Power. His most recent volume tells the exciting story of China’s drive to build high-speed railways in Southeast Asia—Rivers of Iron. He received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University in political science where, as an undergraduate student, he was a firefighter. Lampton has an honorary doctorate from the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Far Eastern Studies. He is a Life Trustee on the Board of Trustees of Colorado College and was in the US Army Reserve in the enlisted and commissioned ranks.
Boston Public Library - Rabb Lecture Hall
Tom Andrews, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar.
Virtual
Dr. Evan Ellis is a research professor of Latin American Studies at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, with a focus on the region’s relationships with China and other non-Western Hemisphere actors, as well as transnational organized crime and populism in the region. Dr. Ellis has published over 330 works, including five books: the 2009 book China in Latin America: The Whats and Wherefores, the 2013 book The Strategic Dimension of Chinese Engagement with Latin America, the 2014 book China on the Ground in Latin America, the 2018 book Transnational Organized Crime in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the 2022 book China Engages Latin America: Distorting Development and Democracy? Dr. Ellis previously served on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff (S/P) with responsibility for Latin America and the Caribbean (WHA), as well as International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) issues. In his academic capacity, Dr. Ellis has presented his work in a broad range of business and government forums in 27 countries four continents. He has given testimony on Latin American security issues to US Congress on various occasions, has discussed his work regarding China and other external actors in Latin America on a broad range of radio and television programs, and is cited regularly in the print media in both the US and Latin America for his work in this area. Dr. Ellis has also been awarded the Order of Military Merit José María Córdova by the Colombian government for his scholarship on security issues in the region.
Boston Public Library - Rabb Lecture Hall
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