SAVE THE DATES! 

WACA is  pleased to announce that the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh will graciously host the Spring Leadership Meeting for Councils on June 8-9, one day before the WACA National Board's Summer Meeting on June 10.  The program opens with a welcome reception (to which a prominent foreign policy expert has been invited) on Thursday, June 8. Spring Leadership workshops will be held from 8:30 am to 3:30 pm on Friday, June 9. Including a keynote luncheon with  Chris Howard, President of Robert Morris University. 

Dr. Howard is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and earned a doctorate in politics as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. He also has an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School. Dr. Howard's service to his country began as a helicopter pilot, then as an intelligence officer, where he was assigned to the elite Joint Special Operations Command. After 9/11, he served in Afghanistan in the Air Force Reserve and was awarded the Bronze Star. He also served as the Reserve Air Attaché to Liberia. Dr. Howard won the Campbell Trophy, the nation's highest academic award for a senior college football player. Dr. Howard is the founder and a trustee of the Impact Young Lives Foundation, a nonprofit organization that brings South African college students of color to the US for summer educational and cultural tours.

WACA is currently negotiating room blocks at two hotels (for up to three nights in downtown Pittsburgh). The full Spring Leadership Meeting agenda, activities such as visits to The Andy Warhol Museum and Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, and the program registration fee and hotel information, will be announced as soon as possible.  

We look forward to seeing you in Pittsburgh! 

Congratulations to the following seven Councils on thier selection to participate in the America's Diplomats film screening and discusion program, sponsored by WACA and the American Academy of Diplomacy:

• Greater Cincinnati World Affairs Council
• Dayton Council on World Affairs
• Peoria Area World Affairs Council
• World Affairs Council of Kentucky and S. Indiana
• Institute of World Affairs (Milwaukee)
• Santa Fe Council on International Relations
• World Affairs Council of Central Florida

The American Academy of Diplomacy conducted a highly competitive application process and is keen for its speakers to engage with and understand American public opinion on U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy. WACA will administer grants of $1,500 per Council for programs scheduled this April to June. 

WACA will host  Howard W. French on his new book,  Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power , for this month's Cover to Cover conference call Tuesday, April 11, at 2:00-2:30 PM ET.

Howard. W. French is Associate Professor of Journalism at Columbia University. He wrote from Africa for The Washington Post, and later was The New York Times bureau chief in Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan, and China. French is the recipient of two Overseas Press Club awards and a two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee. He has written for The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and Rolling Stone, among other national publications.

"Everything Under the Heavens is the most persuasive account I've ever read of how China's history shapes its foreign policy and that of its neighbors today. A subtle and beautifully written book that offers surprising lessons for how Americans and Asians should respond to China's rise. Strongly recommended for policy makers and citizens alike." - Susan Shirk, Chair of 21st Century China Center, University of California, San Diego.

May's Cover to Cover will feature Thomas Wright on his new book,   All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the 21st Century and the Future of American Power  (available May 23), on Thursday, May 25, at 2:00-2:30 PM ET . Wright is director of the Project on International Order and Strategy, as well as a fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe, at the Brookings  Institution. ( Full bio ).

World Affairs Councils of America President and CEO Bill Clifford  received an appointment last month as Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute (FPI) at The Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies. He has also joined the editorial board of the SAIS Review. 

Bill's FPI colleague,  Souad Mekhennet , will be WACA's  Cover to  Cover author on June 13, the publication date of her compelling and evocative memoir , I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad.  Mekhennet is a correspondent for The Washington Post's national security desk, and she has reported on terrorism for The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, and NPR. 

The WACA National Office is proud to recognize the International Affairs Forum as Council of the Month for the 2,600-word profile published by Michigan's Bridge Magazine: Retired Diplomats Bring the World, and a Dose of Civility, to Traverse City.

"A dispassionate analysis of political and world events has been a guiding force for former U.S. diplomats Jack Segal and his wife, Karen Puschel, since they took over the International Affairs Forum of Traverse City in 2012," the article makes clear. 

"The lectures that IAF sponsors routinely sell out and, in a region that can be fiercely divided in its politics, the couple and the speakers they bring in have managed to be at once fair-minded and thought-provoking in ways that promote discussion rather than shouting," the piece continues. " That's important in a place like Northwest Michigan, which brings together the mostly progressive community of Traverse City with a Trump-supporting region that surrounds it."

With the new administration, IAF has increased its programs. Recent speakers include: Steven Simon, former White House director for the Middle East; retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral David Titley, who discussed challenges to U.S. security linked to climate change; Sally Howell, director of the University of Michigan-Dearborn Center for Arab American Studies; and Robert Ford, former U.S. ambassador to Syria. 

 

This year's National Competition will feature a welcome reception at the  United States Institute of Peace , on  Friday, April 28, at 4:30-6:00 PM.  For Topics, Study Guide, and other information click  here . 

Please see the 2017 Program Schedule and stay tuned for updates. 

This year's  AWQ Study Guide , is also on our website. 

   

Travel with Council Leaders - hear them lecture on Travel the World tours from the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia!

2017 travel schedule includes trips to: 

• Mimi Gregory, VP and Program Chairman, Naples Council on World Affairs, Cruise the Face of Europe:  May 15 - 30
• Dr. Carla Thorson, Senior VP of Programs, WAC of Northern California, Circumnavigation of Iceland: Aug. 1 - 9 
• Kay Maxwell, Executive Director, World Affairs Forum (Stamford), Silk Road Odyssey: Oct. 1 - 20
• Derrick Olsen, President, WAC of Oregon, Trade Routes of Coastal Iberia: Oct. 9 -17
• Ambassador Mark Johnson, Founder, WAC of Montana, Mystique of the Orient: Oct. 17 - 29
• Dr. Jerry Leach, fmr. President, World Affairs Councils of America, Inside Morocco: Oct. 20 - Nov. 2

Contact www.wacphila.org/travel  or call 1-800-942-5004 , ext.  209  or 217 .