IGL Newsletter: January 2020

Since the Holocaust, we have often repeated “never again”, but too often the world has failed to prevent genocidal violence, making “never again” an empty slogan. The ongoing conflicts in Syria and Myanmar have ensured that genocide and mass atrocities are once again headline news.

Why do people commit genocide and kill in large numbers? How do they commit mass atrocities? What can be done to prevent and halt such conscience-shocking atrocities? Read more...

Poverty and financial inequity are a global crisis. What is an effective way to address these issues? Microfinance could be a potential solution. The central idea behind microfinance is to provide financial resources to economically underdeveloped regions in the forms of microloans, microsavings, and microinsurance. Allowing access to these initiatives in areas where financial resources are in high demand is key. Additionally, financial inclusion strategies in the form of literacy programs and establishing more permanent Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) are also important factors in developing a more sustainable ecosystem across the world. Read more...

The Empower Program at the Institute for Global Leadership seeks to motivate, educate, and provide resources for aspiring social entrepreneurs at Tufts University. To empower students who seek to solve the world’s social, cultural, economic, and environmental issues through private initiative, the program supports three different types of fellowships.

The Social Entrepreneurship Grant funds students who wish to launch or continue working on their existing social ventures. By providing travel, accommodation, and other funding, Empower allows students to conduct the research needed to get their social entrepreneurship ventures off the ground. Read more...

As a first year student, Nicci Mattey enrolled in EPIIC 2018-19, Migration in a Turbulent World. She participated in the Program Committee, where she conceptualized, enacted and moderated the panel on Gender and Migration. Over the summer, she interned at the Immigration Hub in Washington, DC, with IGL Alumna Kerri Talbot, who had been EPIIC's weekend immersion speaker. She also became involved with the Tufts Chapter of Amnesty International, housed at the IGL. Watch the video...

This past November, on a brisk London night, IGL Director Professor Abi Williams delivered a talk on the United Nations in a Changing Global Order for an audience of Tufts Alumni and Tufts students currently studying abroad at Oxford. The talk took place in Winston House—a beautiful event space lined with portraits and Georgian architectural details.

Drawing on his own experience as Director of Strategic Planning for former UN Secretaries-General Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-Moon, Dr. Williams observed that the fate of the UN concerns all those with a stake in the effectiveness and legitimacy of the global order.  He noted that the foundations of that order are creaking under the weight of myriad challenges from militant extremism, to populism, to climate change.  He highlighted the contributions that the UN is making in peace and security, notably peacekeeping, as well as its normative leadership. Read more...

On December 4, the Institute for Global Leadership held the inaugural Jonathan Moore Memorial Lecture on Moral Global Leadership to honor the memory and impact of one of its long-standing board members, Amb. Jonathan Moore.

Amb. Samantha Power, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in the Obama Administration and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, gave the inaugural address on “The Education of an Idealist: What I Have Learned Inside and Outside Government”.  She is currently the Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and the William D. Zabel ’61 Professor of Practice in Human Rights at Harvard Law School. Read more...

The Tufts Latin American Committee (LAC) hosted its second panel of the semester on the Colombian peace process and its connection to security in Latin America. The panel featured Tufts alumni Mauricio Artiñano (A’06, EPIIC’04) of the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia and Helaina Stein (A’10, EPIIC’08) of the United States Mission to the Organization of American States (OAS). Through Artiñano’s and Stein’s respective experiences with the region, the panel explored the context of the Colombian conflict, the current state of affairs surrounding the peace agreement, and the future of the peace process given domestic and international developments. Read more...

The Middle East Research Group, Women in International Relations and ALLIES will co-sponsor a panel on “U.S. Policy in the Middle East”, welcoming back three IGL alumni: Sarah Arkin, Rachel Brandenburg, and Negar Razavi.

Sarah Arkin (EPIIC’04, Exposure’04-06) is the Deputy Staff Director on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee; she was formerly a Foreign Policy Advisor in the U.S. House of Representatives and a Foreign Affairs Officer with the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. Rachel Brandenburg (EPIIC’03, NIMEP’03-05) is Senior Policy Adviser to Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin; she was formerly director of the Scowcroft Center Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council and Director of the Levant Team at the U.S. Department of Defense. Negar Razavi (EPIIC’04, NIMEP’04-06) is a political anthropologist with a focus on critical security studies, expertise, gender, race, and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Her research specifically examines the role of policy experts and think tanks in shaping U.S. security policies towards Iran and Egypt. She received her PhD in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania and is teaching at William and Mary as a Visiting Assistant Professor in anthropology. Learn more...

Preventing Genocide and Mass Atrocities
March 26-28, 2020

The 35th Annual Norris and Margery Bendetson EPIIC International Symposium: Preventing Genocide and Mass Atrocities. Three days of debate and discussion on the challenges of creating effective policies to address mass atrocities and genocide, from early prevention and warning to intervention, from international legal norms and accountability to the role of the media. For more information on panels and speakers, go here.