The Norris and Margery Bendetson EPIIC International Symposium
The 37th Annual Norris and Margery Bendetson EPIIC International Symposium
March 31- April 2, 2022
The international symposium is an annual public forum designed and enacted by EPIIC students. It features international practitioners, academics, public intellectuals, activists and journalists who come to Tufts each year for three days of discussion and debate in panels and small-group discussions determined by students in the EPIIC course. Students who conduct research projects also have the opportunity to present alongside the invited experts.
The Boston Globe made this assessment of the EPIIC Symposium:
"At a time when the national discourse seems forever reduced to its lowest common denominator…to sound bites and slogans…EPIIC is a refreshing antidote. Far from looking to simplify the world, the symposium aims to teach students to view life in a way that respects complex human systems."
Read the TuftsNow Article about #EPIIC2020 Symposium
Genocide and mass atrocities are “a direct assault on universal human values,” says Williams. Atrocities force the persecuted to flee their homelands, increasing “humanitarian need, which stretches the capacities and resources of nations, of international organizations, of aid agencies, and NGOs.”
Keynote address "A World between Hope and Despair", Thursday, March 31
The Honorable Margot Wallström, Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden and Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2014 to 2019 and Minister for Nordic Cooperation from 2016 to 2019. The Honorable Margot Wallström was elected to the Swedish Parliament in 1979 before serving as minister for youth, women, and consumer affairs from 1988 to 1991, minister of culture from 1994 to 1996, and minister of social affairs from 1996 to 1998. Before taking up her appointment as European Union commissioner in 1999, she worked with Worldview Global Media in Colombo, Sri Lanka. From 1999 to 2004, Mrs. Wallström served as the European commissioner for the environment and then as first vice president of the European Commission from 2004 to 2010. In 2007, she became chair of the Ministerial Initiative of the Council for Women World Leaders. In 2010, the secretary-general of the United Nations appointed her the first special representative on sexual violence in conflict until 2012. From 2012 to 2014, she was chair of the board of Lund University, Sweden. She then served as Sweden’s minister of foreign affairs from 2014 to 2019.
Thursday, March 31
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12:00pm (EDT) |
Welcome: Anthony Monaco, President, Tufts University Introduction: Dr. Abi Williams, Director, Institute for Global Leadership, and Professor of the Practice of International Politics, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy Keynote Address: The Honorable Margot Wallström, "A World between Hope and Despair" (Distler Performance Hall) |
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7:00pm (EDT) |
Social Media: Contending with Extremism and Misinformation in the Digital Age (ASEAN)
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Friday, April 1
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12:30pm (EDT) |
Power, Equity and the Global Climate Crisis (JCC 270)
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2:30pm (EDT) |
Space: The Final Frontier (JCC 270)
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4:00pm (EDT) |
Expert-led, Small-Group Discussion Sessions
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7:00pm (EDT) |
Global Racism: Past, Present and Future (Cabot ASEAN Auditorium)
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Saturday, April 2
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10:00am (EDT) |
The Paradox of Setting Global Norms and the Selective Application of R2P (Cabot ASEAN Auditorium)
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11:30am (EDT) |
Borders, Human Rights, and Identity: The Global Governance of Migration (Cabot ASEAN Auditorium)
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2:30pm (EDT) |
Expert-led, Small-Group Discussion Sessions
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4:30pm (EDT) |
Development, Finance and Trade in the Context of Globalized Inequality (Cabot ASEAN Auditorium)
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Panelists and Discussion Leaders
Lucian Ashworth
Lucian Ashworth is a Professor of Political Science at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. Before joining the Department Lucian Ashworth was at the University of Limerick in Ireland for sixteen years. He is the author of A History of International Thought (Routledge, 2014) and is currently writing a book on international relations and time for the Routledge ‘Worlding Beyond the West’ series.
Noele Crossley
Dr. Noele Crossley is Lecturer (Teaching) in International Organisations and International Security in the Department of Political Science at University College London. She received a PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education from LSE and is a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. She has worked at the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, and she is a member of the Oxford Network of Peace Studies (OxPeace). She has taught a wide range of courses in International Relations and Political Science at LSE, Nazarbayev University, UCL, and Oxford. She has extensive reviewer experience and has reviewed articles for Cooperation & Conflict, Ethics and International Affairs, International Studies Quarterly, Politics, and Review of International Studies, among others. Noele is the author of Evaluating the Responsibility to Protect: Mass Atrocity Prevention as a Consolidating Norm in International Society (Routledge, 2016). The empirical chapters of the book draw heavily on fieldwork in Sudan and Kenya for in-depth case studies of recent conflicts. She has published in African Security, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Global Governance, Global Responsibility to Protect, and South African Journal of International Affairs.
Kiran Nasir Gore
Kiran Nasir Gore is Counsel in the Law Offices of Charles H. Camp, PC, working on all facets of international dispute resolution. She is the co-author of “Nation States Must Comply With Their Responsibility to Protect Ukraine Against the Russian Federation’s Ongoing War Crimes” in the March 2022 edition of The World Financial Review. Over the past ten years, Ms. Gore has developed expertise in public and private international law, foreign investment strategies, and international dispute resolution. Her current and past clients include governments, corporations, institutions, and private individuals. Ms. Gore advocates before US courts, ad hoc arbitration panels, commercial and investment tribunals, and investigative authorities. In addition, she provides strategic advice on treaty law, conflict of laws, and legislative reform. Ms. Gore supports GW Law’s International and Comparative Law Program by teaching Fundamental Issues in US Law, a course for foreign LLM students to better understand the US legal system, alongside two different legal research and writing courses. Ms. Gore is also the coach and advisor to GW Law’s Vis Commercial Arbitration Moot team. She is frequently invited to speak at conferences and publish articles on international law, international development, and dispute resolution. She serves as Associate Editor of the ICSID Review – Foreign Investment Law Journal, Associate Editor of the Kluwer Arbitration Blog, and is a consultant to Wolters Kluwer’s international and comparative law publishing program, where she provides strategic advice on acquisition, development, and marketing of thought leadership content. Previously Ms. Gore was a Senior Associate in the Washington, DC office of Three Crowns LLP, an elite global law firm focused on international dispute resolution (2014-2017); and before that, an Associate in the New York office of DLA Piper LLP, one of the world’s leading large law firms (2010-2014). Early in her career, Ms. Gore was a judicial intern to Hon. James C. Francis, IV, Magistrate Judge in the Southern District of New York and a law clerk in the Office of General Counsel of Michael Kors, Inc. USA, a publicly traded, luxury goods company.
Bayar Goswami
Bayar Goswami is an Arsenault Doctoral Fellow at the Institute of Air and Space Law, McGill University. Prior to advancing his research career as a doctoral fellow, Bayar finished his LL.M. in Air and Space Law at McGill University and his first law degree at Nirma University, India. Among other honors and awards, Bayar is a recipient of Erin J.C. Arsenault Fellowship for both his Doctorate and Masters research and notably was also awarded the Assad Kotaite Graduate and Postdoctoral Fellowship by the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization. Presently, as the Principal Researcher and Associate Editor, Bayar is involved in the project to curate the McGill Encyclopedia of International Space Law at SpaceLawPedia.com and is also playing a key role, as the Research Coordinator, in the research and publication of the McGill Manual on International Law Applicable to Military Uses of Outer Space (the MILAMOS Project). Bayar has made significant contributions to leading research undertaken at McGill, like the International Study on Global Space Governance and the Space Security Index, 2016 and 2017 (SSI) and has also made notable presentations at numerous international forums including the UN COPUOS and the UN/Germany High-Level Forum. Bayar has been a TEDx Speaker and is continuously working for the development and promotion of space law and is passionate about fueling discussions about the social sciences of outer space.
Errol Henderson
Errol A. Henderson is Associate Professor of International Relations (IR). He earned a PhD in Political Science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has authored 50 scholarly publications including five books—the latest on the role of religion in IR, Scriptures, Shrines, Scapegoats and World Politics (2020, University of Michigan Press) is available free online through the TOME Initiative; and another on the African American liberation struggle of the 1960s-70s, The Revolution Will not be Theorized (2019, SUNY Press) is free online as well. His African Realism: International Relations Theory and Africa's Wars in the Postcolonial Era (2015, Rowman & Littlefield) was a Choice “Outstanding Academic Title”. He is working on two books: (1) on the role of white racism in IR; and (2) black women in the Urban Peace and Justice Movement of the 1980s-90s in the US. Henderson established the Diasporas and Politics (DAP) project in 2019 to analyze the influence of racial and religious diasporas in world affairs. He is an original co-sponsor of the Liberation Film Series at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, MI. A member of a variety of professional, academic and activist organizations, Henderson is a veteran of the US Army. He also has been outspoken in challenging white supremacism in academia: Being Black at Penn State.
Gabriela Inchauste
Gabriela Inchauste (virtual) is a Lead Economist in the Poverty and Equity Global Practice of the World Bank. She currently leads work on Fiscal and Social Policies for poverty reduction and shared prosperity. Her research interests revolve around the distributional impact of fiscal policy, ex-ante analysis of the distributional impacts of policy reforms and understanding the channels through which economic growth improves labor market opportunities for poverty reduction. Prior to joining the Bank, she worked at the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank where she contributed to operational and analytical activities in a number of countries covering topics such as macroeconomic forecasting, public expenditure policy, poverty and social impact analysis, fiscal and debt sustainability analysis, post-disaster needs assessments, and subsidy reform. She has published articles in academic volumes and journals on fiscal policy in low-income countries, decentralization, the distributional impacts of taxes and social spending, macroeconomic shocks and the poor, the informal sector, and the role of remittances in developing countries.
Naima Isa Sebbi
Naima Isa Sebbi is a Feminist Lawyer and an activist with eight years’ experience working with NGO’s in Women’s Human rights, refugee rights, Human trafficking, Advocacy, programming and development. She currently works with FIDA-Uganda, an Association of women lawyers in Uganda as programs officer. She is Co-Chair of the Advocacy Policy and Research Committee at the Youth Advisory Board of Youth Against Slavery Movement (YASM), as well as the Operation Director at YASM. She was one of the key coordinators of a consortium in Uganda, which offered direct service provision for trafficking and sexual exploitation to victims/survivors. She has engaged at national (with Government entities and National Civil Society Organizations) and regional levels (East African Commission, African Union and regional Civil Society Organizations) on sexual gender based violence, especially on special Courts as a tool to curb trafficking. She was one of the women lawyers who petitioned East African Legislative Assembly on the East African Anti Trafficking Bill, East African Gender Bill and the East African Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) Bill. She was part of the task force for the Prevention in Trafficking of Persons Act hosted by Ministry of International Affairs. She has worked and coordinated initiatives towards combating trafficking and commercial exploitation of children and women in Uganda and the East African region. Her aspiration and devotion are to improve the lives of women and other marginalized groups in Uganda and Africa.
Karen Jacobsen
Karen Jacobsen is the Henry J. Leir Professor in Global Migration at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and directs the Refugees in Towns Project at the Feinstein International Center (Tufts). Professor Jacobsen’s current research explores urban displacement and global migration, with a focus on the livelihoods and financial resilience of migrants and refugees, and on climate- and environment-related mobility. In 2013-2014, she was on leave from Tufts, leading the Joint IDP Profiling Service (JIPS) at United Nations in Geneva. From 2000-2005, she directed the Alchemy Project, which explored the use of microfinance to support people in refugee camps and other displacement settings. Prof. Jacobsen’s Ph.D. in Political Science is from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her areas of expertise include refugee and migration issues, humanitarian assistance in developing countries, urban impact, and climate change and migration. She is currently at work on a book that examines the impact of displacement on cities. Her previous books include A View from Below: Conducting Research in Conflict Zones (with Mazurana and Gale, Cambridge UP 2013 ); and The Economic Life of Refugees (Lynne Rienner, 2005), which is widely used in courses on forced migration. She consults and works closely with UNHCR and other UN agencies and international NGOs. She is a citizen of both South Africa and the U.S., and splits her time between Brookline, MA and western Maine (Andover, ME).
Kaitlyn Johnson
Kaitlyn Johnson is deputy director and fellow of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Ms. Johnson supports the team’s strategic planning and research agenda. Her research specializes in topics such as space security, military space systems, and commercial and civil space policy. Ms. Johnson has written on national security space reorganization, threats against space assets, the commercialization of space, escalation and deterrence dynamics, and defense acquisition trends. She is also a cohost of the CSIS podcast Tech Unmanned, which features guests with both policy expertise and technical expertise in order to break through the national security jargon and technology hand-waving to get to the core of the technical realities of these emerging capabilities, benefits to development, and the barriers to success. Ms. Johnson holds an MA from American University in U.S. foreign policy and national security studies, with a concentration in defense and space security, and a BS from the Georgia Institute of Technology in international affairs.
Ariel Kraten
Ariel Kraten is Director and a Co-founder of GoBlu, she leads GoBlu’s ‘Pillar 1’ work with brands and retailers, including strategy development, training and capacity building, and implementation.Ariel then spent five years working with Big Brothers Big Sisters International, an NGO focused on mentoring, where she was fascinated by the challenge of rolling out a program in over a dozen different countries with different cultures and challenges. She then moved abroad again, this time to the Netherlands. She shifted her focus specifically to sustainability concerns linked to the apparel and textiles industry, working for four years at the sustainable fashion consultancy MADE-BY, most recently as a Senior Consultant, where her focus was on creating support tools for brands and helping them develop and apply the right sustainability strategy in light of environmental challenges. She enjoys making more technical topics, such as dyeing, approachable and interesting for product teams as well as CR teams, helping to build their knowledge, confidence, and impact.
Laura Kuhl
Laura Kuhl is Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and International Affairs at Northeastern University. Her research examines climate adaptation and resilience in developing countries. Prior to Northeastern, she completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Climate Policy Lab at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She has studied innovation, technology transfer and adoption for adaptation as well as mainstreaming adaptation in development policy in East Africa and Central America. Current projects examine global adaptation finance, transformational adaptation, and resilience and transformation in Puerto Rico. She has conducted fieldwork in Latin America, the Caribbean and East Africa and has collaborated with the Global Environment Facility (GEF), United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Michael Niconchuk
Michael (Mike) Niconchuk is a neuroscience researcher based at Beyond Conflict in Boston. Mike is the editor of The Field Guide for Barefoot Psychologists, a translational neuroscience and self-care book for young migrants and refugees in the MENA region, and he conducts research on stress, violence, and intergroup dynamics from a neurobiological perspective. Prior to Beyond Conflict, Mike spent 7 years working with post-conflict and displaced communities in Latin America and the Middle East, and has worked extensively with young people at risk of violence and conflict with the law. For three years, Mike worked as Emergency Response Coordinator in Za’atri Refugee Camp in Jordan, leading various projects for violence reduction, youth leadership, and alternative education. Mike has also worked with Syrian refugees in Germany and Canada, conducting research on the links between forced displacement, trauma, social cognition, decision-making, and social behavior.
Miles Pomper
Miles Pomper is a Senior Fellow in the Washington DC office of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey. His work focuses on nuclear energy, nuclear nonproliferation, nuclear security, and nuclear arms control. He holds a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University and a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University. Before joining CNS he served as Editor-in-Chief of Arms Control Today from 2003-2009. Previously, he was the lead foreign policy reporter for CQ Weekly and Legi-Slate News Service, where he covered the full range of national security issues before Congress, and a Foreign Service Officer with the US Information Agency.
Patrycja Sasnal
Dr. Patrycja Sasnal is a political scientist, Arabist and philosopher. She works as head of research at the Polish Institute of International Affairs. She is an expert of the Advisory Committee of the United Nations’ Human Rights Council. She is also a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations’ council, and the Polish Ombudsman office’s expert commission on migration. She was previously a Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington and an associate researcher at the American University in Beirut. She specializes in Middle Eastern studies, migration and political violence. She has written for The Guardian, Le Monde and Polityka. Her latest book is Arendt, Fanon and Political Violence in Islam (Routledge, 2019). Sasnal holds a PhD in political science. She is the author of the Council on Foreign Relations paper, “Domesticating the Giant: The Global Governance of Migration”.
Bret Schafer
Bret Schafer is a senior fellow and head of the Alliance for Securing Democracy's information manipulation team. Bret is the creator and manager of Hamilton 2.0, an online open-source dashboard tracking the outputs of Russian, Chinese, and Iranian state media outlets, diplomats, and government officials. As an expert in computational propaganda, state-backed information operations, and tech regulation, he has spoken at conferences around the globe and advised numerous governments and international organizations. His research has appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, and he has been interviewed on NPR, MSNBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, and the BBC. Prior to joining GMF, he spent more than ten years in the television and film industry, including stints at Cartoon Network and as a freelance writer for Warner Brothers. He also worked in Budapest as a radio host and in Berlin as a semi-professional baseball player in Germany’s Bundesliga. He has a BS in communications with a major in radio/television/film from Northwestern University, and a master’s in public diplomacy from the University of Southern California, where he was the editor-in-chief of Public Diplomacy Magazine.
Gauri Singh
Gauri Singh is Deputy Director-General of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and a career bureaucrat with an experience of over thirty years in policy formulation, implementation and policy advocacy in the field of renewable energy, sustainable development and livelihoods. She has worked at the federal level in the Government of India and in Madhya Pradesh. At the federal level, particularly in the field of new and renewable energy, she has vast experience of policy formulation, coordination, and international cooperation. Policy initiatives led by her include, the policy framework of National Solar Mission of India 2010, to build solar power capacities in India. More recently, she steered the rural development sector, in Madhya Pradesh. In this role she provided strategic guidance for planning and implementing large impact community led initiatives, for poverty reduction and sustainable development. She spearheaded the policy formulation, with a strong focus on climate resilience and adaptation, to support livelihoods of the existing self-help groups of 2 million poor women. She is an alumna of Delhi University, India with major in Economics.
Harjeet Singh
Harjeet Singh is a global expert on the issues of climate impacts, migration and adaptation and has been supporting countries across the world on tackling climate change. He also acts as the Strategic Advisor: Global Partnerships to the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. Until recently, he has led ActionAid International’s climate change work globally. He is a member of the United Nations’ Technical Expert Group on Comprehensive Risk Management (TEG-CRM) under Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage. He has served as a board member of Climate Action Network International (CAN-I) and the Global Network of Civil Society Organisations for Disaster Reduction (GNDR). Harjeet has co-founded Satat Sampada, a social enterprise that promotes sustainable and environmental solutions such as organic food and farming in India and beyond. He writes regularly on climate change and disaster resilience issues and tweets at @harjeet11.
Karen Smith
Karen Smith was appointed as Special Adviser of the United Nations Secretary-General on the Responsibility to Protect in January 2019. She currently teaches International Relations at the Institute for History at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and is an honorary research associate at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, where she was an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Studies from 2011-2017. Before that, she taught at the universities of Stellenbosch (2000-2010) and the Western Cape (2003-2004), both in South Africa. Between 2006 and 2007, she served as Secretary-General of the United Nations Association of South Africa. Dr Smith holds a PhD in International Relations from Stellenbosch University (2005) She has a research focus on non-Western contributions to international relations theory, as well as on the changing global order. Her most recent publication is a co-edited book: International Relations from the Global South.
Benjamin Staats
, a second-year graduate student at the Space Policy Institute at The George Washington University. He holds a B.S. from James Madison University, an M.S. from Columbus State University, and an M.A. from the United States Air Force’s Air University. He is also a graduate of the Schriever Space Scholar program. He has been serving in the United States Army over the last fifteen years, the last four of which have been as a Space Operations Officer where he has experience with the tactical and operational utilization of space capabilities by the joint military force. His research interests range from the implications of space on national security to the topic of planetary defense. In his free time, Ben enjoys time with his family, rock climbing, and hiking.
Fatema Z. Sumar
Leveraging her expertise in international development, foreign policy, diplomacy, and advocacy, Fatema Z. Sumar leads efforts to fight poverty by transforming global systems in reaching vulnerable populations. As Vice President of Compact Operations at the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), Ms. Sumar oversees all compacts which are MCC’s signature grant investment vehicle to reduce poverty through economic growth. In this role, she manages all of MCC’s technical and regional divisions working on infrastructure, the environment and climate change, the private sector, gender and social inclusion, human and community development, land and agriculture, procurement, financial management, strategic partnerships, and contracts and grant management globally. She previously served as MCC’s Deputy Vice President for Europe, Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America where she managed all MCC compacts in these regions. Ms. Sumar returned to MCC after working in civil society as the Vice President of Global Programs at Oxfam America where she oversaw regional development and humanitarian response to fight the injustice of poverty. Her work contributed to initiatives on gender justice, climate justice, local humanitarian leadership, strategic monitoring and evaluation, digital rights, and grant management systems. Ms. Sumar has a distinguished career in the U.S. government in both executive and legislative branches. She previously served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia at the U.S. Department of State where she led U.S. efforts to expand regional economic and energy connectivity and as a Presidential Management Fellow (PMF). In Congress, she was a Senior Professional Staff Member on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee focused on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the broader region. Ms. Sumar sits on Advisory Boards for Princeton, Cornell, and Indiana universities. Her work has been published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, The New Republic, The Hill, and other outlets. She is a frequent guest speaker and has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate.
Peter Tinti
Peter Tinti is a writer, researcher, and photographer covering conflict, security, human rights, and organized crime, with a particular focus on the Sahel and Latin America. Among other outlets, Tinti’s writing, photography, and analysis has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Vice, and World Politics Review. He has also worked as a consulting producer for VICE on HBO. Tinti is currently a Lecturer at the Committee on International Relations, University of Chicago and conducts research for a variety of research institutes, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations. He is the author, with Tuesday Reitano, of Migrant, Refugee, Smuggler, Savior and was part of the team for Foreign Policy awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Book and Journalism Award, New Media category.
Amali Tower
Amali Tower is the founder and executive director of Climate Refugees. She has extensive global experience in refugee protection, refugee resettlement and in forced migration and displacement contexts, having worked globally for numerous NGOs, the UN Refugee Agency and the US Refugee Admissions Program. Years of interviewing refugees fleeing conflict afforded her the chance to hear their stories of also fleeing climate change. Through this, Climate Refugees was born. She has conducted country and regional case studies and research in climate-induced displacement contexts, including in urban and camp settings. Her research on climate, conflict and displacement in the Lake Chad Basin in Africa’s Sahel was presented as evidence of loss and damage at COP 26 in Glasgow. She is a member of the World Economic Forum Expert Network in Migration, Human Rights & Humanitarian Response, the UC Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality & Anti-Discrimination Law (climate refugees & immigrant justice working group). She sits on the advisory board of The Center for Climate and Security in Washington D.C. From being asked to respond to Afghan evacuations to overseeing UNHCR operations for Syrian resettlement to the United States, Amali is frequently consulted for her expertise, including in rapid deployments, humanitarian and high-profile contexts. She also frequently consults in areas of human rights, campaigning, advocacy, legislation and public policy. Amali serves displaced populations as an experienced defender and her clients as a partner and advisor. She developed her work ethic, world views and deep commitment to forcibly displaced populations through a lived experience of instability, and as an immigrant, migrant, and even once, an asylum-seeker. She’s born of that education, life in multiple countries, and also those at Columbia University, where she has a Master of International Affairs focused in Human Rights from the School of International and Public Affairs, and a BA in International Development Studies from UCLA. She resides in New York City.
Oliver Wilcox
Oliver Wilcox (A92) is Director (Acting) for Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) at the U.S. Department of State. Previously, he served as State’s CVE Deputy Director and CVE Program Director. Before State, Oliver worked in different Middle East positions at the U.S. Agency for International Development, including in Tunisia and Yemen. He earned an MA in political science from the University of Virginia, an MA with a distinction in Arab studies from Georgetown University, and a BA with honors in political science and Spanish from Tufts University.
Heather Williams
Heather Williams (virtual) is a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation and a professor at Pardee RAND Graduate School. She previously served as associate director of the Strategy, Policy, and Operations Program (SPOP) within the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC). She focuses on violent extremism, homeland security, Middle East regional issues, and intelligence policy and methodology. Williams joined RAND from the National Intelligence Council, where she served as deputy national intelligence officer for Iran and acting national intelligence officer for Iran. In her twelve years within the intelligence community, she worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Special Operations Intelligence Center, and the Department of Homeland Security/Transportation Security Administration. She served as a founding member of the Foreign Fighter Task Force and served three overseas tours supporting Special Operations Forces counterterrorism operations. Williams holds an M.S. in strategic intelligence from the National Intelligence University and a B.S. in U.S. foreign policy and national security from Boston University, and she was a Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholar.
