The Kozmetsky Center at St. Edward's University provides a forum for global dialogue and exchange of diverse perspectives among the academic, policy and private-sector communities-
On Tuesday April 17, the Kozmetsky Center will convene an evening forum in the Jones Global Events Center at 7:00-9:30 featuring leading policy officials and academics representing nations of the transatlantic community, Russia and China to discuss challenges to the rules and traditions and values of the existing Western liberal order. Forum participants will explore the pressures on domestic and international political and financial institutions and communities to adapt to the changing global power configuration and rapidly evolving international security, economic, financial and social developments. This will be the fourth conference event on transatlantic security funded by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI National Resource Program grant in cooperation with the Center for European Studies and Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at University of Texas, Austin.
On Tuesday April 24, the Kozmetsky Center of Excellence will host a screening of Ai Weiwei’s award-winning documentary film: “Human Flow”. With over 65 million people around the world being forced from their homes to escape famine, climate change and war in the greatest human displacement since World War II, this documentary features interviews with immigrant refugees providing first-person insights into their experiences. Viewers of the film will explore a chain of urgent human stories that stretch across the globe in countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, France, Greece, Germany, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, and Turkey. Following the broadcast of the film, students will have the opportunity to discuss and refine their current understanding of the true scale of the international refugee crisis in the twenty-first century.
On Tuesday March 20, 2018, the Kozmetsky Center of Excellence will feature a forum of leading international experts who will explore security challenges of the cyber arena. Panel speakers will offer a diversity of professional perspectives representing academics, business, computer technology, law and domestic and global policy. Panel speakers will assess and discuss both public and private sector measures that address cybersecurity threats in the United States and abroad. In addition, each panelist will also have the opportunity to introduce individual research efforts, varied national perspectives, and proposed solutions to contemporary threats facing users of modern technology all over the world. This Kozmetsky Center forum seeks to provide the St. Edward’s University student body and the broader community with a unique opportunity to learn and discuss the digital threats of the 21st century with prominent authorities in the fields of information security and technology, cyber security and artificial intelligence.
Profiles for Contributing Speakers
On Tuesday February 13, the Kozmetsky Center will feature a panel of expert scholars devoting their research agendas to exploring the intersection of religion and domestic and global societies.
Profiles for Contributing Speakers
On Thursday December 7, we will hold a lecture entitled “Invisible: Surviving the Cambodian Genocide” offered by Dr. Fran Pilch, Professor Emeritus of the United States Air Force Academy. Dr. Pilch’s lecture will incorporate insights from the course she developed for the Air Force Academy entitled “War Crimes, Genocide, and Human Rights,” and extensive research included in her book released on this topic in 2017. Dr. Pilch served as a Fulbright-Hays Scholar in South Africa and a Fulbright Scholar in Mongolia, where she taught International Law at the School of Diplomacy, National University of Mongolia, in Ulaanbaatar. In 2011-12, she was named the Case Carnegie Colorado Professor of the Year. She was awarded her B.A. from the University of Connecticut and her M.A. and Ph.D. in International Relations from Yale University. Dr. Pilch’s lecture will concentrate on the actual accounts of survivors of Pol Pot’s genocide which claimed the lives of an estimated two million people—more than one-fourth of the total Cambodian population. Her lecture is scheduled for 12:30-2:00 PM in Carter Auditorium.
The Kozmetsky Center is pleased to announce that Dr. Igor Okunev of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation in Moscow, Russia has been awarded a visiting scholar appointment for November 4-18, 2017 at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. He is the recipient of a competitive grant provided by his univeristy to support short-term visiting faculty posistions throughout the world. Professor Okunev was introduced to the St. Edward’s community when he participated in the Kozmetsky Center forum “International Policy and Academic Perspectives on the Impact of the Ukrainian Conflict” held in October 2014, followed by his April 2017 visit to St. Edward’s for the conference “Russia & the West: Significance, Challenges, Potential.”
Dr. Okunev earned his Ph.D. from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in 2011, where he currently serves as Vice Dean for Research in the School of Political Affairs and Associate Professor of Political Geography and Geopolitics. Among his teaching and research interests are political geography, geopolitics, comparative politics, and federalism. Dr. Okunev is the author of two books, Geopolitics of Microstates and Capital Cities as a Critical Geopolitics Mirror, and co-author of the textbooks Comparative Politics and World Regional Studies. He currently serves as executive secretary of the journal Comparative Politics Russia.
Dr. Okunev will be offering lectures and participating in seminar visits for courses at St.Edward's as well as providing a series of guest lectures on various aspects of Russia's foreign policy and world geopolitics sponsored by Global Austin and other community organizations.
On Wednesday evening November 8, the Kozmetsky Center will feature a forum entitled “Perspectives on Cuba’s Future: Exploring Policy Options & Paths for the U.S.-Cuba Bilateral Relationship”. The session will feature leading specialists of the academic and business communities on various aspects of Cuban society, economy and foreign policy offering a diversity of perspectives on Cuba and the United States-Cuba bilateral relationship. Our objectives for this evening event are to heighten student and public awareness of political and economic circumstances in contemporary Cuba, and to explore various policy options for achieving long-term desired end-states in the United States relationship with our geographically close neighboring nation of Cuba. The session will devote significant focus to assessing the state of Cuba’s economy, investment opportunities and potential contributions of the American and Texas private sector and civic engagement to Cuba’s future and the development of the United States relationship with the island of Cuba.
Profiles for Contributing Speakers
Please click here to see the Fall 2018 Council of Foreign Relations Conference Call Series.
These conference calls are open to all students; please RSVP to Alesondra Cruz [acruz9 [at] stedwards.edu] and Theresa Zelazny [theresab [at] stedwards.edu] if you would like to attend.