Made possible by a gift from Mary and Peter R. Dallman '51, The Great Issues Lecture series is aimed at making the Dartmouth community aware of and motivated to respond to the pressing international issues of the day, keeping alive President John Sloan Dickey's vision for international understanding and in particular the spirit of his Great Issues course.
Vivian Salama, national security reporter for The Wall Street Journal, in conversation with Spencer Boyer, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European & NATO Policy.
Salama has covered U.S. foreign policy and national security for nearly two decades, reporting from more than 80 countries. Over the course of her career, she has called Iraq, Egypt, Pakistan, Israel and the Palestinian territories and the United Arab Emirates home. Before moving to Washington, Salama was Baghdad bureau chief for the Associated Press, covering the rise and fall of the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, as well as Iran's growing influence across the region. She also covered the refugee and IDP crisis spurred by the violence, visiting camps across the Middle East. The experience inspired Salama to write a children's book -- The Long Journey Home -- about an innocent Syrian boy who is forced to flee his home because of the war.
Prior to her posting in Iraq, Salama had covered the Arab Spring uprisings -- and their fallout -- writing extensively about the political, economic and social implications of the protests. She also wrote at length about U.S. foreign policy in the region, as well as its evolution with the new regimes that came to power following the protests. Salama has also spent time in Yemen investigating the U.S. targeted killing program, traveling repeatedly to al-Qaeda strongholds in the country documenting civilian casualties.
Salama is a fluent Arabic speaker and has working knowledge in Spanish. While the bulk of her experience has been in the Middle East and South Asia, she has also reported in North Korea, the Balkans, and across East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and South America. She began her career working for television networks in New York City and Providence, Rhode Island.
Watch the recording of the event here.
Alinejad gained worldwide attention when she removed her hijab and posted a photo on her Facebook page standing proudly with her hair blowing in the wind. From that, My Stealthy Freedom was born—her viral social media campaign against compulsory hijab that became the biggest civil disobedience movement in the history of the Islamic Republic. Today, it has almost 11 million followers. Iranian authorities responded violently, arresting protesters and violating their rights while in custody. She is one of the most prominent and vocal opposition figures challenging the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Read more about this lecture here.
Lori Arviso Alvord, MD, is an author, mentor, general surgeon, and the first member of the Navajo Nation to be board certified in general surgery. She was raised in Crownpoint, NM, which is located approximately 130 miles from Albuquerque and is fairly remote. Descriptively, Dr. Alvord is of the Tsinnajinnié (also known as the Black Streaked Wood or Ponderosa Pine clan) and the Ashi'hii,' or Salt People clan of the Diné, or Navajo Nation people. Dr. Alvord attended Dartmouth College, graduating cum laude in 1979 with a double major in psychology and sociology, modified with a focus on Native American studies.
Dr. Alvord approaches traditional medicine with an understanding that a stressed mind can impair the immune system, and the use of ceremony was needed to restore harmony, balance, peace, and an interconnectivity that allows patients to heal personal relationships and thus create stronger communities around us. Respecting nature as sacred and allowing the family of Mother Earth and Father Sky to intermingle with the development of western societal norms was the philosophy Dr. Alvord was trying to administer.
Her memoir, The Scalpel and the Silver Bear, one of her most notable accomplishments, tells of her cultural journey from reservation to the operating room and of her work to combine traditional Navajo philosophies of healthcare with that of Western medicine.
Ambassador Keith M. Harper, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, is the first Native American to be named a U.S. Ambassador, serving as U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N. Human Rights Council from 2014 to 2017 based in Geneva, Switzerland.
Ambassador Harper is currently a Partner at the law firm of Jenner & Block and serves as a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs, and the American Bar Association has appointed him as Special Advisor to the ABA's Rule of Law Initiative.
Idowu (Jola) Ajibade, Assistant Professor of Geography, Affiliated Faculty, Black Studies, Portland State University Dr. Idowu (Jola) Ajibade's research focuses on how individuals, communities, and cities respond to global climate change and their different capacities for adaptation and transformation. She explores adaptation in the context of resilience planning, eco-industrialization, eco-gentrification, uneven development and managed retreat. Ajibade's research draws on urban political ecology and environmental justice lenses to interrogate both conventional as well as alternative approaches to adaptation, disaster risk reduction, and sustainability.
AlexAnna Salmon '08, Igiugig Village Tribal Council President President AlexAnna Salmon was raised in the village of Igiugig, Alaska, and graduated from Dartmouth College with a dual major in Native American Studies and Anthropology. As the Igiugig Tribal Council president, Salmon works closely with her community, academic interests, and partners throughout the state as she leads local initiatives for renewable energy and sustainability and advocates for revitalization of Yup'ik language and culture. In 2015, Salmon was invited to President Obama's roundtable discussion with Alaska Native leaders during his state visit.
Ambassador Susan Rice was the United States' Ambassador to the United Nations from 2009-2013 and then served as President Barack Obama's National Security Advisor from 2013-2017. Ambassador Rice is in a conversation with Dickey Center Director Daniel Benjamin about her memoir Tough Love: My Story of the Things Worth Fighting For.
Michael H. Posner is the Jerome Kohlberg Professor of Ethics and Finance and a Professor of Business and Society at NYU's Stern School of Business, where he is working to launch the first-ever center on business and human rights at a business school. Prior to joining NYU Stern, Posner served from 2009 to 2013 in the Obama Administration as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the State Department. From 1978 to 2009, he led Human Rights First, a New York-based human rights advocacy organization. Michael Posner is the Chair of the WEF's Global Agenda Council on Human Rights.
The Bolshevik Revolution was an en0d point of the first globalization. The contest between far left and far right that followed foreshadowed some of our own problems as the second globalization fades. In other respects, modern authoritarianism in Russia, Europe, and America is entirely new. The point of this lecture is to restore a sense of historical time and agency against these narratives of past and present.
Boris Dralyuk, Executive Director of the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Michele Leigh, Assistant Professor of Film & Media History, Southern Illinois University.
Barbara Will, Associate Dean, Arts & Humanities, explores the American Red Cross during World War I and its role in forming the modernism of Ernest Hemingway.
Professor Margaret Darrow, Department of History, Dartmouth College. Although the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914 caused hardly a ripple at Dartmouth, debate the following year over whether the United States -- and the College -- should begin preparing for war absorbed the campus. In April 1917, President Wilson declared war against Germany and its allies. For Dartmouth and its students, the consequences were wide-ranging.
Chad Williams is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of African and Afro-American Studies at Brandeis University. He specializes in African American and modern United States History, African American military history, the World War I era, and African American intellectual history. His first book, Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era, was published in 2010 and won the 2011 Liberty Legacy Foundation Award from the Organization of American Historians, the 2011 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Military History and designation as a 2011 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title.
Stephen Kotkin, John P. Birkelund '52 Professor in History and International Affairs, Princeton University.
Revolution in the Russian empire took place 100 years ago, during the First World War. It brought widespread hopes for a new world. During the course of that year, the revolutionary process in Russia radicalized toward socialism, in part because the horrific war did not end. Socialism was supposed to bring an end to such wars. Socialism in power and the perceived threats of its spread reinforced a trend toward a radicalization of the right, the advent of fascism. Within a generation, another titanic war broke out, even worse than the first one. How do these events of 1917 and thereafter help us understand the world of today, and perhaps of tomorrow?
Ambassador Yoram Ben-Zeev is the former Deputy Director General of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Coordinator for the Peace Process under Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The Ambassador served in many other positions including Ambassador to Germany and Consul General of Israel in Los Angeles.