Providing a Forum for Analysis & Dialogue on Critical Global Issues Fostering Educational & Professional Networks Among the St. Edward’s University Community, Austin & the World

Project organizers are approaching the topic with the assumption that the international community faces challenges that can only be addressed by fostering comprehensive cooperative approaches. We hope that by facilitating exchanges among academic experts, policy officials, security and defense practitioners, and religious leaders representing different nations and regions, we can strengthen networks of collaboration for addressing our most important human security challenges. Panelists will offer updates on recent project conferences, research initiatives, and global engagement efforts as well as sharing views on the importance, potential, and challenges in promoting cooperation among our global policy/security communities with religious faith communities in managing human security. Topics might include violent extremism and terrorism, migration, drivers in contemporary geopolitical divisions, conflict resolution, climate change, and more. The forum will be held in Carter Auditorium in the John Brooks Williams Natural Sciences Center at 12:00-2:00 PM.

Dr. Ted Karasik, Senior Advisor to Gulf State Analytics and Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, will deliver a lecture on the topic “Strategic Security Challenges in the Middle East: Perspectives on a ‘Second Arab Spring’ and the U.S.-Iran Confrontation.” For the past 30 years, Dr. Karasik worked for several U.S. agencies involved in researching and analyzing defense acquisitions, the use of military power, and religio-political issues across the Middle East and Eurasia, including the evolution of violent extremism and financing networks. From 2006 until 2016, Dr. Karasik lived in Dubai, UAE, where he worked on Arabian Peninsula foreign policy and security issues surrounding cultural awareness, cybersecurity, maritime security, counter-terrorism, and infrastructure and national resilience. Dr. Karasik was formerly a Senior Political Scientist in the International Policy and Security Group at RAND Corporation, serving as Director of Research for the RAND Center for Middle East Public Policy. He earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Los Angeles in four fields: Middle East, Russia, the Caucasus with an additional concentration in Cultural Anthropology focusing on tribes and clans from Central Asia to East Africa. Dr. Karasik has been a frequent commentator for major Arab news media (Al Arabiya, Al Jazeera, Sky News Arabia, and others). He will share his perspective on the security challenges in the Middle East, the potential of a Second “Arab Spring” and the recent diplomatic and military confrontation between the United States and Iran. The lecture event is scheduled for Wednesday, February 19, from 12:00-1:30 PM in Carter Auditorium in the John Brooks Williams Natural Sciences Center.

On Thursday, March 5, the Kozmetsky Center will host a screening of “A Cambodian Spring” dealing with public activism and protests over inequality and land rights. Winner of the Brooklyn Film Festival “Best Documentary,” A Cambodian Spring features the personal accounts of activists leading a movement to overthrow the dictatorial regime on Hun Sen. The film exposes political corruption and the human rights crisis in the country, and origins of political activism among its most vulnerable citizens. This film is a testimony “of their struggle for dignity and justice, and a window into the sober reality of a nation and its possibilities for change.” SEU Professors Dr. Jooyoun Lee (Global Studies) and Dr. Imran Khan (History), subject area experts on Asia/ Southeast Asia, will offer their perspectives and lead a discussion following the film. The screening will take place in the Jones Global Events Center from 7:00-9:30 PM.

Our final lecture event for the Spring 2020 semester will feature Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Ph.D., Director Emeritus of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) scheduled on Tuesday, April 21 at 12:00-1:00 PM in the Carter Auditorium in the John Brooks Williams Natural Science Center. Among those specialists emphasizing the urgency of the climate change threat, Schellnhuber was quoted in a BBC article of July 2019 stating that "The climate math is brutally clear: While the world can't be healed within the next few years, it may be fatally wounded by negligence until 2020.” Hans Joachim (“John”) Schellnhuber studied Physics and Mathematics and completed his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics at the University of Regensburg. After a postdoctoral position at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, Santa Barbara, he held professorships at the Universities of Oldenburg and Potsdam, University of East Anglia, Norwich, University of California, Santa Cruz, Oxford University, and the Santa Fe Institute. He has published extensively on topics of climate change, global warming, and security topics at the intersection of science and earth systems and space. Professor Schellnhuber served as founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany from 1991 - 2018 and was research director at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Great Britain from 2001-2005.