Jeremy Haft

 For almost two decades, Jeremy Haft has been building companies on the front lines in China. He has overseen hundreds of sourcing and import/export programs between  American and Chinese enterprises in a wide variety of industries and agriculture, spanning shipbuilding and refineries to auto parts and medical supplies to maple syrup and cowhides. Haft’s current start-up is a public-private partnership, funded by a grant from the Empire State Development Corporation, to build export markets in China for New York agriculture.  

An adjunct professor at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service and McDonough School of Business, he is the author of All the Tea in China, a primer on how to do business in China, and Unmade in China, which examines America’s enduring competitive advantages over China in the coming century.  He has conducted many briefings about China trade and U.S. competitiveness to members of Congress, ambassadors, senior military officers, and the business community.  His analysis has also been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, NPR, BBC, and cable news, among other media outlets.

Keith Luse: North Korea and the World: What’s Next?

Since the end of World War II North Korea has been a dangerous and unpredictable enigma to the rest of the world. Today, Kim Jong-un, the latest member of the Kim dynasty, has the bomb and is publically developing missile capabilities. As the rest of the world and it closest neighbor, China, struggle with how to respond, the people of North Korea are being increasingly oppressed. This program will examine today’s reality and options.

Speaker, Keith Luse, Executive Director of The National Committee on North Korea is well qualified to address the topic. He was Senior Policy Advisor for Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar from 2002-2013. He is a specialist on North Korea and has been a frequent visitor to Pyongyang and participant in various negotiations. He has also worked with the World Bank and the Asia Development Bank.

Floyd Ciruli

Floyd Ciruli is widely regarded as the dean of Colorado public opinion research. He founded Ciruli Associates, a research and consulting firm specializing in public policy and research in 1985.

Mr. Ciruli holds a law degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and a bachelor’s degree cum laude in political science from UCLA.  He is a member of the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), and is the past-president of the Pacific Chapter of AAPOR (PAPOR).  Mr. Ciruli is Director of the Crossley Center for Public Opinion Research and an adjunct professor teaching public opinion and foreign policy at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies.  He is past-president of the Georgetown Law Alumni Board.

Mr. Ciruli is widely known to Colorado audiences as a pollster and political analyst for 9-KUSA TV, KOA Radio and The Denver Post.  He regularly speaks before Colorado, national and international audiences on issues regarding public opinion.  He was recently a featured speaker at an international conference on public opinion research in Buenos Aires. He publishes political and public opinion analyses in The Denver Post, and the Denver Business Journal. He posts at the state’s leading blog for politics and trends at www.fciruli.blogspot.com.

Dominic Tierney: The Right way to Lose a War: America in an Age of Unwinnable Conflicts

For nearly a century, up until the end of World War II in 1945, America enjoyed a Golden Age of decisive military triumphs. And then suddenly, we stopped winning wars. The decades since have been a Dark Age of failures and stalemates-in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan-exposing our inability to change course after battlefield setbacks.

In what is sure to be a provocative presentation, award-winning scholar Dominic Tierney reveals how the United States has struggled to adapt to the new era of intractable guerrilla conflicts. As a result, most major American wars have turned into military fiascos. And when battlefield disaster strikes, Washington is unable to disengage from the quagmire, with grave consequences for thousands of U.S. troops and our allies.

Speaker Dr. Dominic Tierney is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and contributing writer at The Atlantic magazine. He earned his Ph.D. at Oxford University and was a research fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Tierney has authored 4 books on international conflict including his most recent book, The Right Way to Lose a War, published by Little, Brown and Company.

James Clad

Spurred by the shale energy revolution in North America and a vast new thirst for energy in Asia, global energy trends are changing dramatically. OPEC and traditional energy suppliers have struggled to keep pace with these shifts in supply and demand, resulting in a five-year low in global crude oil prices. Russia, long known for using natural gas exports as a political lever, also faces challenges as recently-developed drilling techniques introduce unlikely players into the natural gas market.

Speaker James Clad, an expert on the geopolitics of energy and former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense, former diplomat, war correspondent, and Georgetown University professor will describe the contributing factors and impacts of a rapidly changing global energy landscape. Clad is an author of four books on international economics.

Orville Schell

Reporting on China since 1970, Orville Schell, one of the United States most respected experts on China, is the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society in New York. He is a former professor and Dean at the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Schell was born in New York City, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University in Far Eastern History, was an exchange student at National Taiwan University in the 1960s, and earned a Ph.D. (Abd) at University of California, Berkeley in Chinese History. He worked for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, covered the war in Indochina as a journalist, and has traveled widely in China since the mid-70s.

Schell is the author of fifteen books, ten of them about China, and a contributor to numerous edited volumes. His most recent books are: Wealth and Power, China’s long March to the 21st Century; Virtual Tibet; The China Reader: The Reform Years; and Mandate of Heaven: The Legacy of Tiananmen Square and the Next Generation of China’s Leaders. He has written widely for many magazine and newspapers, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Time, The New Republic, Harpers, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Wired, Foreign Affairs, the China Quarterly, and the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

He is a Fellow at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University, a Senior Fellow at the Annenberg School of Communications at USC and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Schell is also the recipient of many prizes and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Overseas Press Club Award, and the Harvard-Stanford 

 It also sets the stage for perhaps the biggest challenge facing a much wealthier and more powerful China today, since it cannot go on fighting its vanquished ghosts forever.

NYT Review of Books says about Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-First Century --  it “…sets the stage for perhaps the biggest challenge facing a much wealthier and more powerful China today, since it cannot go on fighting its vanquished ghosts forever.

Edward Alden

Edward Alden is the Bernard L. Schwartz senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), specializing in U.S. economic competitiveness. In addition, Mr. Alden is the director of the CFR Renewing America publication series and co-author of the recent CFR Working Paper Managing Illegal Immigration to the United States. The former Washington bureau chief of the Financial Times, his work focuses on immigration and visa policy, and on U.S. trade and international economic policy.

Mr. Alden was the project co-director of the 2011 Independent Task Force on U.S. Trade and Investment Policy, which was co-chaired by former White House chief of staff Andrew Card and former Senate majority leader Thomas Daschle. He was also the project director for the 2009 Independent Task Force on U.S. Immigration Policy.

Mr. Alden is the author of the book The Closing of the American Border: Terrorism, Immigration, and Security Since 9/11 (HarperCollins), which was named a 2009 finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for nonfiction writing. The judges called it "a masterful job of comprehensive reporting, fair-minded analysis, and structurally sound argumentation." 

Mr. Alden was previously the Canadian bureau chief for the Financial Times based in Toronto, and before that was a reporter at the Vancouver Sun specializing in labor and employment issues. He also was the managing editor of the newsletter Inside U.S. Trade, widely recognized as the leading source of reporting on U.S. trade policies. He has won several national and international awards for his reporting. Mr. Alden has done numerous TV and radio appearances as an analyst on political and economic issues, includingNewsHour with Jim Lehrer, McLaughlin Group, NPR, the BBC, CNN, and MSNBC. His work has also appeared in Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, the Japan Times, the San Jose Mercury News, and the Toronto Globe and Mail. He is the coauthor, with Franz Schurmann, of Democratic Politics and World Order, a monograph published by Berkeley's Institute of International Studies in 1990.

Mr. Alden holds a master's degree in international relations from the University of California, Berkeley, and pursued doctoral studies before returning to a journalism career. He also has a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of British Columbia. He was the winner of numerous academic awards, including a Mellon fellowship in the humanities and a MacArthur Foundation graduate fellowship.

T.R. Reid

Reid, author of the critically acclaimed bestsellers “The Healing of America” and “The United States of Europe” has been received with unparalleled enthusiasm at his several previous appearances before the CFWAC. He will give us a preview of his new book, to be released later in 2015, comparing and contrasting the taxation systems of the world’s developed countries. His presentation is certain to be both controversial and entertaining. Watch for more information.

“Mr. Reid’s underlying message of hope does not preclude an intensely satisfying quotient of moral outrage at the worst casualties of our system as it stands.” New York Times Review of Books about “The Healing of America.”

TR Reid’s “The United States of Europe” nudges “… America Awake as a United Europe Takes the Stage”, New York Times

SPECIAL PROGRAM

FUNDRAISER TO SUPPORT THE COLORADO FOOTHILLS WORLD AFFAIRS ENTRY FOR THE ACADEMIC WORLD QUEST HIGH SCHOOL NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP

Dr. Christine Fair: Political Crisis in Pakistan: The Military, the Government, and the Opposition

C. Christine Fair is on the faculty of the Center for Peace and Security Studies (CPASS), within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. She has served as a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation,[2] a political officer to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan in Kabul, and as a senior research associate within the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention at the United States Institute of Peace. Her research focuses upon political and military affairs in South Asia. She has authored, co-authored and co-edited several books including Treading Softly on Sacred Ground: Counterinsurgency Operations on Sacred Space (OUP, 2008); The Madrassah Challenge: Militancy and Religious Education in Pakistan (USIP, 2008), Fortifying Pakistan: The Role of U.S. Internal Security Assistance (USIP, 2006); among others and has written numerous peer-reviewed articles covering a range of security issues in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. She is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the Council on Foreign Relations and also a senior fellow with the Counter Terrorism Center at West Point.

She is a frequent commentator on television and radio including the CBS, BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN, Voice of America, Fox, Reuters, NPR among others. She has given extensive interviews to journalists with the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Businessweek, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe and other print media outlets.

As it says on her webpage, “She can cause trouble in multiple languages.”

Joanne H. Cummings

Joanne H. Cummings is a career Foreign Service Officer in the Department of State and has served extensively in the Middle East and North Africa. Daughter of a Foreign Service family, she was raised in Lebanon, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.  She has worked in Iraq, Afghanistan, Jerusalem, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Cyprus, and Syria, and as well as regionally from Morocco through Pakistan.  Ms. Cummings has served in economic, political, military, and refugee affairs positions in Baghdad and elsewhere. She has twice served as POLAD (Foreign Policy Advisor) to military commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan.  After serving as Economic Section Chief in Syria, she served a similar position in Yemen as Political/Economic Counselor. She has lived through, and served in, a variety of stress and conflict environments. She was evacuated from Syria. 

Ms. Cummings was born in Lincoln, Nebraska before moving overseas with her parents and sister when she was two years old.  She was graduated summa cum laude in History from the American University in Beirut.  She received her MA in Geography from the University of Texas at Austin. She speaks Arabic fluently (Lebanese, Egyptian, Saudi, and Iraqi dialects) and French. She is also familiar with Spanish, Hebrew, Farsi, and Kurdish.

Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth

Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth is one of the United States’ most prominent researchers and authorities on climate. He was a leader in the project that received a Nobel Prize in 2007. Born in New Zealand, Dr. Trenberth obtained his Sc. D. in meteorology from MIT. He has been prominent in most of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientific assessments of Climate Change and has also extensively served the World Climate Research Program (WCRP). He chaired the World Climate Research Program for Global Energy and Water Exchanges from 2010-13. He has published over 520 scientific articles or papers. He has received many international awards for his research.

Our speaker plans to provide a brief outline of the facts: how the global climate is changing with a focus of temperatures and more detail on the recent hiatus in the rise in global mean temperatures. He will explore the seasonality of the changes, and possible explanations of whether global warming has gone away or not. Changes in the oceans prove to be a key but are not as well-known as we would like because there is not yet enough good data. Dr. Trenberth contends that what we do about this is up to all of us and denial of climate change facts by some politicians ought to be called out. 

Dr. Kevin E. Trenberthis Distinguished Senior Scientist, Climate Analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research .

Dr. Schuyler Foerster

Often, as new hot spots develop around the world we focus on immediate issues and often lose sight of the greater global and historical context. Our October 21st speaker, renowned scholar and practitioner, Dr. Schuyler Foerster will help us explore how to connect the dots as we explore several key questions. Among them are:

• 1. Have the US and the other interdependent global actors sufficiently modified their world view following the end of the Cold War? 
• Last month's speaker, Dr. Ervin Rokke spoke convincingly that while circumstances have dramatically changed, our national response has lagged. 
• 2. As we entered the 21st Century and as America sat on the world's summit Henry Kissinger wondered if our position "…would gradually unite the world against the US…”. Can we stay at the top without world alienation?
• 3. What would and should America fight for? Actions by the US during the last four decades have many in the US and abroad asking this question. Can it be answered?

In the context of these and other critical questions, Dr. Foerster will examine "The Big Five"--Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iraq/Syria/ISIS(L), Russia and Ukraine, China, and Iran and North Korea.

Dr. Foerster is highly qualified to help the Colorado Foothills World Affairs Council members work through these difficult questions. He received his doctorate in politics and strategic studies at Oxford University and his Master's degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at The American University. His undergraduate work was done at the US Air Force Academy. Considered a dynamic speaker and scholar, he has lectured on international relations across the United States and abroad and published widely. He has been a senior advisor on security and arms control policy.

 He is intimately involved with the World Affairs Councils of America. He served as the full-time President and CEO of one of WACA's preeminent affiliates in Pittsburgh for nearly a decade and is now on the executive committee of the national board. Until recently he was President of the Colorado Springs World Affairs Council. Currently he is the Brent Scowcroft Professor of National Security Studies at the USAFA.

Dr. Ervin (Erv) Rokke

Dr. Ervin (Erv) Rokke is currently the Senior Scholar in Residence at the USAF Academy Center for Character and Leadership Development.  Before returning to the Academy in 2007, he served nine years as President of Moravian College and Moravian Theological Seminary in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.  He was commissioned into the U.S. Air Force in 1962 and retired from active duty as a Lieutenant General in 1997.

Dr. Rokke is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and serves on the Chairman’s Advisory Council of the U. S. Institute of Peace.   In recent years he has spent time as a fellow at the Australian National Defense University and made substantial presentations at international conferences in Romania, Serbia-Montenegro, the Former Soviet Union and Germany.  In 2000, Erv was inducted into the Defense Intelligence Hall of Fame and, in 2006, was awarded the Jan Masaryk Silver Memorial Medal from the Czech Republic for his contributions toward U.S.-Czech Republic relations.

His 35-year military career was distinguished by operational, diplomatic, and academic leadership positions.  He served as a staff plans officer at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, as an intelligence officer with U.S. Forces Japan, as the National Security Agency’s associate director for support to military operations, and as Permanent Professor and Dean of Faculty at the U.S. Air Force Academy.  He was also assigned as Air Attaché at the American Embassy in London; as Defense Attaché in the former Soviet Union; as Director of Intelligence for the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany; and as the Air Force’s Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence at the Pentagon.  Prior to assuming his duties as President of Moravian College in 1997, he served as the President of the National Defense University, Washington, DC.  

Rokke is a native of Warren, Minnesota.  He graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1962 with a Bachelor of Science degree.  He later earned a master's degree and a doctorate in international relations from Harvard University. He and his wife Pam have two children, Lisa and Eric. 

Our previously scheduled speaker, Gen. Michelle Johnson, Superintendent of the US Air Force Academy, has been given a special assignment that prevents her from speaking on September 16th. Please note the program change.

John Hofmeister

John Hofmeister is former president of Shell Oil Company and now president of the non-profit Citizens for Affordable Energy whose mission is “…to educate citizens and government officials about pragmatic, non-partisan affordable energy solutions, environmental protection, energy alternatives, efficiency, infrastructure, public policy, competitiveness, social cohesion, and quality of life.” 

He is also a key member of the United States Energy Security Council. The Council, appointed by the President of the United States, consists of current and past CEOs of many Fortune 50 corporations. Its focus is national security through energy security with special attention given to a range of affordable energy supplies, increased efficiency and effective energy infrastructure in the context of sustainable environmental policies and public education.  

Hofmeister is also serves as Chairman of the National Urban League and the Department of Energy’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Advisory Committee. He is also the author of Why We Hate the Oil Companies: Straight Talk from an Energy Insider.

John earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at Kansas State University and is now a Wrigley Scholar/Executive in Residence in the Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University.

Gregory Young

Throughout the cold war Turkey has been one of the US’s most stalwart allies. Sharing a strategic boundary with the former Soviet Union, it was one of the first signatories to NATO. Turkey, a historic bridge between Europe and Asia, has been on the geopolitical front lines for most of its history. Two critically important US Air Force installations are among the nearly two dozen NATO bases in Turkey. Their presence has allowed the NATO and the US to exert significant influence through much of the region.

The European Union’s reluctance to advance Turkey’s application to full membership beyond candidacy status has created disillusionment and even anger among many Turks. While Turkey is a constitutionally secular state, many believe the underlying reason for EU exclusion is that unlike the rest of Europe, Turkey is predominately Muslim.

Turkey’s Arab Spring uprising in 2012 was initially cited by some as a democratic example of political freedom. This initial optimistic reaction has been blunted by the deep concern raised by the crackdown on opposition political speech and a suppression of the press through mass arrests.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been credited with this heavy-handed response. He has been accused of corruption, accepting kickbacks on major building projects and attempting to cripple any police or judiciary trying to investigate any wrong doing.

Our speaker will address critical questions about contemporary Turkey: Where is Turkey headed? Will Erdogan uphold the modern secular democratic tradition established by Ataturk in the 1920’s and 30’s or will he pull a Putin-like switch with President Abdullah Gul to remain in power indefinitely and move to an increasingly authoritarian state? Are fears justified about a possible move by Turkey from that of a secular state to an Islamic state?  

Dr. Gregory Young is on the political science faculty at CU-Boulder specializing in the Middle East. He lived in Turkey as a child and is now a frequent visitor to that country. He is a retired naval officer with wide experience in military intelligence and reconnaissance. He earned his master’s degree from the Naval Postgraduate School where his research led to the discovery of a previously unknown mutiny on a Soviet Destroyer. This finding became the basis for Tom Clancy’s best seller The Hunt for Red October.  His Ph.D. in political science is from the University of Colorado. Hepreviously taught at the US Naval Academy (where we was also associate chair of the political science department) and the US Air Force Academy. He lives in Boulder with his wife, Dr. Mary Marlino, who is the Director of the Libraries and E-Science at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Larry Diamond

Larry Diamond is a professor of political science and sociology at Stanford University, where he teaches courses on democratic development. He is the 2013 recipient of Stanford's Richard W. Lyman Award for outstanding involvement in Stanford Alumni Association programming and continuing University stewardship. In 2007, he was named Teacher of the Year by the Associated Students of Stanford University for teaching that "transcends political and ideological barriers." That year he also received Stanford's Dinkelspiel Award for "his inspired teaching and commitment to undergraduate education" and "for the example he sets as a scholar and public intellectual." 

Mr. Diamond received all of his degrees from Stanford University, including a B.A. in 1974, an M.A. in 1978, and a Ph.D. in Sociology in 1980. He taught Sociology at Vanderbilt University from 1980-85 before joining the Hoover Institution. Mr. Diamond is a leading expert on democracy around the world and has published multiple books on the subject.

Greg Dobbs: Putin’s Games: The Olympics as a political event

The Olympic Games are international celebrations of excellence in sport. They are also opportunities for host nations to make political statements that can have lasting legacies for leaders and political systems. One only has to remember the Berlin Olympics of 1936 and the Beijing Olympics of 2008 as examples.

The Games can also provide a stage for others seeking to make dramatic statements intended to shock host countries as well as the international community. We saw this happen with the Munich slaughter of 1972, and the 1996 bombing at Centennial Park during the Atlanta Olympics. 

The Sochi Olympics will have the highest level of security ever seen for the Games. Two recent bombings in south Russia carry threats of more terrorist attacks or other attempts to disrupt the Games themselves. In this context, the Colorado Foothills World Affairs Council is proud to present the celebrated and honored international journalist, Greg Dobbs.

Greg Dobbs has been a keen observer and analyst of international affairs for four decades, giving special attention to the Soviet Union, and then after its collapse, to the turbulent evolution of the Russian Republic. As the Sochi Olympic Games put Russian President Vladimir Putin’s legacy on center stage, Greg will give us a progress report.

A highly respected journalist for ABC News, World News Tonight, Nightline, 20/20, Good Morning America, and others, Dobbs’s excellence in global reporting and analysis have earned him two national Emmys. In addition to his international work he has covered national elections with Dan Rather and anchored HDNet’s coverage of every space shuttle launch since Columbia. 

Greg recently authored Life in the Wrong Lane and has written a university-level textbook on journalism. His newspaper opinion columns are regularly seen in The Denver Post.

Kurt Shaw: The end of the street

Kurt G. Shaw, Executive Director of Shine a Light, graduated summa cum laude from Williams College and then won a Fulbright fellowship to spend almost two years working with grassroots groups in El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia. He has worked as a Visiting Scholar at the Departamento Ecuménico de Investigaciones, Latin America's premier institute for Liberation Theology, and as a Research Associate at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC, where he addressed US-Cuba relations and governance issues in Chile. After earning a Master's Degree in Religion from Harvard University, Kurt counseled homeless teenagers in New York and Santa Fe, New Mexico, and then went on to found Shine a Light, which would become the largest network of NGOs serving street children in Latin America.  

Twenty years ago, throughout Latin America, street children were ubiquitous--their numbers were estimated to be in the tens of millions. Today they are rarely encountered. Shaw has been a participant and eyewitness to this extraordinary and positive social change. 

As the number of children living on the streets of Latin America has dropped precipitously, Shaw moved Shine a Light into work on using digital media to win visibility for excluded children, including gang members, ex-child soldiers, and indigenous children.  He has won the Harvard First Decade Award as the graduate who has contributed most to social justice in his first ten years of work, and he coordinated the work of two finalists and one winner of the "Freedom to Create Award", given to the youth art group that has done most to promote human rights in the world. This past summer "The Good" an organization funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recognized Shaw and Shine a Light as one of the major actors for positive social change.

In addition to writing half a dozen books on youth homelessness, Latin American gangs, child soldiers, and children and media, Shaw has also produced several hip-hop albums with marginalized children, a fictional feature film with child soldiers, and several documentaries that have been shown at important film festivals in Latin America and Europe.  He lives in Florianópolis, Brazil, with his wife (and Shine a Light co-director) Rita da Silva and their young daughter, Helena.