SMU is hosting the third annual Women’s Ambassador Forum (WAF) June 6-9, which is bringing in 25 young women from 18 different countries to attend seminars and learn how to become leaders and promote gender equality in their home countries.
Tower Center Executive Director Luisa del Rosal has advised the student planning committee, co-chaired by SMU students Gloria Gutierrez and Mirka Serrato, to make the forum possible.
Read the Dallas Morning News’ story here.
Photo: Jacky Naegelen/Reuters
Tower Center Academic Director Jim Hollifield and Tower Center Associate Bud Weinstein, also associate director of the SMU Maguire Energy Institute, talked to Dallas Morning News reporter Jill Cowan about President Trump’s announcement to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.
Hollifield argues that this is yet another example of Trump disregarding how things are done in foreign policy, or in his words, Trump threw the global playbook “out the window.”
“Gone are the days when the U.S. would take the lead in pursuing global public goods,” he told Cowan.
Aside from the geopolitical effects of withdrawing from the deal, which is supported by nearly 200 countries and ratified by 144, Weinstein weighed in on the effects on the energy industry in Texas. He thinks they will be minimal. The decline in coal energy is hardly related to the United States’ commitment to a climate deal, he said.
“I look at it this way: Carbon emissions have been falling in the U.S. for the last 20 years, not so much because of regulations at the state and federal level but because we’ve been substituting coal power,” Weinstein said.
Read the full article here.
President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement that the Obama administration ratified. As of May 2017, 144 countries had ratified the agreement and 195 countries had signed it.
After the agreement was negotiated, Tower Center Academic Director Jim Hollifield and Tower Center Associate Idean Salehyan wrote an article for the Wilson Center on an unspoken consequence of climate change: the displacement of millions of people.
Read what our experts had to say here.
Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in front of a government building in Tunisia Dec. 17, 2010. Following his death in early 2011, protests and riots erupted throughout the country, unseating President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali after 23 years of rule Jan. 14. Tunisia has been working to establish a democracy since then, and made significant progress in 2014 by establishing a new constitution and holding elections for parliament and a new president.
Tunisia’s Ambassador to the U.S. Faycal Gouia visited the Tower Center to give the seminar “Navigating Democracy and Open for Business” May 18.
Tunisia’s Ambassador to the U.S. Faycal Gouia visited the Tower Center May 18 to discuss Tunisia’s progress and the country’s goals and ideas for the future during the seminar “Navigating Democracy and Open for Business.”
Gouia is most proud of Tunisia’s public education program. The government offers free education from kindergarten through university and PhD programs to students who can pass a series of tests. Gouia says this is an effort of the to have a fully educated population. But even with an educated public, the small North African country is struggling with high levels of unemployment. The World Bank reports Tunisia’s unemployment to be 15.2 percent, with unemployment for graduates at 19.9 percent. Gouia tags this as the number one social problem the country faces. The government’s goal is to reduce the rate to 12 percent by 2020.
This issue has been compounded by an economy in turmoil. Tunisia’s economy has suffered greatly from the threat and presence of terrorism — especially with Libya as its neighbor. However, Gouia is optimistic that this is changing for the country. It has been 15 months since the last attack, tourism and Foreign Direct Investment are both on the rise, and the military has transitioned from defensive to offensive operations to eliminate the terrorist threat.
In response to a question about Tunisia’s violence-ridden neighbor, he offered insight into Libya’s situation and why establishing a democracy seems to be an impossible mission for them.
The unrest in Libya, according to Gouia, is easier to solve than the unrest in other Arab countries such as Yemen and Syria because its population is homogeneous and tribal. The main problem, however, is that there were no established institutions (such as a military or police force) when Muammar Gaddafi was killed in 2011, unlike the well established institutions Ben Ali left behind in Tunisia. Although Libya is a rich country in terms of resources, it has the largest oil reserves in Africa, Gouia said it has been plagued by the “worst leadership” in the Arab world.
Here is Ambassador Gouia’s four-step solution to Libya:
The ambassador left the discussion on a brighter note saying talks with the Trump administration have gone well, and that foreign aid has been granted to Tunisia for 2017. But with talks of budget cuts circulating Washington, he said the world is uncertain what 2018 will hold.
HCM Tower Scholar Ben Prengler ’19 was awarded the Tower Center Tom Bryant Medders, Jr. Fellowship for 2017-2019.
Prengler, a pre-law student from Fairview, Texas, plans to use the fellowship for research comparing constitutional design in the United States and Canada. He wants to understand how Canadian multiculturalism and American Liberal-Republicanism impacts each country’s institutions.
Tower Chair and national security expert Josh Rovner weighed in on the possible consequences of President Trump sharing classified intelligence with Russian officials.
The original source of the information that Trump leaked was reported to be Israel, viewed as one of the United States’ most important allies.
This Quartz article explores the possible fallout after the information was divulged (to an adversary nation) without the source ally’s permission. Rovner argues Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu might forgive the U.S., since what he really wants is “real support from the U.S.”
However, the consequences could still be great. He told the Christian Science Monitor: “This whole episode is terrible for trust – and trust is what makes intelligence sharing work.”
Tower Center Diplomat-in-Residence Ambassador Robert Jordan weighed in on President Trump’s upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia.
“There’s a degree of nervousness,” Jordan told the Dallas Morning News. Diplomats prefer predictability and clear foreign policy, according to Jordan, which is something the Trump administration has lacked so far.
Read the article here.
Tower Chair Josh Rovner edited a policy roundtable discussing the U.S.-China relationship under President Trump.
“The stable maritime-land balance is now in question, at least to some observers, because of China’s economic and military rise,” Rovner wrote.
Trump’s shifting attitude and rhetoric has created a cloud of uncertainty as to what his policy toward China and President Xi Jinping will be.
Read what the panel of experts have to say here.
Admiral Patrick Walsh asks a question at the 2016 Sun & Star Symposium in Tokyo.
Tower Center Senior Fellow Admiral Patrick Walsh was interviewed about cyber security and “The Changing Battlefield” for The Catalyst, a quarterly journal put out by the George W. Bush Institute.
“It’s no longer just the nation-state. It’s no longer just the counterinsurgency. Just about anybody can get in and act on their motivations inside the cyber domain,” Walsh said.
Read the interview here.
The junior class of Highland Capital Management Tower Scholars participated in a simulations for their policy seminar course and presented their policy proposal to the Deputies Committee of the National Security Council May 1. The scholars acted as members of the Department of State, Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense and Joint Staff. This semester students were asked to imagine they were tasked with coming up with a response to cyberattacks from Russia.
This year the seminar was co-taught by Professors Josh Rovner, political science, and Frederick Chang, engineering.
“The policy seminar allows the Tower Scholars to explore a current policy issue in depth, using the analytical tools they learned in earlier courses,” Rovner said.
In October last year Chang was trying to decide what would be best for students to study and he thought to himself, “let’s have them study Russian hacking.” The topic is as timely as ever with ongoing investigations into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible collaboration with the Trump campaign.
The Scholars presented their policy proposals to their client Michael Elliott, who recently served as Deputy Director for Strategic Stability in the Joint Staff before his retirement. Elliott visited the class a few times throughout the semester to provide guidance and to layout his expectations for the simulation. Elliot, Rovner and Chang all three took turns asking questions during the students’ presentations.
“He’s a tremendous asset to the Tower Scholars Program,” HCM Scholar Thomas Schmedding ’17 said of Elliot. “It was an honor and privilege to talk with him about real challenges facing the country.”
The Department of State, represented by Schmedding, MacKenzie Jenkins ’18 and Brian O’Donnell ’18, presented first and suggested that the U.S. impose economic sanctions in order to pressure the Russian government to act in accordance to international norms. They noted that the challenge is norms have not actually been agreed upon since NATO has not accepted the Tallinn Manual.
Homeland Security, played by Isabelle Gwozdz ’18, David Shirzad ’18 and Fairooz Adams ’18, presented next. They identified the three critical infrastructure sectors as communications, energy, and the government facilities sector. Their recommendations included increased funding, having authority over private energy sector companies in order to oversee information sharing, and to return to paper ballots in elections to prevent vote manipulation.
The Department of Defense and Joint Staff, represented by Grace Caputo ’18, Drew Wicker ’18, and Diana Cates ’18, concluded the brief advocating for thought-out plans and routines to address cyber threats, such as an added “Cyber Amendment” to the New START Treaty.