Photos from the National Security Conference are now available online.
National Security Keynote Dinner
Robert Gallucci
Monday, October 3, 2011
Click the Photo to see the full album
National Security Conference
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Click the Photo to see the full album
Tower Center staff member and student, Afsana Qurishi, spent this summer in the prestigious White House Internship Program. She is majoring in international studies in SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences.
“Interning at the White House this summer was truly an amazing experience,” Afsana wrote in her blog. “I was there for about three months working in the Management and Administration Office. My main job was to update security access lists, file documents and schedule White House tours. I was also involved in other various activities within the White House Internship Program as a whole. . .”
Read all about her experience in her blog.
A number of Tower Center Fellows and Associates participated in conversations about the legacies of 9/11.
Robert Jordan, Tower Center Diplomat in Residence and Former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, was interviewed on Bloomberg this morning and will be on CNBC tomorrow (2/24) at 6:45am. He will be talking about Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
Here is Bob’s interview from this morning:
Pia Orrenius, Senior Economist at the Dallas Fed and Tower Center Fellow, has published a wonderful new book Beside the Golden Door: U.S. Immigration Reform in a New Era of Globalization with co-author Madeline Zavodny.
You can catch her interview on CNN from July 31st (below) or read the transcript.
Pia’s website has links to a number of her other publications that deal with the economics of immigration.
Tower Center Director, Jim Hollifield was interviewed last month by the BBC’s World News Service about Britain’s first coalition government in 65 years.
Click Here to listen.
Tower Center Faculty Fellow, Hiroki Takeuchi, was interviewed on the KERA Think Radio Show on Wednesday, July 21. Dr. Takeuchi discussed the current state of politics and economics in Japan and its implications for international relations.
Here’s the link: KERA Think Podcast
Read Tower Center Director Jim Hollifield’s comments in the June 25, 2010 New York Times article on global migration:
Global Migration – A World Ever More On The Move
GORDON BROWN’S rant about a “bigoted” voter sped his exit from the British prime minister’s post. What punctured his cool? Her complaint about immigrants. When an earthquake shattered Haiti, Dominicans sent soldiers and Americans sent ships — to discourage potential immigrants. The congressman who shouted “You lie!” at President Obama was upset about immigrants. “Birthers” think Mr. Obama is an immigrant.
There was also the Hamas rocket that landed in Israel this spring, killing a farmworker. Not so unusual, except that the worker was Thai.
Perhaps no force in modern life is as omnipresent yet overlooked as global migration, that vehicle of creative destruction that is reordering ever more of the world. Overlooked? A skeptic may well question the statement, given how often the topic makes news and how divisive the news can be. After all, Arizona’s campaign against illegal immigrants, codified in an April law, set off high-decibel debates from Melbourne to Madrid. But migration also shapes the landscape beneath the seemingly unrelated events of the headlines. It is a story-behind-the-story, a complicating tide, in issues as diverse as school bond fights and efforts to isolate Iran. (Seeking allies in Latin America this month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had to emphasize the dangers of a nuclear-armed Tehran while fending off complaints about the Arizona law.)
Even people who study migration for a living struggle to fully grasp its effects. “Politically, socially, economically, culturally — migration bubbles up everywhere,” James F. Hollifield, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University, said. “We often don’t recognize it.”… Read the rest of the article here.
Professor Hiroki Takeuchi was quoted in USA Today about the resignation of Hatoyama.
The eight-month process of trying, but failing, to move the U.S. base, against strong Washington opposition, “gave the public the impression that Hatoyama couldn’t make a decision by himself,” said Hiroki Takeuchi, a Japanese politics expert at Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
His Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) “promised many things, and tried to do everything, and gave the false expectations that they could do everything,” Takeuchi said.
Ahead of elections for Japan’s upper house next month, many DPJ politicians pressured him to resign, Takeuchi added. “They said with Hatoyama as prime minister they couldn’t get elected.”
On the Okinawa base, Hatoyama “complicated this issue and had a negative impact on U.S.-Japan relations,” Takeuchi said. Overall, “the Japanese public supports the U.S. presence and agrees with the idea that, due to the U.S. military presence, Japan’s national security is maintained,” but Okinawans remain opposed to any U.S. military presence on their island, he said.
Read the full article
Japan’s PM resigns after failure to move U.S. base – USATODAY.com
As part of the Tower Center’s programmatic emphasis on national security and political economy, Jim Hollifield, Seyom Brown, Kathy Cooper, and Lynne Novack participated the “First Worldwide Cybersecurity Conference” on May 4-5, convened by the East-West Institute. The conference of some 300 delegates from governments and private industry from around the world was called to launch a comprehensive international awareness campaign by governments, businesses and the public about growing threats to economic stability and international peace and security presented by the vulnerabilities in and threats to digital information systems and networks. The Tower Center delegates contributed ideas on implications for national security policy and energy supply systems, for “rules of engagement” in international cyber-conflicts, and for international cooperation in devising means of attending to the global public good of cybersecurity.
These issues will be centrally a part of the Tower Center’s November 2010 Conference on National Security and Defense, which will be devoted to the implications for national security of technological innovations in digital communications, robotics, nanotechnology, non-lethal weapons, and space.
Vanda Felbab-Brown, Tower Center Associate, was a guest on the Diane Rehm Show today. The program focused on the Obama administration’s new strategy to fight illegal drug use.
Dr. Felbab-Brown is a Foreign Policy fellow at the Brookings Institution, adjunct professor at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Tower Center Associate, and frequent guest speaker in Dallas. Her work focuses on the national security implications of illicit economies and strategies for managing them. Her recent book is Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs.
Read Vanda Felbab-Brown’s recent research and commentary:
Vanda Felbab-Brown discusses the transactional relationship between the US and Afghanistan. She argues that structure of this relationship is ultimately unproductive.
The Design and Resourcing of Supply-Side Counternarcotics Policies
In testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Vanda Felbab-Brown assesses the Obama administration’s counternarcotics strategy, focusing on the role and design of supply-side programs within the strategy. Felbab-Brown’s statement highlights country-specific challenges and opportunities in Afghanistan, Colombia and Mexico.
In an interview with China Radio International, Vanda Felbab-Brown offers her insights on the current status of Mexico’s powerful drug trafficking organizations and the scope of narcotics traffic in the region.
How to Win Mexico’s War on Drugs
In a Daily Beast OpEd, Vanda Felbab-Brown discusses the new policy of Mexico’s government toward the drug trafficking organizations, Beyond Merida, and the challenges and opportunities of this new approach.
The Political Economy of Illegal Domains in India and China
Vanda Felbab-Brown’s article explores: How illicit economies arise and how are organized? What are the regulatory requirements for their functioning? And what threats do illicit economies pose to countries? The articles examines these dynamics primarily with respect to India and China both contemporarily and historically, but also draws on other countries for comparisons, such as Hong Kong Triads, piracy in South China Sea, insurgencies in India’s Northeast and drug smuggling and illegal trade in wildlife there, poppy cultivation in India, and Chiang Kai-Shek’s, Mao’s, and the Green Gang’s counternarcotics policies and participation in the drug trade.
© Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas | Legal Disclosures | A-Z Site Index | Contact SMU
