11/14/09- “Athens Today: Can an Ancient City Move with the Times?” by Dr. Eleni Bastéa, who teaches architectural history at UNM. She was born and grew up in Thessaloniki, Greece, and spent most of a year and several summers in Athens. She studied art history at Bryn Mawr College, and architecture and history of architecture at the University of California at Berkeley. Eleni is the author of The Creation of Modern Athens: Planning the Myth (Cambridge University Press, 2000), co-winner of the international John D. Criticos Prize. She also published Memory and Architecture (UNM Press, 2004) and her own translation of her book on Athens in Greek (Athens: Libro Publishers, 2008).
10/30/09-“Political Islam: What Is It and Does It Matter?” by Dr. Emile Nakhleh, born in the Middle East and educated in the United States, he holds a Ph.D. from American University. After teaching for twenty-six years, Dr. Nakhleh embarked upon a government career. He became a senior intelligence service officer and Director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program in the Directorate of Intelligence at the CIA. Now retired, he is the author of A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World (Princeton University Press, 2009).
10/02/09- “Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Terrorism: An Insider’s Look” by Nicholas Schmidle. A New York Times Book Review named his book To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan “Editor’s Choice.” Nicholas Schmidle takes readers to Pakistan’s rioting streets, to Taliban camps in the North-West Frontier Province, and on many surprising adventures as he provides a contemporary history of a country long riven by internal conflict. With intimacy and good humor, Schmidle narrates what was arguably the most turbulent period of Pakistan’s recent history, a time when President Pervez Musharraf lost his power and the Taliban found theirs, and when Americans began to realize that Pakistan’s fate is inextricably linked with our own.
Nicholas Schmidle is a fellow at the New America Foundation. Schmidle writes for the New York Times Magazine, Slate, The New Republic, Smithsonian, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. In 2008, he received the Kurt Schork Award for freelance journalism based on his reporting in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He speaks Urdu and Persian. Schmidle is a graduate of James Madison University and American University.
8/12/09-“Middle Eastern Women Today: Odalisques, Terrorists or Just Like Us?” by Dr. Evelyn A. Early, a diplomat with the Department of State, is currently Senior State Department Advisor at the Air University in Montgomery, Alabama. She has served as Counselor for Press and Cultural Affairs at embassies in Rabat, Prague, Damascus, and Khartoum. She has researched in Lebanon, Egypt and Syria and taught anthropology at the University of New Mexico, Notre Dame University, and the University of Houston. Her B.A. is from Macalester College, her M.A. from the American University of Beirut, and her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
8/23/09-“ST. PETERSBURG: The City that Should Not Be and Would Not Die” by Dr. Marina Oborotova, AIA founder and president. Many of the AIA members remember her talk “Moscow: Building a New Third Rome?” and the Russian dinner that followed “ as one of the best we had” … She was born in Russia and visited St. Petersburg so many times that she lost count. She loves St. Pete and will go there in a heart beat again. Professionally Dr. Oborotova is the author of multiple articles and books on foreign affairs. She worked for IMEMO, Russia’s leading think tank, also for the United States Industry Coalition, TCInternational and taught at UNM’s History and Political Science Departments and the Anderson School of Management. She is the President of the Center for International Studies.
6/7/09-“Dangerous Curves on the Road to Wealth and Power. How China is Managing the Current Crisis: the Economic, Social, and Political Picture” by Dr. Stephen MacKinnon, Trained in Chinese Studies at Yale and University of California, Davis, Dr. MacKinnon is a professor of History and former Director of Center for Asian Studies at Arizona State University. Besides dozens of academic articles and book chapters, he is the author of Power and Politics in Late Imperial China (1981); China Reporting: An Oral History of American Journalism in the 1930s and 1940s(1987); Agnes Smedley: Life and Times of an American Radical (1988); Wuhan, 1938: War, Refugees, and Making of Modern China (2008) – all published by U. of Calif. Press . Just published in 2008, War, Refugees and the Making of Modern China has already been translated and published in Chinese. Between 1979 and 1981 and again in 1985, MacKinnon worked as an expert for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. After Chinese language study in Taiwan and Hong Kong in the 1960s, he first visited the PRC in 1972. Thereafter he visited China regularly for work and teaching purposes. He is China now and will return shortly before his lecture in Albuquerque in June 2009.
5/28/09- “Hotels: American Origins and Global Competition” by Dr. Andrew Sandoval-Strausz, Associate Professor of History at the University of New Mexico. He received his B.A. from Columbia in 1994 and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2002. His work has been featured in the New York Times, The Economist, and Business Week and on National Public Radio and Slate.com. His first book, Hotel: An American History (Yale University Press, 2007) was named one of the Best Books of the Year by Library Journal and won the American Historical Association’s 2008 Pacific Coast Branch Book Award.
5/8/09-“The Legacy of New Mexico: Twenty-first Century Immigration and the Descendants of Seventeenth Century Indo-Hispanos” by Dr. L.M. García y Griego. García y Griego is a native of New Mexico, descendant of founders of the Cañón de Carnué Land Grant, established in 1819. He received his B.A. from Princeton University, M.A. in Demography from El Colegio de México, and Ph.D. in history from UCLA. He held faculty appointments at U.T. Arlington, El Colegio de México, and the University of California, Irvine, before joining the UNM faculty in 2006. He is the founder of the New Mexico Land Grant Studies Program at UNM. He has published widely on Mexican migration to the United States, U.S. immigration policy, U.S.-Mexican relations, and on New Mexico land grant issues. His most recent publications include “Beating Around the Bush: Symbolism and Substance in Contemporary Immigration Policy,” in Latino Immigration Policy: Context, Issues, Alternatives, edited by José E. Cruz, 2007; “Dos tesis sobre seis décadas: la emigración hacia Estados Unidos y la política exterior Mexicana,” in En busca de una nación soberana: relaciones internacionales de México, siglos XIX y XX (Mexico City: CIDE and Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2006); and Researching Migration: Stories from the Field, co-edited with Sherrie Kossoudji and Louis desipio (New York: SSRC Books, 2007). Dr. García y Griego has served as an expert witness on a number of cases, including In re Children Litigation, later consolidated with Plyler v. Doe 457 U.S. 202 and In re Mexico Money Transfer Litigation (2000). He has served as panelist in the U.S.-Mexico Bi-national Study (1996-97) and on the Social Science Research Council International Migration Postdoctoral Fellowship Review Committee (1996-2002). More recently he organized a workshop on U.S.-Mexico border security at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (Tijuana, B.C.) and presented at a forum on Mexican immigrant and Latino leadership networks at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Washington, D.C.).
5/1/09- “New Cold War? Selective engagement? Strategic Partnership?” by Ambassador Tom Pickering. Ambassador Pickering is one of the brightest and most distinguished US diplomats. He held the personal rank of Career Ambassador, the highest in the U.S. Foreign Service. In a diplomatic career spanning five decades, he has served as a U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, as U.S. Ambassador and Representative to the United Nations in New York, Ambassador to the Russian Federation, Israel, India, El Salvador, Nigeria, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. He also served on assignments in Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Ambassador Pickering was Executive Secretary of the Department of State and Special Assistant to Secretaries William P. Rogers and Henry A. Kissinger. He worked as the Senior Vice President for International Relations and a member of the Boeing Executive Council from January 2001 until July 2006. In 1983 and in 1986, Pickering won the Distinguished Presidential Award and, in 1996, the Department of State’s highest award – the Distinguished Service Award. He is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies and the Council on Foreign Relations. He speaks French, Spanish, Swahili, Arabic and Hebrew.
4/24/09- “Shanghai: City of the Future” by Charles Bergman. Charles is currently a member of Albuquerque Academy’s history faculty. For the past twenty years he has been educating students and adult professionals to prepare them to meet successfully the challenges of globalization. Prior to joining the Academy faculty, Charlie served as Director, Asia-Pacific, for Meridian Eaton, a San Francisco-based consulting firm focused on developing global skills for business leaders of multinational organizations. The geographic focus of Charlie’s own consulting work is China and East Asia. Charlie began his international career with a teaching appointment at Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan, in 1978. He then worked for several years in Beijing as a member of the IBM China start-up team, sent by IBM’s New York headquarters to build a China subsidiary there. On his return to the U.S., Charlie resumed teaching and consulting. Charlie has a B.A. in mathematics from Amherst College, an M.S. in mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley, and an M.A. in East Asian Studies from Stanford University.
4/11/09- “From UNM to the White House and Coca-Cola: Reflections on a New Mexican’s Success Story” by Rudy M. Beserra, VP, Coca-Cola. Rudy’s family has for many generations been very active in New Mexico politics; Rudy began his career as Director of the LULAC Family Learning Center in New Mexico. He was recruited in 1982 to work for the Campaign Committee to coordinate Hispanic Outreach as Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) for Small Business Issues. During President Reagan’s second term, Rudy served in the White House as Special Assistant to the President for Public Liaison. In a feature article of LATINO LEADERS, the National Magazine of the Successful Hispanic American, Rudy was described as, “He’s the Real Thing.”
3/27/09-“Europe’s Southern Underbelly: Corruption, Gangsters, and War Criminals” by Dr. Melissa Bokovoy, Associate Professor History at UNM and former fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International for Scholars and award winning author for her study of the establishment of communist rule in Yugoslavia. She is presently working on a study of war and memory in interwar Yugoslavia as well as on a general history of twentieth century Yugoslavia (Wily-Blackwell, under contract for 2011.) Dr. Bokovoy received her B.A. from Pomona College, and her MA and Ph.D. from Indiana University.
3/13/09-Latino Arts and Culture: Mapping a Social Movement by Dr. Maribel Alvarez. Maribel holds a dual appointment as Assistant Research Professor in the English Department and as Research Social Scientist at the Southwest Center, University of Arizona. She teaches courses on methods of cultural analysis with particular emphasis on objects, oral narratives, and visual cultures of the US-Mexico border. She holds a doctorate in anthropology from the University of Arizona. Alvarez is the Animator of BorderLore, a cultural documentation initiative that includes an e-newsletter, a Blog, and several community-based partnerships to record and interpret vernacular knowledge in the borderlands. She has written about poetry and food, intangible heritage, nonprofits and cultural policy, artisans and patrimony in Mexico, and popular culture and stereotypes. From 1996 to 2002 she served as the Executive Director of MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana, a multidisciplinary urban arts space in San Jose that she also co-founded. Under her leadership, MACLA became nationally recognized for its smart innovations in community arts. In 2001, the Andy Warhol Foundation for
the Visual Arts recognized MACLA as one of the 25 most effective “alternative art spaces” in the country. Maribel was born in Cuba, grew up in Puerto Rico, and has worked closely in the field of Chicano arts since the 1980s. Maribel currently serves on the Board of the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture and edits their national magazine, El Aviso.
2/27/09-The State of the American and European Unions:
Prospects and Challenges across the Atlantic in our Rapidly, Changing World by Anthony Smallwood, First Counselor, Spokesman and Head of Press and Public Diplomacy, Delegation of the European Commission, Washington, DC. The Commission is the executive arm of the EU, and Mr. Smallwood has worked for its Directorate General for External Relations (RELEX) since 1995. He previously acted as Head of Delegation (effectively ambassador) of the EU in Trinidad and Tobago and in Brussels before that, monitored EU relations with Egypt. Before joining RELEX he was co-director of the ‘bureau’ that managed the ERASMUS educational exchange Program, and also served extensively overseas with the British Council.
2/13/09- Latinos in Presidential Politics by Valerie Martinez-Ebers is professor of political science at the University of North Texas and 2008 vice-president of the American Political Science Association. The first Latina to be president of the Western Political Science Association, her teaching interests and research areas of expertise include: race, ethnicity and politics; public policy; political tolerance; and the politics of Rock-n-Roll music. She is one of the principal investigators for the Latino National Survey (LNS) funded by Ford, Carnegie, Russell Sage, Hewlett, Joyce, Rhode Island and National Science Foundations. Completed in December 2007, the LNS is a state-stratified survey of over 9,800 Latinos/as in the U.S. Many of Dr. Martinez’ publications are on the consequences of education policies for minority students, but she also has publications on Latino/a politics, women in politics, aging policy and methods of survey research. Two of her more recent publications include Politicas: Latina Public Officials in Texas and “Su Casa Es Nuestra Casa: Latino Politics Research and the Development of American Political Science,” published in the American Political Science Review. She also is co-editor of Perspectives on Race, Ethnicity and Religion: Identity Politics in the United States and a co-author of the forthcoming book, Making it Home: Latino Lives in America.
1/23/09- From US Financial Crisis to Global Economic Crisis by Matías Fontenla, PhD in Economics from the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on Macroeconomics, Financial Crises, Economic Growth and Development. He has been invited to talk on his area of expertise at many conferences and to upper management at many countries’ central banks around the world. He has appeared in print and on electronic media on many occasions. His research on Financial Crises has appeared in leading Macroeconomic journals. Dr Fontenla is currently working on issues of Microfinance and banking for the poor by studying replicas of the famous and hugely successful Grameen Bank and its programs for making micro-loans without collateral to the very poor in Latin America so that they can purchase equipment and supplies to become more productive and self-sufficient.
1/09/09- Foreign Loyalties? Hispanic and American National Unity by David R. Ayon, political analyst, writer and lecturer specializing in U.S.-Latin American relations and the politics and foreign policy of the United States and Mexico. Ayón has worked as analyst, consultant, and special producer for Spanish language television news during each electoral cycle in the U.S. and in Mexico since 1992. He is a contributing editor to the Spanish-language edition of the journal Foreign Affairs; a contributor to México en el Mundo, an annual review of Mexico’s foreign relations; and has contributed numerous essays to the op-ed and Sunday Opinion pages of the Los Angeles Times since 1983, when he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies of UC San Diego. Educated at Princeton, Stanford and the Colegio de Mexico, Ayón has taught courses on politics and U.S.-Latin American relations at six colleges and universities, including two campuses of the University of California, Stanford and USC, and was Associate Director of the California-Mexico Project of the USC School of International Relations. Currently he is Senior Research Associate and U.S. Director of the ‘Focus Mexico’ project at the Leavy Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.
