Alumni Weekend 2014: The Changing Face of Security
As part of the Boston Univeristy’s Alumni Weekend 2014, the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies hosted a special panel discussion on “The World in Flux: The Changing Face of Security” on September 20, 2014 at the School’s new premises at 121 Bay State Road.
Speaking to a standing-room only audience, the panel – consisting of Prof. Henrik Selin, Amb. Robert Loftis, Prof. Cornel Ban and Pardee School and CAS alumni Matthew Trevithick – spoke about the many dimensions of how the very meaning and import of international security is changing in today’s world.
Prof. Henrik Selin, in introducing the panel and the Pardee School, also celebrated the presennce of BU Alum Matt Trevithick and his family in the audience. Matt, who had graduated with a degreee in International Relations in 2008, is the co-founder and Director of Research at the Syria Research and Evaluation Organization (in Turkey) and has previously worked at the American Univeristy of Afghanistan and the American University of Iraq. Earlier during the day, Matt Trevithick was presented with a BU Young Alumni Award during the Best of BU Alumni lunch.
During their remarks at the panel, former US Ambassador Robert Loftis, now a Professor of Practice at the Pardee School, highlighted the continuing and growing role of global diplomacy in security issues. He remarked that the pressures on diplomacy are greater than ever before, as are the needs in ever-expanding theatres of global insecurity. Opening remarks from Prof. Cornel Ban focused on how international finance has now become a major arena of global security, and insecurity. In particualr, he shared examples from across the world – especially including Europe – of the many ways in which international finance creates new seurity challenges for the world.
Matt Trevithick focused his opening remarks on his experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now in Turkey, in the middle of the conflicts that have enveloped that region. In reflecting on his training and education at Boston University, he stressed in particualrly the importance of contextual knowledge and language instruction that he recieved here. These, he believed, were instrumental to his own preparation for the work he has been doing, but also that these are areas which US education has sometimes neglected. Rounding off the main panel disucssion, Prof. Henrik Selin highlighted aspects of climate and environmental insecurity and especially how they relate to issues of human security and poverty. These, he believed, are amongst the greatest challenges of the world in flux that we live in today.
A lively Q&A session followed the panel discssion.