Pardee School Hosts Mentoring Session on Intelligence and Diplomacy
Around 70 students participated in a mentoring session on intelligence and diplomacy hosted by the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University on October 9, 2018. The event featured former and current members of the intelligence community alongside three former ambassadors for a discussion on the relationship between these two fields.
Two panels presented, which gave students the opportunity to ask questions and enabled speakers to discuss their personal backgrounds while providing anecdotes from their various careers.
The speakers for the event included Pardee Professors of the Practice of International Relations and former Ambassadors Vesko Garčević, Paul Hare, and Robert Loftis, who were joined by Pardee Professors of the Practice of International Relations and former CIA officers Joseph Wippl and John Woodward. Additionally, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA officer and the Director of the Intelligence Project at the Belfer Center, Harvard University, served as a panelist along with a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) officer and a representative from the Officer of the Director of National Intelligence..
The panelists provided the audience with in-depth answers regarding questions about career paths and specializations, and gave students a well-informed perspective on what a career in either field would entail. The speakers provided honest and transparent answers to questions on a variety of topics including career challenges, highlights, and realities of the working life in intelligence and state careers. The DIA speaker, for example, movingly described her experiences serving in Iraq and coming under attack.
Pardee School student Noah Riley commented, “The panel the Pardee School you assembled was absolutely amazing. The years of experience and knowledge together in one place was hard to soak in all at once.”
The panels were followed by an offline session which allowed students to engage with the speakers regarding these discussions and to ask for further career advice.