David Burger served as Political Counselor in the largest U.S. Embassy in the world - Kabul, Afghanistan - from 2018-2019.  In this presentation he will reflect on his assignment there, the complex U.S.-Afghanistan relationship, and his 27 year career serving the American people as a Foreign Service Officer.

David Burger, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, is Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of the United States of America in Athens.  Prior to this, he served as Political Counselor at U.S. Embassy Kabul, Afghanistan.  Previously Mr. Burger served as Director of the Bureau of Counterterrorism's Office of South and Central Asia and Near East Affairs and as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Ljubljana, Slovenia.  He has also served in Skopje, Ankara, Helsinki, Singapore, Lahore, and two other assignments in Washington.  Mr. Burger is a six-time recipient of the State Department's Superior Honor Award.  He received his Master of Arts degree in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, and his Bachelor of Arts degree from the same institution.

Brendan Helm is a research assistant for the Lester Crown Center on US Foreign Policy and Public Opinion teams at the Council. After earning his undergraduate degree in international relations from the College of William and Mary, he worked at Teaching, Research, and International Policy—a survey project which examined the gap between academia and policymaking. ​

Craig Kafura is the assistant director for public opinion and foreign policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project, and a Pacific Forum Young Leader. At the Council, he coordinates work on public opinion and foreign policy and is a regular contributor to the public opinion and foreign policy blog Running Numbers. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, and The Diplomat, among others. Kafura holds an MA in Political Science from Columbia University and a BA in Political Science from Yale University. ​

Dr. Christine Petersen, an expert on vaccines, epidemiology and the pandemic, is the director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases and a professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Iowa College of Public Health. The focus of this center is to bring together trans-disciplinary research teams to lessen the burden of emerging zoonotic infectious diseases across health settings. These efforts bring together immunologists, vaccinologists and computational biologists/biostatisticians to attack the problem of vaccine-intractable infections through statistical hierarchical modeling of protective immunity. CEID-based efforts have led to published collaborative studies.

Dr. Christine Petersen’s scholarly work has focused on the recognition and prevention of zoonotic diseases, primarily the epidemiology and immunobiology of vector-borne and parasitic diseases and like almost everyone in these fields in 2020, also now SARS coronavirus 2. Dr. Petersen is the scientific program chair for the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Dr. Petersen is the US/non-vector borne disease region representative to the international veterinary group that provides recommendations regarding treatment and prevention of infection with the zoonotic protozoan parasite, Leishmania infantum; Leishvet. Dr. Petersen’s collaborative group works in Brazil, India and Ethiopia via NIH/Fogarty International Center and NIAID-funded focused on understanding transmission routes and host species immune susceptibility for vector borne zoonoses including tick borne and sand fly borne diseases. This work has been predominantly evaluating dogs for their role in these infectious disease ecologies, but has spanned work in domestic ruminants (goats, cows and water buffalo) to small rodent reservoirs of Borrelia. Dr. Petersen’s published and patented work demonstrates the ability to target reservoir species for immunologic and parasitologic control of chronic infections to promote disease elimination. ​

When: Thursday, April 29th @ 7pm
Where: Online via Zoom
Please register to receive a link to join the online program live.

Questioning and reassessing the European Union (EU) is vital for the future of the transnational organization as it struggles to connect with its people. Many works of art of the last few decades pointed to the roots of popular discontent with the EU even before it was known as such. Recent pieces exude a sense of urgency, manifesting deep concern about the European integration project. Their contribution provides new perspectives to debates that are often the monopoly of politicians, technocrats, and academics. 

​Luis Martín-Estudillo is a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa and holds affiliate positions at the Universities of Minnesota-Twin Cities and Groningen (The Netherlands). He specializes in modern and contemporary Spanish cultural and intellectual history, visual culture, and European studies. He has published and edited eight books, including The Rise of Euroskepticism: Europe and Its Critics in Spanish Culture (Vanderbilt University Press, 2018), winner of an inaugural National Endowment for the Humanities' Open Book Award. His latest book, Goya and the Mystery of Reading, will be published this year.

The United States of America is a signatory to the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions yet routinely transgresses these and other treaties and agreements comprising our system of international law. Why then are presidents not held accountable or impeached? This talk will address this question in light of the ‘informal empire’ that the United States has managed since 1945 and the violations of human rights and international law which have occurred. In sharing personal experiences of helping draft articles of impeachment against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Dr. Zmolek will attempt to help us connect the dots between the assault on civil liberties and the escalation of violence in US foreign policy post-9/11 and the January 6th assault on the US Capitol by a mob incited by Donald Trump. While this resort to violence in attempting to subvert the outcome of a democratic election has been rightly viewed as an assault on domestic political norms, use of the same tactics by parties supported by the United States has been a routine part of managing the US’s informal empire. The fact that impeachment as a mechanism for upholding accountability to the law obviously remains hostage to the partisan politics of America’s two-party system leaves the door open to future episodes involving the turn to the use of force against democracy.

Michael Andrew Zmolek teaches World History, International Studies and Development Studies at the University of Iowa. His book Rethinking the Industrial Revolution (Brill 2013; Haymarket 2014) explores five centuries of English/British history and is part of a broader effort to understand the nature and origins of capitalism. Mike received a BA in Linguistics and a Certificate of African studies at the University of Iowa before going on to complete his PhD in Political Science at York University in Toronto, where he served as an executive of the Graduate Students' Association for four years. As a legislative assistant in Congress, his work focused on addressing the plight of Gulf Coast survivors of Hurricane Katrina and on drafting articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for representatives Cynthia McKinney (GA) and Dennis Kucinich (OH). As an activist he has worked on the campaign to abolish apartheid in South Africa; opposing tuition hikes for students in Canada; and opposing the bombing, sanctions against, invasion and occupation of Iraq.

This talk is dedicated to the memory of Ed Zastrow.

We invite you to join us for a discussion with three University of Iowa Mandela Washington Fellow Graduates: Valeria Adzo Adzatia, Edgar Munatsi, and Sandra Ejang. This Iowa City Foreign Relations Council program will feature a panel discussion, moderated by Dimy Doresca, Director of the International Business Institute at the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business.
 
These three young entrepreneurs are eager to share with you how their ventures have progressed since they left Iowa City. In addition to discussing their successes, the discussion will include conversation around the current health, political, and economic contexts within their respective countries.  

The U.S. State Department's Mandela Washington Fellowship, started in 2014 as part of the Young African Leaders Initiative created by President Obama, empowers young people from Sub-Saharan Africa through academic coursework, leadership training, and networking. Each year the Fellowship provides 1,000 young ambassadors with the opportunity to hone their skills at U.S. higher education institutions. Over the years, the Iowa delegations of Fellows spend six weeks in Iowa taking entrepreneurial classes and touring the state.
 
Each year ICFRC hosts a program featuring the Mandela Washington Fellows visiting the University of Iowa. This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are bringing you a virtual discussion from three former fellows. You won't want to miss this new twist on our annual Mandela Washington Fellowship spotlight!

This talk presents some of the key findings from Hirsch's current book project. It is based on long term fieldwork in the Peruvian Andes during the 2010s, an era when Peru's economy saw astronomical aggregate growth due to simultaneous booms in extractive industry, gastronomy, and tourism. Hirsch explores the question of growth: in rural villages at the Andean margins of Peru's economic boom, what does it mean to experience economic growth as a daily fact of life? What does it actually look like? How does it feel? How, in other words, are people supposed to know that their country is growing? Hirsch follows three distinct development projects that are invested in recruiting rural villagers to the collective enactment of Peruvian economic growth as its newest entrepreneurs: one from the Peruvian Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, one from a non-governmental organization, and one from a mining corporation. 

Eric Hirsch is an environmental and economic anthropologist whose research focuses on climate change, development, and how marginalized communities build their livelihoods. Most of his field research has taken place in Peru, particularly the southern Andean Colca Valley, and the cities of Arequipa and Lima. Hirsch has conducted additional research in the Maldives and the US. His current book project, Acts of Growth: Development and the Politics of Abundance in Peru (under contract with Stanford University Press) investigates economic growth as a shared understanding that comes alive through face-to-face interaction in rural Peru. 

Hirsch's second major project delves more directly into the issue of climate change as a fact of daily life. In collaboration with the Barcelona-based project "Local Indicators of Climate Change Impacts," the project works to center how non-Western scientific observations in rural communities contribute to those communities' responses to climate change. Hirsch has published his research in journals including Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Geoforum, and Global Environmental Change. 

When: Tuesday, March 16th @ 12pm
Where: Online via Zoom
Please register to receive a link to join the online program live.

After withdrawing the United States from the Iran Nuclear Deal, former President Trump waged a failed and reckless "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran. This dangerous policy brought the two countries disturbingly close to the brink of war, shortened Iran's "breakout time" to build nuclear weapons, and caused Iranian civilians to suffer needlessly. It's time for a policy reset and a swift return to diplomacy. While there's much reason for optimism regarding the prospects for peace as the Biden administration, our European allies, and Iranian leaders all appear to be eager to turn the page and restore the JCPOA, saving the deal will not be without difficulties. 
 
The JCPOA was always meant to be a starting point. While there are a myriad of issues that should be resolved diplomatically between the United States, Iran, and other governments in the region, the nuclear issue is the most pressing. A full return to the nuclear deal should serve as a foundation for future talks to address these issues. In this discussion we will learn about the history that brought us to this moment, the political dynamics shaping this conversation around the JCPOA, and show ways for citizens to engage with their members of Congress to support diplomacy with Iran. 

Hassan El-Tayyab is FCNL's lead lobbyist on Middle East policy. He is also responsible for representing FCNL with the various coalitions that work on these issues. Prior to joining FCNL in August 2019, he was co-director of the national advocacy group Just Foreign Policy, where he led their lobbying work to advance a more progressive foreign policy in the Middle East and Latin America. He played a major role in the successful passage of the War Powers Resolution to end US military aid to the Saudi-UAE coalition's war in Yemen.
 
Hassan's passion for foreign affairs is rooted in his desire to make life better for people in the Middle East, including his extended family in Jordan. He is convinced that advancing a more peaceful and diplomacy-based foreign policy in the Middle East is critical, not only for the family he loves, but for peace and stability worldwide. His writings and commentaries have been featured in numerous news outlets, including BBC World News, The Hill, Al Jazeera, The Huffington Post, The Intercept, and more.