New PCFR chairwoman; 2019-20 schedule
The Providence Committee on Foreign Relations (thepcfr.org; pcfremail@gmail.com) is pleased to announce that Barbara Ann Fenton has been named chairwoman, succeeding Hannah Hazelton, whose has successfully led the organization for the past couple of years.
Ms. Fenton has lived and studied in Scotland and Australia, and has long had a keen interest in international affairs, especially in regards to global health and environmental issues. This year Fenton was named to Providence Business News's "Top 40 Under 40" list. She has extensive university teaching and political experience.
Fenton stated, "After immensely enjoying the lively evenings that the PCFR dinners are known for, I'm thrilled to be stepping into this role and leading this renowned 91-year-old organization. With guests such as Jon Gage, Tweed Roosevelt and Ambassador Duddy early on in the season, we are looking forward to another energizing year of camaraderie and learning.’’
The Providence Committee on Foreign Relations is an independent private membership organization established in 1928 under the aegis of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which is based in New York. It no longer has a formal connection with the CFR, although CFR-linked experts sometimes speak at PCFR dinners.
The PCFR remains faithful to informing citizens about the world, and hosts around 10 engaging speakers each year in an off-the-record setting. For information about the organization, including on joining, see: www.ThePCFR.org
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Below is the current list of our dinner speakers (at our venue, the Hope Club, in Providence) for our 2019-2020 season. There will be refinements and outright changes in topics; the PCFR tries to remain somewhat flexible to respond to news and other events
Our first scheduled speaker comes Wednesday, Oct, 2, with Jonathan Gage, who will talk about how coverage of such international economic stories as trade wars has changed over the years, in part because of new technology, and how that coverage itself changes events.
Mr. Gage has had a very distinguished career in publishing and international journalism. He has served as publisher and CEO of Institutional Investor magazine, as publisher of strategy+business magazine, as a director at Booz Allen Hamilton and Booz & Company, as enterprise editor for Bloomberg News and finance editor of the Paris-based International Herald Tribune (of sainted memory) and as a senior writer for the Boston Consulting Group.
He is a trustee, and former vice chairman, of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.
He has written or edited for such publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek and Psychology Today magazine.
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On Wednesday, Oct. 23, comes Ambassador Patrick Duddy, who will talk about Venezuelan internal political and economic conditions and relations with the U.S., Cuba, Russia and other nations. Mr. Duddy, currently director of Duke University’s center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, served as American ambassador to Venezuela during some of the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. The late President Hugo Chavez expelled him but eight months later he resumed his ambassadorship. He finished that assignment in 2010.
Before his ambassadorships, Mr. Duddy served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (DAS) for the Western Hemisphere, responsible for the Office of Economic Policy and Summit Coordination, which included the hemispheric energy portfolio, as well for the Offices of Brazil/ Southern Cone Affairs and of Caribbean Affairs. During his tenure as DAS, he played a lead role in coordinating U.S. support for the restoration of democracy in Haiti.
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On Wednesday, Nov. 6, comes Tweed Roosevelt, president of the Theodore Roosevelt Association and great-grandson of that president. He’ll talk about how TR’s foreign policy, which was developed as the U.S. became truly a world power, affected subsequent presidents’ foreign policies. Mr., Roosevelt is also chairman of Roosevelt China Investments, a Boston firm.
In 1992, Mr. Roosevelt rafted down the 1,000-mile Rio Roosevelt in Brazil—a river previously explored by his great-grandfather in 1914 in the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition and then called the Rio da Duvida, the River of Doubt. The former president almost died on that legendary and dangerous trip.
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On Thursday, Dec. 5, we’ll welcome Dr. Elizabeth H. Prodromou, who directs the Initiative on Religion, Law, and Diplomacy, and is visiting associate professor of conflict resolution, at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She titles her talk "God, Soft Power, and Geopolitics: Religion as a Tool for Conflict Prevention/Generation".
Dr. Prodromou is also a non-resident senior fellow and co-chair of the Working Group on Christians and Religious Pluralism, at the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, and is also non-resident fellow at The Hedayah International Center of Excellence for Countering Violent Extremism, based in Abu Dhabi.
She is former vice chair and commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and was a member of the U.S. Secretary of State’s Religion & Foreign Policy Working Group. Her research focuses on geopolitics and religion, with particular focus on the intersection of religion, democracy, and security in the Middle East and Southeastern Europe. Her current research project focus on Orthodox Christianity and geopolitics, as well as on religion and migration in Greece.
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On Wednesday, Jan. 8, comes Michael Fine, M.D., who will talk about his novel Abundance, set in West Africa, and the challenges of providing health care in the Developing World. He will speak on: “Plagues and Pestilence: What we learned (or didn't) from Ebola about Foreign Policy and International Collaboration in the face of epidemics and outbreaks’’
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On Wednesday, Feb. 5, we will welcome as speaker PCFR member Cornelia Dean, book author, science writer and former science editor of The New York and internationally known expert on coastal conditions. She’ll talk how rising seas threaten coastal cities around the world and what they can do about it.
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On Wednesday, March 18, comes Stephen Wellmeier, managing director of Poseidon Expeditions. He’ll talk about the future of adventure travel and especially about Antarctica, and its strange legal status.
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On Wednesday, April 29, comes Trita Parsi, a native of Iran and founder and current president of the National Iranian American Council and author of Treacherous Alliance and A Single Roll of the Dice. He regularly writes articles and appears on TV to comment on foreign policy. He, of course, has a lot to say about U.S- Iranian relations and a lot more.
Mr. Parsi is a co-founder of a new think tank, financed by an unlikely partnership of the right wing Koch Brothers and the left-of-center George Soros. It’s called the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and dedicated to helping craft a new U.S. foreign policy that would be far less interventionist and put an end to America’s “endless foreign wars.’’
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On Wednesday, May 6, we’ll welcome Serenella Sferza, a political scientist and co-director of the program on Italy at MIT’s Center for International Studies, who will talk about the rise of right-wing populism and other developments in her native land.
She has taught at several US and European universities, and published numerous articles on European politics. Serenella's an affiliate at the Harvard De Gunzburg Center for European Studies and holds the title of Cavaliere of the Ordine della Stella d'Italia conferred by decree of the President of the Republic for the preservation and promotion of national prestige abroad.
June: Keeping open for now but possibly something on China.