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Welcome to the introductory issue of The Pell Center Times. Having now completed my fifth month as Pell Center Executive Director, I thought it might be appropriate to attempt some form of electronic newsletter to keep you informed of new ideas and plans for the coming year. I want to let you know about our new ideas and plans as well. That said, we welcome your thoughts and inputs. Just as many of you know that I will be asking for your support in the coming months, it remains important that we are aware and attentive to your interests and concerns. In order to honor and to continually focus on programs that honor Senator Pell's career, for example, we have refined the five primary focus areas of the Pell Center, which are:
In line with these foci, we have decided to concentrate on several specific issues in the coming months. Specifically, all of us have been stunned and saddened by the Asian tsunami of December 26th, 2004. Thus, in collaboration with Salve Regina University's efforts to mobilize the university community to participate in relief efforts for victims of the recent tsunami disaster, the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy will present a public lecture, to be held in the Bazarsky Lecture Hall, O'Hare Academic Center, on Monday, January 31 2005. Remember to bookmark the Upcoming Events page on our Pell Center website to learn about the next scheduled programs on our agenda. For reservations, questions, suggestions or concerns, please contact us by email at pellcenter@salve.edu or by telephone at 401.341.2927. Please accept all our best wishes at the Pell Center for you and those close to you in the New Year. P. H. Liotta, MFA, Ph.D. |
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In collaboration with Dr. Mary Sokolowski, Salve Regina's director of community and government relations, we are working to organize further programs that mean to inform members of the university community and the general public about the critical impact citizens can have in assisting during times of "complex emergencies"—whether they be wars, humanitarian crises or natural disasters. Possible future programs to support this effort include videoconferencing, panel presentations and public lectures at the Pell Center that illustrate the crucial role organizations and policy initiatives can play in supporting and sustaining human security needs. Although all programs have not yet been formalized, we do mean to stress the critical concerns and the critical nature of environmental issues that can affect millions of lives. In May, for example, we hope to host Geoffrey Dabelko, Director of the Environmental Change and Security Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars; his presentation will highlight how and why environmental issues can affect policy decisions. |
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To support Salve Regina University's efforts to mobilize the university community to participate in relief efforts for victims of the recent tsunami disaster, the Pell center for International Relations and Public Policy will present a public lecture, to be held in the Bazarsky Lecture Hall, O'Hare Academic Center, on Monday, January 31, 2005 at 6:30 pm. The speaker for this event is Samuel Worthington, national executive director and chief executive officer of Plan USA. Plan USA is an international development charity that is providing crucial support in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami of December 26th, 2004. |
Plan USA's staff in Sri Lanka was in a position to respond immediately by providing emergency and reconstruction aid to the areas most devastated—and will continue to play an important part in supporting short- and long-term relief and reconstruction in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand and India. We also hope to host Paolo Tripodi, Donald Brem Chair of Ethics at the Marine Corps University for a lecture on "Remembering Rwanda" in February. David Newman, editor of the international journal Geopolitics, will also speak in April on the continuing relevance of political geography. |
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The other major initiative we will launch this year is the "Visions of Peace" lecture series. The linking theme for these sessions will focus on how to approach seemingly irreconcilable conflicts and issues with a sense of purpose—and peace. Some of the speakers we have scheduled include:
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We have also invited:
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Recent Pell Director Lectures & Seminars The Pell Center Executive Director traveled to Rome, Italy in December to lecture and conduct seminars with senior diplomats, military officers, and other government officials from 39 different countries (including Georgia, Armenia, Jordan, and Kyrgyzstan) at the NATO Defence College. Dr. Liotta lectured on how demographic changes—specifically aging populations, rapid urbanization, and "gender imbalances" among male-female birth rates in many states—may fundamentally alter future societies. Notably, some of the recent work Dr. Liotta and his staff at the Pell Center have focused on in this specific area was featured in the December 12th, 2004 issue of the New York Times Magazine. He also considered how migration may become a necessity to sustain viable workforces and public funding programs for many states in the developed world, particularly in Western Europe and Japan. While migration is often considered as a "negative" factor by many, Liotta emphasized that migration can also have vastly significant positive impacts as well. Noting that, of the world's most powerful nations, the United States is the only one of the G-8 states still growing in population; almost all advanced states have not sufficiently planned to accommodate the increasingly daunting costs of aging populations. (In 1900, for example, the life expectancy of an American male was roughly 47 years; in 2000, this life expectancy was 77 years.) The ratio of taxpaying workers to non-taxpaying workers is 4:1 in most industrialized nations; by 2050, that may be 2:1. Italy, for example, already has an "aged" population of more than 20 percent beyond 65 years of age; costs to support this portion of the population currently consumes in excess of 15 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product. Japan, the nation with the most "serious" demographic challenge in terms of aging populations, could possibly see reduction in its gross national product of up to 23 percent by 2050. Liotta argued that "We cannot sustain support for aging populations with pension systems, and social support in the manner citizens have come to expect, and continue to thrive and prosper thirty years from now." He further addressed the earth's overall growing population and the corresponding growth in mega-cities. In 1950, New York was the only city with a population numbering more than 10 million. Within only 65 years, megacities have multiplied throughout the earth. We may well see proliferating states and regions with enormous populations and weak infrastructures —such as Bangladesh, whose seemingly inevitable collapse is accelerating due to increased flooding and severe poverty. While emphasizing that nothing about the future is certain or predictable, Dr. Liotta did stress that demographics and migration may well come to be some of the most significant security concerns of the first quarter of this century. Equally, the benefits of emerging technology may come to prove crucial in helping to address and solve some of these increasingly serious influences. |
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In December, the Pell Center co-sponsored a working conference with Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies titled "Prepared for Peace? The Use and Abuse of "Culture" in Military Simulations, Training and Education". We are deeply grateful, in particular, to U.S. Senator Jack Reed's support and his opening remarks as keynote speaker. Both his address and his thoughtful responses to questions following proved pivotal to the overall resounding success of this conference. Participants constantly referred to his presentations and to his deep appreciation of the complexities of Iraq over the course of our two days of work. The session brought together scholars and practitioners from the Watson Institute and the U.S. Naval War College, as well as colleagues from different branches of the U.S. Military, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, and other civilian and military academic institutions in the U.S. Presenters included academic researchers from a number of disciplines, computer design specialists and serving military officers and educators. Over two days, we discussed how culture is used, appropriated and incorporated in operational environments. Our challenge was to document how, currently and in the recent past, knowledge of culture is and has been transformed into action; to debate the benefits and limitations of current approaches; and to explore cutting edge problems and methods in cultural intelligence, awareness and sensitivity training. We sought to examine how changing conceptions of conflict and stability operations, and new blurrings of the distinction between war and this session – especially from editors of prestigious journals and book publishers. We believe that our session addressed a critical gap in our current thinking on culture – and we look forward to future exploration. |
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The World and the Future Program After some discussion with local communities, we have offered to launch "The World and the Future" program, which is an outreach to middle and high schools in New England. While emphasizing the mission of the Pell Center to help inform the public of the world's complexities, as well as prepare citizens for service, we mean for "The World and the Future" program to help students also become aware of the mission of Salve Regina University. |
The first scheduled lecture was presented to St. Mary-Bay View Academy and took place on January 14th, involving one hundred and ten partici-pants at the Pell Center. Notably, one Salve Regina undergraduate and one graduate student volunteered to serve on an interactive discussion panel following Dr. Liotta's presentation. In February, we will host the Meadowbrook Waldorf School for a session that will examine "The Real Meaning of Globalization". |
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Contact us: For questions, comments or concerns, please contact usat pellcenter@salve.edu or by telephone at 401.341.2927. |
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