The Young Initiative invites foreign policy experts and guest speakers to campus to engage in discussions on international relations and the global political economy with students and faculty.
Past Young Initiative Speaker Events
Young Initiative speakers give students and faculty an opportunity to expand their understanding of global issues. The Young Initiative sponsors several speakers each academic year highlighting particular aspects of global affairs and the global political economy. The Young Speakers program is devoted to highlighting the work and success of eminent international affairs experts and Â鶹ÊÓƵ alumni in public service and academia.
John Marks, the founder and former president of Search for Common Ground, visited Â鶹ÊÓƵ on November 21st and led a discussion titled "Can Sports Bring World Peace?" As a world renowned international conflict management programmer, Marks has aided US diplomatic missions in an effort to ease foreign tensions and reduce conflict risk.
Brought here as part of the "Can the United Nations Empower Social Change?" series; Mr. Altman’s talk primarily focused on the threat to life that queer bodies face globally, examining why sexuality and gender identity have become so politically contested.
On Tuesday, Nov. 1, the Young Initiative welcomed co-founder of the Center for Open Data Partnership Laura Manley to campus. Manley’s presentation focused mainly on targeted group work, where students were asked to create teams to analyze some of the challenges facing the use of data to measure progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.
Carmen Chu graduated from Occidental in 2000 and returned to campus Tuesday to share the story of her path to public service. She is the first speaker in a series hosted by the Young Initiative and Politics Department titled, Distinguished Alumni Speaker Series.
On October 14th, Derek Chollet came to Â鶹ÊÓƵ to discuss President Obama's foreign policy legacy. Derek Chollet is counselor and senior advisor for security and defense policy at The German Marshall Fund, was the U.S.
The recent speaker in the 2016 Sustainable Development Speaker Series, Philip Thigo, focused on the role of data in Kenya’s implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Thigo is a senior advisor for the Deputy President’s office in Kenya, as well as the founder of INFONET, and he approached the topic with a sense of optimism.
The former Prime Minister of Haiti, Laurent Lamothe, visited Occidental to discuss new methods of economic development for the future of multilateral international relations. Mr. Lamothe shared his experiences using technology as a resource to help the country recover from the 2010 earthquake that produced a humanitarian crisis.
Faisal Devji is a world-renowned scholar on jihadism and serves as a University Reader at St. Antony’s College, one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. On September 20, Dr. Devji spoke at the McKinnon Center for Global Affairs, for which he is an advisory board member.
On September 6th, 2016, Occidental was visited by Jenna Slotin, the Director of Sustainable Development Policy at the United Nations Foundation.
Michael Mahdesian served for seven years (1993-2000) as the Deputy Assistant Administrator for USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Response. His main duties included overseeing the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI). During this period, he was integrally involved in shaping USAID’s response to Haiti, Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Indones