Peace and Global Security 2008 Track Archive
Saturday, March 8th
10:45 - 12:15am: Track Time I
Track Plenary: “Building Security from the Ground Up: The Frontlines of Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding”
Reports of experience in the Middle East and Africa on local activities that provide a foundation for peacebuilding.
Moderator: Lisa Schirch, Eastern Mennonite University
Speakers: Father Clement Mweyang Aapengnuo, Ghana; Jana El-Horr, Lebanon and Iraq; Ruba Musleh, Palestine
2:45 - 4:15pm: Track Time II
Joint Plenary with Middle East Track: “Iran and Nuclear Nonproliferation”
How to deal peaceably and effectively with Iran’s nuclear weapons potential and bring Iran into a structure of true regional security.
Speakers: Stephen Kinzer, former New York Times bureau chief; Trita Parsi, President, National Iranian American Council; Joe Stork, Human Rights Watch
Moderator: Barbara Green, Executive Director, Churches Center for Theology and Public Policy.
4:30 - 6:00pm: Track Time III
(A) Joint Workshop with Africa Track: “Swords into Plowshares: Drawing Back U.S. Military Presence in Africa”
Review of U.S. military bases and military assistance programs in Africa, the new African Command, and alternative ways to help Africans achieve true security.
Speakers: Daniel Volman, Ph.D., Director of the African Security Research Project; Nicole Lee, Executive Director, TransAfrica Forum.
Moderator: Lora Lumpe, Legislative Representative on the US Campaign to Ban Landmines, Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL)
(B) Workshop: “Ending U.S.-Sponsored Torture”
Examination of the nature of U.S.-sponsored torture including the role of the School of the Americas in fostering it. Exploration of what the U.S. Congress can do and what the religious community can do to end it.
Moderator: Rev. Richard Killmer, Executive Director of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT).
Speakers: Dr. George Hunsinger, NARCAT Founder and Professor of Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary; Eric Le Compte, National Coordinator, School of the Americas Watch; John Humphries, Director for Program Coordination, NRCAT; Matt Hawthorne, Director for Policy Coordination for NRCAT.
Sunday, March 11th
2:00 - 3:30pm: Track Time IV
Joint Session with Domestic Track: “Federal Budget Priorities”
Understanding current federal budget priorities, including military spending, and changing current spending decisions to better meet our security and domestic human needs.
Speakers: Miriam Pemberton, Institute for Policy Studies/Foreign Policy in Focus; Greg Speeter, Executive Director, National Priorities Project
3:45 - 5:15pm: Track Time V
Track Plenary: “Getting Traction on the New Nuclear Danger”
Need to stop development of new nuclear weapons and work toward a world without nuclear weapons.
Moderator: James Winkler, General Secretary, United Methodist General Board of Church and Society.
Speakers: Jonathan Schell, Journalist, The Nation, and lecturer, Yale University; David Culp, Legislative Representative, Friends Committee on National Legislation.
For further information on Peace and Global Security Track, contact chair of Track Planning Team: Howard W. Hallman, chair, Methodists United for Peace with Justice at 301 897-3668 or hhallman@mupwj.org
Peace and Global Security Track Speakers
Fr. Clement Aapengnuo is Catholic priest from Ghana. He was the director of the Northern Ghana Peace Project, a faith based organization working for peace in Northern Ghana. He is currently a graduate student at the Institute of Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR), George Mason University.
David Culp is a Legislative Representative for the Friends Committee on National Legislation (Quakers). He was instrumental in the passage of the nuclear testing moratorium in 1992, the ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997, and the defeat of funding for the “reliable replacement warhead” in 2007.
Barbara Green is Executive Director of the Churches’ Center for Theology and Public Policy. She has served in the past as a policy advocate for the Presbyterian Church and as a liaison for the National Council of Churches USA in Berlin. She is a scholar in the life and work Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the author of numerous articles and co-author of a book about the 1991 Gulf War, Lines in the Sand: Justice and the Gulf War.
Matt Hawthorne serves as NRCAT’s Director of Policy Coordination. He enables the religious community to have a strong voice on torture in the halls of Congress, works closely with the Human Rights community on this issue and lobbies directly with Members of Congress. Prior to his time at NRCAT, he was on the Washington staff of Senator Dorgan of North Dakota.
Jana El Horr was recently awarded the first International Peacebuilding Fellowship from the American Islamic Congress and is a doctoral candidate at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. Of an Iraqi-Lebanese background, Ms. El Horr has worked in policy analysis and issue advocacy in the United States and Lebanon. She conducted workshops in Iraq last year on the principles of conflict resolution and reconciliation.
John Humphries serves as NRCAT’s Director for Program Coordination. He has more than ten years’ experience as a community organizer and trainer, serving as the director/lead organizer for organizations in rural Appalachia and in Connecticut. A member of the Hartford Friends Meeting, he traveled to Iraq in June 2002 with a Quaker/AFSC delegation, and he has helped organize a statewide interfaith network acting to oppose torture and the war in Iraq.
Dr. George Hunsinger is the Hazel Thompson McCord Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. In January 2006 he founded the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. Since 2003 he has been active in the Ecumenical movement through the Faith and Order commission and recently completed a book on The Eucharist and Ecumenism: Let Us Keep the Feast, to be published by Cambridge University Press in the summer of 2008.
Rev. Richard Killmer is the Executive Director of the National Religious Campaign Against torture. He has worked for national church agencies for 40 years including the National Council of Churches, the national headquarters of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Churches’ Center for Theology and Public Policy.
Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has reported for the Boston Globe and the New York Times. He is the author of Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq and All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. Stephen teaches journalism and political science at Northwestern University. He is currently engaged in a nation-wide speaking tour discussing the likely consequences of armed hostilities between the U.S. and Iran.
Eric LeCompte is the National coordinator of the campaign to close the School of Americas and is the former Chris of Pax Christi USA. Eric will share an update on the campaign and will discuss the history of torture at the School of the Americas and how this history influenced the torture used at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
Nicole Lee was appointed to the position of Executive Director of TransAfrica Forum in December 2006. Before accepting the position, Nicole was the organization’s Chief Financial Officer and a Senior Policy Researcher. Prior to joining TransAfrica Forum, Nicole was the Managing Director of Global Justice, a Washington advocacy group focused on HIV/ AIDS and child survival policy. Prior to this, Nicole spent three years in the human rights field. Living in Haiti, she researched claims and interviewed victims human rights abuse in Haiti for the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux. In 2001, Nicole worked in South Africa, assisting in the largest class action lawsuit ever filed on the continent for victims of environmental racism. She has appeared on countless television and radio programs and is a regular commentator on Pacifica Radio and Al Jazeera. Nicole holds a Juris Doctor degree and has done extensive graduate work in women's studies.
Ruba Musleh is currently a Fulbright Scholar at Eastern Mennonite University where she is pursuing an MA degree in Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding. Ms. Musleh has four years of experience in USAID projects in Palestine. She is currently an intern at American Task Force on Palestine, an advocacy organization in Washington DC. She plans to return to Palestine to resume her career in peacebuilding.
Trita Parsi is the president of the National Iranian American Council, an organization founded in 2002 to promote Iranian-American participation in American civic life and foster greater understanding between the peoples of Iran and the United States. Trita holds the PhD in international relations from Johns Hopkins University and two master’s degrees from Sweden. He is the author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States, (Yale 2007) a history of relations among the three countries from 1948 to the present. His articles on current affairs have appeared in leading newspapers in the U.S., the U.K., Israel, and Lebanon.
Miriam Pemberton is Research Fellow, Peace and Security Program, Institute for Policy Studies and Peace and Security Editor for Foreign Policy In Focus. She has testified in Congress on the economic consequences of going to war with Iraq and is a principal author of the Unified Security Budget. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in 1987 and was previously the Editor and Research Associate and later the Director of the National Commission for Economic Conversion and Disarmament.
Jonathan Schell is the author of The Fate of the Earth, among other books, and the just-published “The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger.” He is a journalist at The Nation and a lecturer at Yale University.
Greg Speeter, Executive Director, founded the National Priorities Project in 1982 as a way for community groups and the public to understand and participate in critical federal budget decisions. He has been a featured speaker at both policy conferences and training sessions for community organizers, has held a number of budget briefings on Capitol Hill, and is frequently sought out by the media for analysis of budget policies. Before founding the National Priorities Project, Greg worked for six years at the Citizen Involvement Training Project in Amherst, MA, where he authored training books on community organizing and access to the political process. He began his career as a VISTA Volunteer in 1966, and spent the first decade of his professional life as a community organizer and policy analyst.
Joe Stork is the Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch. His work focuses on violations of human rights and humanitarian law by states and armed groups. Joe is a co-founder of the Middle East Research & Information Project and the past editor of its journal, Middle East Report. His articles have appeared in numerous journals including The Nation, the Middle East Journal, World Policy Journal, Index on Censorship, and Le Monde Diplomatique.
Daniel Volman is the Director of the African Security Research Project in Washington, DC and a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars. He received a BA degree in History from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1975 and received a Ph.D. degree in African History from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1991. He is a specialist on U.S. military policy in Africa and U.S. military activities on the continent and has been doing research and writing on these issues for more than 30 years. He is the author of numerous articles in both scholarly and popular journals.