School News AGS

The American Graduate School in Paris and, its partner institution in the United States, Arcadia University have agreed to launch a joint academic journal on international studies. This new journal will focus on International Relations, Diplomacy and Development issues as well as Peace and Conflict Resolution, reflecting the interdisciplinary approach and complementary academic concentrations of the two institutions. It will be an online-only open source publication available at no cost to users worldwide, featuring peer-reviewed articles, book reviews, opinion pieces and interviews.

Patrick Clairzier (on the left on the picture), Assistant Professor in the Study Abroad program at AGS in Paris and initiator of the project, met with Warren Haffar (on the right on the picture), Dean of International Affairs at Arcadia University, and Sandra Hordis, Director of Arcadia's Off-shore Programs in Paris on October 18th, 2013 to discuss the various ways in which the two institutions can develop interdisciplinary research through this joint project.

The first issue of the journal will be released early 2014. The theme will be "The Roles and Challenges of Diplomacy in the 21st Century: Inclusion and Exclusion in a Globalized World.” More details will be posted here soon on how to access the journal.

This collaboration demonstrates a combined commitment by AGS and Arcadia to furthering high-level academic research, innovation and debate on important international trends and topics.

Preparation for the 9th AGS Graduate Student Conference is underway as the Call for Papers has been released. This year’s edition focuses on “Cyber-Developments in International Relations: Impacts on an Evolving World.” The goal of this conference is to build awareness about the contemporary evolutions within international relations. It will seek to analyze the changes that technology has brought within the field and to understand how it is used to enhance the discourse, from interactions through media to the subtleties of the use of Twitter and other social media by diplomats, activists and politicians.

As in previous years, the AGS Conference Team has brought together a dozen happy candidates in the master’s in International Relations and Diplomacy program at AGS in Paris, under the coordination of Stefan De Las (Class of 2014).

The Conference Team has been steadily sending out the Call for Papers to universities around the world and posting it on websites such as the International Studies Association (see here) and StudentCompetitions.com, a Swedish-based website that promotes student events and competitions worldwide to some 260,000 members (see here).

The Conference Team has also been preparing marketing and logistic strategies and planning fundraising events to finance the conference, such as a Halloween party on November 26 at Belushi’s in Paris, which was welcomed by many French and international students in the Paris community.

Additionally, the Conference team has been working with its active partners and sponsors such as Fondation Alliance Française, The World Cultures Institute (Maison des Cultures du Monde) and Banque Populaire Rives de Paris.

See Call for Papers

On September 26-29, students participating in Arcadia's undergraduate study abroad program at AGS in Paris went to Nice for the first of their semester trips. Nice, France's fifth largest city, is located on the Mediterranean along the famous Côte d'Azur (French Riviera).

Students explored Vieux Nice (historical center) and its narrow winding cobblestone streets filled with shops and restaurants. They also made the trek up to the Parc du Chateau, a former Louis XIV castle site overlooking the Mediterranean. One of the hightlights of the trip was a day-long visit of Eze, a Medieval fortified village dating back to 200 BC, perched on a rocky peak facing the Mediterranean.

This trip was one of two that students take every semester as part of Arcadia's study abroad program at AGS in Paris. The other trip is to Brussels, Belgium or - every other semester - to Strasbourg, France, where they tour the European Union institutions which they study in the classroom. In addition to the program trips, students often use their weekends and breaks to travel on their own time. They go to various places in France, Europe and North Africa, all easily accessible from Paris.

Jennifer Wright, coordinator of the study abroad program at AGS, says: "All of these trips during the semester abroad in France are a wonderful way to enhance the students' international experience and get a comparative view of France and other European countries. This trip to Nice gave students a good understanding of picturesque Provence- a region that inspired so many artists and writers. Travel is a wonderful means of complementing in-classroom learning."

On the 27th September, AGS students were invited to attend a talk by 2011 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Leymah Gbowee, which took place at the American Church in Paris.

Leymah Gbowee spoke about her experience as a peace activist in Africa and her native country Liberia during the second civil war (1999-2003). She recounted her non-violent struggle through peacebuilding initiatives allowing for the full participation of women. Ms. Gbowee emphasized the need for us as human beings “to talk to one another and not to talk at each other” and our duty “to step out of our individual spaces and do one kind act that will draw people together."

A former trauma healing specialist, Ms. Gbowee became one of the leaders of Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace in 2002, a women's peace movement which aided in bringing about the end of the second Liberian civil war in 2003 and brought to power fellow activist Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, making Liberia the first country with a woman president in the history of the African continent. Along with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Yemeni Human Rights activist Tawakkol Karman, Ms. Gbowee was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for her "non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work."

AGS students Stefan De Las and Mathew Wood, both candidates in the Master in International Relations and Diplomacy program at AGS in Paris, attended the talk. Stefan De Las says: "This kind of event makes me realize how lucky we, AGS students, are to have access to all that is happening in Paris as one of the world's capitals. We attended this talk two weeks after a lecture by Human Rights Watch France director Jean-Marie Fardeau and one week after a debate with German diplomat Ambassador Wilfried Bolewski, both professors at AGS... What better place than Paris to study International Relations?"

The most recent edition of AGS’s “Wine and Cheese” discussion had Ambassador and AGS professor Wilfried Bolewski as the evening’s speaker and main attraction. The debate was centered on the theme: “Diplomatic Asylum in International Law: From Assange to Snowden.”

Ambassador Bolewski gave the background of the ongoing cases of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden and examined them from the perspective of international law. He highlighted the factors of diplomatic immunity and discussed the implications of international treaties such as the Vienna Convention. He explained the procedure in Ecuador’s decision to give Assange diplomatic asylum within the Ecuadorian embassy in the United Kingdom as well as Snowden’s sought after asylum in Russia to escape American indictment.

With regards to diplomatic missions within foreign countries, Ambassador Bolewski emphasized the need to adhere to certain rules and guidelines such as the sovereign equality of States, and the inviolability of diplomatic practices in future decision-making, stating that “The disputed legality of granting diplomatic asylum according to General International Law does not allow an infringement on the undisputed inviolability of the embassy.”Yet, he also recognized the difference in regional understanding of international customary law, citing the relevant example of Latin America, as “there are new emerging laws corresponding to new emerging situations.”

One of the highlights of the evening was a Foreign Policy decision-making exercise: Ambassador Bolewski engaged the audience in providing options and possible solutions in a lively round of discussion. Dr. Eileen Servidio, President of the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at AGS, moderated the exercise, and awarded a prize - a bottle of French wine - to three highly engaged AGS students, Christina Boehrer, Christine Brownfield and Mathew Wood.

Ambassador Bolewski is a German career diplomat, lawyer and professor of International Law. Attending the evening were AGS students, alumni, faculty members and other guests, including the former director of AGS, Georges Lambrakis, who had 31 years of experience in the US Foreign Service serving in Europe and the Middle East.

See photos of the evening:

On September 12, AGS hosted a talk and Q&A session on the relations between US and Pakistan. The speaker, Lubna Sunawar, is a Ph.D. candidate in Peace and Conflict Studies at the National Defence University in Islamabad. She is currently a visiting fellow at AGS, where she works with the guidance of Dr. Tatiana Coutto under the SPLIT program, a joint initiative of the French Embassy in Pakistan and the Pakistani Higher Education Commission aimed to help the development of cooperation between French and Pakistani scientific organizations.

In her presentation, Lubna Sunawar put a particular focus on the post-9/11 period and the impact of the War on Terror on the US-Pakistani Relations. She emphasized Pakistan’s role as an important diplomatic, military and logistic ally to the US, and the repercussions of that role on Pakistan and its position on the international stage.

“The decision to support the U.S.-led War on Terror and the intervention against the Taliban government in Afghanistan has brought serious political, economic and military repercussions for Pakistan. The Taliban resistance has now assumed the shape of an insurgency and they have pursued an armed struggle against the foreign forces which are stationed there as a retaliation. Unfortunately, today this on-going war is not only confined to Afghanistan alone but has now entered Pakistan’s tribal belt and FATA region (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) where large number of militants have taken asylum and have created serious security problems thus directly leading to military operations in these areas carried out by the Pakistan military itself.”  explains Sunawar. She adds: “This ongoing war on terror has not only created a serious socio-political gash within Pakistan’s population and state elements but has also dragged Pakistan into an endless severe economic crisis.”

This talk was attended by AGS students, faculty, alumni and external guests. One of the attendees, South-Asian scholar Chaminda Hettiarachchi, Associate Director of the Research Center for Strategic Studies in Sri Lanka, comments: “The talk covered not only US-Pakistani relations but also Pakistan's position in the South-Asian region and terrorism as a global issue.” A regular visitor to AGS since he participated in the 2007 AGS conference, Hettiarachchi adds: “AGS is not only an academic institution but a multicultural hub where we meet a lot of people from different nationalities and backgrounds. Today I had the experience of a Pakistani scholar talking about US-Pakistani relations in France to an audience of people from more than 15 countries!”

On September 2, AGS recent graduate Dave Feldman (M.A. in International Relations and Diplomacy, class of 2012) was invited to present at an international conference called "Brokering Human Security: Access at Times of Hightened Migration Control". This conference was held in Paris and co-organized by Sciences Po/CERI (FrenchResearch Center on International Relations) and the University of Amsterdam.

Dave Feldman opened the onference with a paper entitled "Border Communities are not for Sale! Towards a 'queer' rejection of 'border security' in Southern Arizona?"

"In my article, I argue that a small campaign launched this past June in Tucson, Arizona called "Border Communities are not for Sale!" represents a 'queering' of 'border security' politics for similar reasons as those pointed by anthropologist Nicholas De Genova in his study of the migrant mobilizations in the US during the first half of 2006. He interpreted them as a 'queering' of migration politics in their announcement of presence and refusal to articulate clear political demands other than a rejection of the racist and draconian Sensenbrenner Bill that had passed the House of Representatives in late 2005." explains Feldman. "My paper is very much a continuation of a larger research project that started with my thesis at the American Graduate School in Paris, and I was able to focus more explicitly on Gramsci's concept of common sense and its role in the uncritical acceptance and indeed constant demand for more 'security'--and by extension militarization--in the contemporary United States. By demonstrating that the vague concept of 'border security' translates to abuse and death on the border, and that this is what is actually at the heart of the so-called 'comprehensive immigration reform' recently passed by the US Senate, Border Communities are not for Sale! is--in my estimation--an attack on this hegemonic common sense. I argue that it sidesteps the severe limitations of 'political compromise' and points the way toward exciting forms of critical resistance, possibly even presaging the development of a politics of 'anti-security' as suggested by Mark Neocleous. Indeed, this 'anti-security' angle is an approach that I would like to explore in my further research on the militarization of the US-Mexico borderlands."

Dave Feldman is now enrolled in a Sociology and Political Philosophy program at the French university Paris VII-Diderot. Following his presentation, the discussant of his panel has asked him to write two articles for the prominent French journal on Human Rights La Revue des Droits de l'Homme.

Another conference - and another success - for the AGS Model United Nations team. Six AGS students participated in the Paris International MUN conference(PIMUN) on May 31-June 2, along with around 600 other students from around the world. Thanks to all of the research and preparation work that the team had done under the coordination of Master's candidates Christine Brownfield and Manuel Navarro (AGS Class of 2014), the AGS team received two of the conference Best delegate awards, which are the top awards in each committee : Christine Brownfield was nominated Best Delegate for her work in the First Committee of the General Assembly (Disarmament and International Security - DISEC), and Tim Francis was nominated Best Delegate for his work in the International Atomic Energy Agency Committee (IAEA).

This is the fourth conference in the MUN program that AGS started in 2012 as a component of its Master’s in International Relations and Diplomacy. Previous conferences included the Catalonian MUN conference in Barcelona and the London Model United Nations conference, where AGS delegates also won awards.

The class of 2013 of the American Graduate School in Paris graduated on June 6th, 2013. 27 students from 14 different countries received an American Master's degree after completing their studies at AGS in Paris: Master of Arts in International Relations and Diplomacy, or International MBA. Both degrees are accredited in the US through AGS's partner institution Arcadia University. 

The ceremony took place in the Alliance Française building were AGS is also located, in the heart of Paris, near Luxembourg gardens. The commencement speaker this year was Amir Taheri, an Iranian-born journalist and author based in Europe. Taheri published over ten books on the Middle East and has been a contributor to leading newspapers in the US (New York times, Wall Street Journal...), France (Le Monde, Le Figaro...), the UK (The Times, the Daily Telegraph...), Germany (Die Welt, Die Zeit...), Italy (La Republicca...), and Arab Countries (Arab News, Asharq Alawsat...).

The ceremony was followed by a graduation dinner in the French Senate where the AGS crew was welcomed by French Senator Roland du Luart, former Vice-President of the Senate (2004-2011) and President of the Franco-US Senate Committee (Groupe France - État-Unis).

See Full Graduation Ceremony (1:00:09)

See Recent Graduate Testimonials (3:35)

The American Graduate School in Paris hosted its 8^th International Graduate Student Conference on April 18-19, 2013, on the theme of "Identity and Gender Politics Within International Relations". Academics, students and professionals from a dozen countries - India, Taiwan, Israel, Zimbabwe, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Italy, Switzerland, France, Canada, the United States and Brazil - came to AGS to discuss ideas and share research findings. Building bridges between academia and actors in the field, they touched on such themes as as humanitarian aid, gender-based violence and the role of media as a social tool.

"One of the greatest values of the conference was how, after numerous presentations, panelists and audience members discussed the many layers of identity that individuals possess. I also appreciated the discussions about the frequent conflation of gender politics with women's politics. In fact, gender is about women as well as men, and more broadly about the spectrum of gender identities that exist around our commonly accepted dichotomy,” says Seyward Darby, a Master’s candidate in International Relations at Yale University, who presented a paper entitled; “Woefully Incomplete: Interrogating the Dominant Narrative of Rape as a Weapon of War.” 

The keynote panel featured Jean-Marie Fardeau, France Director of Human Rights Watch; Alison Smale, Executive Editor of the International Herald Tribune; Jane Freedman, Program Specialist in the Gender Equality Division of UNESCO; and Kimberly Adams, Managing Partner of the social enterprise Flying Bridges. Keynote panelists discussed how their respective organizations address issues of gender and identity.

“Human Rights Watch has a long-standing commitment for the respect of gender and identity as this lies at the core of human rights." says Jean-Marie Fardeau. "We have researchers covering about 100 countries and release reports everyday on the multiple aspects of these wide and complex issues, such as early marriage in Arab countries, women trafficking between Eastern and Western Europe, forced labor, denial of women’s access to education and health, gender inequalities in the professional and political arenas, and flouted rights of the LGBT community." Fardeau adds: "This conference was a good way to exchange ideas with other actors from intergovernmental organizations, NGOs and academia, as well as raise public awareness on these crucial subjects.” 

The AGS annual conference is organized by master’s degree candidates in the AGS International Relations and Diplomacy program under the supervision of Professor Ruchi Anand, who authored two chapters in AGS’s book Crimes Against Women (New York: Nova, 2010), a collective work edited by David Pike with a foreword by Bangladeshi human rights advocate Taslima Nasrin. 

“The AGS conference is a tremendous opportunity to enhance many skills that are considered necessary in the professional world. Being able to coordinate individual and team efforts along a projected timeline was very important,” said Stefan De Las, a Master’s candidate at AGS who took an active role in the conference organization and has already accepted to be the student director for next year’s edition. “Our entire committee was involved in the procedure, from writing the call for papers, reaching out to the academic and professional community, managing the logistics to creating the marketing strategy and material. During the conference, the ability to network and meet the panelists who wrote the papers is also priceless, as you grasp new ideas while sharing your own. The entire process has been an amazing experience and I must say, I am looking forward to next year’s AGS Conference.”

This event was held in partnership with Arcadia University and with the contribution of institutional partners Fondation Alliance Française, World Cultures Institute and Banque Populaire Rives de Paris.

More photos