School News AGS

Starting this Fall, NGO offers a new graduate certificate program on NGO Management which will be co-taught by specialist in education and development Clinton Robinson and Human Rights Watch France director Jean-Marie Fardeau. This program is designed for students and professionals looking to start or join an NGO as well as NGO staff seeking to deepen their knowledge and improve their practices, and for all those who wish to integrate in other types of careers an in-depth understanding of what have become essential components of international affairs.

Courses are held in Paris in English. The program is based on a dual focus: a thorough exploration of the nature and role of non-governmental organizations and of the international context in which they are active, and a hands-on approach of the principles and practices of developing and managing an NGO. It comprises two semester courses which can be either taken as components of the Master of International Relations and Diplomacy program at AGS, or as a standalone module yielding a graduate certificate.

An independent consultant in education and development, Clinton Robinson has served as a senior specialist on various education programs, after working for over twenty years for SIL International, a literacy and language development NGO. His experience includes ten years in Africa, as well as building professional networks with the UN system and other NGOs. His areas of expertise include education in developing countries, social and rural development, literacy and language issues, and NGO management. Robinson holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Rural Social Development and Sociolinguistics from Reading University (UK), an M.A. in Modern Languages from Oxford University (UK), and a Master in African Linguistics from La Sorbonne Nouvelle (France).

An agronomist by training, Jean-Marie Fardeau is the Director in France of Human Rights Watch, one of the world's leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. Through his work, Fardeau seeks to influence France's domestic and foreign policies to ensure that they comply with human rights standards. Before joining HRW in 2007, Fardeau worked in humanitarian aid and international cooperation for over twenty years, serving notably as Executive Director of CCFD (Comite Catholique contre la Faim et pour le Developpement) and president of CIDSE (Cooperation Internationale pour le Developpement et la Solidarite, an international network of catholic development NGOs).

Fardeau says: "NGOs have become key players on the international scene. Growing out of an understanding of democratic action that is rooted in citizens' concerns, they aim to express the values, ideas and commitments of civil society. I am honored to share with AGS students my own experience in creating and managing NGOs."

Ph.D. candidate A.J. Jackson from the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at AGS has been accepted to present a paper at a conference on "Governing Migration" in Kampala, Uganda, on July 3rd to 6th. This conference is organized by the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration, which brings together academics, practitioners and decision-makers working on forced migration issues. It is hosted by the Refugee Law Project, a local Ugandan NGO which seeks to ensure fundamental human rights for all asylum seekers, refugees, and internally displaced persons within Uganda.

This 13th conference of the IASFM aims to explore key dimensions of the relationship between forms and tools of governance on the one hand, and patterns and experiences of forced migration on the other. A.J. will present at a panel on th subject: "Dirty Wars and Violent Sex: What Does It Take to Repair Gender Wounds After Conflict?". She will also chair a panel on "Harmful Sex, Violence and Disease: The Challenge of Protecting Women During and After Conflict". See conference program.

A.J. writes: "In front of a group of my respected peers, I will argue that the banishment of Congolese females from their homes and/or communities after they have been sexually assaulted is a form of forced displacement and should be considered so by transitional justice mechanisms."

Taking place on June 17 in Paris, the annual graduation ceremony of the American Graduate School in Paris featured writer and journalist Alan Riding as the commencement speaker. The thirty-six students of the graduating class together represent twelve different national origins: United States, Guatemala, Ecuador, Ireland, Denmark, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Macedonia, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, and Mongolia. Commencement exercises were followed by a graduation dinner in the French Senate.

Twenty-nine graduates were awarded the degree of Master of Arts in International Relations and Diplomacy in partnership with Arcadia University (Pennsylvania, USA); one graduate was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in International Relations and Diplomacy, and six graduates were awarded the degree of Executive Master of Science in Finance, in partnership with Baruch College at the City University of New York (New York, USA). In addition, thirteen of the Master’s graduates, having followed one of the dual programs offered at AGS, are also being awarded a second Master’s degree from one of AGS’s partner universities: M.A. in International Peace and Conflict Resolution from Arcadia University, European Master in Diplomacy and Strategic Negotiation from Université Paris Sud 11 (France), or LL.M. in French and European Union Law from Université de Cergy-Pontoise (France).
See more information on AGS's dual degree programs

Born in Brazil to British parents, Alan Riding studied economics and law before becoming a journalist and writer. Working successively for Reuters, The Financial Times, The Economist and The New York Times, he reported from the United Nations in New York, Latin America, and Western Europe. For much of his career, Riding covered political and economic affairs. During the final 12 years before he retired from journalism in 2007, he was the European cultural correspondant for The New York Times, based in Paris. He is the author of the best-selling books And The Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris (New York: Knopf, 2010) and Distant Neighbors: Portrait of the Mexicans (New York : Knopf, 1985), as well as co-author of Opera (London: Dorling Kindersley, 2006) and Essential Shakespeare Handbook (London: Dorling Kindersley, 2004).
See more information on Alan Riding and his latest book.

About the American Graduate School in Paris, Riding writes: "The best pitch for AGS has to come from its graduates, those who have been through this enriching - some say life-changing - experience and emerged the better for it. The next best pitch, I suspect, is from someone like me, who did not attend the school, but wishes he had. That is my feeling whenever I attend a graduation ceremony. As a small institution, AGS ensures high academic standards by treating every student as an individual. Based in Paris, it offers access to major international organizations. And, as important, thanks to its cultural and language diversity, the school itself is something of a United Nations. Who doubts that today's world is infinitely complex? Graduates of AGS emerge, both personally and professionally, equipped to address it."

Previous commencement speakers at AGS include French Foreign Affairs Minister Alain Juppé, former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard,  Pulitzer Prize winner Serge Schmemann, and former Lebanese Ambassador to Japan and UNESCO H.E. Samira Hanna-El-Daher, among others.

Commencement program and list of graduating students

Alan Riding's commencement address

More photos

Miram Cochran, who will be graduating this year with two Masters from the dual program in International Relations and Diplomacy/Diplomacy and Strategic Negotiation, went to Turkey to present a paper at a conference on "Whither the 'Post-Westphalian' World? Inequalities, Conflicts and Solidarity in the Twenty-First Century". This conference was held on June 15-17 in Istanbul, at Kadir Has University, on the occasion of the 8th annual convention of the Central and East-European International Studies Association (CEEISA). Miriam's paper focused on the decline of the role of the state (and therefore the importance of Realism) while noting that it is not yet obsolete.

On May 26-27, AGS held its sixth Annual Graduate Student Conference on the theme: “The Politics of Disaster: The Mitigation, Management, and International Response to Environmental Crises.” After a decade marked by a particularly intense series of natural and man-made environmental catastrophies, AGS invited students, professors, and NGO managers from around the world to examine the consequences of such crises and the environmental, social and economic responses from international governments.

Panelists from China, Pakistan, England, Ireland, Argentina, and the United States, participated along with AGS students to exchange ideas and discuss potential solutions to better prevent and respond to future crises.

Click here to view the conference program

This conference was organized by a special conference committee composed of students in the Master's and Ph.D. in International Relations and Diplomacy programs working under the coordination of Ruchi Anand. Professor Anand's areas of expertise include international environmental policies. She authored, among other books, International Environmental Justice: A North South Dimension (Ashgate, 2003) which assesses the environmental disparities between the North and the South and the structural political, economic, social and legal conditions that have reinforced those disparities.

"Conferencing and publishing are invaluable and essential components of graduate school.", says Anand. "I have always pushed our students towards it and for the past six years, we've formalized it and we're only getting bigger and better each year. It allows students to hone their CVs and gives them a chance, in a rather amicable setting, to brainstorm challenging and complex issues of our time. And to top it all, it's always a lot of fun putting it together and seeing our students getting involved and taking charge - that's the AGS spirit!".

The previous AGS Graduate Student conferences have addressed the following themes:

• 2006: Order and Disorder in a Changing World

• 2007: Current Challenges and Future Trends in International Security

• 2008: Searching Beyond the State: Intercultural Dialogue and Alternative Approaches to International Politics

• 2009: Democracy in the 21st Century: Relevant, Redundant or Risk?

• 2010: Evolving Borders: Identity and Affiliation in a Volatile International Landscape

More photos of the 2011 conference:

"Arab States and Beyond: The Domino Effect": this was the theme of AGS's latest Wine and Cheese evening, which took place on Wednesday, March 11. The discussion was led by AGS faculty member Ambassador Samira Hanna El-Daher, Representative of Lebanon to UNESCO.

After opening the evening with a brief history of the recent revolutionary movements in the Maghreb and Middle East, Ambassador El Daher asked the following questions and debated with students, alumni and guests present at the event: What sparked these revolutionary movements? Will they spread to the rest of the Arab world, and possibly beyond? What will happen next? How has the international community reacted thus far and what will it do next? How do these movements compare to past revolutions?

Ambassador El Daher served as head of mission for Lebanon in Japan, the Philippines, Australia, China, Switzerland, Great Britain, and Cyprus, as well as Legal Counselor to the Lebanese Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York. She teaches the course on Foreign Policy Formulation at AGS. She has chaired and participated in many conferences and symposia on dialogue of civilizations, cultural diversity, Middle East issues, women in the Arab world, et cetera. She was a member of the Cabinet of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and was head of the International Relations Department in Beirut. She has published several articles and prepared for UNESCO a handbook for teachers on disarmament.

More photos:

On April 11-17, Alexis Delabre, Chairman of the Board of AGS, Eileen Servidio, President of the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at AGS, and Douglas Yates, African Studies specialist at AGS, were invited to the Nyerere Center for Peace Studies in Arusha, Tanzania, to discuss joint African Studies teaching and research projects with Arcadia University.

The Nyerere Center for Peace Research is a joint initiative of Arcadia University and the East African Community. It serves as an academic resource to the member states of the EAC through policy research/analysis and training, and provides study abroad, exchange programs, and field research opportunities in Tanzania to students and faculty from Arcadia University and its partner institutions. All of these activities converge towards one scope and mission: peace.

Chairman Delabre, President Servidio, and Professor Yates met with Dr. Roland Adjovi, director of the Nyerere Center, Dr. Warren Haffar, Dean of Internationalization and Director of the International Peace and Conflict Resolution program at Arcadia University, and Dr. Nikki Christensen, President of Arcadia's College of Global Studies. Together they explored the various ways in which the American Graduate School in Paris could take part in this initiative and make its students benefit from the unique opportunities that it provides. Discussions covered possible joint courses at the graduate level as part of the African Concentration in the International Relations M.A. program at AGS, as well as joint study abroad courses at the undergraduate level.

During the visit, Professor Yates gave a presentation about the crisis in Ivory Coast to the students in the conflict resolution class at the Nyerere Center. The AGS delegation was taken to visit the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which is located just a few blocks away from the Nyerere Center. The ICTR was created by the UN to try cases of crimes against humanity and genocide which would have been impossible to try in the collapsed judicial system of post-conflict Rwanda. Delabre, Servidio and Yates also visited the African Court for Human and People's Rights, which not only serves to defend human rights, but as its name indicates, also hears cases concerning "people's rights", which includes such issues as self-determination and group-based rights.  This court represents an advancement on the original African Commission on Human and People's Rights in that it has jurisdiction to hear cases from individual citizens and not only state (an innovation in international law).

On May 19th, AGS will host the screening a documentary film about work of the New York City Commission on Human Rights, followed by a Q & A session with one of the co-directors of the film.

"The Title 8 Project" is an independant documentary movie showing the daily work of the New York City Commission on Human Rights, the real life situations with which it deals and the challenges that it faces as it pursues its mission of enforcing the New York City Human Rights Law against discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations (Title 8 of the Administrative Code of the City of New York).

AGS alumna Audrey Wang (M.A. in International Relations, class of 2009) works as a Human Rights Specialist for the New York City Commission on Human Rights. She says: "As a part of a services-oriented agency, I interact daily with individuals and civil society at the grassroots level; my work is immediately applicable to the lives of New York residents and visitors."

"The Title 8 Project" is co-directed by Antoine Meyer (who will be present at the screening), Newton Da Costa, and Pierre-Julien Trombe. The screening/ Q & A will take place at AGS at 6.45 pm on Thursday, May 19. If you wish to attend, please contact Matthew Delabre.

• More information on the film

• More information on the New York City Commission on Human Rights

Photo from the film: (c) Antoine Meyer, All Rights Reserved

On April 7th, Master of International Relations and Diplomacy student Christopher Manning (Class of 2011) presented his research on "The Role of Islamophobia in Homegrown Islamic Radicalization" at the 2nd International Conference on Hate Studies. The conference was sponsored by Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. His presentation examined how anti-Muslim rhethoric and behaviors in the United States and United Kingdom have the effect of isolating the Muslim populations in those countries. This paper was based on the research that Chris has been conducting for his Master's thesis at AGS, under the advisorship of Professor Joav Toker. It is now being considered for publication in the Journal of Hate Studies. Chris explains, "The most exciting aspect for me was getting to discuss the topic with an audience which included an FBI counterterrorism agent and a representative of the United Kingdom's Crown Prosecutor."

Arthur S. Hoffman, co-founder of the American Graduate School in Paris (at the time called American Graduate School of International Relations and Diplomacy), professor and student advisor, passed away in his sleep on March 3, 2011.

Dr. Hoffman was born in Camden, New Jersey, USA on June 22, 1926. He was valedictorian of the 1943 graduating class of Camden High School and, in his senior year, won the State oratorical contest sponsored by the American Legion and continued on as far as the national semifinals. He also played on the high school tennis team, and continued his passion for the game throughout his life.

Art enrolled in Oberlin College, Ohio, in 1943, and then left after his freshman year to enlist in the US Army. After basic training, he was selected for a program in Japanese studies and language at the University of Minnesota. In 1946, he was assigned to be an interpreter in postwar Japan. When his Army duty ended, he returned to Oberlin, received his baccalaureate in political science in 1947, and enrolled in the Master's program in international relations at the (soon to become Johns Hopkins) School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC, where he received his M. A. in 1948,

He then went on to the University of Geneva, where he was awarded a Docteur es sciences politiques in 1951. His dissertation on the Marshall Plan in France, focusing on statism, gigantism and monopoly tendencies, was written under the faculty supervision of Professor Wilhelm Roepke, an advisor to Ludwig Erhard on German postwas economic reform policy. By age 25, he was fluent in Japanese, German and French.

In the course of his doctoral research, he met his wife Roberte Anne Piot de Casse, in Paris. They enjoyed 60 years of marriage and had four children, Richard, Alan, and Sidney Hoffman and Elisabeth Jamieson. Richard and Alan, as well as Arthur's younger brother David and son-in-law Neil Jamieson, all attended SAIS in Washington, Bologna or both.

Art worked from 1950 to 1984 with the postwar High Commission for Germany (HICOG), the US State Department, and primarily the United States Information Agency (USIA). The USIA Directors he worked under included Edward R. Murrow, Carl Rowan and John Chancellor. His assignments included Fukuoka, Japan; Prague, Bordeaux, Ankara, Saigon, Paris and Brussels. In most of these postings, he served as Cultural Affairs Officer (or a similar title) for an area of the host country, or Cultural Attache at an American Embassy. By his last Washington assignment in the 1970s, he had reached the highest career position in USIA, Associate Director for Policy and Plans. He retired in 1984 with the rank of Minister-Counselor.

During his career and after his retirement, he always found time for academic pursuits and achievements. In 1965-66, he was given a 1-year assignment to found the Edward R. Murrow School of Public Diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, where he created the curriculum, administered a budget, hired faculty and staff, and taught a course. He was a Fellow at the Battelle Research Center in Seattle, and a guest lecturer at many other universities in the US, Europe, Africa and elsewhere. Between 1988 and 1996, he was Adjunct Professor in the M. A. programs at the American University of Paris and Schiller International University, also in Paris.

From 1994 through 2000, he was a professor and Director of Studies at the American Graduate School of International Relations and Diplomacy, which he co-founded along with Professors John Lee and Joseph Tomchak.  In 2000, he spent a semester at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, teaching a survey course on world political history and philosophy on an exchange program that AGS had with University of Miami

Dr. Hoffman published numerous articles and wrote or edited several books, including International Communication and the New Diplomacy (Indiana University Press,1968) and Europe in Transition: Managing Security after the Cold War (Praeger, 1992).