Past Events
On Wednesday, April 6, 2022, the University of Texas at Austin's Intelligence Studies Project, Strauss Center for International Security and Law, and Clements Center for National Security will host author and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operations officer, James Lawler, for a talk on his recently released book, Living Lies: A Novel of the Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program, which will be followed by a conversation on counter
Join the LBJ School Student Ambassador team to talk about classes, culture and life as an LBJ student.
On Wednesday, March 30, the Asia Policy Program is partnering with the Center for East Asian Studies to host Rana Siu Inboden, adjunct assistant professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and Asia Policy Program faculty affiliate, to discuss her first book China and the International Human Rights Regime. This talk will be moderated by Sheena Chestnut Greitens, director of the Asia Policy Program and associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, at Robert L. Patton Hall, RLP 1.302B. The Asia Policy Program is a joint effort of the Clements Center for National Security and the Strauss Center for International Security and Law.
Rana Siu Inboden examines China's role in the international human rights regime between 1982 and 2017 and, through this lens, explores China's rising position in the world. Focusing on three major case studies – the drafting and adoption of the Convention against Torture and the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, the establishment of the UN Human Rights Council, and the International Labour Organization's Conference Committee on the Application of Standards – Inboden shows China's subtle yet persistent efforts to constrain the international human rights regime. Based on a range of documentary and archival research, as well as extensive interview data, Inboden provides fresh insights into the motivations and influences driving China's conduct and explores China's rising position as a global power.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Rana Siu Inboden is a senior fellow with the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law at The University of Texas at Austin. She serves as a consultant on human rights, democracy and rule of law projects in Asia for a number of nongovernmental organizations and conducts research related to international human rights, Chinese foreign policy, the effectiveness of international human rights and democracy projects and authoritarian collaboration in the United Nations. Her first book, China and the International Human Rights Regime (Cambridge, 2021) examines China's role in the international human rights regime between 1982 and 2017.
Previously, Inboden served in the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, where her primary responsibilities included managing the State Department's Human Rights and Democracy Fund China program and promoting U.S. human rights and democracy policy in China and North Korea. She also served at the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai, in the Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs, and in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research where she covered U.S.-China relations.
Inboden holds a D.Phil from the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford University. She obtained an M.A. at Stanford University in East Asian Studies and a B.S. at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She was awarded a U.S. State Department Superior Honor Award for her work in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.
Hiram Chodosh, fifth president of Claremont McKenna College (CMC), explores freedom and diversity of expression with Dr. Peniel Joseph in the first William C. Powers Jr. Speaker Series lecture of the year.
About Hiram Chodosh
Hiram Chodosh is the fifth president of Claremont McKenna College (CMC), a highly selective liberal arts college with a distinctive leadership mission. A graduate of Wesleyan University and Yale Law School and a renowned scholar with institutional justice reform experience in over a dozen countries, Chodosh was recognized as one of the 25 most influential legal educators in the country in 2013 and received the Gandhi Peace Award in 2011.
Under Chodosh's leadership, CMC has developed full set of powerfully integrated programs: The Student Imperative, The Soll Center for Student Opportunity, The Kravis Opportunity Fund, and many others remove financial and social barriers to the expansion of student opportunities. Nationally recognized for sustained success, CMC has nearly doubled its enrollment of Pell-eligible students and nearly tripled the enrollment of students who are first in their families to attend college, with outstanding post-graduate success and achievement in social mobility. The Open Academy reinforces commitments to freedom of expression, viewpoint diversity, and effective dialogue, in partnership with The Presidential Initiative on Anti-Racism and the Black Experience in America, the CARE Center, the four-time world champion Model UN team, and other student programs. CMC ranks 1st in the nation in freedom of speech, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and was recognized by the Heterodox Academy with the 2019 institutional excellence award in open inquiry.
About the William C. Powers Jr. Speaker Series
Honoring the memory of former UT President William C. Powers, Jr., this speaker series invites thought leaders to present research in American politics and public policy in reflection of his commitment to diversity and inclusion. The series is sponsored by the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, and organized by the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy team and its director, Dr. Peniel Joseph, Barbara Jordan Chair in Ethics and Political Values.
About Strengthening Democracy Through Civil Dialogues at the LBJ School
The Strengthening Democracy event series consists of conversations at the LBJ School featuring thought leaders, scholars and activists from a wide variety of backgrounds who will offer insight, analysis and provocation regarding the challenges and opportunities facing our democracy now and in the future. Our intention is to introduce our community of students, faculty, staff and alumni to a series of speakers who can challenge us to grow in new and unexpected ways. We believe that Strengthening Democracy Through Civil Dialogues preserves freedom for all people to enter the civic arena in ways that cultivate respectful, constructive and thought-provoking dialogue and debate that will inspire our community to better construct policy solutions in today’s age.
On Tuesday, March 29, 2022, The University of Texas at Austin's Intelligence Studies Project, Strauss Center for International Security and Law and Clements Center for National Security will host Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) psychologist Dr. Ursula M. Wilder for a talk: "The Psychology of Espionage and Leaking." Dr. Bianca Adair, UT-Austin's CIA Resident Intelligence Officer, will moderate.
** Only pre-submitted questions will be considered during the Q&A. Please pre-submit your name and question(s) by Tuesday, March 22 to intelligencestudies@austin.utexas.edu.
** Advance registration is required. Photography and/or recording at the event will be prohibited.
The event sponsors follow the University of Texas's public health related policies. There is an inherent risk of exposure to viruses and other health threats in any public space. Attendees voluntarily assume all associated risks. All UT guidelines and FAQs about COVID-19 can be found at Protect Texas Together.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Ursula M. Wilder is a clinical psychologist who has served at the CIA for 25 years in medical, operational and analytic functions. Key assignments have included CIA's Counterintelligence Center, Counterterrorism Center, the National Counterterrorism Center, CIA's Sherman Kent School of Intelligence Analysis, and a CIA medical and psychological unit in the Directorate of Analysis. Wilder was a federal executive fellow at the Brookings Institution (2012–13), where she studied counterterrorism psychology and was recently awarded a Deputy Director of CIA Fellowship to study neuroscience and cyberpsychology, housed in CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence. Wilder was the first woman psychologist promoted to the Senior Intelligence Service at CIA and was awarded the George H.W. Bush Award for Excellence in Counterterrorism for her work in operations and the Sherman Kent Award for her contributions to the academic literature and scholarship on intelligence.
On Thursday, March 24, the Clements Center for National Security and the Alexander Hamilton Society — UT-Austin Chapter will host Carrie Filipetti, executive director of the Vandenberg Coalition and former deputy assistant secretary for Cuba and Venezuela, Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, for "The American Toolbox: Our Efforts to Confront Latin American Dictatorships in Cuba and Venezuela." This event will take place in the Bass Lecture Hall at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Join us at 12:15 p.m. CT.
Biography
Carrie Filipetti currently serves as the executive director of the Vandenberg Coalition. Previously she served as deputy assistant secretary for Cuba and Venezuela in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs and the deputy special representative for Venezuela at the U.S. Department of State, for which she received a Superior Honor Award. From 2019–20, Filipetti also served as the senior advisor to the Havana Incidents Task Force, where she was responsible for coordinating an interagency effort to address the causes of unexplained health incidents affecting U.S. personnel, and identifying proper long-term care mechanisms. Before that she served as a senior policy advisor for the United States Mission to the United Nations (USUN), where she advised U.S. Ambassador Nikki R. Haley on issues related to counterterrorism, the Middle East and the Western Hemisphere.
Filipetti began her career at The Paul E. Singer Foundation, where she served as director of portfolio management, helping to oversee the Foundation's transition from a relationship-driven organization to a national leader in strategic philanthropy. She also served as a senior advisor and co-founder of Start-Up Nation Central, a Tel-Aviv based nonprofit that seeks to connect the world with Israeli innovation.
Filipetti graduated with a degree in religious studies from the University of Virginia as both a Jefferson and Echol's scholar. In her spare time, she volunteers as an EMT at a local fire department and serves on the board of Fired Up to Help, a local nonprofit that provides hot meals to first responders in the aftermath of natural and man-made disasters.
For more information about this event, contact Elizabeth Doughtie: elizabeth.doughtie@utexas.edu.
On Tuesday, March 22 the Clements Center for National Security, the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the UT-Austin History Department will host Mark Lawrence, director of the LBJ Presidential Library and our former director of graduate studies, for a book talk on his new release, The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era. This event will take place in Bass Lecture Hall at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Join us at 12:15 p.m. CT.
Biography
Dr. Mark Atwood Lawrence is the director of the LBJ Presidential Library. Previously an associate professor of history at The University of Texas at Austin, where he taught since 2000, he also served as director of graduate studies for UT-Austin’s Clements Center for National Security. He is considered a prominent scholar on President Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War. Beginning in 2015, he has taught an undergraduate course at the LBJ Presidential Library entitled "The Johnson Years." Currently, Lawrence is completing a study of U.S. policymaking toward the Third World in the LBJ era, tentatively entitled In the Shadow of Vietnam: The United States and the Third World in the 1960s. He is author of Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), which won the Paul Birdsall Prize for European military and strategic history and the George Louis Beer Prize for European international history. In 2008, he published The Vietnam War: A Concise International History (New York: Oxford University Press), which was selected by the History Book Club and the Military History Book Club.
In 2005, Lawrence was awarded the President's Associates' Award for Teaching Excellence at UT-Austin, and in 2019 he won the Silver Spurs Centennial Teaching Fellowship from UT-Austin’s College of Liberal Arts. He held the Cassius Marcellus Clay Fellowship at Yale University (2006–08) and the Stanley Kaplan Visiting Professorship in American Foreign Policy at Williams College (2011–12). He has served as consulting historian for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund and for the National Veterans Memorial and Museum. Lawrence earned his bachelor's degree from Stanford University in 1988 and his doctorate in history from Yale University in 1998.
For more information about this event, contact Elizabeth Doughtie: elizabeth.doughtie@utexas.edu.
Join the LBJ School's Office of Student Affairs and Admissions team to talk about the application process, the different programs we offer, and the student services we provide.
For the third installment of the Strengthening Democracy Through Civil Dialogues series, the Office of Justice, Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion (JEDI) and Center for the Study of Race and Democracy (CSRD) welcome Dr. Talitha LeFlouria, associate professor of history and fellow of the Mastin Gentry White Professorship in Southern History at The University of Texas at Austin, to discuss her book, Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South, with JEDI Associate Dean and CSRD Director Dr. Peniel Joseph.
Featured Panelist
Talitha LeFlouria is associate professor of history and fellow of the Mastin Gentry White Professorship in Southern History at The University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South (UNC, 2015), the first history of Black, working-class incarcerated women in the post-Civil War period. This book received several awards including: the Darlene Clark Hine Award from the Organization of American Historians (2016); the Philip Taft Labor History Award from the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations & Labor and Working-Class History Association (2016); the Malcolm Bell, Jr. and Muriel Barrow Bell Award from the Georgia Historical Society (2016); the Best First Book Prize from the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders, and Sexualities (2015); the Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Book Prize from the Association of Black Women Historians (2015); and the Ida B. Wells Tribute Award from the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History (2015). She is currently finishing her second single-authored book, Searching for Jane Crow: Black Women and Mass Incarceration in America from the Auction Block to the Cell Block (forthcoming from Beacon Press). The Carnegie Corporation supported this project with a prestigious Andrew Carnegie fellowship. In addition to her scholarly publications, LeFlouria writes for popular media outlets including The Atlantic, Washington Post and The Root. Her research has also been profiled in Ms. magazine, New York magazine, Huffington Post and The Nation, as well as in several documentaries including "Slavery by Another Name"; "Rust"; "Demanding Justice: A History of Domestic Workers"; and "One Thousand Years of Slavery," a series co-produced by Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance.
Moderator
Peniel Joseph holds a joint professorship appointment at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the History Department in the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the inaugural associate dean of the Office of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI), and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy (CSRD) at the LBJ School. His career focus has been on "Black Power Studies," which encompasses interdisciplinary fields such as Africana studies, law and society, women's and ethnic studies, and political science. In addition to being a frequent commentator on issues of race, democracy and civil rights, Joseph's most recent book is The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
On Wednesday, March 9, the Asia Policy Program is partnering with the Clements Center, Strauss Center and the Intelligence Studies Project to host Susan Sutton, former director of the Office of Maritime Southeast Asia, and Bianca Adair, Resident Intelligence Officer at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, for a panel on Women in National Security to celebrate Women's History Month. This talk will be moderated by Sheena Chestnut Greitens, founding director of the Asia Policy Program and associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. The Asia Policy Program is a joint effort of the Clements Center for National Security and the Strauss Center for International Security and Law.
Biographies
Susan Sutton joined the Foreign Service in 1985. Over her 35-year career, she worked primarily on Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. Sutton was deputy chief of mission in Hanoi, Vietnam, from 2015 to 2017. She previously served as deputy chief of mission in Sofia, Bulgaria and Vientiane, Laos, and as political counselor in Bangkok, Thailand. In Washington, Sutton was the director of the Office of Maritime Southeast Asia, with responsibility for the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and Timor-Leste, from 2012 to 2014. Previously, she served in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and as the country officer for Bulgaria and Albania. From 2018 to 2020, she was on the faculty of the National War College in Washington, DC.
Bianca Adair, an officer in the Directorate of Operations at the Central Intelligence Agency, is the resident intelligence officer at the University of Texas at Austin's LBJ School of Public Affairs (2020–22). She has more than 16 years of federal government service in leadership positions in Washington, DC, and foreign field posts. In her nine years at the CIA, Adair has worked in the Middle East, Europe and North Africa on security, counterterrorism and foreign policy, with a special focus on Iran. Prior to her time in the CIA, she served in Iraq and the United Arab Emirates as a Foreign Service Officer in the U.S. Department of State. The recipient of a Fulbright Research Grant on Austrian-Hungarian Relations and conversant in Persian (Farsi), French, Tajiki, German and Hungarian, Adair holds a Ph.D in political science at The University of Alabama. In Fall 2020, she will be offering courses on "Intelligence and National Security" as well as "Thinking, Writing, and Briefing for Intelligence." In partnership with the College of Natural Science's Inventors Program, she will be teaching the "STEM for National Security" course in Spring 2021.