True adventures in Afghanistan next topic
in Great Decisions lecture series March 17

The World Affairs Council of Western Michigan has partnered with Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo College and Davenport University to jointly present a three-part series of Great Decisions topics in the Kalamazoo area in February and March at Kirsch Auditorium in WMU’s Fetzer Center (map).

True Adventures in Afghanistan

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould
7 p.m. Tuesday, March 17
Kirsch Auditorium, WMU Fetzer Center
(book signing follows lecture)

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS.   Their new book about war in Afghanistan, Invisible History, is near release now: a fresh, comprehensive analysis of Afghanistan's political history that begins at the roots of tribal leadership and ultimately emphasizes our present political moment and the impact of ongoing US military intervention.

This yearly series brings national experts and policy makers into western Michigan for provocative and stimulating talks on critical foreign policy issues. The World Affairs Council of Western Michigan has been the local sponsor of Great Decisions since the 1960s.On January 14, the council hosted former President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf in Grand Rapids to a sold-out audience of almost 600 people. The event was President Musharraf's first speaking engagement in the United States since leaving office last August, 2008. 

"Our mission for sixty years has been to educate people in western Michigan about international and foreign policy issues,"said Dixie Anderson, executive director of the council. "Every facet of life in the United States is affected by decisions made in other parts of the world.  We surely all learned this with the recent  global economic meltdown.  In fact, there's a new term that's been coined: "Intermestic" issues--issues that straddle domestic and international life like global warming, pandemics and terrorism."

WMU has been an educational partner of the council for many years. Wilson "Bill" Woods, Haenicke Institute associate dean, recently served on the council's board and helped the group formulate a plan for expanding the Great Decisions series.

"The University has been interested for a long time in having the council offer programming here in Kalamazoo because they're noted for bringing in some of the leading international experts in the United States," Woods said. "We wanted to offer that expertise to our students and the general public in Kalamazoo."
 
Attending a council dinner featuring Lech Walesa, the former president of Poland, captured the interest of Joe Brockington, Kalamazoo College's associate provost for international programs, in teaming up with WMU and Davenport as co-sponsors of Kalamazoo-area lectures.

"Lech Walesa captivated the sold-out audience with his message and his wonderful sense of humor," Brockington said.  I knew then that if the Council routinely brought this level of speaker into western Michigan, Kalamazoo College wanted to be part of offering this quality to the Kalamazoo area.  We look forward to his partnership and expanding international programming."

Open to the public. Cost: $10 per lecture; free, easy-access parking. Students/faculty of WMU, Kalamazoo College and Davenport University free with ID. For more information about Great Decisions in Kalamazoo, write margaret.vonsteinen@wmich.edu, or call (269) 387-3993.

Who Owns the Northwest Passage: Arctic Region Issues

Mead Treadwell, chair of the U.S. Arctic
Research Commission, Fairbanks, Alaska
6 p.m. Tuesday, February 10
Kirsch Auditorium, WMU Fetzer Center

The United States, Canada, Russia, Norway and Denmark maintain 200-nautical-mile economic zones around their Arctic seacoasts and all are eager to extend into this potentially strategic location. In a controversial symbolic gesture, Russia in 2007 planted a flag near the North Pole, prompting calls for new ways to handle territorial claims outside the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.  How will this new race for the Arctic impact relations between surrounding countries? Is a new convention needed to clarify contentions over the disputed territory?  

Biography of a Cause: Cuba after Castro

Tom Gjelten, NPR national security issues reporter and author
6 p.m. Tuesday, February 17 (book signing follows)
Kirsch Auditorium, WMU Fetzer Center

True Adventures in Afghanistan

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, reporters and documentary
makers focused on Afghanistan
7 p.m. Tuesday, March 17 (book signing follows)
Kirsch Auditorium, WMU Fetzer Center
*NOTE: THIS PROGRAM BEGINS AT 7:00 PM

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS.   Their new book about war in Afghanistan, Invisible History, is near release now: a fresh, comprehensive analysis of Afghanistan's political history that begins at the roots of tribal leadership and ultimately emphasizes our present political moment and the impact of ongoing US military intervention.

Great Decisions lecturer bios and photos:

Mead Treadwell was appointed to the United States Arctic Research Commission in 2001 and was designated chair by President Bush in 2006.
During his 30-year residency in Alaska, Treadwell has played an active role in Arctic research and exploration. His focus has been on development of natural resources, protection of the Arctic environment and fostering international cooperation after the Cold War. In business, government and the academy, Treadwell has helped establish a broad range of research programs in technology, ecology, social science and policy.

Currently, Treadwell serves as Senior Fellow of the Institute of the North, founded by former Alaska Governor Walter J. Hickel. He served as the institute’s first full time managing director and adjunct professor of business when the institute was part of Alaska Pacific University. Treadwell’s research at the Institute focuses on strategic and defense issues facing Alaska and Arctic regions, management of Alaska’s commonly owned resources and integration of Arctic transport and telecommunications infrastructure.  Concurrently, in business, Treadwell is chairman and CEO of Venture Ad Astra, an Anchorage, Alaska based firm, which invests in and develops new geospatial and imaging technologies.

Treadwell served as Deputy Commissioner of Alaska's Department of Environmental Conservation in the Hickel Cabinet from 1990-1994, and represented the State of Alaska on U.S. delegations on three circumpolar government groups: the eight-nation Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy, the follow-on Arctic Council and the regional Governors’ Northern Forum formed during the early 1990s.

Tom Gjelten covers intelligence and other national security issues for NPR News. He brings to that assignment many years covering international news from posts in Washington and around the world. Gjelten's overseas reporting experience includes stints in Mexico City as NPR's Latin America correspondent from 1986 to 1990 and in Berlin as Central Europe correspondent from 1990 to 1994. During those years, he covered the wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Colombia, as well as the Gulf War of 1990-1991 and the wars in Croatia and Bosnia.

With other NPR correspondents, Gjelten described the transitions to democracy and capitalism in Eastern Europe and the breakup of the Soviet Union. His reporting from Sarajevo from 1992 to 1994 was the basis for his book Sarajevo Daily: A City and Its Newspaper Under Siege (HarperCollins), praised by the New York Times as "a chilling portrayal of a city's slow murder" and selected by the American Library Association as a "Notable Nonfiction Book." He is also the author of Professionalism in War Reporting: A Correspondent's View (Carnegie Corporation) and a contributor to Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know (W. W. Norton).

Prior to his current assignment, Gjelten covered U.S. diplomacy and military affairs, first from the State Department and then from the Pentagon. He was reporting live from the Pentagon at the moment it was hit on September 11, 2001, and he was NPR's lead Pentagon reporter during the war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. Gjelten has also reported extensively from Cuba in recent years, visiting the island more than a dozen times. His new book, Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: A Biography of a Cause (Viking), is a unique history of modern Cuba, told through the life and times of the Bacardi rum family. A graduate of the University of Minnesota, Gjelten began his professional career as a public school teacher and a freelance writer.
 

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould began working together in 1979 co-producing a documentary for Paul's television show, Watchworks. In the spring of 1981, they were the first American TV crew to acquire visas to enter Afghanistan. Following their news story for the CBS Evening News, they produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS and in 1983 they returned to Kabul for ABC Nightline.
As the first American journalists to get deeply inside the story they not only got a view of an unseen Afghan life, but a revelatory look at how the United States defined itself against the rest of the world under the veil of superpower confrontation. At the time of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, Paul and Liz were working on the film version of their experience under contract to Oliver Stone. During the research for the screenplay many of the documents preceding the Afghan crisis were declassified.

As the horrors of the Taliban regime began to grab headlines in 1998 Paul and Liz began collaborating with Afghan human rights expert Sima Wali. Along with Wali, they contributed to the Women for Afghan Women: Shattering Myths and Claiming the Future book project. In 2002 they filmed Wali's first return to Kabul since her exile in 1978. They produced a film about Wali's journey home, The Woman in Exile Returns.
In 2009, City Lights will publish Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story, an account of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and U.S. foreign policy.