Recap

Education Apartheid in Afghanistan was World Affairs Council of Orange County’s first ever Lunch and Learn, in partnership with UC Irvine’s School of Law’s Center on Globalization, Law, and Society and the Afghan Literacy Foundation.

Aditya Arya, executive director and co-founder of the Afghan Literacy Foundation, Hashmat Nadipor, legal expert and leader of the Afghanistan Human Rights Project at UCI Law, and Muslema Purell, assistant religious director at The Majlis, spoke on the impacts of Taliban’s policies on young girls’ and womens’ access to education during this hour-long lunchtime program.

After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, women and girls rapidly returned to schools, creating effects such as increased economy and lower infant mortality rate.

The three experts discussed the short and long-term implications of the termination of both basic and higher education for women after the return of the Taliban in 2021, not just for women, but what it means economically and societally.

Cyber Espionage: Threats & Realities featured Admiral Michael Rogers, former director of the National Security Agency and commander of US Cyber Command on the evening of January 9th at the Irvine Marriott.

Amidst the chaos of the fires in Los Angeles, Admiral Rogers spoke on the ever-evolving cyberspace, AI, and technology, and their impact on our national security, moderated by Serge Tomassian.

Admiral Rogers’ conversation emphasized the emerging use of cyber-attacks to infiltrate U.S. information systems and infrastructures, as well as further steps to guarantee not just quick recovery after but prevention and resilience against cybersecurity attacks.

There was also the debate of AI’s role in cybersecurity, how it may be used in both malicious and benevolent manners in the online battlefield, and to what extent it should be restrained by legal means.

Admiral Rogers stresses the importance of a joint effort between federal, academic, and private areas to further grasp the relatively modern topic of cybersecurity.

This event was hosted by the World Affairs Council Orange County.

John Negroponte is an American diplomat. Negroponte served in the United States Foreign Service from 1960 to 1997. From 1981 to 1996, he had tours of duty as United States ambassador in Honduras, Mexico, and the Philippines. After leaving the Foreign Service, he subsequently served in the Bush administration as U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations from 2001 to 2004, and was ambassador to Iraq from June 2004 to April 2005.

In 2018, he was a James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor at the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. He is a former J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of International Affairs at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. Prior to this appointment, he served as a research fellow and lecturer in international affairs at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, United States Deputy Secretary of State (2007–2009), and the first ever Director of National Intelligence (2005–2007).

Ambassador John Negroponte, joined McLarty Associates in 2009, following a distinguished career in diplomacy and national security. He held government positions abroad and in Washington between 1960 and 1997 and again from 2001 to 2008. He has been Ambassador to Honduras, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Nations, and Iraq. In Washington he served twice on the National Security Council staff, first as Director for Vietnam in the Nixon Administration and then as Deputy National Security Advisor under President Reagan. He has also held a cabinet-level position as the first Director of National Intelligence under President George W. Bush. His most recent position in government was as Deputy Secretary of State, where he served as the State Department’s Chief Operating Officer. While in the private sector from 1997 to 2001, Ambassador Negroponte was Executive Vice President of the McGraw-Hill Companies, with responsibility for overseeing the company’s international activities. During those years he was also Chairman of the French-American Foundation.

Ambassador Negroponte serves as Chairman Emeritus of the Council of the Americas/Americas Society. He is also Co-chairman of the US-Philippines Society and a past member of the Secretary of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. He has also served as Chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. From 2009 to 2016, Mr. Negroponte taught international relations at Yale’s Jackson Institute and from 2016 to 2018 at The Elliott School for International Affairs at George Washington University. He currently holds the James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. Ambassador Negroponte has received numerous awards in recognition of his more than four decades of public service, including the State Department’s Distinguished Service Medal on two separate occasions, the highest award which can be conferred by the Secretary of State, and on January 16, 2009, President Bush awarded Ambassador Negroponte the National Security Medal for his outstanding contributions to US national security.

Moderator Clayton Dube heads the USC U.S.-China Institute which focuses on the multidimensional and always changing U.S.-China relationship. Dube has earned teaching awards at three universities. Trained as a historian, he first lived in China in 1982-85 and carried out research there in 1989 and 1991-92. He’s visited another fifty-plus times for research, teaching, and to lead groups of students and teachers. Dube is a director of the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA) and serves on the editorial boards of Education about Asia and the International Review of Chinese Studies. He was previously associate editor of Modern China. Dube has produced several documentary films and consulted on others. The best known of these is the twelve-part Assignment: China series on American media coverage of China since the 1940s.

This November 28, 2017 dinner was a partnership between the Richard Nixon Foundation and the World Affairs Council of Orange County. Dinner co-chairs were Nixon Foundation President William H. Baribault and World Affairs Council Chairman Judge James P. Gray (Ret.), while vice chairs were Ambassador and Mrs. George L. Argyros and the Mark Chapin Johnson Foundation.

The dinner was attended by nearly 400 guests, in the Library’s magnificent White House East Room.

The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum Situated on nine rolling acres in Yorba Linda, California, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum offers visitors an insider’s glimpse into the events, people and world that shaped, and were shaped by, the 37th President.

“Thank you for an excuse to visit this Library for the very first time,” said General David Petraeus, a retired four-star Army General, and one of the most consequential and effective military leaders of our generation. Speaking in a packed East Room at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum on November 28, the General offered his thoughts on President Donald Trump’s foreign policies, the North Korea nuclear issue, US-China relations, continuing troubles in the Middle East, President Nixon’s strategic vision, and leadership. Commenting on whether the United States should continue to lead the world’s rules-based international order, General Petraeus said that doing so is “something that I am firmly committed to and think we should strongly do, and it’s something that the man around whom this Library is built was absolutely committed to, and did so much to help forge and then to help evolve, particularly with, of course, as it’s termed here – ‘the week that changed the world’ with his opening to China… The One China policy still is the policy of the United States, and it began as the brainchild of an individual – only he could have gone to China.” “Someone told me one time, ‘Don’t tell me how high the guy jumped; tell me how high he jumped back after getting knocked down,’ and that’s what this Library, I think, above all says… It’s really how you respond to adversity that counts… This is a truly extraordinary national treasure.”

General Petraeus graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and served in the United States Army for 37 years. His four-star assignments included serving as Commanding General, Multi-National Force – Iraq from 2007 to 2008 (during which he oversaw all coalition forces in Iraq), the 10th Commander, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) from 2008 to 2010, commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), and Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A) from 2010 to 2011. He was appointed by President Barack Obama as Director of the CIA in 2011, and served until 2012. He is now the Judge Widney Professor in the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.