Services for the poor, “transformational diplomacy” and NATO will be lecture topics this week at the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies at Brigham Young University.
Kristen Proctor Westenskow, a public health instructor at the University of Utah, will present “Our Covenantal Responsibility to the Poor” at the International Field Studies lecture on Friday, Nov. 10 at noon in 238 Herald R. Clark Building. In addition to teaching public health classes, Westenskow is working to create a public health international study program.
While a student at BYU, she studied at the Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies (1996), served a mission to Chihuahua, Mexico (1996–98), completed a field study in Ghana (1999), and served as both the student facilitator and co-director of the Dominican Republic International Volunteer Program (2000–01).
John “Dink” Dinkelman, deputy director of the Orientation Division at the Foreign Service Institute, will present “Transformational Diplomacy: The New Face of America Abroad” at a Global Awareness lecture on Wednesday, Nov. 15 at noon in 238 Herald R. Clark Building. He will also present a Foreign Service Career lecture at 3 p.m. in the same location.
His topic is based on the January 2006 announcement by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who indicated that Foreign Service assignments would undergo a major shift from the U.S. and Europe to global hot spots. Rank advancement will not occur without such an assignment, expertise in at least two regions and fluency in at least two foreign languages—Chinese, Urdu and Arabic were among the examples cited.
Rice referred to these changes as “transformational diplomacy.”
A BYU alumnus, Dinkelman joined the orientation division in 2001, where he served as deputy A-100 coordinator until August 2005, when he became the course coordinator.
His previous postings have been to Ankara as human resources officer (2000–01), The Hague as supervisory GSO (1995–99), Majuro as regional administrative officer for Micronesia (1993–95), London as administrative staff assistant (1991–93) and Belgrade on a CON/GSO rotation (1989–91).
"Europe," NATO, and the United States: The New Geopolitics of European Security” will be presented by John A. Agnew, a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, on Friday, Nov. 17 at 2 p.m. in 238 Herald R. Clark Building. Agnew has expertise in the democratic transformation in Italy, sovereignty and territoriality, hegemony versus empire in global geopolitics and the history of geographical thought.
He has been the recipient of the Distinguished Scholarship Award from the Association of American Geographers (2006) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2003–04), and delivered the Hettner Lectures at the University of Heidelberg (2000).
Most lectures are archived online. For more information on David M. Kennedy Center events, see the calendar online at http://kennedy.byu.edu.
Writer: Lee Simons
