Dear Friends of the Hamilton Lugar School,
On behalf of my faculty colleagues, staff, and students, thank you for your support during 2019—and happy new year and happy holidays.
For the Hamilton Lugar School, 2019 was a year of continued growth and accomplishment, but also one of loss. We received news last April that Senator Richard G. Lugar had passed away. Equal parts ambition and decency, Dick Lugar was one of the Senate’s most consequential foreign policy voices. His policy aspirations and ethos of treating all people with respect and dignity were critical to his legislative successes and ensured he had a seat at the policy table long after he left the Senate.
The gentle giant of American diplomacy, Senator Lugar’s example showed the power of diplomacy to improve our world, and his legacy will endure through the generations of global leaders at our school who will follow in his path. Please enjoy this video tribute in his honor.
We are fortunate to live in a state and to be part of a university that has doubled down on its investment in global studies, at a time when the national trends are in the other direction. The global challenges we face, and deepened disagreement about the direction of US foreign policy, reminded us of the need for understanding of both global systems and the societies and cultures that shape our world. I am proud to report that the Hamilton Lugar School’s faculty, staff, and students have risen to the occasion. Their example is a tonic for our times.
New degrees
- We are excited to report that a new degree in Cybersecurity & Global Policy, a partnership between HLS and the newly named Luddy School of Informatics, Computing & Engineering has begun enrolling students for the fall of 2020. The first-of-its-kind, the degree will challenge students to build a foundation of technical and global skills to prepare them to understand how new technologies affect global society.
- HLS and our outstanding partners at the Maurer School of Law celebrated the first year of our joint degree in International Law and Institutions with weeklong career-related events for students, highlighted by a capacity crowd in the Shreve Auditorium for a lecture by Justice Michael Kirby. The week also featured “Navigating the Backlash Against Global Law and Institutions,” a two-day conference hosted with Australian National University and the University of Maryland.
Student success
- In December, we hosted the inaugural Hamilton Lugar School Scholarship Dinner in Indianapolis to benefit the Global Leadership Scholars Program. The evening featured a fireside chat with former US Secretary of Defense and IU alumnus Dr. Robert M. Gates, and Carol Giacomo, The New York Times editorial board writer covering foreign affairs. Proceeds will support scholarships for in-state students entering the school in the fall of 2020. Dr. Gates—who is an alumnus of the Hamilton Lugar School’s acclaimed Russian & East European Institute—also received Indiana University’s Distinguished Alumni Service Award. See his remarks from the award presentation.
Convening leading global voices
- The fourth annual conference on America’s Role in the World featured keynote speaker Ernest J. Moniz, former US Secretary of Energy and co-chair and CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative. The conference offered panels on the rise of global hate speech, the role of the new Congress in foreign policy, national security challenges heading into the 2020 presidential election and innovation in international development.
- Mark your calendars for next year’s conference on March 5-6, 2020. Ambassador William J. Burns, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, will give the keynote.
- The 21st Century Japan Politics & Society Initiative hosted its first national conference on US-Japan relations.
- The Institute for Korean Studies held its fourth annual conference on the Future of Korea’s Economy.
- HLS hosted a two-day conference on the future of the Law of the Sea Treaty in Hamburg, Germany at the headquarters of the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea. Former US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel gave the keynote.
- With the Simon Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, we screened the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Documentary, 82 Names, followed by an expert panel on the detention and torture of Syrian civilians by the Assad regime.
Grants & collaborations
- In support of our nation’s armed forces, HLS was awarded a one-year, $970,000 grant by the Department of Defense to establish a Language Training Center program within the school. This program, which will complement the excellent work of our Language Workshop, offers year-round language instruction in partnership with the US Special Operations Command and the Indiana National Guard.
- To further strengthen the state of Russian studies in the nation and at the university, the Carnegie Corporation of New York awarded the Russian and East European Institute a grant of $700,000 in support of its Russian Studies Workshop. This grant follows a two-year, $1 million award by Carnegie that provided support to launch this program, which promotes research and exchange between US and Russian scholars.
- To support global learning in the State of Indiana, our Center for the Study of Global Change published the Indiana Language Roadmap, a Department of Defense-funded program to strengthen cross-cultural and language skills across the state’s citizenry and workforce.
- The Tang Research Foundation extended its generous support to the Department of Central Eurasian Studies to enable faculty and graduate school exchange programs and workshops on Silk Road studies between CEUS and the Department of History at Peking University.
Faculty growth
- Three new tenure track faculty joined the 120 outstanding full-time members of our school’s faculty.
- Stacey Van Vleet is a Tibet scholar who comes to Bloomington from UC-Berkeley, continuing the Department of Central Eurasian Studies’ historical excellence in the field.
- Michael De Groot is an international historian specializing in Russian foreign relations in the Department of International Studies. A diplomatic historian who received his doctorate from the University of Virginia, and recently completed a fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. De Groot is an alumnus of our Language Workshop.
- Wendy Leutert is the GLP-Ming Z. Mei Chair of Chinese Trade and Economics, who conducted research for her dissertation embedded in Chinese state-owned enterprises. She joins us from Cornell University and was the Postdoctoral Fellow at the Columbia-Harvard China and the World Program at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.
- We have a new Executive Associate Dean, Professor John Hanson, a highly respected scholar of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community—a trans-national Islamic movement with origins in South Asia that gained a significant following in twentieth-century Ghana.
- Also, continuing our commitment to the study of lesser commonly taught languages, we are hosting ten Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistants. FLTAs are part of the Fulbright program, supported by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the State Department. They are offering instruction in: Bengali, Burmese, Finnish, Indonesian, Kazakh, Kiswahili, Kyrgyz, Thai, Turkish, and Urdu.
Thanks to all of you for your good counsel and support. With wishes for a more just and more secure world in 2020.
Yours,
Lee Feinstein
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