The Foreign Affairs Symposium (FAS) announced its event lineup for the spring semester on Wednesday, featuring a mix of several big-name speakers as well as the issue-specific panels that have become a trademark of the organization.
Seeking to maintain a balance between intellectualism and popular speakers, the co-chairs of FAS sought to branch out from the typical crowd of international relations and political science majors by hosting some speakers with wider appeal.
"FAS got a lot of praise last year for having small, intellectual panels," junior Co-Chair Marc Goldwein said. "At the same time, while there was a lot of praise, they didn't draw a lot of people. We need to stay intellectually honest and also attract large audiences with big names. Fortunately our big-name speakers are very intellectual for the most part."
The symposium is run by juniors Goldwein, Carey Polis and Adnan Ahmad.
This year's lineup includes New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman; host of MSNBC's Hardball, Chris Matthews; and senior advisor to President Bill Clinton Dennis Ross. Panels will cover such issues as the AIDS crisis in sub-Saharan Africa, and the prospects for democracy in the Middle East.
The Symposium's theme, "Ideologies in Flux: Examining Divergent Political Strains in Geopolitics," seeks to address in a general sense the various changes taking place throughout the world, while still offering a close look at individual conflicts and ideological shifts.
Polis said, "We wanted a theme that could address changes everywhere, not just a certain region. This theme allows us to observe the U.S.' role and look at everyone else's role more closely as well."
She added, "The panels will draw less people just by the nature of their format, but the people we're bringing are excellent and the depth of discussion they'll provide will be much more than one person could."
In an effort to allow for more individual attention to the tasks of the group, the co-chairs elected to scale back the size of the FAS staff, carefully selecting those candidates who they felt would make the most significant contribution to the goals of the symposium.
"We totally restructured the staff," Polis said. "We had a really intense interview process, cutting more people than we had expected. The philosophy was that we wanted a lot of people who would make FAS their top priority and weren't looking to pad their resumes. It's really worked well, and we've had very few problems overall."
Goldwein recognized that sufficient funding was more difficult to attain for this year's more expensive speakers, but noted that the money was nonetheless there for the taking. With some funding left over from last year's symposium, grants became a large source of funding this year.
The Graduate Representative Organization, the Alumni Association, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and several other sources provided grant money, while still more came in from FAS alumni, the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, and the School of Medicine.
Polis noted that budgetary concerns have always been major issues for the staff of FAS. "We don't get any funding from the school, in the sense that we don't get a block grant, which is something to consider when looking at who we can get. We could not afford a lot no matter how good we were with fundraising."
FAS achieved Class-A status with the Student Activities Commission this year, which allows the organization to submit a budget proposal in April for the following year. "It won't mean that much," Polis said, "but it will mean we have a little more to work with next year."
"We're really excited and very happy with our staff, and we're looking forward to a great year," Polis said. "It's really great to create this and have something come out of virtually nothing."
