FAS reveals lineup for spring speaker series

The Foreign Affairs Symposium (FAS) officially announced their speaker lineup for the spring semester on Thursday, Feb. 2. For the Symposium’s 20th anniversary, they have brought together a range of speakers united around the theme “Undercurrent.”

Radical feminist and founding member of the Russian punk rock protest group, Pussy Riot, Nadya Tolokonnikova kicked off the series by speaking in Shriver Hall Wednesday, Feb. 1.

Critically acclaimed novelist and black feminist activist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie spoke as part of the series yesterday night. Having completed her master’s degree in Writing Seminars, Adichie is also a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant and the author of a number of novels.

The next speaker in the series is the Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz, who is set to speak on Feb. 22. Díaz is most well known for his book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in the same year.

Aneesh Chopra, the first Chief Technology Officer of the U.S., is set to speak on March 8. He served as a government official under the Obama administration from 2009 to 2012. Chopra currently works as a senior advisor at Albright Stonebridge Group, a global business strategy firm.

On April 5, the Symposium will host the Veterans Writing Project in memory of the 2009 Hopkins graduate, Anne Smedinghoff, who died while delivering textbooks to students in Afghanistan. The Veterans Writing Project will come to help share veterans’ stories and host writing workshops.

Acclaimed Pakistani-Canadian journalist and filmmaker Suroosh Alvi will speak on April 12. Alvi is also the founder of VICE Media, which combines the work of journalists, fiction writers, graphic artists, photographers and cartoonists.

Finally, the Symposium will exhibit several works of Chinese artist and political dissident Ai Weiwei in the Glass Pavilion on a date that has yet to be announced.

Ai, who will not be coming to Hopkins, is notable for being arrested by the Chinese government and held for 81 days without being formally charged with a crime. He has had his works exhibited in galleries such as the Hirshhorn Museum and Tate Modern in London.