7th Annual AGS Graduate Student Conference: A Success!

On April 19-20, the American Graduate School in Paris hosted its 7th Annual Graduate Student Conference on "The Roles and Challenges of Diplomacy in the 21^st Century: Inclusion and Exclusion in a Globalized World". Participants from Norway, Canada, South Africa, India, the United States, Russia, Spain, Australia, Lebanon, Israel, Iran, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, Sri Lanka, Barbados, Venezuela, Belgium, and France exchanged their experiences, research findings and ideas on the subject. Around 100 academics, journalists and professional diplomats joined in the audience to take part in the debates.

Panels covered diverse aspects of the conference theme such as the growing role of non-state actors, the impact of new communication technologies on diplomacy, power politics and hegemony in international relations, multilateral diplomacy in a globalized world, and the contemporary case of the Arab Spring.

The highpoint of the conference was a keynote panel that brought together career diplomats from the United States, Lebanon, Germany, and Switzerland: H.E. Wilfried Bolewski, former Ambassador of Germany to Jamaica and Belize, Philip Breeden, Minister Counselor for Public Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, H.E. Dominique Dreyer, former Ambassador of Switzerland to India and China, and H.E. Samira Hanna-El-Daher, former Ambassador of Lebanon to Japan, Cyprus and the Philippines. Pulitzer Prize winner Serge Schmemann of the International Herald Tribune moderated the discussion and Q & A session. With a cumulative 130 years of experience in the practice of diplomacy, having witnessed and taken part in the recent evolution of this domain and with firsthand understanding of the challenges ahead, the panelists shared their views on such questions as the skills needed to be a good diplomat today, the importance of global negotiations versus traditional state-to-state diplomacy, the growing role of NGOs, and the recent Wikileaks issue.

"Attending this unique discussion between prestigious diplomats and getting a chance to ask them questions was an amazing experience and privilege. This was not like anything you could find in books or on the Internet. The panelists gave us insight into the practice of diplomacy on-stage and backstage. They generously shared their collective knowledge and conveyed their passion for the art of diplomacy," comments Arcadia/AGS student Carlyle Taylor (class of 2013).

A full video recording of the panel will be available on AGS's Youtube Channel soon.

The other panels each succeeded in bringing diverse international perspectives to each of the topics, and in connecting academics with practitioners in the field (see conference schedule). Among the presenters were two students from AGS in Paris and two students from the International Peace and Conflict Resolution program at AGS's partner institution Arcadia University. The conference was entirely organized and fundraised by AGS students, under the supervision of AGS professor and faculty organiser Dr. Ruchi Anand and under the coordination of Student Director Ryan Godfrey (class of 2012), an Arcadia/AGS dual Master's candidate.

Erik Szedely, a graduate student at the University of Oslo, Norway and at Sciences-Po in Paris, France commented: "The graduate student conference of AGS in Paris was a fantastic academic and social experience. Two days of presentations on various topics in the field of diplomacy gave us all food for thought and motivation to continue in our studies to better understand the complex realities of world politics. The interaction between students and feedback from both professors and career diplomats are just priceless."

On the occasion of the conference, AJ Jackson, a Ph.D. Candidate at AGS and a professor in the Arcadia undergraduate study abroad programs, announced the launch of an academic journal published by AGS, "The American Graduate School in Paris International Studies Review". One of the papers of the conference will be selected to be featured in the first issue, and further connections between the journal and the yearly conference will be explored.

Ambassador Bolewski, one of the keynote panelists, concludes : "The AGS Conference shed some light on the various issues and stakeholders in modern Diplomacy, ranging from non-state actors to the Internet and Public Diplomacy. The young academic participants will now have to carry their interest in the practice of diplomacy to the level of problem-solving. They might discover that creative diplomacy as thinking outside the box matters more than ever, since it is not about perfection, but accommodation."