My third week here has been absolutely incredible. The initial anxiety of having to adjust to city life--and to a new living environment in general--is slowly dissipating, and I've been able to venture further out of my comfort zone and explore more of the city and all it has to offer. After this week, it's just dawned on me the unbelievable amount of access to high-level officials students have here in D.C. I knew studying here would offer me valuable exposure to the foreign policy world, yet I never once fathomed that in just one week--not even that, four days--I would have the opportunity to sit in a room with a former president of Spain, or speak and shake hands with a distinguished ambassador and former deputy national security advisor. Let me explain.
Following the lengthy and relaxing Labor Day weekend, which fortunately was sunny and beautiful, we jumped right into a week filled with a number of lectures about transatlantic relations (the relationship between the United States and with the rest of the "West," ie, Europe), and journeyed throughout the heart of D.C. in order to hear from distinguished officials who study the issue day in and day out.
The first of such meetings took place on Tuesday, September 3rd, in a small conference room at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), known to be one of the preeminent graduate schools for international relations in the world. SAIS has many campuses abroad, and allows its graduate students to study in any one of its three campuses: Washington, DC; Bologna, Italy; or Nanjing, China. It is comfortably situated near embassy row in Dupont Circe, and is right next to some of the top global think tanks such as the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Once we arrived, we heard the former president of Spain, Jose Maria Aznar, speak about the current challenges that are facing Spain, and more broadly, Europe, at this time. He discussed at length contemporary issues such as the eurocrisis, Europe's problems of solidarity and identity, and the emerging transatlantic trade agreement, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
On Wednesday we met Heather Conley, a senior fellow and director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who was incredibly fun and engaging; she was also clearly brilliant, having served as deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs with a slew of critical responsibilities in many countries, including those from the post-Soviet sphere like Ukraine and Belarus. She had a lot of insightful information to offer, and I got the chance to ask her about the future of the Ukraine. She was very helpful and I hope to include her thoughts within the research paper I am currently working on.
Yesterday morning we met with Dr. Jackson Janes, acting director of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS), which is uniquely one of the only think tanks associated with a university--again, Johns Hopkins. He's an expert on German-U.S. relations, and was able to offer us information on how Germany has been handling the eurocrisis as one of the only countries within the eurozone that has been able to stay afloat and free of debt. Germany will hold elections in a couple of weeks, and many are looking forward to seeing what will come of them, and what that will mean for the trajectory of the debt crisis in Europe. Will Germany continue to be a willing pillar of aid to the southern European countries like Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Greece? We'll have to wait and see.
Today was probably the most interesting day of all. In the morning we met with former ambassador and deputy national security advisor James Jeffrey, who discussed the future of U.S. foreign policy with a focus on Iran and the Middle East. He was a very impressive speaker, energetic, and really personable; I suppose to some extent ambassadors have to be. We introduced ourselves and where we went to school, and he was very familiar with Bowdoin, and told a little story about Joshua Chamberlain, one of the most lauded figures in Bowdoin's history.
After meeting with the ambassador, we quickly took off to the British embassy, where we spoke with diplomats there about their experiences working in the United States on issues like energy policy, nonproliferation, and of course, the TTIP trade agreement that I addressed previously. One of the diplomats served abroad in Moscow, Russia for three years, and so I asked him to talk about the experiences he had there, which were really interesting to learn about. The embassy was much bigger than I would have imagined. It was a very modern building with many large glass panels, allowing for natural light to flow in. There were many spacious conference rooms, and I noticed that there were a couple of American interns working at the embassy. Perhaps in the future I can look into working for a foreign embassy as well!
In other news, I visited the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, one of the Smithsonian's 14 free museums in D.C., with a fellow friend in my class from Tokyo, Japan.
As for my internship, I will be starting Monday at 10:00 a.m. and am incredibly excited to get going. I will be working all day Monday and Tuesdays, and may even be able to work half-days on Wednesdays. There are a great number of opportunities for interns to meet with scholars at meet-and-greets, resume-building workshops, networking events, and free admission to all AEI-sponsored conferences. I have also been told that there are opportunities to be published in AEI's online magazine, The American. Hopefully I can hop on board that train and get a few articles published and my name out there! I'll have much more to say about that, and the internship experience, next Friday! There are also complimentary breakfasts and lunches on-site at the Institute.
And free cookies on Friday. Yes you heard that correctly.
Following the lengthy and relaxing Labor Day weekend, which fortunately was sunny and beautiful, we jumped right into a week filled with a number of lectures about transatlantic relations (the relationship between the United States and with the rest of the "West," ie, Europe), and journeyed throughout the heart of D.C. in order to hear from distinguished officials who study the issue day in and day out.
The first of such meetings took place on Tuesday, September 3rd, in a small conference room at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), known to be one of the preeminent graduate schools for international relations in the world. SAIS has many campuses abroad, and allows its graduate students to study in any one of its three campuses: Washington, DC; Bologna, Italy; or Nanjing, China. It is comfortably situated near embassy row in Dupont Circe, and is right next to some of the top global think tanks such as the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Once we arrived, we heard the former president of Spain, Jose Maria Aznar, speak about the current challenges that are facing Spain, and more broadly, Europe, at this time. He discussed at length contemporary issues such as the eurocrisis, Europe's problems of solidarity and identity, and the emerging transatlantic trade agreement, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
 |
| Jose Maria Aznar, former president of Spain, at Johns Hopkins' SAIS. |
On Wednesday we met Heather Conley, a senior fellow and director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who was incredibly fun and engaging; she was also clearly brilliant, having served as deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs with a slew of critical responsibilities in many countries, including those from the post-Soviet sphere like Ukraine and Belarus. She had a lot of insightful information to offer, and I got the chance to ask her about the future of the Ukraine. She was very helpful and I hope to include her thoughts within the research paper I am currently working on.
Yesterday morning we met with Dr. Jackson Janes, acting director of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS), which is uniquely one of the only think tanks associated with a university--again, Johns Hopkins. He's an expert on German-U.S. relations, and was able to offer us information on how Germany has been handling the eurocrisis as one of the only countries within the eurozone that has been able to stay afloat and free of debt. Germany will hold elections in a couple of weeks, and many are looking forward to seeing what will come of them, and what that will mean for the trajectory of the debt crisis in Europe. Will Germany continue to be a willing pillar of aid to the southern European countries like Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Greece? We'll have to wait and see.
Today was probably the most interesting day of all. In the morning we met with former ambassador and deputy national security advisor James Jeffrey, who discussed the future of U.S. foreign policy with a focus on Iran and the Middle East. He was a very impressive speaker, energetic, and really personable; I suppose to some extent ambassadors have to be. We introduced ourselves and where we went to school, and he was very familiar with Bowdoin, and told a little story about Joshua Chamberlain, one of the most lauded figures in Bowdoin's history.
After meeting with the ambassador, we quickly took off to the British embassy, where we spoke with diplomats there about their experiences working in the United States on issues like energy policy, nonproliferation, and of course, the TTIP trade agreement that I addressed previously. One of the diplomats served abroad in Moscow, Russia for three years, and so I asked him to talk about the experiences he had there, which were really interesting to learn about. The embassy was much bigger than I would have imagined. It was a very modern building with many large glass panels, allowing for natural light to flow in. There were many spacious conference rooms, and I noticed that there were a couple of American interns working at the embassy. Perhaps in the future I can look into working for a foreign embassy as well!
In other news, I visited the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, one of the Smithsonian's 14 free museums in D.C., with a fellow friend in my class from Tokyo, Japan.
As for my internship, I will be starting Monday at 10:00 a.m. and am incredibly excited to get going. I will be working all day Monday and Tuesdays, and may even be able to work half-days on Wednesdays. There are a great number of opportunities for interns to meet with scholars at meet-and-greets, resume-building workshops, networking events, and free admission to all AEI-sponsored conferences. I have also been told that there are opportunities to be published in AEI's online magazine, The American. Hopefully I can hop on board that train and get a few articles published and my name out there! I'll have much more to say about that, and the internship experience, next Friday! There are also complimentary breakfasts and lunches on-site at the Institute.
 |
| Entrance to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), 1150 17th Street, NW, DC. |
And free cookies on Friday. Yes you heard that correctly.
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