Newswise — Robert Rotberg, a specialist in conflict resolution at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Goverment, will speak on "Failed States, Terror and U.S. Foreign Policy Options" at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 13, at Westfield State College in Westfield, Mass. His presentation is the keynote address of an international conference on "The Idea of a Failed State: Interdisciplinary Theories and Application." Several international scholars will speak on the issue during the three-day conference, Oct. 12-14.
Rotberg, also president of the World Peace Foundation, is one of the world's most prominent experts on state failure. His talk will explain what it means to describe a state as failed and relate this explanation to both the causes of global terrorism and what can be done to deal with that problem.
He is the author and editor of numerous books and articles on U.S. foreign policy, failed states, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. His most recent book is "Israeli and Palestinian Narratives of Conflict: History's Double Helix."
Liam Harte of Westfield State's Department of Philosophy said the conference grew out of conversations with colleagues at other institutions, especially his collaborator Mark Evans at the University of Wales in Swansea, who is also one of the speakers.
Harte said a major goal of the conference is to explore definitions of the term "failed state." "The phrase is used frequently, but among scholars it can have rather different meanings," he said. "When you get into the political and popular uses of the term it becomes even vaguer."
"An important challenge for the world community is that of dealing with so-called 'failed states,'" Harte said. "Many problems, intra- and international, are laid at their door: savage, prolonged wars; global terrorism, persecution, organized crime, the spread of disease, the impoverishment of the local population, and illegal immigration, to name only some of the most obvious. These problems are clearly important, and if they are caused or worsened by the very existence of failed states, then solving them requires that we firmly grasp that phenomenon."
The scheduled speakers are: Denise Baer (Washington College); Venelin Ganev (Miami University of Ohio); Adrian Hehir (University of Sheffield, UK); Cristof Kurz (Tufts University); Vanessa Ruget (Wheaton College); Marcel Tomasek (Masaryk University, Czech Republic); Mark Schuller (University of California, Santa Barbara); Christoph Stefes (University of Colorado at Denver); Jason Strakes (Claremont Graduate University); Tom Wood (Trinity College, Hartford); Enayatollah Yazdani (University of Isfahan, Iran); and independent scholars William Barnes and Saby Ghoshray.
Panels will be chaired by members of Westfield's departments of political science and philosophy.
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