Aliaksandr Paharely, Visiting Scholar, Center for Belarusian Studies, Southwestern College, Kansas

Blue White Future, a non-partisan Israeli organization that seeks to help achieve a two-state solution, has developed a radical new approach to achieve this goal. Join us as Blue White Future’s co-founder Ami Ayalon presents the plan and for a wide-ranging discussion of prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Authors and scholars Alexander Cooley and Alexander Kupatadze discuss their research into the interplay of geopolitics and local networks across Central Asia. Cooley explores the dynamics of the new competition between Russia, China and the United States over the region since 9/11, as well as how small states’ interaction with great powers advances our understanding of how world politics actually works in the contemporary era of diminishing Western influence and rising new regional powers. Author Alexander Kupatadze will discuss the diverging trajectories of organized crime in post-Soviet Eurasia focusing on professional criminals (so-called vory-v-zakone) in Georgia and drug smuggling groups in Kyrgyzstan.

This luncheon program will convey the continuing impact of the European Humanities University (EHU) through exchanges with current EHU students and remarks from the university’s founding rector, Anatoli Mikhailov and Eurasia Foundation President, Horton Beebe-Center. The students, a live example of civic education in action, will help to focus the session on the challenges and rewards of educating a rising generation, especially in a state with an authoritarian government.