Annual conference explores sovereignty and intervention

Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Halberstam and journalist and international expert Leslie H. Gelb will be awarded the Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Awards at this year's EPIIC International Symposium, scheduled for February 27 through March 2 on the Medford/Somerville campus.

The symposium, "Sovereignty and Intervention," will address issues in the Middle East and Latin America as well as topics such as the environment, humanitarian intervention and transnational crime. The symposium is an annual event organized by students in the Experimental College's EPIIC (Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship) program.

Sherman Teichman, director of the Institute for Global Leadership, which includes EPIIC, said, "We are convening this forum at a time when the United States is considering preemptive war, when the West Bank and Gaza and Israel are ablaze, when the economies of Latin America are reeling under the tensions of international financial markets and corruption, when humanitarian intervention is being challenged as an oxymoron, when the experiment in nation building in Afghanistan is under way, when the United States is allegedly entering an era of empire, when the emergence of the international court is testing legal boundaries and when genomics is challenging the concept of what it means to be human."

Halberstam, the author of War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals, and Gelb, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, will receive their awards on Friday, February 28. Other participants in the symposium include Jessica Tuchman Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al Quds University in Jerusalem and former head of the Palestinian Authority; Mary Robinson, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and former president of Ireland; and Romeo Dallaire, former force commander of the United Nations Mission to Rwanda.

For a complete schedule of events and speakers, visit the web site www.epiic.com