FAS lineup includes Greg Asbed, Chelsea Manning, Samantha Power

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Foreign Affairs Symposium (FAS) has announced that the theme of its spring 2018 lineup is “Ravel | Unravel.” The speakers include: activist and Maryland senatorial candidate Chelsea Manning; former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power; and Hopkins alumni and humanitarian strategists Greg Asbed and Laura Germino, The Johns Hopkins News-Letter said.

Asbed, who is a descendant of an Armenian Genocide survivor, was awarded a MacArthur fellowship, or a “genius grant,” last week for his efforts to improve workplace conditions for farmworkers in Immokalee, Florida

Kat Gross, a senior International Studies major and an executive director of FAS, said that they chose “Ravel | Unravel” as their theme because it captures the tension of a polarized society.

“In our current sociopolitical landscape, we’re seeing two contradictory phenomena — the coalescence of many different movements and new communities and institutions fighting against systemic injustice but also the unravelling of certain civil liberties,” she said.

She added that many of this year’s speakers are activists in communities that fight against the rise of “Trumpian” rhetoric. According to Gross, FAS hoped to highlight the manner in which activists build new communities to counter this rhetoric.

“Ravel | Unravel” builds on last year’s theme of “Undercurrent,” which Gross said featured speakers known for challenging the status quo.

“Sometimes there are institutions and norms that need to be challenged,” she said. “In this lineup, we’re looking also at how new communities are being created in the wake of the norms that are being broken down.”

With the ongoing construction in Shriver Hall, FAS booked alternative spaces for each speaker. Most will be in the Hodson Hall auditorium, though others will be in the Mason or Mudd Hall auditoriums.

Gross said that Shriver’s continued closure presented a challenge for FAS.

“We just had to think a bit more critically about the spaces we have available on campus,” she said. “We didn’t want to go off campus. Turner Auditorium on the med campus is lovely and larger, but the logistics of getting everyone there, we felt, would be a bit of a hassle.”

She said that they will offer overflow rooms for some of the events, and they will also ticket the visits from Power and Manning.

Gross said that FAS acknowledged some controversy around Power because of some recent criticism. In 2015 she came under fire for declining to comment on the Obama Administration’s refusal to acknowledge the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

“With Samantha Power, I feel like we might have a little bit of controversy,” Gross said. “She’s often criticized the political establishment for turning a blind eye to mass violence and genocide around the world, but some have suggested that maybe she’s complicit in various human rights abuses.”