Throughout July, TAA students, faculty, and friends are attending exciting lectures at The Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Philadelphia offices. Upcoming topics are listed on FPRI’s site here and include:

Wednesday, July 9, 11-12 noon - Inside Pakistan: A Trip Report

Nicholas Schmidle, Fellow, New America Foundation

Nicholas Schmidle is a fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC, and a freelance writer whose work focuses on the intersection of culture, religion and politics in Asia. He has reported from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Central Asia and Iran, and his work has been published in Slate, New Republic, Washington Post and other publications. He lived in Pakistan as a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs from February 2006 through January 2008, when he left under threat of deportation following the publication of his “Next-Gen Taliban” in the New York Times Magazine. He is now writing a book about his experience in Pakistan, to be published by Henry Holt.

Tuesday, July 22, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM - The New National Defense Strategy

Thomas Mahnken, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning

Dr. Thomas G. Mahnken has served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning since November 2006. From 1997-2006, Dr. Mahnken was a Professor of Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College, and from 2004-06 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. He is author of Uncovering Ways of War: U.S. Intelligence and Foreign Military Innovation, 1918-1941 (Cornell, 2002). He is editor (with Emily O. Goldman) of The Information Revolution in Military Affairs in Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) and (with Richard K. Betts) of Paradoxes of Strategic Intelligence: Essays in Honor of Michael Handel (Frank Cass, 2003). As a Navy Reserve intelligence officer, he served with Naval Special Warfare unites in Iraq and Bahrain and was part of NATO’s initial deployment into Kosovo in 1999.

Wednesday, July 30, 11-12 noon - From Stone to Silicon: A Brief Survey of Technology and Inventions

Lawrence Husick, Senior Fellow, FPRI, and co-project director for FPRI’s project on Teaching Innovation

Lawrence Husick is a Senior Fellow at FPRI, where he has helped develop a project on Teaching the History of Innovation. He is also an adjunct professor in the Organizational Dynamics Masters Program of the University of Pennsylvania and at the Whiting Graduate School of Engineering of the Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Husick was co-founder and principal system architect of Infonautics Corporation (now HighBeam Research, Inc.), which offers the Electric Library on the World Wide Web, for which he has been awarded five U.S. patents. He serves as Chief Innovation Officer of TeraDisc, LLC, a pioneering company in the field of in silico drug research. He has been a consultant to both government and private organizations as a systems analyst and design engineer. Husick served as the Senior Legal Fellow of Apple Computer, Inc. for seven years.

It’s Summer School at The American Academy!

• We have had a great science camp in June in Potter County, where the students built rockets and successfully launched them; they built electric engines out of ordinary household items; they hiked, star-gazed, and went fishing.
• June17 was our all day summer book discussion at Dr. Traver’s house. The students read George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion together, watched My Fair Lady and had a fun pizza dinner. Thank you to the Travers!
• High school students attended a three day trip to Washington DC. Courtesy of Senator Arlen Specter’s office, they had special tours of the Russell building, saw the 19 C senatorial marble baths (now underneath heating equipment!), rode the underground tram to the Capitol Building, toured all aspects of that building and ended with tickets to observe the Senate debating several items – that was just one afternoon. Senator Specter’s office also arranged a special early morning tour of the Library of Congress, where 20,000 items are received and stored each day – and not all of them are books! The students also saw Hillwood, home of Marjorie M. Post, the National Cathedral, The Museum of Natural History, the Holocaust Museum, the special archaeology exhibit from Afghanistan (National Gallery, East wing) and enjoyed a wonderful evening tour of the lit monuments of the city. Thank you to Mrs. Chagan for organizing this memorable trip.
• On July 1, students attended the annual Intercollegiate Studies Institute BBQ in Wilmington, DE. Charles Murray spoke about education. He cited the lack of education for bright students as a “national security crisis.” Tom Anderson wrote a review of the lecture for The Bulletin which appeared last week.