The Santa Fe World Affairs Forum aims to broaden and deepen understanding of world affairs through small, interactive, professionally led sessions on international issues for a membership of informed individuals.
Next Program
Fulbright, Peace Corps and Higher Education: America’s Global Smart Power Under Assault, How Best to Respond
Wednesday, October 15, 2025 from 12:00 noon – 2 pm
Kevin Quigley
Kevin Quigley is former college president of Marlboro College where he led its merger with Emerson College. As president of the National Peace Corps Association, he led the national campaign resulting in the Peace Corps’ largest appropriation increase in history. He has been a three-time Fulbright Senior Specialist and a Fulbright Association board member and was the first executive director of the Global Alliance for Workers and Communities, where he pioneered a tri-sectoral partnership among global corporations, governments, and civil society organizations designed to improve global workplace conditions.
He is co-founding editor of Fulbright Chronicles, a global, independent, peer- reviewed journal by and for Fulbrighters (www.fulbright-chronicles.com); and with his wife, Susan Flaherty, founded the Peace Corps Commemorative Foundation www.peacecorpscommemorative.org), now a Peace Corps community effort to build the Peace Corps Park near the National Mall as a testament to the historic and enduring importance of service and international understanding in the United States’ engagement with the world.
He has extensive teaching and publishing experience on international service, democratization, and higher education issues. Quigley has served on various university boards, including the New England Board of Education, American University of Nigeria, American University of Afghanistan, Parami University (Myanmar), and Swarthmore College. He has degrees from Georgetown University, Columbia University, University College Dublin, and Swarthmore College.
Registration: This SFWAF lunch is $26 for members and $36 for nonmembers. You may pay by check made out to SFWAF and mailed to The Santa Fe World Affairs Forum, Santa Fe, PO Box 31965, NM 87594 or with a credit card using our Paypal account. Please indicate on your check or if using Paypal please note in “add special instructions to the seller” that your payment is for the Thursday, October 16, 2025 program.
Members: if you have not yet paid your 2025-26 membership dues, you may include the $50 per person annual dues in your payment for this program, but please also note in special instructions that dues are included. Because we are a 501(c)(3) organization, dues and contributions are tax deductible in accordance with IRS regulations.
If you are not a member or plan to bring a guest who is not a member, please include your best contact information and your guest’s name. We use nametags. If you are interested in membership, please email us: sfwaforum@outlook.com.
Payment for this program is non-refundable after Friday October 10, 2025 . We strongly prefer that payment be made by Paypal or check postmarked by October 10, 2025 at the latest to facilitate check in. It is also very helpful if you are sending a check to email us at sfwaforum@outlook.com to
NEXT SYMPOSIUM 2020
Thursday April 16 and Friday April 17, 2020
at the Santa Fe Community College, Santa Fe, New Mexico
“The Warming World: Rising Temperatures, Rising Tides, Rising Turbulence”
Scientific study after study demonstrates the enormity of the impact of climate change on earth’s biosphere. These changes range from the Arctic’s melting icecap and the desertification of parts of Africa to rising sea levels submerging Pacific islands and parts of populous countries like Bangladesh. The increase and intensity of typhoons in Asia and hurricanes in the Caribbean, wildfires in California and Indonesia as well as melting ice, changing trade routes and new security threats in the Arctic are all part of this manmade phenomenon.
Some of this story plays out in 24/7 news – but much more does not. What do we know about the national security impact of climate change and how US military planners are attempting to prepare for it? What about its relationship to the increasing flows of migrants uprooting and risking their lives to cross continents, borders, rivers and seas in search of safe havens often to be met by hostility, indifference and uncertain futures? What about the spread of disease and the possibility of pandemics we have yet to discover? How can we address technological impediments to climate change mitigation? Finally, why are even the governments of countries which have been on the forefront of climate mitigation, unable to move to a new economy based on alternative energy?
If we’ve known for years about the warming world, why hasn’t more been done to try to slow or deter its worst effects? Many people now understand that climate change is, foremost, driven by rising carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas levels from human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas and current agricultural practices like raising livestock and clearing land resulting in changes in our atmosphere leading to warming of the planet. But are major impediments exclusively from oil and coal companies trying to preserve the bottom-line? Are infrastructure and unemployment fears also holding us back? Are new technologies available or on the horizon to help mitigate the worst effects of the earth’s rapid warming?
The impact of global warming is not just an issue for scientific researchers, for military planners confronting the next national security threat or for energy company executives preserving short term profits. It is more critically an issue that directly affects our lives and the future of our children.
Dealing with the New Normal: Climate change is global. Rising temperatures respect no national boundaries. This is the new (ab)normal. As such it presents complex transnational problems. It is an ever shifting calculus. It requires involvement from all levels of government, international organizations, large corporations, local city councils, small startups, researchers, teachers, students and all citizens of planet earth to begin to cope with this heretofore silent crisis.
This symposium will explore the interrelated issues of coping with the warming world from the vantage points of national security, economic viability, health and human welfare.
PAST SYMPOSIUM 2019
Thursday April 11 and Friday April 12, 2019
Democracy in the Time of Autocrats
To register for the 2025 Symposium, please email sfwaforum@outlook.com with names of registrants, days attending and whether paying by check to SFWAF and mailed to: The Santa Fe World Affairs Forum PO Box 31965, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87594. Or to by Paypal or credit card through our website at https://sfwaf.org/payment
April 10-11, 2025
Speakers
Gary A Grappo, US Ambassador (rtd) and currently Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Middle East Studies at the Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver; CEO of Equilibrium Consulting.
Siegfried Hecker, former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory and current professor of practice at Texas A&M University and at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, Monterey, CA;
Dr. Manuel Montoya, PhD, Associate Professor, University of New Mexico, Department of Economics. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, he has delivered over 100 lectures on emerging markets and global conflict worldwide and is a recent recipient of UNM’s Presidential Teaching Fellowship, the university’s highest honor. He has also developed Vessels and Voids, a podcast, which he discusses the link between popular culture and development of global society.
Dr. Jody K Olsen, former Director and Deputy Director of the US Peace Corps and Peace Corps staff member and volunteer who currently co-chairs Women of Peace Corps Committee, chairs the Peace Corps Commemorative Foundation Park Advisory Committee and a member of the Maryland Governor’s Commission for Service and Volunteerism. Dr Olsen has also authored A Million Miles: My Peace Corps Journey which was published earlier this year.
Eric Rubin, US Ambassador (rtd) to Bulgaria and former president of the American Foreign Service Association; Summary
We live in stormy times. The heyday following Communism’s end in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is a faded memory. History has not ended as once prophesized – it has instead moved on to the rise of populist leaders and their autocratic control domestically and internationally. The democratic model which promised so much is under challenge throughout the globe.
Can democracy survive the onslaught of autocrats? Can civil society institutions prove to be democracy’s underlying strength? But will they hold, or will they too falter?
There is deepening concern that autocrats, often initially elected democratically, have used the levers of raw power to dominate mainstream and social media, subvert education, and control elections first to hobble and then effectively destroy democracy turning back the clock by sweeping away progress on desperately needed reforms – from action on climate change to gender and income inequality.
Moreover, do autocracies now seize the opportunity to attack their neighbors? Threaten nuclear holocaust unless they get their way, and destabilize the
international order that kept the peace throughout much of the world since the end of WWII?
How significant is the ripple effect of the seemingly sudden demise of the 40 year old Assad dynasty not just for Syria itself but also for the greater Middle East, Russia, Ukraine,
Register for an event or make other payments on the Payments page.