On the first anniversary of the U.S.-NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s takeover, WACA presents Elliot Ackerman to talk about his experience in the war-ravaged country. Ackerman left the U.S. military ten years ago, but his time in Afghanistan and Iraq with the Marines and later as a CIA paramilitary officer marked him indelibly. […]
*****EVENT CANCELLED *** We are pleased to feature Diana Villiers Negroponte as our special guest speaker. Author and professor, Diana Negroponte has focused on the Cold War and how it ended. In between teaching at Fordham, George Washington and Georgetown Universities, she researches and writes. In 2015 the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies offered […]
The World Affairs Council of Austin and the Kozmetsky Center of Excellence in Global Finance at St. Edward’s University host a series of Forums on Global Investment, Finance, Emerging Markets and Geopolitical Risk. Our next Forum will feature Amir Husain, CEO of Sparkcognition. Amir Husain is an entrepreneur, inventor, technologist, and author based in Austin. […]
Hosted in partnership with the World Affairs Council of Connecticut and Global Santa Fe, the World Affairs Council of Austin invites you to this ONLINE event on Lincoln’s birthday with award-winning historian and author Allen Guelzo. Mr. Guelzo will join a conversation with Jim Falk on the American President whose firm and powerful beliefs in […]
In 2021, the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan. What followed was a period of turmoil, as they turned on those who were in the Administration of President Ashraf Ghani or supported it. Then, there was the diaspora of those associated with the Americans in any capacity. Rangina Hamidi, who served as the first female […]
What’s next for the U.S. in the Middle East? Join author Steven Cook, senior fellow for Middle East & Africa at the Council on Foreign Relations, in conversation with Jim Falk on what went wrong with U.S. involvement in the region, and how the U.S. should reimagine our strategic interests in the Middle East amid […]
In his new political thriller The Human Scale, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright tells the story of an Israeli cop and a Palestinian-American FBI agent who join forces to solve the murder of an Israeli police chief in the West Bank – set against the backdrop of the decades-long Israel-Palestine conflict. Wright joins us on […]
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman – de facto ruler of one of the wealthiest states in the Middle East – has positioned himself as a transformative leader. His rule is defined by economic and social change, a close relationship with President Trump, and concerns about human rights abuses and power consolidation. Jordan’s King […]
Join your fellow World Affairs Council of Austin members for a conversation with Lawrence Wright, author, screenwriter, and playwright. Mr. Wright received the Pulitzer Prize for this book, "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11." With a degree from American University in Cairo, he has spent time living and reporting on the Middle […]
How did Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, come to be one of the world’s most notorious and prominent players in global intelligence? Just look to Meir Dagan, the Mossad’s former director […]
Journalist Yi-Ling Liu takes us behind the Great Firewall to the reality of 30 years of surveillance and censorship on the Chinese Internet. Thirty years ago, the world began to […]
On this special edition of WorldNow with Jim Falk, we sit down with Elliot Ackerman, author of 2084: A Novel of the Future of War. What will war look like […]