A Year of War in Ukraine

february, 2023

23feb9:00 am10:20 amA Year of War in Ukraine

Time

(Thursday) 9:00 am - 10:20 am

Location

USF Student Center

200 6th Ave S

Event Details

Panel Discussion moderated by Pierre Guerlain

On February 24, 2022, Russia attacked Ukraine, an act of military aggression that has killed tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians, created 7.5 million refugees from Ukraine, internally displaced an equal number, sundered agricultural and commercial supply chains, ruined livelihoods of millions, and destroyed cities and infrastructure that will take generations to rebuild. Experts on Russia, Ukraine and Germany will provide updates.

Speakers for this event

  • Andreas T. Siegel

    Andreas T. Siegel

    Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany, Miami/Florida (USA) Andreas Siegel is a career diplomat with a broad range of international experience in strategic, political, economic and cultural affairs. He holds both a (postgraduate) diploma of the College of Europe, Bruges/Belgium and a Master degree of French, English and American literature/linguistics of the University of Freiburg/ Germany. Andreas has had a long-time connection and affinity with the United States: he was an AFS exchange student in Michigan in the 1970ies. And his first foreign assignment as a diplomat was to serve as a Vice-Consul at the German Consulate General in Boston, Mass. Before coming to Florida in July 2019, Andreas headed the German Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Previously, he had been working at the German Permanent Representation to NATO in Brussels, focusing on arms control, counter-terrorism and NATO-Russia working groups. Prior to that, he had been working for six years in Strasbourg/France: initially as Deputy Chief of Mission at the German Permanent Representation to the Council of Europe (CoE), and then – on leave from the Foreign Service – as Director of Strategic Planning of the CoE. During this period, Andreas negotiated several Cooperation Programs on Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law with Russia and Ukraine. His professional experience also includes: working as a spokesperson of the German Delegation to the European Cultural Policy Committee in Brussels and heading a cross-border cooperation unit at the Foreign Ministry. He also worked as Deputy Head of Mission at the German Embassy in Lilongwe/Malawi (South-Eastern Africa) and spent three years at the Federal Chancellery (Desk for strategic and security issues) , followed by a “double-hatted posting” in Morocco as Head of the economic section of the Embassy (in Rabat) and as Consul General in Casablanca.

  • Dr. Golfo Alexopoulos

    Dr. Golfo Alexopoulos

    Professor and Director of the USF Institute for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies I teach a variety of courses on topics related to contemporary Russian politics and society, modern Europe and the Soviet Union. My undergraduate and graduate courses tend to focus on conflict in the world, comparative dictatorship and authoritarianism, the problems of war and revolution, as well as genocide and human rights. When possible, I try to engage student interest by incorporating a variety of media (art, film, music) and assigning diverse readings (primary sources, literature, memoirs, poetry). In particular, I enjoy showing students my slides from when I lived in the Soviet Union and Russia under Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin. Over the years, I have advised many bright USF students, both graduate and undergraduate. Some of them have been accepted into first-rate doctoral programs in Russian/Soviet history, others have joined the Peace Corps or pursued careers in international law and business, the military, diplomacy, teaching, and journalism. Research My current work examines the threads that connect twentieth-century Soviet and twenty-first-century Russian authoritarianism, especially in the dis/information space. My most recent book, Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin’s Gulag, was published by Yale University Press in 2017. The work examines the system of violent human exploitation in the Stalinist forced labor camps, 1929-1953. It draws upon recently declassified archival materials from the Gulag health department to reveal how prisoners were fundamentally dehumanized and managed as commodities. Mortality was much greater than the official Soviet records indicate, as prisoners were routinely released on the verge of death. The book argues that human exploitation in the Stalinist camps was deliberately destructive and that the regime concealed the Gulag’s destructive capacity. My first book, Stalin’s Outcasts: Aliens, Citizens, and the Soviet State, 1926-1936 (Cornell, 2003), examines Stalin’s disenfranchisement policy, and the lives and voices of those deprived of rights (lishentsy). At the center of the work is an analysis of over five hundred petitions to Soviet officials for the reinstatement of rights. I discovered these handwritten letters from social outcasts in a closed archive in western Siberia just months after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The book demonstrates how, from Kremlin leaders to marked aliens, many engaged in identifying citizens and non-citizens and challenging the terms of social membership in the Stalinist state. Specialty Areas Russia and the Soviet Union, Stalinism and authoritarianism, medicine/health and society, political violence and human rights, disinformation and security

  • Neal Walker

    Neal Walker

    Neal Walker is an alumni of Eckerd College. He started his professional career doing a year of independent research on renewable energy solutions in Costa Rica. That led to 6 years with the Organization of American States and then 28 years with the United Nations. At the UN, Walker led work in sustainable development, conflict prevention and response, governance, humanitarian action and in defense of human rights. Walker was appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General as head of United Nations in Kyrgyzstan (2006), in Bangladesh (2011) and in Ukraine (2014 – 2018). Before then he held senior field positions in Sudan, Equatorial Guinea and Guatemala. In 2018 Walker accepted the post of Diplomat-in-Residence at Eckerd College in the USA. Prior to his professional career, Neal Walker worked in a steel mill, on the fishing docks, as a carpenter, as a fast food cook and in a roof truss factory.

  • Pierre Guerlain

    Pierre Guerlain

    Pierre GUERLAIN is Professor emeritus of American Studies formerly at Université Paris Ouest Nanterre, France. His fields of research are US foreign policy and US politics. He has done a lot of work on "anti-Americanism" and the image of the US abroad. He published a book about the mutual perceptions of the Americans and the French Miroirs transatlantiques; la France et les Etats-Unis entre passions et indifférences, and articles in various scholarly journals and online publications.

We'll be back in a bit!

The system is currently undergoing routine maintenance to ensure you get the best experience. 

Thank you for your understanding!

X
X