Threats to Education Worldwide

Speakers for this event

• Abdul H. “Zi” Azizi

  Abdul H. “Zi” Azizi

  Real Estate Advisor, Premier Sotheby’s International Realty Born and raised in Kabul, Afghanistan, Abdul H. “Zi” Azizi’s early life was marked by extreme hardship. In 1994 during the Jihadist war to seize Afghanistan, four-year old Zi was wounded when a bullet grazed his head during a firefight. His father also was wounded and their house burned in a rocket attack. As a young boy, Zi helped support his family by selling cooking oil on the streets of Kabul. The Taliban era brought greater hardships for the family when Zi’s mother was forced to quit the job she had held for 20 years at a bank and his father was briefly jailed. During this time, Zi began to learn English by watching American movies broadcast from a black-market satellite dish installed at night and removed before dawn to avoid punishment by the Taliban. U.S. Special Operations Forces liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban in 2001 and Zi and his family became engaged in supporting coalition efforts. At age17, FEDEX hired Zi to deliver packages to the U.S. military and he soon become manager of the FEDEX operation serving coalition military and defense contractors. Graduating from the Swiss University for Management, Economics and Finance in Kabul with a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration in 2013, Zi began working for an Orlando-based U.S. defense contractor that handled programs teaching literacy to the Afghan military. In 2013, Zi was accepted at St. Petersburg College, and in 2015, he became a licensed real estate professional. An ambassador to the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce, Zi brings a cross-cultural outlook to clients from around the world. He gives back to his adopted community as an active and proud member of Rotary International.

• Ann Morrison

  Ann Morrison

  Ann Morrison is a former editor for Time Inc. magazines in New York (Fortune), Hong Kong (Asiasweek) and London (Time). She has also taught journalism in the Global Business Journalism Program at Tsinghua University in Beijing and at Sciences-Po in Paris. She is an advisory board member of the American Library in Paris and continues to freelance for various publications.

• Dr. William Felice

  Dr. William Felice

  William F. Felice is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Eckerd College. Dr. Felice is the author of six books on human rights and international relations: Human Rights and Public Goods (2021) with Diana Fuguitt; Introduction to International Politics: Global Challenges and Policy Responses (2019) with Glenn Hastedt; The Ethics of Interdependence: Global Human Rights and Duties (2016); How Do I Save My Honor: War, Moral Integrity and Principled Resignation (2009); The Global New Deal: Economic and Social Human Rights in World Politics (2010; 2003); and Taking Suffering Seriously: The Importance of Collective Human Rights (1996). He has also published numerous articles on the theory and practice of human rights in a variety of journals including, the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Ethics and International Affairs, Human Rights Quarterly, International Affairs, and Social Justice. Dr. Felice was named the 2006 Florida Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In addition, Felice has received Eckerd College’s John Satterfield Outstanding Mentor Award (2021), Grover Wren Award for Leadership and Service to General Education (2017), the Lloyd W. Chapin Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Art (2011), the John M. Bevan Teaching Excellence and Campus Leadership Award (2005), and has been recognized by the students as Professor of the Year (2003) and by the faculty as the Robert A. Staub Distinguished Teacher of the Year (1999). Felice received his Ph.D. from the Department of Politics at New York University. He has served as a trustee on the board of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Relations. He was also the past president of the International Ethics Section of the International Studies Association.

• 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.