US Politics Viewed from Abroad

Speakers for this event

• Eduardo Cue

  Eduardo Cue

  Moderator

  Eduardo Cue is an experienced communications expert, media coach and international journalist who has trained professionals at the highest levels, including Heads of State, Cabinet ministers, French and American Ambassadors, high-level European business executives, and leading journalists. He has extensive experience working in Africa, Europe, the United States and Latin America. Totally fluent in English, French and Spanish, Mr. Cue served as a public information officer and spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Africa, Latin America and New York as well as for the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris. He recently completed a long-range project to improve the external communications capabilities of the Nigerien military Eduardo is currently working as a European correspondent for the i24News network, for whom he covered the 2017 French presidential election and the secessionist movement in Catalonia in northeastern Spain. He brings to his training seminars experience as both a spokesperson and international journalist. His main topics include the art of the interview, how to get messages across to an audience, crisis communications, journalistic ethics, the relationship between the military and the media and the role of the media in a democracy. He has spoken before distinguished audiences including the AfriCorps summit that brings together African and US military leaders; the Senegalese Council of Ministers; and Parliamentary committees of the Moroccan Parliament. Eduardo carried out six missions as spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, serving in Geneva, New York, Chad, Colombia (where he was responsible for the public information operations of five countries), South Sudan and Mali. As an international journalist Eduardo has worked for the world’s leading media houses, including US News & World Report, United Press International, The Associated Press, The Washington Post, and The Times of London, where he served as Latin American correspondent. The mayor stories he covered include the Nicaraguan Civil War, human rights in Chile, military rebellions in Argentina, the Spanish ETA terrorist group, the creation of the Euro, the crises in Zimbabwe and Venezuela, and several French and US presidential elections as well as the US Congress and the White House. In the field of television Eduardo was a producer and correspondent for the Mexican television network Televisa in Paris and Washington as well as a correspondent for CNN in Spanish in Paris. More recently, Eduardo was an international affairs editor for the French 24 network, where he analyzed geopolitics for both the English and French networks. He appears frequently on numerous international radio and television channels to analyze events ranging from North Korea to the Middle East. Eduardo began his career in Spain covering the transition from the Franco dictatorship to democracy before joining the metropolitan staff of The Washington Post. He attended Georgetown University, where he received an AB Degree in political science and European history and received an MS in Journalism from Columbia University in New York.

  URL https://www.france24.com/en/eduardo-cue-1

  Moderator

• Jim Laurie

  Jim Laurie

  Jim Laurie is an international writer, lecturer, broadcaster, and media consultant who has witnessed many defining moments in global history in the past 50 years. A recipient of multiple Emmy, Peabody, and Overseas Press Club Awards, Jim roamed the world first for NBC News (1972-1978) and ABC News (1978-2000). For most of his career, he has specialized in Asia – China, Japan, Cambodia, Vietnam. He was the only American TV correspondent to cover the fall of Saigon in 1975 and remain to watch the Communist victory. Earlier, he flew out on the US helicopter airlift as Phnom Penh collapsed under the Khmer Rouge onslaught. In July 1981, Jim opened the first network news bureau in Beijing for ABC News. In January-February 1989, he reported on the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and returned to work in Afghanistan in November 2001. In the early 1990’s, based in Moscow, Jim reported on the collapse of the Soviet Union and the start of independence in Ukraine, Georgia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. He is rare among journalists having interviewed Russian leaders Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Vladimir Putin. In October and November 2022, Jim completed a six nation, six lecture global video tour speaking on China today, Vietnam-Cambodia, reflections on Putin’s Invasion, and the history of war reporting. His travels took him to Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Jim is the author of ‘THE LAST HELICOPTER: Two Lives in Indochina’ (2020), a memoir of war, love, and survival in Cambodia and Vietnam in the 1970’s.

• Shachi Kurl

  Shachi Kurl

  President, Angus Reid Institute

  Shachi Kurl is President of the Angus Reid Institute, Canada’s non-profit foundation committed to independent research. She works with public opinion data to further public knowledge and enhance the national understanding of issues that matter to Canada and the world. Kurl is often found offering analysis on CBC’s “Power and Politics”, in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, and on the editorial pages of the Ottawa Citizen, among other places. In October 2020, she moderated BC’s only televised provincial election debate, presented by the British Columbia Broadcast Consortium. She spent the first part of her career as political reporter and holds a degree in Journalism and Political Science from Carleton University. She returned to Carleton University as an Adjunct Research Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication in 2022. Kurl is a recipient of the prestigious Jack Webster Award for Best TV Reporting. Along with former Australian and UK Prime Ministers Julia Gillard and Margaret Thatcher, she is an Alumnus of the US State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program. She is a national co-chair of the Canadian Cancer Society. Kurl moderated the 2021 English language leaders debate during the 44th federal election. She also won the Industry Marvel Award from Darpan Magazine in October of that year.

  President, Angus Reid Institute

• Taoufik Djebali

  Taoufik Djebali

  Taoufik Djebali was born and raised in Tunisia, a former French possession in North Africa, known for its cohesion and religious tolerance. In the 1980s, like many North African students, he decided to move to Paris to pursue higher education after earning a degree in English. In Paris, he got a degree in sociology and a Ph.D. in American studies on race and public policy. Djebali then started a career in teaching at the University of Caen in the northwest of France. Since then, he has been dividing his time between the port city of Caen, Paris, and Tunisia where he teaches as a Visiting Professor. He has published articles on racial, ethnic and immigrant issues in the United States and Tunisia.