A large part of my Emeritus life is advising and meeting wonderful individuals and cohorts.
In July of 2018, I was invited to lead a discussion for the Millennium Leadership Program of the Atlantic Council during the annual retreat of their 2018 cohort of Millennium Fellows in Brussels and Waterloo, Belgium.
It was a fascinating experience, including a visit and military debrief at the site of the Battle of Waterloo, decisive in Napoleon’s defeat. The Fellows represented an eclectic and accomplished group of young leaders in government, academia, and a wide array of industries, from air defense and applied physics, to sanctions compliance and filmmaking.
Rachel Brandenburg
I was asked to participate in the retreat by Daniel Bennett, the Director of the Millennium Leadership Program, to whom I was first introduced by my former student Rachel Brandenburg, Atlantic’s Director of the Middle East Security Project at the Council, (now a senior foreign policy advisor to US Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin.)
The topic of the session I led was on dilemmas of ethical leadership. Helping me lead this session were Millennium Fellows Maria Lourdes Landivar Tufiño, Laura Klick, Marta Poslad, and Sayed Zafar Hashemi.
I was asked to challenge the group with scenarios of ethical dilemmas for them to deliberate on their own ethical and moral intuitions. I chose challenges where I either was personally directly engaged, or in which my alumni were involved.
Case A.
You are on a rescue mission in the Congo sanctioned by the International Organization on Migration. You are tasked with preparing, and escorting out by plane airlift, a specific selected group of identified refugees hoping to escape violence and threats in an allegedly safe refugee camp. When you arrive, you discover that the camp is in a dangerous environment. A second group of highly endangered individuals, whom you were not mandated to assist, appeals to you for help. Evacuating them too could endanger the entire mission, but you believe leaving them behind would mean their certain death. What do you do?
At the center of this challenge is Sasha Chanoff, the founding director of RefugePoint. I successfully nominated Sasha for the Bronfman Award for Humanitarianism, and was his nominator for the Aurora Prize. He is the author of From Crisis to Calling: Finding Your Moral Center in the Toughest Decisions.
I am currently a strategic adviser to RefugePoint.
Case B.
You are a senior UN peacekeeping officer, experienced in many hot-spot deployments, and now one of the officials responsible for the safety and security of several thousand internally displaced peoples (IDPs) in Dili, East Timor who have fled into your gated compound. Militias and death squads are at the gates, and have already killed many civilians, including recently several of your UN employees. You are in an immediate dangerous crisis, with soldiers threatening to assault and storm the compound - this is not a drawn-out siege. UN headquarters has informed you that they are sending helicopters to evacuate only you and your professional colleagues. You feel intense accountability for the people who have sought refuge with you. How would you respond?
This is the story of another alumnus and good friend, Nick Birnback. He was part of the group that was awarded the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity's Humanitarian Award for their actions in Timor. I awarded him Tufts University’s highest alumnus award, the Light on the Hill.
Case C.
Imagine you are the government of Israel, confronted with the demands of Hamas to exchange well over a thousand prisoners, many of whom have been convicted of the murder of hundreds of Israeli non-combatant civilians, for the life of one kidnapped Israeli soldier. What decision will you ultimately make, and why?
This is the case of Gilad Shalit, and the government of Netanyahu. I advised on this case, as did another wonderful friend, the Honourable Irwin Cotler. I now a Senior Fellow at the Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights chaired by Irwin. These are ongoing issues - see the current Hadar case.
Daniel’s feedback:
A HUGE thank you to you for coming out to Waterloo to join us. I’m thrilled by the connections you established and the actions that were able to come out of it. This is fantastic and a best-case outcome for any session. At the end of the day, what are all our efforts to “connect” people worth if they don’t yield some sort of synergy that translates to actions afterwards. I had very positive reviews and the shear number of follow-ups you reference is evidence of that success. Honestly - it was great. Thank you again.
I continue to recommend potential applicants.