Educated at Harvard, Yale and Tufts, Dr. Mark Plotkin is an ethnobotanist, who has been working with many of the most ancient and powerful Shamans of the Amazon for much of the past three decades. His organization - the Amazon Conservation Team (www.amazonteam.org) - has partnered with 32 Amazonian tribes to map, manage, and protect 70 million acres of ancestral rainforest. For the efficiency and effectiveness of this unique methodology, Plotkin won the coveted "Social Entrepreneur" designation from the prestigious Skoll Foundation, the first environmentalist to receive this recognition.
A top-rated lecturer for the Young Presidents Organization for over 20 years, Plotkin is the author of numerous books and reports, and played a starring role in the Academy Award-nominated IMAX film "Amazon."
Graduate Program in International Studies (GPIS)
20th Anniversary Celebration
April 23, 2013, 7:30 p.m.
North Cafeteria - Webb University Center
Joseph S. Nye Jr.
Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor,
Harvard Kennedy School
Joseph S. Nye Jr., is University Distinguished Service Professor and former dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1958, did postgraduate work at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship and earned a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard, where he joined the faculty in 1964. In 2008, a poll of 2,700 international relations scholars listed him as the most influential scholar on American foreign policy, and a 2011 poll rated him the fourth-most influential scholar in international relations over the past 20 years. Foreign Policy rated him among the "top 100 Global Thinkers."
From 1977-79, Nye was a deputy undersecretary of state and chaired the National Security Council Group on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In 1993-94 he chaired the National Intelligence Council, which prepares intelligence estimates for the president, and in 1994-95 served as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. He won Distinguished Service medals from all three agencies.
Nye has published 13 academic books, a novel and more than 200 articles in professional and policy journals. His most recent books include "Soft Power," "The Powers to Lead" and "The Future of Power," which The Economist called "rigorous and convincing." His next book, "Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era," will be published in May 2013.
He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the British Academy and the American Academy of Diplomacy, and an honorary fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He is the recipient of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson Award, the Charles Merriam Award from the American Political Science Association, France's Palmes Academiques and various honorary degrees.
