Seeking peace
Annual University of Idaho Borah Symposium’s topics include the war in Ukraine
The war in Ukraine will feature prominently during the University of Idaho’s 76th annual Borah Symposium next week in Moscow.
The symposium honors the legacy of Idaho’s former U.S. Sen. William Edgar Borah (1864-1940) “by considering the causes of war and the conditions necessary for peace in an international context,” according to a UI news release.
“As we find ourselves approaching the second winter of Russia’s war against Ukraine, it is clear that there is no more pertinent a subject for the Borah Symposium,” Borah committee member, electrical and computer engineering professor and member of the Council on Foreign Relations Dakota Roberson said in the news release.
Fiona Hill, a senior fellow with the nonpartisan research and education think tank the Brookings Institution, will give the keynote address at 7 p.m. Monday in the Bruce M. Pitman Center’s International Ballroom, 709 Deakin Ave.
Hill, a former deputy assistant on Russian affairs to President Donald Trump, will address challenges to democracy on the world stage in a fireside chat, with moderator Kenton Bird of the UI School of Journalism and Mass Media.
Georgetown University Law Center professor David Koplow will present the Renfrew Colloquium lecture, “Updating Senator Borah: A Nuclear Kellogg-Briand Pact,” at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Pitman Center’s Vandal Ballroom.
The Malcolm M. Renfrew Interdisciplinary Colloquium, which honors its eponymous Vandal alumnus (1910-2013), is a yearly series of talks meant to bridge the cultures of science and the humanities and arts.
Koplow will discuss the original Kellogg-Briand Pact, signed in 1928, which outlawed war as an instrument of national policy, and present a proposal to outlaw the threat of nuclear weapons as an instrument of national policy.
A screening of the documentary “Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes,” which follows reporters from PBS’ “Frontline” and the Associated Press, is set for 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre, 508 S. Main St.
Former Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, who also served as U.S. Secretary of the Interior, will give the symposium’s closing address at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the International Ballroom.
— Inland 360
