Friday's SID Speaker event will focus on Haiti's history of crisis

Mar. 17, 2010

Larry Birns

Larry Birns, the founder and director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, will speak Friday, March 19 on “Why Haiti Suffers: U.S.-Latin America Relations Leading to the Obama Era.”
 
A focus of the talk will be the existence of crisis conditions in Haiti for a long period prior to this year’s disastrous earthquake, a situation that made Haitians extremely vulnerable when the earthquake struck.
 
Birns’ talk will take place from 12:15 to 1:45 p.m. in Glynn Amphitheater in The Heller School for Social Policy and Management. It is sponsored by the Programs in Sustainable International Development (SID). Pizza will be provided to attendees.
 
A specialist in U.S.-Latin American relations, Birns has taught at many U.S. and British universities, published hundreds of articles, served as a senior United Nations Economic Commission public affairs officer for Latin America, and appeared on numerous television and radio programs.
 
He recently co-authored a study on the George W. Bush administration’s Latin American policy for the American Foreign Service Journal and the afterword to Dr. Paul Farmer’s book “The Uses of Haiti.”
 
Birns has been the director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs since its founding in 1975. He is also a former defense researcher, strategist and member of the Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
 
The SID Speaker series takes place every Friday during the spring semester, and is one of the principal extracurricular learning opportunities that SID offers to the entire campus community.