Officers of Americans for UNESCO

Americans for UNESCO has recently elected a new slate of officers. The full slate of AU officers consists of:

President                                            Mary Futrell

Senior Vice-President                   Ray Wanner

Vice-President                                 Susie Rauch

Vice-President                                 Emily Vargas-Baron

Vice President/Treasurer            Richard Nobbe

Secretary                                             Laura Engel

Meeting of the Board of Directors of Americans for UNESCO

Eric Woodard and Kelly Siekman from the State Department addressing the Board
Board members shown on right are Roger Coate, Patrice Lyons and Mary Futrell

A meeting of the Board of Directors of Americans for UNESCO took place on Friday, November 18, 2011.

Kelly Siekman, the Director of the Office of UNESCO Affairs in the State Department, and Eric Woodard, the Chair of U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, provided the Board with a detailed briefing on the recent General Conference of UNESCO. Their discussion centered on the vote by the General Conference to admit Palestine to membership in UNESCO and its implications. They emphasized that, while the law requires the United States Government to withhold our contribution to UNESCO, the United States remains a member of the Organization and that the U.S. delegation to UNESCO in Paris and the related office in the State Department in Washington remain fully staffed and active. Under the law, both the assessed and the voluntary contributions to UNESCO are now being withheld. Since they have been authorized and appropriated by the Congress, the funds are currently being held by the State Department, but are subject to being reprogrammed for other purposes; currently no such action is contemplated.

The Obama administration remains convinced that UNESCO is a worthwhile organization useful to U.S. foreign policy interests. The media coverage of the Palestinian vote generated considerable interest in the United States, both by supporters and by opponents of UNESCO and U.S. membership in UNESCO. The State Department is investigating the complex issues of domestic U.S. law and international law involved in the admission of Palestine to UNESCO membership and in the withholding of U.S. funds. (Palestine will not be a member state of UNESCO until it files is accession documents, but the Congress is taking the vote of the General Conference as defining the intent of the Organization.)

The United States delegation lobbied against admission of Palestine but found it difficult to convince the delegates of other nations, although a great many abstained from the vote. Not surprisingly, it has been difficult to explain the complex domestic politics in the United States underlying our positions in this matter; the Constitutionally defined ability of the Congress to control funding and of the President to control foreign policy -- a situation underlying the current situation -- is perhaps poorly understood abroad.

Other Business

Two Board members were in Paris at the time of the General Conference and they too reported on the event. The impressions included great concern by members of the UNESCO Secretariat about the cuts and uncertainty caused by the U.S. withholding of funds, and disappointment of other delegations with the position taken by the United States with respect to the right of Palestine to membership in UNESCO.

The main focus of the rest of the Board meeting was a revision of the Bylaws of Americans for UNESCO. The revisions included an expansion of the membership of the Board and its Executive Committee and separation of the position of Secretary-Treasurer of the AU into two positions - Secretary and Treasurer.

The meeting marked the retirement of Nicole Varchaver who served for many years as a secretary to Americans for UNESCO, rendering a huge service to AU. We will miss her dedicated service, her cheerful demeanor, and indeed her presence.

The Board meeting offered an opportunity for members to meet Charles Prince who has become an intern for Americans for UNESCO. Paul Danaj who has been serving as intern will reduce his hours of service as he has accepted a position at the Department of State.

Photos courtesy of Nicole Varchaver

Mary Futrell Elected President of Americans for UNESCO

Mary Hatwood Futrell has been elected President of Americans for UNESCO. She has served for some years on the Board of Directors of AU. Dr. Futrell specializes in reform policy, professional development, and diversity issues in education.

Andre Varchaver now joins Richard Arndt as Presidents Emeritus of the organization.

Dr. Futrell has recently stepped down from the post of Dean of the School of Education and Human Resource Development of George Washington University. She is a recipient of the Jan Amos Comenius Medal, one of UNESCO’s most prestigious awards honouring outstanding achievements in the fields of education research and innovation.

Dr. Futrell has been president of the National Education Association (NEA). In 2004, she completed her term as president of Education International (EI), a global federation of 30 million educators from 152 countries that works with governmental and non-governmental organizations in advocating education for all. She also is the former president of the World Confederation of Organization of the Teaching Profession.

Meeting of the Board of Directors

The Board of Directors of Americans for UNESCO met yesterday. Francesco Bandarin, current director of the World Heritage Center and Assistant Director General designate for Culture opened the meeting with a most informative overview of the new developments in UNESCO.

Discussions in the meeting focuses on next week's meeting of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO and the expectations of the Board for the future of the National Commission. The National Commission has been relatively inactive since it was reestablished and the consensus of the the Board is that it should be reorganized and rechartered to become more active in the future.

The Board also discussed the future of the UNESCO seminar that Board members have given at George Washington University in each of the last four Spring semesters. The course appears to be well received by students and to be a useful means of developing a cadre of young people knowledgeable about UNESCO. It was agreed that it should be continued and a small group was appointed to study ways and means of doing so.

News About Americans for UNESCO Board Members

Patrice Lyons is recently returned from Japan, where she was invited to participate in the award of the Japan Prize to her husband, Robert Kahn, co-inventor of the Internet. Check out the photos of the presentation and award banquet with the participation of the Emperor of Japan.

Roger A. Coate has been named the first Paul D. Coverdell Endowed Chair of Policy Studies at Georgia College & State University. To pursue the new challenge, Roger leaves the University of South Carolina where he has served since 2001 as the director of The Richard L. Walker Institute of International Studies.

Rita Colwell last year was presented the National Medal of Science by President Bush. The award is the nation's highest honor for scientists. (Robert Kahn was an earlier laureate of the National Medal of Technology).

Americans for UNESCO Board Meeting

The Board of Directors met yesterday. The main topic of discussion was a review of last week's meeting of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO. The views expressed of that meeting ranged from negative to positive, reflecting to some degree the different portions of the meeting that were attended by different members of the Board, and to some degree the differing personalities of the Board members themselves.

It was reported that only 44 of the 100 members of the National Commission were observed at the meeting, and some of them did not attend for all of the two day meeting. There was general agreement that the cultural events scheduled around the National Commission meeting were excellent, and that the presentation at the Commission on the U.S. funded project to develop museums in developing countries was excellent and widely appreciated.

It was recognized that Ambassador Oliver had achieved considerable skill in her diplomatic role leading the U.S. permanent delegation to UNESCO, but the State Department presentation was criticized as not having adequately reviewed the success of the delegation in encouraging UNESCO in directions that would better achieve U.S. policy objectives in international education, science, culture, and communications, nor in the more fundamental effort to secure the defenses of peace in the minds of men.

There was apparent agreement among the Board members that the National Commission still was not fulfilling the mandate of its legislation, and that its success in providing advice on UNESCO affairs to the Government was at best mixed. The session of the National Commission on the future of the Commission itself was seen as useful, while that on the UNESCO budget priorities was criticized.

The meeting also reviewed the course on UNESCO that was offered last semester at George Washington University, and the initiative of students from that class to create a student club at the university focusing on UNESCO.

A brief report was made on the online presence of Americans for UNESCO. The most relevant portion of which was the evolution of traffic on the Americans for UNESCO supported blogs, which is shown week by week in the following graph.
The resignation of two long time members of the Board, Sid Passman and Irv Lerch, was noted with regret. Both have found it impossible to continue devoting time to Board activities due to personal reasons. They will be missed!

The Board approved modest changes in the Bylaws for Americans for UNESCO, and appointed committees to work on support for the Man and the Biosphere Program and to draft with the aid of the Advisory Committee a paper for the transition team to begin working on the new Administration after the November 4th election.

Rita Colwell Calls for Science Debate Among Presidential Candidates

Dr. Rita Colwell, a member of the Board of Directors of Americans for UNESCO, made this video as part of an effort broadly supported in the U.S. scientific community to encourage a debate on science among the candidate in the U.S. presidential election. The video is being widely distributed and viewed. Dr. Colwell is also the former Director of the National Science Foundation 1998-2004; Distinguished Professor, University Of Maryland/Johns Hopkins University School Of Public Health. She was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2006.

Two from Roger Coate

Roger Coate, a long time member of the Board of Directors of Americans for UNESCO has published two important articles in The Interdependent Winter 2007-2008 issue. The Interdependent is the flagship publication of the United Nations Association of the United States of America (UNA-USA).

• Poverty Goals: The Possible, the Probable, the Unlikely

  The article points out that while the Millennium Development Goals are not likely to be met, their importance may not be so much in defining a specific development path as in creating a process by which the nations of the world focus on poverty and agree on means to combat it.



• AID AND DEBT RELIEF: Development’s Bottom Line

  Coate shows that the donor community is lagging badly on its committments to provide financial assistance to developing nations. Moreover, that assistance is being focused on only a few countries, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. The lack of donor assistance, which is covered in MDG 8, is in part responsible for the shortfall in meeting the other Millennium Development Goals. So too is the international trade domain that does not allow developing nations equitable access to international markets. Coate notes that a bad as the failure to achieve the Millennium Development Goals might be, abandonment of the global effort to erradicate poverty would be much worse for the world.