Expert on Latin America Offers Outlook for Security Among “Guns, Gangs and Cartels”

CHESTERTOWN, MD—Howard J. Wiarda, one of the nation's most respected and influential scholars on Latin America and U.S. policy in the region, will speak Thursday, October 20 at Washington College on the topic of “Guns, Gangs and Cartels: Hemispheric Security in the New Millennium.” His talk will take place at 5 p.m. in Hynson Lounge, Hodson Hall, on the College campus, 300 Washington Avenue.

Presented by the Louis L. Goldstein ’35 Program in Public Affairs, the event is free and open to the public.

Wiarda is the Dean Rusk Professor of International Relations at the University of Georgia and founding head of the university’s Department of International Affairs. He also serves as a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center. For nearly a quarter century he has divided his time among the academic, policy, and think-tank worlds. Among his many prestigious posts, he has been visiting scholar/research associate at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University; founding director of the Center for Hemispheric Studies at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research; course chairman at the Foreign Service Institute of the Department of State; lead consultant to the National Bipartisan (Kissinger) Commission on Central America; and Thornton D. Hooper Fellow in International Security Affairs at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

A prolific author, Wiarda has written or edited more than 70 books, including American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins, 1996), Development on the Periphery (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), European Politics in the Age of Globalization (Harcourt, 2001), Latin American Politics and Development, (6th ed., Westview, 2006), and Political Development in Emerging Nations (Wadsworth, 2004). He also is the author of more than 300 articles, book chapters, op-eds, and congressional testimonies. A graduate of the University of Michigan, he holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Florida and an M.S. degree from the National Defense University.

For more information visit www.washcoll.edu.