Slightly beyond Wellesley: WHS grads discuss foreign policy Tuesday

From Wellesley Turn Out the Lights celebration committee:

Wellesley High School welcomes back four of its most accomplished graduates in the area of international relations for the panel discussion “U.S. Foreign Policy: Making It, Executing It, Analyzing It and Covering It.” The panelists will be Kennedy School professor and former diplomat Nicholas Burns, WHS class of 1974; journalist Jeffrey Fager, WHS class of 1973; journalist Sean Carberry, WHS class of 1987; and journalist and speechwriter Aneesh Raman, WHS class of 1997. The moderator for the evening will be Fletcher School professor and Wellesley resident Alan Henrikson. The panel will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 22 at 7:30pm in the Wellesley High School auditorium and is free of charge and open to the public.

Nicholas Burns is Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project and Faculty Chair for the Programs on the Middle East and on India and South Asia. Burns served in the United States Foreign Service for twenty-seven years until his retirement in April 2008 most recently as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the State Department’s third ranking official. He was U.S. Ambassador to NATO (2001-2005) and to Greece (1997-2001), State Department Spokesman (1995-1997) and worked on the National Security Council at the White House from 1990 to 1995. Burns also served in the American Consulate General in Jerusalem and in the American embassies in Egypt and Mauritania. He has received ten honorary doctorates, the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award, the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service from the Johns Hopkins University and the Boston College Alumni Achievement Award.

Jeffrey Fager became the first chairman of CBS News in February 2011, after re-shaping its flagship broadcast, “60 Minutes.” Fager comes to the chairman’s position with more than 30 years of experience at every stage of the electronic news business, including 15 years as an executive producer, seven of those at the helm of “60 Minutes.” Before assuming control of “60 Minutes,” Fager is credited with leading “60 Minutes II” to a variety of major awards as its executive producer for its first five seasons. As the executive producer of the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather from 1996 to 1998, Fager led the broadcast’s highly praised rededication to hard news, enterprise reporting and increased foreign coverage. Fager served as the senior broadcast producer for the CBS Evening News from 1994 to 1996 and as a producer of that news program based in London from 1985 to 1988 and in New York from 1984 to 1985, covering major international stories. He also was part of the team that developed and launched “48 Hours,” the primetime CBS News magazine.

Aneesh Raman has just taken a new job as a speechwriter for the White House, formerly working as a speechwriter at the Department of Defense and as a speechwriter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Before joining the government, Raman was an award-winning CNN reporter and the network’s first ever correspondent based in the Middle East and responsible for region-wide coverage. From 2005 to 2006, Raman was CNN’s Baghdad Correspondent. In addition to embedding with US forces across the country, Raman covered Iraq’s National Assembly and the efforts to ratify a new constitution. Raman also provided in-depth coverage of the Saddam Hussein trial and was the first American television journalist to announce Saddam Hussein’s execution. Raman’s initial international posting was in Bangkok, Thailand, where he covered the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. Raman also worked on the presidential campaign of Barack Obama as part of the communications team for vice presidential nominee Joe Biden.

Sean Carberry has more than 10 years of radio journalism, audio production, and public policy experience. Sean currently is a producer on the foreign desk of National Public Radio, most recently reporting from Iraq and Libya. Previously he was supervising senior producer and correspondent for America Abroad Media in Washington, D.C. In addition to managing the radio production team, providing editorial oversight, and serving as the technical director of the monthly radio program, Carberry has traveled to Iraq, Lebanon, Serbia, Kosovo, Russia, Sudan, Egypt, Colombia, and Afghanistan to produce and report segments for America Abroad. Previously Carberry worked at WBUR-FM in Boston serving as political producer and field producer as well as technical director/associate producer for The Connection, and producer and/or reporter for On Point, Here & Now, Morning Edition, and All Things Considered.

Panel moderator, Alan Henrikson is the Director of Diplomatic Studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. His current research focus is the diplomacy of the US-EU relationship in the larger context of relations between the United States and Europe in the world. Professor Henrikson was the Fulbright Chair in US-EU Relations at the College of Europe during 2010-2011. During the Spring of 2003 he was Fulbright/Diplomatic Academy Visiting Professor of International Relations at the Diplomatische Akademie in Vienna. He also has been Lloyd I. Miller Visiting Professor of Diplomatic History at the US Department of State, Visiting Professor at the National Institute for Defense Studies in Tokyo, and United Nations Development Programme Visiting Professor of Diplomatic History at the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing.