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Civil-Military Relations Conference 2014

In Case of Emergency: Civil-Military Relations and Disaster Response

Tufts ALLIES’ premier fall event, the Civil-Military Relations Conference (CMR) brought together members of ALLIES and the leading “voices from the field” to discuss civil-military relations in a functional context. The 2014 conference was held on November 14-15. Students and faculty had the opportunity to engage with military officers, civilian government personnel, NGO aid workers, and other professionals on the challenges of coordinating civilian, military, and non-governmental disaster relief overseas

 

Schedule of Events:

Friday, November 14
5:30 – 6:45 — Reception (Cabot Hall of Flags)
7:00 – 7:45 — Keynote (Crane Room)
7:45 – 8:15 — Q & A (Crane Room)

Saturday, November 15
10:00 – 11:00 — Panel (Pearson 106)
11:00 – 11:30 — Q & A (Pearson 106)
11:30 – 11:45 — Break
11:45 – 12:30 — Breakout Session (Campus Center)
12:30 – 1:15 — Lunch (Campus Center)
1:15 – 4:15 — Simulation (Campus Center)
4:15 – 4:30 — Debrief (Pearson 106)

 

Speakers

James A. Schear, Keynote Speaker

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, US Department of Defense

James Schear Photo

James A. Schear of Maryland served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Partnership Strategy and Stability Operations from 2009-2013. He led efforts to help foreign partners build effective and accountable security forces, to reshape U.S. investments in stabilization missions post-Afghanistan, to navigate war-to-peace transitions, to prevent mass atrocities and to provide life-saving aid to the victims of natural disasters and complex emergencies.

Dr. Schear’s public service contributions span more than two decades. From 1989-94 he served as an advisor at the United Nations where he assisted senior officials in shaping implementation of 1991 Gulf War cease-fire resolutions and providing analytic support to the leadership of UN missions in Cambodia and Former Yugoslavia.

In June 1999, Dr. Schear was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service for his work during the Kosovo crisis. During prior service as a deputy assistant secretary of defense, 1997-2001, he and his peacekeeping & humanitarian affairs team played key roles in supporting U.S. efforts to end the Eritrean-Ethiopian war, to stabilize East Timor following its separation from Indonesia, to counter predatory violence in war-torn regions, and to strengthen international standards against the use of child soldiers. More recently, his humanitarian efforts helped shape U.S. responses to Haiti’s devastating earthquake in 2010, as well as Japan’s 2011 tsunami & nuclear emergency, Operation Odyssey Dawn in Libya, and assistance to refugees fleeing conflict in Syria.

Dr. Schear’s contributions to applied policy research are also noteworthy. As Director of Research at the National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies, 2001-8, he supervised seven project teams conducting studies on regional security affairs, strategic concept development and terrorism/transnational challenges. He also has held research appointments at Harvard University, the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Stimson Center and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. From 1984-87, he served as Executive Officer of the Aspen Strategy Group, co-chaired by Lt. Gen. (ret.) Brent Scowcroft and William Perry, and directed by Joseph S. Nye. In 2007-8, he was a principal member of the Afghanistan Study Group; and he also served as an expert advisor for the Iraq Study Group as well as the Genocide Prevention Task Force. In late ’08, he served on the President-elect’s transition team for the Defense Department, leading its subgroup on planning for the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review.

Dr. Schear earned his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He holds a Master’s Degree from Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies and a B.A. from The American University’s School of International Service. He has lectured widely on international security affairs, visited more than sixty countries, edited or co-edited four books and authored numerous articles, book chapters, reports and op-ed pieces in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Washington Quarterly, Foreign Policy, The Christian Science Monitor, International Security, Strategic Survey and Global Strategic Assessment.

 

COL Wiley C. Thompson, PhD

Head, Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering, West Point

COL Wiley Thompson

Colonel Wiley Thompson is an active duty Army officer and aviator with 25 years of military service. Wiley has served in tactical assignments at the company, battalion and brigade levels. His most recent field experience includes operational aviation assignments in support of both Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. He had the privilege of leading the US military aviation response to the 2005 South Asian Earthquake in Pakistan, just prior to starting his doctoral work. He holds a BS in Geography from West Point (1989) and an MS (1999) and PhD (2008), both in Geography and both from Oregon State University. Wiley is an environmental geographer with research interests in large-scale disaster response, climate change, development, and conflict. He is currently the Head of the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at West Point.

As a volunteer in his community, Wiley serves as the head student-athlete mentor for the Men’s Hockey team at West Point and he coaches girl’s lacrosse at the local high school. Wiley is currently serving on the board of advisors for the College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. He has recently completed a term on the board of advisors for Puppies Behind Bars, a non-profit organization that provides wounded Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans with canine service companions. His wife Tina, son Noah and daughter Isabelle still actively volunteer their support to that cause.

 

Mischa Shattuck

MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Mischa Shattuck Photo

Mischa Shattuck is a researcher at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.  Mrs. Shattuck’s research interests include the evolving role of militaries in complex humanitarian crises, civil-military coordination in humanitarian assistance disaster relief operations, open data and technology in disaster response. She was a member of a Harvard-MIT team that responded to the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti. In 2013, Mrs. Shattuck co-organized and facilitated an international code-sprint focused on open data around the Syrian conflict to better support the humanitarian response community. Over the past year, she has organized and facilitated two HADR workshops, bringing together the operations and research community, for the purpose of exploring novel technology solutions to address some of the consistent challenges in disaster response.  Mischa holds a BA in Social Science from Washington State University, and a MSc in Global Health from Trinity College in Ireland.

 

Michael Marx

United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Michael Marx Photo

Michael Marx is currently the Senior Civil-Military Coordination Advisor for the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN/OCHA) at the UN Headquarters in New York. Prior to this position, he was based in Geneva, Switzerland where he served as the Chief of the Civil-Military Coordination Section (CMCS) in UN/OCHA in Geneva. OCHA’s Civil-Military Coordination Section is mandated to facilitate and coordinate the access to and use of international Military and Civil Defense Assets (MCDA) in countries hit by humanitarian emergencies. For this purpose, it serves as the UN focal point for governments, international organizations and military and civil defense establishments for the employment of these assets in humanitarian situations.

Michael joined the UN after more than two decades working within the US Government, including serving as the Division Director for the Disaster Response and Mitigation Division in the Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance at the US Agency for International Development (USAID/OFDA). While in OFDA he served in various disaster response assignments, including Disaster Response Team Leader; Africa Team Leader; DART Team Leader (Disaster Assistance and Response Team) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and Mozambique; as well as the Response Manager for the US Government’s assistance to numerous crises, including the Asia Tsunami in 2004 and the Pakistan Earthquake in 2005.

Mr. Marx is also a former US Army Officer, whose tours included Asia, Europe, and Africa. While in the Army, he participated in several support operations to international disaster responses, including operations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

 

Sean Horgan

Team Rubicon

Sean Horgan Photo

Sean Horgan is the Regional Administrator for Region 1 of Team Rubicon.  He manages a volunteer team of 8 Regional Managers and 6 State Administrators that directly serve New England and supports disaster responses throughout the globe.  Sean was born in Ireland and enlisted in the Marines shortly after he became a US resident.  He attended the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where he received a B.S. in Computer Science (cum laude) and has built SMS notifications systems, large database and analytics platforms.  During H1N1 he developed an application that allowed health departments to monitor vaccine distribution in real-time.  Sean currently works full-time as a Product Manager for PatientsLikeMe, a patient-powered research network, and lives in Somerville with his wife and twins.

 

Yonahton Bock

USAID Humanitarian Assistance Advisor/Military

Yoni Bock Photo

Yoni Bock serves as a Humanitarian Assistance Advisor/Military based in Washington, DC. He has worked with OFDA for nearly ten years, including positions in OFDA’s information/reporting unit, Middle East/Central Asia team, and since 2009, with OFDA’s Military Liaison Team. A certified trainer, Yoni facilitates nearly twenty Joint Humanitarian Operations Courses a year educating US military col- leagues on U.S. Government best practices, policies, and procedures for conducting overseas humanitarian assistance.

During his tenure with OFDA, Yoni has participated in numerous disaster responses, including on the DART deployed to Kenya following the 2007 post-election violence and on technical teams sent to Greece and China following the wildfires and earthquake in 2007 and 2008, respectively. Following the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, Yoni deployed as the DART’s Civil- Military Coordinator for the Joint Support Force at Yokota Air Base providing guidance to the 4- and 3-star leadership on humanitarian requirements, including how best to direct U.S. military assets to de- liver life-saving assistance and reinforce the vital strategic relation- ship between the U.S. and Japan.

From August to September 2014, Yoni served as Response Manager for OFDA’s response to events in northern and central Iraq, supervising a team of twenty to coordinate the US Government’s humanitarian response to rapid displacement, including air drops of relief to displaced populations stranded on Sinjar mountain.

From December 2009 through May 2010, Yoni was detailed to the Pentagon, where he supported the Office of the Secretary of Defense/Policy during the Haiti Earthquake response as a military liaison officer and worked on updating DoD policy pertaining to international disaster response. Between 2010 and 2012, Yoni was assigned to CENTCOM in Tampa, FL, as the Senior Humanitarian Advisor to the command, providing input on various exercises and operational guidance on military requirements during emergencies in Central Asia, including the 2010 Pakistan floods.

From 2008 to 2009, Yoni covered OFDA’s Iraq portfolio, including overseeing the programming of more than $80 million in emergency and transitional assistance. In 2006, he drafted the U.S. Army training manual “Working with OFDA”, a precursor to the DoD handbook on Support to Foreign Disaster Relief (GTA 90-01-030).

A Boston native and life-long Red Sox fan, Yoni holds an MA in Law and Diplomacy (focus area: International Security Studies) from Tufts University’s Fletcher School and a BA (Religion and Middle East Studies) from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.