And that’s a wrap! ??
Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of helping execute the The University of Texas at Austin’s and The LBJ School of Public Affairs’ first ever Central Asia Policy Symposium (CAPS)! Six months of hard work alongside my amazing team of graduate student colleagues brought incredible experts directly from Washington, D.C. and abroad to the Forty Acres to give our university’s graduate and undergraduate students interested in foreign policy a comprehensive overview of Central Asian countries’ perspectives and priorities in the realms of security, governance, and human rights.
Before all of the emails, room bookings, grant writing sessions, and brainstorming meetings, this initiative started out with one shared belief among the graduate student organizing team: Central Asia matters. And young Americans aspiring to have a career in the foreign policy realm must be better informed about this rapidly changing and increasingly important part of the world.
Thus, I want to extend my sincere gratitude to the incredible experts who joined us at the LBJ School for two days of panels, presentations, and insightful Q/A sessions; the faculty members who participated in CAPS as moderators for the Security, Governance, and Human Rights Tracks; and CAPS’ institutional sponsors — Clements Center for National Security, Strauss Center for International Security and Law’s Asia Policy Program, UT Austin Center for European Studies The University of Texas at Austin — Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies and TexasGlobal— for their support! Finally, to the rest of the CAPS Organizing Team: thank you for all of your hard work! This wouldn’t have come to fruition without you.
After speaking with countless students and faculty about how much they learned from CAPS, I am confident that this symposium directly contributed to students’ curiosity and understanding of this unique region of the world!