Diplomatic Dispatches

Diplomatic Dispatches

by Nora Boustany
Washington Post
09/08/2004

Post-Sept. 11 Dialogue

To commemorate the third anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, leaders of Americans for Informed Democracy, a student-run nonpartisan group, are planning 30 town hall meetings across the country to discuss U.S.-Islamic world relations.

Students and family members of Sept. 11 victims are organizing the sessions, which will feature conversations with a bipartisan coalition of members of Congress, former ambassadors and scholars. The sessions are supported by a number of nonprofit organizations such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the United Nations Foundation and the Families of September 11, an independent group founded by victims' families.

The series is titled "Hope not Hate, " said Seth Green, a student at Yale Law School who is executive director of Americans for Informed Democracy. He said the program is a "call to action out of the ashes of tragedy and as a response to the recently released 9/11 Commission report." Organizers believe the United States must share its "vision of opportunity and hope" and "must act aggressively to define itself in the Islamic world," Green said.

He said the sessions would close with six face-to-face videoconference dialogues. Participating in the dialogues, he said, will be young leaders at universities in Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and South Dakota, and from six countries, Egypt, Indonesia, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey.