Kasturi is a senior at American University in Washington, D. C. and is majoring in History with a minor in Psychology. Originally from a rural town in Massachusetts, she has worked in the development sector of non-profit organizations around the Capital and has enjoyed learning new and innovative ways of communicating with donors and foundations. She is looking forward to exploring new methods of promoting the cause of Americans for Informed Democracy and reaching out to the greater D. C. community in the process. As a student of a highly politically engaged university in the nation’s capital, she believes that students must be heard and can contribute greatly to the country’s endeavors on the international scale. In her free time, she enjoys Indian classical dance and cooking.
Kasturi Puntambekar – Marketing and Fundraising Fellow
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Government official talks at Coffman Union about pre- and post-Sept. 11, 2001, security
by Mohamad Elmasry Minnesota Daily 3/2/2005 University students gathered Tuesday to listen to a high-ranking government official speak about what the United States is doing to combat terrorism. Keynote speaker Michael Hurley, current senior director of the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, discussed the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, United States efforts to combat terrorism and the root causes of terrorism. The event took place at Coffman Union. Approximately 50 people attended. Hurley said that Americans were living … [Read more...]
Students discuss politics via international video forum
by Lauren Eichmann Daily Illini March 1, 2005 Hundreds of college students across the globe will communicate with one another tonight via a live videoconference to discuss American power and global security. The conference, held at the University of Illinois for the first time, will be hosted by The Americans for Informed Democracy, a non-partisan organization that seeks to increase global awareness on more than 175 U.S. university campuses and other campuses in more than 10 countries, in conjunction with the World Bank Group. The event, which … [Read more...]
Organization Aims To Inform Americans About The Rest Of The World
by Bernie Pearlstein News Informant 2/28/2005 Seth Green was in the U.K. right after Sept. 11th and noticed that students from all over the world were showing sympathy for the United States. Not one to miss an opportunity, Mr. Green, who was attending Oxford University on a Marshall Scholarship back in 2001, worked to organize several forums on cross-cultural understanding. He continued the effort but noticed that the sympathy began to ebb after President Bush delivered a speech on Iraq at the UN in Sept. 2002. “Although Americans viewed the … [Read more...]
Ambassador discusses ways to improve political climate: The speaker elaborates on how U.S. foreign policy could best be used to curb terrorism threat
by Romel Lira The Shorthorn (UT-Arlington) 2/24/2005 Former Pakistani Ambassador Husain Haqqani said that in order for the United States to alleviate the threat of Islamic terrorism, it must first clean up the wreckage left by European colonialism. The visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace spoke Wednesday at a town-hall style meeting in the University Center Concho Room. The UTA Chapter of Americans for Informed Democracy sponsored the event. He spoke on Islamic fundamentalism and how the United States’ foreign … [Read more...]
Prediction
If Paul Krugman's analysis in his column from today is correct, Americans should be outraged. In my "Hot Air" postings, I discussed the tendency to use foreign policy for domestic populist purposes on both sides of the Atlantic (though I admittedly came down harder on the Europeans). This being a tool used for centuries by presidents, ministers and monarchs, we should not be surprised that it is happening today. We might note, however, that it seems to be happening more - or at least more obviously - recently, and that it is hindering … [Read more...]
Hot Air Part II
In a recent posting, I lamented that the transatlantic rift we've been navigating for the past three years was characterized by a lot of hot air, that disagreements were patched over when it was domestically convenient, when all the major players could declare reconciliation without conceding defeat. The first test of the post-State-of-the-Union rhetoric comes now, as Bush arrives in Brussels and begins his short tour of the Continent, an apparent extending of the olive branch to obstinate Old Europe. There are many reasons to be hopeful about this … [Read more...]
Panel addresses future of U.S.-African Relations
by Lan Nguyen The Trail (University of Puget Sound) From students interested in careers in foreign policy to inquiring citizens of Tacoma, several dozen people gathered in Trimble Forum on Feb. 10 to watch the a panel discussion addressing the future of U.S. and African Relations. Introducing the speakers was junior Nick Brown, who is the campus representative for AID (Americans for Informed Democracy), which sponsored the discussion. Brown initially became involved with AID while studying at the University of Lancaster in England. … [Read more...]
It takes a village to educate an American
by Conor Williams Bowdoin Orient 2/18/2005 The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations discovered in its 2004 general public opinion survey that only 53 percent of American adults could correctly name the currency of the European Union (the "euro") and just 22 percent knew the name of the current Secretary-General of the United Nations (Kofi Annan). It's no surprise that the same survey found that nearly 40 percent of Americans follow international affairs "not very closely" or "not at all." We've all heard the statistics about the average … [Read more...]
Abroad experiences motivate juniors to start AID chapter
by David M. Kaufmann The Collegian (University of Richmond) February 17, 2005 Three former study-abroad students are determined to bring the world home. They are in the process of founding a Richmond chapter of Americans for Informed Democracy (AID), a non-partisan organization focusing on America's role internationally. The students, Alicia Surdyk, Ashley Weathersbee, and Elleni Ghebremicael all attended AID's Berlin Summit last semester. "Many Americans don't understand how important our role is globally," Ghebremicael said. "That's what AID … [Read more...]
Bringing the World Home: Life after Study Abroad
by Stacey Umans De Madrid al cielo… (Middlebury’s Magazine for Students abroad in Madrid) February 2005 On December 10-12, 2004, two hundred and ten American students spent the weekend in Berlin, Germany, to work together and share ideas in the common effort to bring home what they learn while studying abroad. The “Bringing Home the World” Conference was organized by Americans for Informed Democracy, a nonpartisan organization that works to raise global awareness at more than 175 U.S. university campuses and in more than 10 countries. The … [Read more...]
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