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ACADEMIC COUNCIL OF THE LECTURE SERIES HOLDS FIRST MEETING

The Academic Council of the Lecture Series of the Americas was established Friday and held its first-ever meeting with the attendance of the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, and its first seven members.

The Academic Council is chaired by Dr. Raúl Bao, rector of the Universidad San Martín de Porres (Peru). The first members of the Council are the rectors of Arizona State University (United States), Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (Mexico), International Organization of Higher Education (Organización de Universidades Interamericanas OUI-IOHE), Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) “José Simeón Cañas” (El Salvador), Universidad Diego Portales (Chile), and University of the West Indies in Mona (Jamaica).

Members of the Council will be invited by the OAS General Secretariat to become participants at their own cost with a rotating bi-annual membership. The Inter-American Organization for Higher Education (IOHE) will also participate as member of this Council but with a permanent member status.

The Academic Council, with an advisory role to the OAS General Secretariat, will work throughout the year, meeting annually with several goals, such as extending the reach of the Lecture Series and the topics in the Inter-American agenda within the academic community, promoting greater participation of universities in the hemispheric dialogue, facilitating the relationship between the OAS and the academic community in the region, and identifying and securing prestigious high-level speakers for the conferences.

The first meeting of the Council was inaugurated by Secretary General Insulza, who insisted on the value of these debates focused on important topics of the Inter-American agenda and provided by very high-profile speakers.

Secretary General Insulza highlighted that the aim of the Academic Council should be to “widen the reach of the debates taking place at the Lecture Series of the Americas and make it useful as academic material and as a contribution to the design of public policies.”

The Chairman of the OAS Permanent Council and Permanent Representative of Chile to the Organization, Ambassador Pedro Oyarce, praised the Lecture Series and encouraged its organizers and the Academic Council to strengthen it as “a great effort to socialize knowledge” as well as “education on principles and values”, to promote debates on “the concerns of our societies” and to put the Hemisphere in context, “because the Americas are not an abstraction, the Americas live in the world.”

The first meeting was attended by Professor Carlos Castillo-Chavez, Regents Professor and Executive Director, Mathematical and Theoretical Biology Institute at Arizona State University; Eng. Carlos Cruz Limón, Vice chancellor of Relations and Development at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey; Eng. Gabriel García Torres, Advisor to the President of the OUI-IOHE; Dr. José María Tojeira, rector of UCA; Dr. Juan Enrique Vargas, Dean of the School of Law of the Universidad Diego Portales; and Amb. Gordon Shirley, Vice Chancellor and Principal of the University of the West Indies.

The meeting featured a presentation by Dr. Irene Klinger, Director of the OAS Department of International Affairs and Coordinator of the Lecture Series of the Americas as well as the OAS Secretary of External Relations, Amb. Adam Blackwell.

The Lecture Series of the Americas aims to enrich the hemispheric debate on the principal themes of the Inter-American Agenda linked to democracy, social development, human rights, and multidimensional security through monthly conferences wherein well-known, highly esteemed speakers share their knowledge and experience with the general public.

Reference: E-275/09