“My semester of teaching at Tufts gave me an opportunity to try to make sense out of my nearly 60 years of experience in foreign affairs. Through the rich exchanges with extremely bright students, I left refreshed and ready for more. The benefits for me were perhaps greater than those for the students who challenged and stimulated me. Yet I believed they pulled a great deal out of me that I did not even know was there. This is a great and valuable program.”
- Ambassador William Luers,
IGL/PJTT INSPIRE Fellow
IGL/PJTT INSPIRE Fellowship
Through ACCES, the IGL/PJTT INSPIRE Fellowship enables world leaders and other distinguished individuals with unique contributions to forging peace in war torn societies to spend four-six weeks on the Tufts University campus. During their stay, Fellows will either teach a PJTT/IGL class or conduct research that involved Tufts students at both the undergraduate and graduate level. In all cases, these fellowships are designed to facilitate student experiential learning through direct involvement and access to the people and places integral to the research subject.
PJTT and the IGL have held three Fellowships to date:
- Tim Phillips: 2002-2003 IGL/PJTT INSPIRE Fellow
Mr. Phillips is the co-Founder of the Project on Justice in Times of Transition and a member of the Club of Madrid’s Advisory Board. During his stay at Tufts, Mr. Phillips worked with sixteen students on initiatives in Central America, Sri Lanka, Kosovo, the Basque region of Spain, as well as the creation of the Sovereignty Project, which was an initiative that interviewed 14 global leaders on the future of sovereignty in a globalized world. - Ambassador José Maria Arguta: 2007-2008 IGL/PJTT INSPIRE Fellow
Ambassador José Maria Argueta was the first civilian National Security Advisor of Guatemala after the war and subsequently Ambassador to Peru and Japan. Ambassador Argueta worked with eight Tufts students on a research effort looking at the relationship between poverty and national decision-making by elites in Guatemala. This research resulted in a paper on the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s (MCC) criteria for grant making in Guatemala that was discussed during a state visit by President Colom of Guatemala with President Bush in the White House. This effort has subsequently led to the creation of an IGL based student project called Poverty and Power Research Initiative (PPRI) dedicated to researching the role of elites in poverty and violence throughout the developing world, currently including the Philippines, Kenya, and Bosnia Herzegovina. - Ambassador William Luers: 2009-2010 IGL/PJTT INSPIRE Fellow
In 2009 Ambassador Luers, fmr. US Ambassador to Venezuela and Czechoslovakia and President of the United Nations Association, taught a class, “US Experiences in Talking with the Enemy,” where students examined the changing nature of US efforts to engage with its enemies, from the 1933 opening of relations with the USSR to the current US problems in dealing with Iran, Cuba and North Korea. - Zach Iscol: 2010-2011 IGL/PJTT INSPIRE Fellow
A combat decorated US Marine Officer, Zach Iscol served two tours in Iraq and on other assignments throughout Africa, the Middle East, and into Central Asia. During 2010, he co-led eleven undergraduate students on a research trip to Iraqi Kurdistan as part of the Institute for Global Leadership’s New Initiative for Middle East Peace (NIMEP). See trip overview here)