International Relations Council

Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Private Sponsor Reception 6:00 p.m.
Social Hour 6:00 p.m.
Dinner and Program 7:00 p.m.
Westin Crown Center
1 Pershing Road, KCMO

IRC is pleased to announce that DR. REZA ASLAN will receive the Distinguished Service Award for International Statesmanship at our Awards Banquet on August 17.

Dr. Reza Aslan, an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions, is a contributing editor at the Daily Beast. Reza Aslan has degrees in Religions from Santa Clara University, Harvard University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He serves on the board of directors of the Ploughshares Fund, which gives grants for peace and security issues, Abraham's Vision, an interfaith peace organization, and PEN USA, which champions the rights of writers under siege around the world.

Aslan's first book is the international bestseller, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, which has been translated into thirteen languages, and named one of the 100 most important books of the last decade. He is also the author of How to Win a Cosmic War (published in paperback as Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in a Globalized Age), and editor of an upcoming anthology from Norton titled Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East. Born in Iran, he now lives in Los Angeles where he is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside.

IRC will present the Award for Contributions to International Commerce & Community Service to Seaboard Corporation. Seaboard is a $3.3 billion international commodity trading and milling company based in Merriam, Kansas. Seaboard operates in ten African countries and in 17 countries in the Caribbean basin and South America. Seaboard Corporation has gone beyond its role as an owner and employer to become a true community partner in the locations where it does business. Seaboard built a maternity clinic in Matadi, Democratic Republic of Congo, in 2006, and, since the recent earthquake in Haiti, has opened its port there for relief supplies.

Dr. Aslan will sign his books, No god but God and Confronting Religious Extremism in a Globalized Age, which will be for sale through Rainy Day Books.

September 28
6:00 Reception
7:00 Dinner & Program
Kansas City Marriott Downtown
200 W. 12th St., KCMO

IRC is excited to announce that Canadian Ambassador Gary Doer will be our guest on September 28. Canada is the number one export market for both Missouri and Kansas and the United States's top trade partner. This dinner will provide a wonderful opportunity for both businesses and individuals to greet the Ambassador and to learn the current status and future prospects for the U.S. - Canada relationship. You will not want to miss this special opportunity!

Ambassador Doer assumed his responsibilities in October 2009. Prior to taking up his current position in Washington, Ambassador Doer served as Premier of Manitoba for ten years. During that time, he worked extensively with U.S. Governors to enhance Canada-U.S. cooperation on trade, agriculture, water protection, climate change and renewable energy. In 2005, he was named by Business Week magazine as one of the top 20 international leaders on climate change. As Premier, he led strategic investments in health care, education, and training and infrastructure.

Ingrid Betancourt tells the story of her captivity in the Colombian jungle, sharing powerful teachings of resilience, resistance, and faith. Born in Bogota, raised in France, Ingrid Betancourt at the age of thirty-two gave up a life of comfort and safety to return to Colombia to become a political leader in a country that was being slowly destroyed by terrorism, violence, fear, and a pervasive sense of hopelessness. In 2002, while campaigning as a candidate in the Colombian presidential elections, she was abducted by the FARC. Nothing could have prepared her for what came next. She would spend the next six and a half years in the depths of the jungle as a prisoner of the FARC. Even Silence Has an End is her deeply personal and moving account of that time.

Condoleezza Rice has excelled as a diplomat, political scientist, and concert pianist. Her achievements run the gamut from helping to oversee the collapse of communism in Europe and the decline of the Soviet Union, to working to protect the country in the aftermath of 9-11, to becoming only the second woman and the first black woman ever to serve as Secretary of State. But until she was 25 she never learned to swim. Not because she wouldn't have loved to, but because when she was a little girl in Birmingham, Alabama, Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor decided he'd rather shut down the city's pools than give black citizens access.

As comfortable describing lighthearted family moments as she is recalling the poignancy of her mother’s cancer battle and the heady challenge of going toe-to-toe with Soviet leaders, Rice holds nothing back in this remarkably candid telling. This is the story of Condoleezza Rice that has never been told, not that of an ultra-accomplished world leader, but of a little girl and a young woman trying to find her place in a sometimes hostile world and of two exceptional parents, and an extended family and community, that made all the difference.