Helath and Human Services gives thier briefing.

Students listen to the final reports.

Homeland Security reports to the Senior Staff.

The feedback.

Tuesday, July 11th
Washington, DC

This just in, there has been an outbreak of human to human transmission of the H5N1 or bird flu in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Relax, although not actually happening this was the situation called “PANDEMIC FURY” that our students were presented with at the National Defense University. This is a group that operates and is staffed by the US department of State. They research, develop, plan, and facilitate various national and international disaster scenarios designed to help those engaging in the activity to better utilize inter agency cooperation among various governmental departments. They use their findings to help design more efficient and useful plans to deal with emergencies. They are very realistic and although the NDU sternly states that there is no attribution to any official government policy or opinion the people usually participating in these scenarios have some influence over policy. The usual “students” are members of Congress, grad schools of international policy, and agency representatives. These activities are called “strategic gaming”. Here is a link to the history of “war gaming”. The students loved the hands on nature of the day. They received intelligence memos and briefings, presented to various agencies, and then made recommendations to “Senior Staff” and were questioned on their recommendations. The professors of the NDU played the role of Director of Homeland Security, Secretary of State, and the Vice President of the United States. The students had about 30 pages of prep work to do the previous couple days in order to be prepared for the scenario and what specific agency and role at the agency that they had to play. The four departments were Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, State Department, and Department of Defense. Many of the students stated that this was of their most interesting activities thus far.

After dinner the students heard from Robert Muse, esq. who helped prepare the congressional report, “Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared”. It was interesting to hear the failings of the inter agency cooperation and overall lack of coordination. The students were acutely aware o theses struggles based on their activities of the morning and afternoon.

The room assembled to begin the toasts.

The toast.

The toast masters witht the Indian DCM.

The spread at the embassy.

The boys show off the eats.

A conversation or two.

Students talk witht the Indian DCM.

Some of the girls enjoy their meal at the Indian embassy.

The morning sessions of class focused on fellowship opportunities and other service opportunities. Their three groups speaking and the students were broken into different groups and simply rotated session. The groups were Teach for America, a great program that allows recent graduates of college to go and teach in areas that normally have trouble recruiting quality teachers. The recruit who are typically non education majors go to either extremely rural or inner city schools. The program is very competitive and about half decide to stay in education and the others go to med school, law school, or grad school. One of my close friends from college did this and is now the principle of a KIPP Academy in Houston, TX. The next group was the Peace Corp. This was a group started back in the sixties based on a speech that JFK gave to the University of Michigan turning a visit. Great programs and a great way to learn a language. I’ve had a couple of friends do this and it has turned out great for each of them. The last group was Truman Scholars. I did not attend this session bit the students seemed excited about the things that this fellowship had to offer. After these sessions the students attended classes on publics speaking and systems theory.

For the evening we all had a special treat. This night we were the guests of the Indian Embassy for dinner. The dinner and reception invited all of the speakers and guest s of the program to come together for conversation and a wonderful meal. It was fun to watch the students mingle and make conversations with the consular staff of the Embassy and all of the speakers they had heard. Many of the speakers could not attend, but many did. The toast that two of the students did was spot on and the students proved again why they were in a program like this. They did their families, schools, and this program well by their actions. They all seemed to have fun also. We had to nearly drag them out because the bus had to back at a certain time. It was a great evening for everyone involved.