A collection of honors and achievements

While I regret that I don’t have a way to capture all of the achievements of and honors received by our students and alumni, a few nice ones have recently passed by me.  First, Anna McCallie, second-year MALD (which, at this time of year, means soon to graduate and leave us), received the University’s Presidential Award for Citizenship.  In the type of supportive message I love to see, her friend and classmate Ali shared news of Anna’s award with the community, writing:

This award recognizes outstanding community service and leadership achievements.  This should come as no surprise to those of us who have benefited from her dedication in putting together this year’s Tufts Energy Conference, her virtuosity in making the Culture Nights what we’ve all enjoyed, and her beaming presence around campus.

Nice!  Over the weekend, I received a note from alumna Margot Shorey, informing me (and others included on the message) that she has recently published an article.

I would like to share this article Chad: a Precarious Counterterrorism Partner that I co-wrote with my colleague Dr. Benjamin Nickels, which has been published in the April edition of the CTC Sentinel.  I thought you might find the subject and our analysis interesting.

Although the title says most of it, here’s a teaser: Chad has been building a reputation as a strong and reliable counterterrorism partner in an increasingly difficult region of Africa.  International partners are funding Chad’s military to fight high profile non-state actors such as Boko Haram and AQIM, but there are multiple internal and external vulnerabilities that could render this regional power broker a broken power.  On the edge of your seat to find out what these vulnerabilities are…..? Read more here.

If you have comments, you can reach Margot via Twitter at @margots02.

And then, I learned that one of our first-year MALD students, Katherine Trujillo, is one of the 2015-16 recipients of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans.  Others at Fletcher had already heard the news, but I’m not sorry that I first found out about it when I saw her smiling in the announcement in The New York Times.