June 3rd 2020 at 6:00 pm
Virtual Club Meeting - Ambassador Rosemary Banks


Rosemary Banks has had a forty year career in Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, including six previous overseas assignments.  She was Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York (2005–2009) and Ambassador to France and Portugal and New Zealand’s Permanent Representative to the OECD (2010-2014).  Rosemary earlier served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Honiara and Canberra.

As Deputy Secretary in New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT), Rosemary was responsible for multilateral, legal and consular affairs.  Earlier Wellington based positions included Director of Development Assistance, Director of North Asia Division, Director of Public Affairs and foreign policy adviser to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. 

Prior to her appointment as Ambassador to the United States, Rosemary served as a Crown negotiator for the Treaty of Waitangi settlement process.  She was also a member of the Council of the University of Canterbury and a Senior Adjunct Fellow in the Department of Political Science. 

Rosemary has provided diplomatic trade craft training for the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, The Treasury, the New Zealand Defence Force and the Papua New Guinea Department of Foreign Affairs. 

Rosemary has a Master of Arts degree in Russian with First Class Honours from Canterbury University and a Master or Science from London School of Economics. 
 

June 10th 2020 at 6:00 pm
Nobel Peace Laureate to Speak June 20, 6-7pm

June 10th 2020 at 6:00 pm
Virtual Club Meeting - Ira Helfand

Ira Helfand, MD is a member of the International Steering Group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, ICAN, the recipient of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, and co-President of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the founding partner of ICAN and itself the recipient of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. He is also co-Founder and Past President of Physicians for Social Responsibility, IPPNW’s US affiliate.

He represented ICAN at the Oslo and Nayarit Conferences on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear War, and in September of 2015 he addressed a special session of the United Nations General Assembly. In May of 2016 he led the session on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear war at the United Nations Open Ended Working Group meeting in Geneva that led to the successful negotiation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in the summer of 2017, and on September 20 of 2017 he represented IPPNW at the signing ceremony for the Treaty.

Dr. Helfand has published studies on the medical consequences of nuclear war in the New England Journal of Medicine, the British Medical Journal, the Lancet and the World Medical Journal, and has lectured widely in the United States, and in India, China, Japan, Korea, Russia, South Africa, Israel, Pakistan, Mexico, Brazil, Columbia, and throughout Europe on the health effects of nuclear weapons. represented PSR and IPPNW at the Nobel ceremonies in Oslo in December 2009, honoring President Obama, and presented their new report, Nuclear Famine: One Billion People at Risk, at the Nobel Peace Laureates Summit in Chicago in April of 2012. A second edition was released in December of 2013.

Dr. Helfand was educated at Harvard College and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He is a former chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine and President of the Medical Staff at Cooley Dickinson Hospital, and currently practices as an internist and urgent care physician at Family Care Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts.

He is the recipient of the 1997-1998 Will L. Judy Award, the 2003 O’Dwyer Award, the 2003 John Phillips Award, the 2016 Verdoorn Prize, the 2017 Distinguished Peace Leadership Award, and the 2017 Edward Barsky Award

He lives with his wife, Deborah Smith, a medical oncologist, in Leeds, Massachusetts.

June 17th 2020 at 6:00 pm
Virtual Club Meeting - Katherine G. Southwick

Katherine Southwick is the Senior Genocide Prevention Adviser on a project at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on the role of domestic criminal justice systems in atrocity prevention. Katherine previously worked for a decade on human rights, humanitarian advocacy and statelessness, and legal reform in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific Islands. She worked for the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) in Washington DC and the Philippines on programs relating to judicial reform, anti-trafficking in persons, and the ASEAN human rights system. She also clerked for the late Hon. Charles P. Sifton in the Eastern District of New York and practiced international arbitration. She has worked in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser, and for human rights organizations in India and Uganda. Katherine’s commentary on the Rohingya crisis has appeared in media and scholarly outlets, and she has provided legal expertise to Rohingya rights organizations. Katherine grew up in Africa as the daughter of a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, and holds a B.A. and a J.D. from Yale University as well as a PhD (to be conferred 2020) from National University of Singapore Faculty of Law.