Institute Scholars and Practitioners in Residence (INSPIRE)
2009-2010
2009-2010
| Gary Knight | Amb. William Luers | Hossain Zillur Rahman |
GARY KNIGHT is a distinguished photojournalist who pioneered the launch of the VII Photo Agency in September 2001. Having worked in Southeast Asia and the former Yugoslavia, he followed the development of events in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. He was one of only a few non-embedded photographers covering the invasion of Iraq alongside the U.S. Marines. His work has been widely published by magazines all over the world and exhibited globally and he has initiated a broad education programme with universities and NGOs worldwide.
In June 2008, Knight launched a new quarterly magazine, dispatches. He is a 2009-10 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and taught “The Concerned Photographer” at Tufts through the IGL and Experimental College.
AMBASSADOR WILLIAM LUERS is a 31-year veteran of the US Foreign Service and the former President of the United Nations Association of the USA (UNA-USA). He served as US Ambassador to Czechoslovakia (1983-1986) and Venezuela (1978-1982) and held numerous posts in Italy, Germany, the Soviet Union, and in the Department of State, where he was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe (1977-1978) and for Inter-American Affairs (1975-1977). Amb. Luers has been a visiting lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, at George Washington University in Washington, DC, and at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Amb. Luers is also the former President of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
His areas of expertise include: US Foreign Policy and International Affairs, The United Nations, Russia and Eastern Europe, Latin America, US and Iran, and International Cultural Relations.
In a collaboration between the Project on Justice in Times of Transition, the Institute for Global Leadership, and the Experimental College, Amb. Luers is teaching a course at Tufts this semester on “Talking with the Enemy.”
HOSSAIN ZILLUR RAHMAN is Executive Chairman of the Dhaka-based thin tank Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC), a Dhaka-based think tank in 1996 and was for over twenty years a leading researcher at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies specializing on poverty and governance issues. He combines degrees in Economics (Masters, Dhaka University) and Political Sociology (Ph.D, Manchester University).
Dr. Rahman is the author of Rethinking Rural Poverty (SAGE, 1995), Local Governance and Community Capacities (UPL,2002), Unbundling Governance (PPRC, 2007), Researching Poverty from the Bottom (Grameen Trust, 2007) and numerous articles.
Dr. Rahman was the lead drafter of the poverty reduction strategy of the government of Bangladesh and was on the SAARC Poverty Commission. Dr. Rahman was appointed Advisor (Minister) for Commerce and Education in the Caretaker Government of 2008 and was credited with a lead role in the successful return of the country to electoral democracy. Dr. Rahman was awarded the Dr. John Meyer Global Citizenship Award by the Institute for Global Leadership, Tufts University in 2009.