Students met with American diplomat Dan Whitman at UzhNU
On 12 June, Dan Whitman, a professor at George Washington University (USA), visited the Faculty of History and International Relations. At a meeting with students, the distinguished guest spoke about his diplomatic experience and gave a lecture on the causes of global conflict.
"We are pleased to welcome the professor and are very grateful that he came to us. Dan Whitman is, without exaggeration, a legend of American diplomacy. As future leaders of Ukraine's foreign policy, it will be extremely useful for you to listen to him," said Vitaliy Andreiko, Dean of the School of Foreign Languages.
Whitman began the lecture by telling about himself, his work and his diplomatic experience. The professor is a former officer of the US Foreign Service, during which he worked in Denmark, Spain, South Africa, Haiti, Cameroon and 8 other countries.
After 10 years of travelling, he decided to make a change in his life and for a long time was not interested in politics, diplomacy or consular work.
The professor advises students: "You need to understand who you are, what you want, and develop a strategy - this is the first rule to achieve something. You need to have a dream, tactics (what you need to do to make this dream come true today) and a strategy (a long-term development plan)." Dan Whitman notes that a plan is important for all spheres (political, military, and personal life), but one should be prepared for the fact that it will not work.
The professor then moved on to the second part of the lecture and outlined several causes of conflict. Among them are different perceptions of the situation, misunderstandings, lack of resources and fear. To illustrate this, Mr Whitman gave several analogies from world history and cinema.
The students watched two videos: the first one about an experiment with monkeys and unequal pay ("Capuchin monkeys reject unequal pay"); the second one with a pantomime about a marital quarrel ("Argument to Beethoven's Fifth").
The war in Ukraine was also discussed. Throughout the lecture, the professor kept returning to this issue and citing it as an example for his story. "Ukraine must win - it's no secret. You want it, I want it, the whole world wants it. America is currently sending a lot of aid to Ukraine and will continue to do so," Mr Whitman said.
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