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Hunt rounds out Seminars at Steamboat

Organizers expect large election-year crowds at series events

Saturday, May 3, 2008

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By Brandon Gee (Contact)

Strobe Talbott

Michael Osterholm

Swanee Hunt

Galia Golan

Steamboat Springs — Seminars at Steamboat officials have identified their fourth and final speaker for the 2008 edition of the series, which begins July 10.

Swanee Hunt, director of the Women and Public Policy program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, will be the speaker at an Aug. 14 seminar titled “Women waging peace: Lessons from the Bosnian War.” The seminar will join three others spanning topics from pandemics to foreign policy. The seminars are free and open to the public.

“Swanee Hunt is very active in women’s public policy issues,” said Jane Stein, spokeswoman for the series. “She was the founder of the Women’s Foundation of Colorado, so there’s a Colorado angle.”

While ambassador to Austria in the 1990s, Hunt worked with women in Bosnia during a civil war to help secure peace, Stein said.

This year’s Seminars at Steamboat will include many upgrades for the series, which is entering its sixth season. Most visible will be the move to Strings Music Festival’s new concert pavilion at Mount Werner and Pine Grove roads. Last year’s events were held in the Strings music tent, and in previous years they were held in Centennial Hall. Stein said the event quickly outgrew that venue.

Seminars at Steamboat is nonpartisan and began as part of an effort to bring provocative speakers to Steamboat Springs to discuss timely national and international issues.

“We have been growing steadily,” Stein said. “We had 1,800 at the four events last year.”

The series also will increase the number of “Dutch Treat” dinners for Friends of the Seminars and their guests. There will be one after each speaker this year; there were just two last year. The dinners, held at Rex’s American Grill & Bar, allow participants to continue the discussion with speakers in a more intimate setting.

“We’re excited about that because they’ve been really successful,” Stein said of the dinners.

A contribution of $100 is required to join the Friends of the Seminars. Further donations qualify Friends for prizes such as books from a list to be provided by the speakers and the opportunity to meet with a speaker in a smaller setting.

Seminars at Steamboat will kick off July 10 with a presentation by Michael Osterholm titled “The next influenza pandemic: A harbinger of things to come?” Osterholm is director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, associate director of the Department of Homeland Security’s National Center for Food Protection and Defense and a professor of public health at the University of Minnesota.

The second seminar will feature speaker Strobe Talbott and his speech titled “Why foreign policy issues in the 2008 election matter so much to the world.” Talbott is president of The Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C., former deputy secretary of state and former Washington bureau chief of Time Magazine.

“I think it’s going to be a terrific slate because it covers so many issues that are in the paper every day,” Stein said. “Clearly Strobe Talbott talking about foreign policy and the election — I don’t know what’s more important.”

Stein added that the economy, an issue not being covered in this year’s series, might be the only thing more important.

Hunt speaks Aug. 14, and Galia Golan will round out the series Aug. 21. Golan’s presentation is titled “Israel, Palestine and the chances for peace.” Golan is professor emeritus of Soviet and East European studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is on the faculty of the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herliya, Israel. She also is a founder of Peace Now.

“They’re all extremely topical, which is what we as planners hope for,” Stein said. “I think that this primary season has shown that people across the country are very, very interested and involved in the issues that will shape the election.”

— To reach Brandon Gee, call 871-4210

or e-mail bgee@steamboatpilot.com