Representing the United States Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel John Vitacca is a national defense fellow for 2009-2010 at CISAC. 

John holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Marketing from Texas A&M University, a Master of Business Administration degree in Management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Master of Arts degree in Military Operational Art and Science from Air Command and Staff College, Air University, Alabama.  He is a command pilot with over 3,400 flight hours in the B-2 and B-52, qualified as both an instructor and evaluator pilot.  Prior to coming to CISAC, John served in various assignments including a tour at the Pentagon as the Chief of the Global Persistent Attack Branch and the B-2/Next Generation Bomber subject matter expert.   Most recently, he was the Commander of the 393d Bomb Squadron at Whiteman Air Force Base, one of only two operational B-2 stealth bomber squadrons in the USAF.  His research at CISAC will focus on nuclear weapons policy issues.

Dr. Stephen Flynn served as a senior policy advisor on homeland security during the Obama campaign and during the presidential transition. Since May 2009, he has been supporting the Department of Homeland Security in drafting of the first Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) that will be presented to Congress by DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano in Jan 2010. In addition, he has been assisting the newly created National Security Council Directorate for Resilience Policy on integrating the concept of resilience into presidential guidance on national preparedness. He will discuss how the homeland security mission is being recalibrated by the Obama Administration to place greater emphasis on building national capacity to withstand, quickly recover from, and adapt to man-made and natural disasters.

About the speaker:

In December 2009, Dr. Stephen Flynn becomes the fifth President of the Center for National Policy (www.cnponline.org), founded in 1981.  Prior to being selected to lead CNP, he spent a decade as a senior fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.  Following the election of President Barack Obama, he served as the lead policy advisor on homeland security for the presidential transition team.  He is a member of the bipartisan National Security Preparedness Group, co-chaired by former 9/11 commissioners, Governor Tom Kean and Congressman Lee Hamilton.

Dr. Flynn is the author of the critically acclaimed The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation (Random House, 2007), and the national bestseller, America the Vulnerable (HarperCollins 2004).  He is a Consulting Professor at the Center of International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at the Wharton School's Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania.  Since 9/11 he has provided testimony on twenty-two occasions on Capitol Hill.  Dr. Flynn is also a member of the Marine Board of the National Research Council. Prior to September 11, 2001, he served as an expert advisor to U.S. Commission on National Security (Hart-Rudman Commission), and following the 9/11 attacks he was the principle advisor to the bipartisan Congressional Port Security Caucus, and advised the Bush Administration on maritime and homeland security issues. 

He is a frequent media commentator and has appeared on Meet the Press, 60 Minutes, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The Today Show, the Charlie Rose Show, CNN and on National Public Radio.  Four of his articles have been published in the prestigious journal, Foreign Affairs.  Excerpts of his books have been featured in Time, as the cover story for U.S. News & World Report, and as the subject of two CNN documentaries.

A 1982 graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, Dr. Flynn served in the Coast Guard on active duty for 20 years, including two tours as commanding officer at sea, received several professional awards including the Legion of Merit, and retired at the rank of Commander.  As a Coast Guard officer, he served in the White House Military Office during the George H.W. Bush administration and as a director for Global Issues on the National Security Council staff during the Clinton administration. 

Dr. Flynn received the M.A.L.D. and Ph.D. degrees in International Politics from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, in 1990 and 1991.  He was a Guest Scholar in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution from 1991-92, and in 1993-94 he was an Annenberg Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.   He has been a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations since 1999.

Dr. Flynn is the principal for Stephen E. Flynn Associates LLC, where he provides independent advisory services on improving enterprise resiliency and critical infrastructure protection, and transportation and maritime security.

Born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1960, Dr. Flynn lives in Connecticut with his wife JoAnn and their daughter Christina.

Prior to coming to CISAC, Joe was the project director and leader for the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s team in the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) design feasibility study.  He will share his experiences and knowledge from over 25 years at Los Alamos and multiple projects related to nuclear weapons design and maintenance, plutonium storage and disposition, stockpile life extension and plutonium aging.  Following a slide show, he will be available for a question and answer session.
 
This is the second in a series of informal gatherings aimed at providing first hand, in-depth information on a variety of topics.  Different from more a formal research seminar, these informal discussions will provide first hand information and Q&A opportunities to facilitate wider understanding and to catalyze potential unrealized research opportunities.

Dr. Joseph C. Martz is a 25 year employee of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in which he has served in a variety of research, leadership, and management positions.  His career has focused on nuclear weapons and materials, and he has lead and participated on a variety of projects related to nuclear weapon design and maintenance, plutonium storage and disposition, stockpile life extension and plutonium aging.  His early work led to a nationwide evaluation and repackaging of stored nuclear materials, and he was a co-developer of the ARIES system, a means to dismantle and safely recover plutonium from excess nuclear weapons.  Dr. Martz technical focus has been on plutonium surface chemistry and metallurgy, including oxidation, dispersal mechanisms, and plutonium aging.  He is a long-time contributor to the Enhanced Surveillance Program for the stockpile, including the evaluation and predictive assessment of aging effects in stockpile materials and components.   Most recently, Dr. Martz was the project director and leader for the New Mexico team in the recent Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) design feasibility study.  Dr. Martz is the author of over 50 papers and invited presentations in these areas.  He holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

Born in 1940 and raised in southern Germany, Peter Schneider has greatly contributed to the literary and cultural life of Germany over the last four decades. After finishing his studies in German, History, and Philosophy in 1964, Schneider became a central figure in the 1968 Student Protest Movements in Berlin and Turin, Italy. After completing his Staatsexamen in higher education, Schneider began his career as a writer with his novel Lenz. After the success of Lenz in Germany, over twenty other novels, screenplays, and volumes of journalistic essays followed, including the English translated works Der Mauerspringer (The Wall Jumper, 1984), Extreme Mittelage (The German Comedy, 1990), Paarungen (Couplings, 1996), and Eduards Heimkehr (Edward's Homecoming, 2000). Schneider's screenplays were filmed by Reinhard Hauff - Messer im Kopf (Knife in the Head) and Margarethe von Trotta - Das Versprechen (The Promise). His essays can be found in Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, The New York Times, Time Magazine, and Le Monde.

Since 1985, Peter Schneider has served as a guest professor at Stanford, Princeton, Dartmouth, Harvard, Washington University St. Louis, and Georgetown University. During the 1996-97 academic year, Schneider was awarded a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. Peter Schneider returned to Georgetown as the Parker Distinguished Writer-in-Residence in the fall of 2000 and took up his role as Roth Distinguished-Writer-in-Residence with the spring semester 2001. During the spring of 2002 he taught at the Emory College's Halle Institute as a Distinguished Fellow.

This event is jointly sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe, Center for European Studies, Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in the Humanities, Department of History, and Stanford Humanities Cener.

Audio Synopsis:

Peter Schneider recounts his experience and impression of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the changes he has observed over the past twenty years. Schneider was in Dartmouth, NH when the wall fell, having recently written that more than a wall divided Germans, and that it could only come down if the idea of reunification were abandoned. He felt disbelief when the wall fell, an event he describes as a "miracle that did not appear in any political calculus." Schneider credits the fall of the wall to pressure from the East German people, and cooperation between German and American politicians. Britain and France, in contrast, resisted the idea of a unified Germany, as did intellectuals and many Germans.

Schneider is struck by the city's transformation over twenty years, including new Western style housing and beautified storefronts. He relates how he observed a new generation of young Germans "taking charge" of the national flag as a symbol of joy rather than sorrow during Germany's hosting of the 2006 World Cup. However, he warns that it would be wrong to assume this progress signifies a new, shared culture. Germany illustrates the adage that a happy marriage is the product of long-term hard work, and much work remains to be done. Schneider describes that "a wall in the heads" of Germans persists, along with a clear generational gap. There is also significant economic disparity between East and West, including in unemployment rates and wages. He predicts that East Germany may rely on financial transfers from the West for another two decades or more.

Schneider observes that reunification has changed both sides and predicts an "Easternization of West Germany". He cites multiple surprising political developments of recent years including the election of the first female chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the rise of the PDS leftist party in the West.

In conclusion, Schneider provides a ready answer to the question of how happy Germans are twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall: "as far as Germans can be happy, and warm up to the pursuit of happiness, we are almost happy." A discussion session follows Schneider’s presentation.