General Announcements - November 15, 2011
IPI Launches the Rick Hooper Distinguished Fellowship for International Peace and Security
The International Peace Institute has established a new fellowship honoring Richard M. Hooper, the UN diplomat and Middle East expert who was killed at age 40 on August 19, 2003 in the terrorist bombing of United Nations headquarters in Baghdad.
“Rick was one of the most—perhaps even the most—talented and creative individuals I have known,” said IPI President Terje Rød-Larsen at the October 19th event announcing the fellowship. “He was a great expert on Middle East issues and a wonderful person to work with. He is an inspiring role model, and I hope that this fellowship will contribute to continuing his legacy.”
Mr. Hooper worked in Gaza in 1995-1996 and again in 1999-2001 as the Special Assistant to Terje Rød-Larsen, then serving as the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.
A graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz, Mr. Hooper spent a year as an undergraduate student at Birzeit University in the West Bank. He went on to study Arabic on a Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Damascus and at the American University of Cairo. He received an M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown University.
Mr. Hooper began his career at the United Nations in 1990 as a refugee affairs officer with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza and served as a research officer and as Assistant Chief of Staff to UNRWA’s Commissioner-General at its Vienna headquarters. He became the Special Assistant to Sir Kieran Prendergast, U.N Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs in 2001, and was on a short U.N. assignment in Iraq at the time of the Canal Hotel bombing.
In 1998-2000, Mr. Hooper worked as Senior Adviser at the Norwegian Institute for Applied Social Sciences (Fafo) where he helped establish its Program for International Cooperation and Conflict Resolution. He was also the Founding Director of the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum (CPPF) at the Social Science Research Council in New York.
The first recipient of this fellowship, which is funded by an anonymous donor, is Walter Kemp, Director for Europe and Central Asia at IPI’s Vienna headquarters.
Prior to joining IPI in 2010, Dr. Kemp served for four years as the spokesman and speechwriter in the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). From 1996 to 2006, he worked for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), where he served as the Senior Adviser to the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, among other positions. Dr. Kemp is the author of several books, including Nationalism and Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (1999) and Quiet Diplomacy in Action (2001).
The Global Observatory
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Key Global Events to Watch in May
A list of key upcoming meetings and events with implications for global affairs.
The Global Observatory is a new website by IPI, providing timely analysis on peace and security issues, interviews with leading policymakers, interactive maps, and more.
Recent Events
May 10, 2012
Arbour: What the Rule of Law Means
“In my understanding of the rule of law, fundamentally, what the rule of law means is that it embraces the principle of equality before the law,” Louise Arbour, president of the International Crisis Group (ICG), told an IPI audience on May 10, 2012. Ms. Arbour outlined that this means that no one is above the law and everyone has both equal protection and equal benefit of the law. 
May 03, 2012
Shachtman: Cyber Threats Akin to South Bronx, Not Pearl Harbor
“There’s not a danger of a cyber Pearl Harbor… it’s more like the South Bronx circa 1999, where there’s a danger that it becomes such a tough neighborhood that no one wants to set up shop there and people move out,” Noah Shachtman, editor of the Danger Room blog at Wired magazine and non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution, told an IPI audience at a panel on cyber security on May 3, 2011.
April 27, 2012
Preventing Conflicts in Africa: The Role of Early Warning and Response Systems
An April 27th roundtable discussion at IPI titled “Preventing Conflicts in Africa: The Role of Early Warning and Response Systems” examined the progress, prospects and challenges of regional and international early warning and response mechanisms to monitor, anticipate, and mitigate potential conflict situations in Africa.