Talked about strengthening kplu community resilience. This took place in Southern California. Its about an hour 20 minutes. Good afternoon. And welcome to the first monday, actually the first monday working in january. This is it a partnership of three organizations. My name is adam powell. I am the director of washington operations of the university of Southern California center for communication leadership and policy. And also president of the Public Diplomacy counsel. Those are two of the partners in these monthly events. The third is the Public Diplomacy alumni situation and plea pleased to have that president here. Its my pleasure to welcome you. And highlight three events. Office of the historian of the department of state is putting out the volume on the Foreign Relations of the United States, the documents Public Diplomacy from 1961 to 1963, which is the kennedy period when many of us date back to. They are going to be releasing it at decor house, 20 at the door, but you do have to sign up in advance. And i think it will be a very interesting exploration of Public Diplomacy. Secondly one of the things they do is provide awards fort current great Public Diplomacy work that department of state Public Diplomacy officers are doing. We give the awards in may. And we are beginning to request nominations through the state department over the next month or so. And i would ask any of you with contacts right now in the field to encourage them to nominate their people doing good work for that award. And if any of you who are members or would like to consider being members of pda would contribute to the award fund, you are more than welcome. Thirdly, on february 12th at noon we will have our Lunch Program over at decor house called democracy and human rights and diplomacy. And we look forward to as many of you as possible coming. You would get full information if you were nems in our newsletter which will be arriving on your doorstep january 22. Also digitally. So thanks very much. Thanks, cynthia. And we have a Fourth Organization which has been essential these six years of these programs. And that is the American Foreign service association, which has graciously hosted these events for six years. But today cities combatting violent extremism. Our speaker has held a number of position ns the state department and school teacher, contributed articles to newspapers, and he is someone who holds three advanced degrees. He has one from Johns Hopkins in international relations. He has one from Northwestern School in journalism. And one from the university of Southern California in Public Diplomacy. So mike did you hauff in, the f yours. Thanks so much. [ applause ] [ inaudible ] there is a price to pay with that education. I want to thank adam and Public Diplomacy council to inviting me to speak today and thank you for showing up. I know the weather has warmed up. Can you hear me now . No. No . Should i it helps if the mic is turned on. Can you hear me now . Yes. All right. Thank you so much for coming. I know the weather warmed up a little bit but obviously its still pretty cold. I would like to thank adam and the Public Diplomacy council for inviting me to speak and thank you for being here. We have la Diverse Group of people in the audience so ill try to keep the jargon and acronyms to a minimum. But if there is anything that needs clarification, please let me know. And obviously well have a q a session at the end. If for some reason you dont have a clans to ahance to ask m question, look me up on twitter and i can respond there as well. I want to begin by talking about the last couple of years in terms of countering violent extremism. We have seen a disturbing up tick in the number of mass casualty incidents in cities. Many has been perpetrated by isis and supporters. Prior to november 2015, isis was urging supporters to come to the socalled caliphate in syria and iraq. Tens of thousands of men and women answer that call, but now they ask them to commit acts in their own communities using whatever means necessary. The attacks is meant to show the diversity of the eye adviisis. Some use firearms and knives and other use vehicles to kill and injury dozens of people. At the state department, we are both proactive in defeating isis. We train Law Enforcement in how to detect terrorist plots. This is what we refer to as ct. We often say we cannot arrest our way out of the problem. Which is why countering violet extremism is so important. Cve is umbrella term for range of activities focused on prevention, intervention, and rehabilitation, reintegration. Youll hear some people building against violent extremism. The focus here is the actual activities directed towards countering isis and other groups. There are four basic principles of cbe efforts italy. First efforts internationally. First achieve the goals. Second we need to encourage the various branches of government to work together. The ministry of health and education is critical partners in this effort. We also need to encourage governments to partner with Civil Society which requires a considerable amount of trust. Third, we need stakeholders to share practices, good practices with each other. We say good not best practices, because certainly no one has found a way to absolutely counter prevent violent extremism. While every community is unique, there is a lot someone in lebanon can learn from someone in montreal and viceversa. Also need the good practices insurance stewalized so when the Editor Community leader takes a different position when they move on, we need someone who can take their place and pick up where they left off. Lastly, we need to bring more stakeholders into the fold. At the most greenain u lar effo we need to fight against it. We need coaches, council loriord religious leaders to get involved. If its training an at risk individual later on they will resist a recruitment pitch of a terrorist organization. One way we try to do is Strong Cities. Created in 2015 network started with 25 members and now has 125. Its first Global Network for cities focused on countering violent he can tremmism. Not only members face the threat from isis. Some from the far right and some threats from the far left. There are currently 10 u. S. Members of the Strong Cities network. Members connect online and in person through workshops. In annual global meetings and exchanges. United states and several other governments support it and run through the london based institute for Strategic Dialogue. The networks policies are determined by the 26 members steering committee. In addition to our direct support of sen, my office works closely with the state Departments InternationalLeadership Program to to support in the network. In march 2016 inaugural sen members to the United States for three weeks. Such exchanges help expose Exchange Visitors to good practices in the u. S. , and they also help spread awareness about scn among cities. Because scn has multiple events around the world there are numerous opportunities for members of the multi country exchanges to interact. Its essentially built in alumni network. In fact five originally members keep in touch on facebook and have collaborated with each other on their work. In may 2016, anatolia and turkey hosted the meeting. About 240 people from 20 countries attended this event which highlighted diversity of the network. We had speakers there talking about july 2015 attack that killed five military members at recruiting station in chat a noog a. We had a mayor talk about his experience about being abducted from bow cowhoran. We also had people talking about other topics. A year later hosted second and youll. This time 500 people from 50 countries attended. We had mayor, and los angeles deputy, and delegations from las vegas, louisville and san diego in attendance. To the right, right over here, we have the mayor hans ill talk about him a little bit in the slide. Its a city just north of brussels in belgium id like to talk about our City Pair Program which has been around since 2011. Partnership between the state department and Homeland Security office of civil rights and liberties. This two way Exchange Program connected about 20 countries around the world. International cities first, then we work with dhs to identify, excuse me, and we work with dhs to identify the appropriate u. S. Partner city. We try to identify cities with complimentary skill sets and those express interest in maintaining connections beyond the exchange. These cities arent necessarily part of the Strong Cities network. Although some of them are, and we certainly those who are not we encourage them to join. One point i want to mention is when people think of cities to partner with international cities, the first one may be like los angeles or minneapolis, the problem is when you have delegations going to the same city, thats taxing on their schedules. We want connections that people who have the time, the capacity to engage their International Counterparts. So lets say today we Exchange Business cards. We want connections where when we introduce them to their u. S. Counterparts, they have the ability and interest in following up and forming partnerships that as you know require a lot of time and effort. Each delegation has five to nine people and has someone from mayor office, and religious leader and representatives from society. One delegation will spend about a week in the other city meeting with the range of stakeholders and a few months later the two cities will trade roles. Its hard to quantify the success of the program, but in one instance we can. In 2014 state and dhs partnered with columbus ohio. They once had the highest per capita number of people departing from their city to syria and iraq. After updating their Community Engagement strategy following the exchange, the departure suddenly stopped. We recognize that there are multiple factors involved. But we have heard from several cities how these exchanges have helped. They eventually joined scn and now speaks with mayors around the world. One thing i want to note about the exchange, its a relatively small municipality, we were able to bring the mayor and police chief, they were able to participate in this exchange. Obviously, earlier this year we did an exchange between london, excuse me last year we did an exchange between london and launlos angeles, it was not feasible to ask the may ors to participate in that exchange. But we were able to get the deputy may tear mayor of los angeles and value to do smaller cities. These exchanges may have more of an impact. And its not to say they dont have impact with larger cities. In december 2016, we partnered with orlando and tampa. We actually had this exchange planned well before the pulse nightclub attack. There was nothing that we knew about a threat there. It just so happened that they were very good at Community Engagement and that was something that we wanted to highlight with the delegation from marseille. With this one we arranged meeting which complemented with workers on the ground. This also allows us to put us on the radar who can champion this issue better than i can. And one thing i do want to note about mayor, hes been very gener generous with his time. We had someone come from canada and had a meeting scheduled with the Mayors Office and he decided when he saw that this group was in, he decided to meet with them and spoke to them for about an hour. So for a mayor of major u. S. City, thats extraordinarily that commitment to this issue. This past december we brought someone from manchester, both cities have experienced major terrorist attacks. Manchester wanted to hear about boston their resill taience bom. Some have never worked together so they developed new programming for boston efforts to engage at risk youth. I was there. We visited a gymnasium that trains people to become personal trainers, and mentoring component to that so that was one example that the delegation from manchester really excited about the program and not to say they are necessarily going to develop a program exactly like that, but they were inspired by that. And then as we speak, adele gauges from boston is traveling to manchester for the second half of that exchange. Adele gauges. In april, we brought members to the u. S. These two countries have had the highest number of capita depart for syria and iraq. Western balkins also account for onethird of the membership. This exchange exposed them to good practices in the u. S. And also helped them connect to each other. We chose to send this delegation to tennessee and georgia to learn about integration in the civil rights movement. Met with the mayors in these cities and visitsed atlanta. One thing i would like to point out, rather obvious, but cities are not necessarily comparable to their large cities are not comparable to our large cities. So it didnt make sense smaller countries to go to big cities. N not to say that atlanta is not ha small city, but chat noog ha, they did have the opportunity to sit down, meet with the mayor, the police chief, everybody who is involved in the attack from two years ago. That was extraordinarily for this group and quite inspiring for them. Some of the members of the delegation, one has become a member of parliament. One is the National Coordinator for coso var. And one is minister of culture and sports. So weve also had some nice returns in terms of deliverables from that exchange. Id like to talk about the next steps. A few of the things that we are planning in the future. U. S. Conference of mayors. On january 24th, the state department is hosting a workshop for dough please particulmestic countries. We are going to expect about 40 to 50 mayors. This has been part of an ongoing relationship weve had with u. S. Conference of mayors. Ive attended. They meet twice a year. The one forum for all u. S. Mayors to get together, talk about cross cutting policy issues, and to network. And so when ive attended, im looking for cities that would be interested in hosting delegations. Ones that we work with, bureau of educational and Cultural Affairs on, identifying cities that would be good partners for the city peer program. And then hopefully, and we started doing this a little bit, sending u. S. Mayors overseas. A lot of u. S. Cities focus on international trade, foreign direct investment, but listening to mayors talk about their policy priorities it helps to identify opportunities for them to, if they have a program that they are trying to champion, well, you know, they are very open to sharing that internationally. And ill give you one example. Anaheim mayor tom tate, ive been speaking to him for last two years in the Conference Meeting in indianapolis june 2016. I learned about his city of kindness initiative. I didnt realize when i started talking to him that hes really good friends with the dalai lama and received support from lady gag a too. And when i asked him to travel to denmark for this meeting, part of my pitch to him was, hey, this an initiative a lot of other cities in other countries would be interested in it. The mayor of nashville when we brought the delegation there, the mayor has initiative called office of new americans where they help integrate newly arrived immigrants into society. So that was what helped us set up that meeting. So its just to say that listening to mayors and their priorities is critical for these partnerships. Next month we are having the mayors of louisville and anaheim to engage with india counterparts on the Strong Cities network. Right now we only have one member in india, mumbai, so hope to increase membership and get cities there more active on i would say more broader what we would call relevant. So theyll visit there. Mayor tate, he was so impressed at what he saw at the pleating last may, that he wants to launch a year long campaign. The Strong Cities network on kindness. And one thing ill note about this, not all cities violent extremism isnt a major concern for all cities. Granted there are attacks in places where its quite surprising like the town really small town in texas a couple months ago. But that being said, mayors are not going to allocate huge amounts of resources just because its the topic of the day or whatever. So its just to say that by investing or getting mayors to invest in social cohesion, kind of a no your neighbor kind of initiative, that is something that some cities can buy into. And you know its not going to upset advocacy groups or whatever. But thats just to say that this delegation its really important for us because its sending these high level mayors in priority country for us. So please follow twitter and ill update you guys on the progress of that. Next id like to talk to you about the south by southwest festival. This is it also partnership that developed from us engaging u. S. Conference of mayors. So we have two panels. One is local leadership in the wake of terror. That will feature the mayors of cities. Then im going to moderate a panel local efforts to counter violent extremism which will feature domestic Civil Society partners. And this is just to say, i mentioned chattanooga