Conflict and Reconciliation Expert Emma Sky

My Earliest Memory Was Wanting to Help End Wars

Emma Sky, OBE, is a British expert on conflict, reconciliation, and stability, who has worked mainly in the Middle East. The founding director of the International Leadership Center at the Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, which oversees the Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program, from 2007 to 2010, she served in Iraq as the political adviser to U.S. Army General Ray Odierno, and as the governorate coordinator of Kirkuk for the Coalition Provisional Authority from 2003 to 2004. Before interviewing her former colleague Steve Miska about what the U.S. owes our …

December 31, 2021

Leaving No One Behind—Interpreters Included

As Troop Withdrawal Looms, U.S. Military Veterans Call to Get Allies Out of Afghanistan and Iraq Safely

by Sarah Rothbard | June 2, 2021

Four months before the last American servicemembers withdraw from Afghanistan, retired U.S. Army Colonel Steve Miska spoke at a Zócalo/Pacific Council/USVAA event the day after Memorial Day. The topic: what …

The Navy Gave a Gay Man a Home—And a ‘Bad Paper’ Discharge That Haunted Him for Decades

A Vietnam War Veteran Reflects on 50 Years of Fighting for People Like Himself and The Group He Loved

by Dave Lara | November 11, 2020

I was 17 when I joined the Navy in 1965. My family was poor, and I was failing out of high school. Four years in the Navy felt like my …

Seeking a New Kind of Leader for the ‘War’ Against COVID-19

Military-Inspired Political Charisma Doesn’t Work Anymore

by David A. Bell | July 29, 2020

When COVID-19 began its surge in March, politicians worldwide rushed to cast themselves in a familiar role. Donald Trump described himself as a “wartime president.” Emmanuel Macron of France solemnly …

Why California Should Mourn the Loss of Topgun

The Navy's School for Elite Pilots, Once Based in San Diego, Taught Us to Deal With Technological Failure

by Joe Mathews | October 15, 2019

Bring back Topgun!

By that, I do not mean Top Gun, the cliché-ridden, late-Cold War, Tom Cruise film about speed-crazy Naval fighter pilots that still defines San Diego in the public …

How Hawai‘i Inspired the Advance of Aviation

In the 1920s, the Contest to Cross the Ocean and Reach the Islands Was Deadly—and Transformational

by Jason Ryan | January 4, 2019

Approximately 20 million airline passengers traveled through Hawaiian airports last year. That might seem like a lot of people on a couple of small Pacific islands, but Hawai‘i hardly broke …

military