To preserve the stories and the friendship of the EastWest Institute’s (EWI) global community, the EWI Society actively collects oral histories from policymakers, donors, board members and staff as well as provides an engagement platform for EWI alumni and friends. These histories are archived and made accessible by the College of Charleston Libraries’ Lowcountry Oral History Initiative.
In this interview, Farwa Aamer describes her role as a researcher and director with the East-West Institute and the Stimson Center. Aamer has experience analyzing issues of transboundary water issues in South Asia and the Himalayas, with a particular emphasis on women’s rights and water security. As part of the EWI’s commitment to Track II diplomacy, she has organized a number of conferences and summits focused on these issues, bringing community leaders together from India and Pakistan in particular. In this interview, Aamer also discusses growing up in Karachi, Pakistan and her family’s influence on her career. She is the first woman in her family to go to university abroad. Before joining EWI, Aamer also studied and worked in the fields of international investment and development.
In this interview, Robert (Bob) Campbell III recalls his childhood, his work, and his political experiences growing up and living in Texas, along with his professional engagement with the East West Institute. Campbell grew up in San Antonio and his family had many personal and business connections with the US military and local political scene. He had an early interest in politics. After graduating from Austin College in 1971, and being part of the inaugural class of the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, Campbell took a job with Deloitte, a management consulting firm. He worked in Washington D.C. for several years before returning to Texas, with his wife and children. Campbell worked at Deloitte from 1973 and 2012 and managed some of the firms most important public sector projects. He was managing partner of the US Public Sector and co-founder of Deloitte’s Center for Cyber Innovation. These work experiences, at the intersection of the public and private sectors, introduced Campbell to the East West Institute’s leadership. In the early 2000s, in partnership with John Mroz and EWI, Campbell organized a series of cybersecurity summits attended by high-ranking officials from around the world, including Russia, China, and the United States. Upon retiring from Deloitte, Bob also became an Executive Committee member of the East West Institute and its Chair. In addition to his role on the EWI board, Bob has served on other prominent boards including chairman of the LBJ School of Public Affairs, the George HW Bush Foundation of US-China Relations, the Center of the Study of Race and Democracy-University of Texas at Austin, among others. In this interview, in addition to describing his many experiences, Campbell also discusses his approach to management and leadership, and how this connects with the mission of EWI.
Allen Collinsworth discusses in this interview how he came to work for the EastWest Institute after starting his career in banking on Wall Street. Interested in the transitioning economies in Eastern Europe and Eurasia in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, Allen started working for the EastWest Institute in the Private Sector Initiative, a program aimed at wedding private and public interest in the changing landscape in Europe in the 1990s. After Allen left EWI in 1999 to work in Turkey and Eurasia, he later returned to EWI as a member of the Board of Counselors. He discusses John Mroz’s unique leadership style and recommends that students of international relations seek opportunities to live in foreign countries.
Interview with James (Jim) Creighton, who was the Chief Operating Officer of the East West Institute from 2011-2015. After the death of John Mroz, he assumed the role of CEO. From 2015-2017 Jim Creighton was a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute. During his time at EWI, Creighton transitioned into different leadership positions, worked on the budgeting, the Sinai Initiative and supported the efforts in growing the cybersecurity program and used his expertise in Afghanistan to strengthen EWI works in the Middle East. Jim Creighton’s interview offers insights into the leadership and communication strategies of EWI, the role that John Mroz played in the organization and thorough analysis of his communication and leadership style. In addition, Jim Creighton discusses global conflicts and relationships ranging from the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 up to the contemporary with a focus on Afghanistan, Egypt, Saudi-Arabia, China, and Japan. The interview closes with a discussion of Creighton’s forthcoming book “Coalition Leadership: Combined Team Uruzgan 2010-2011” and the role of foreign languages and cultural competencies for students interested in international relations.
In this interview, Jonathan Fanton recounts his experiences engaging the fight for human rights, at home and abroad. Fanton also has had a long and respected career in academia, serving as Special Assistant to the President of Yale University, Vice President of Planning at the University of Chicago, and President of the New School for Social Research for 17 years in New York. As an historian and author, Fanton has published on the relationship between civil society and universities. Universities, he argues, are key incubators of creative thought and democracy. In addition to his university career, Fanton has served as board chair for organizations such as Human Rights Watch, and President of the John D. and Catherine MacArthur Foundation. In this interview, in particular, Fanton explains how he first became involved in the organization Human Rights Watch during the 1980s, as democracy movements began to grow in Eastern Europe, and later, how he joined the East-West Institute’s board.
Marshall Goldsmith and the interviewer discuss the work he did with John Mroz to refine and develop the latter’s leadership style and improve the organizational management of the EastWest Institute. Marshall shares attributes he thinks are important for the global leaders of tomorrow.
Sasha Havlicek recalls in this interview her work with community-level cross-border cooperation at EWI. While at the Institute, she worked on many transnational projects dedicated to war resolution and community diplomacy in high-conflict areas, including the former Yugoslavia and Kaliningrad oblast. She describes how groundbreaking the approach was, and how her time at the EastWest Institute influenced her subsequent career in conflict resolution and cross-border community building in Europe.
Jeffrey (Jeff) Helsing joined the International Peace Academy while in graduate school at Columbia University, where he became John Mroz’s research assistant and accompanied Mroz on various trips to Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. Helsing was one of the original employees of the EastWest Institute at its founding, and helped coordinate the Institute’s first conference in Romania in 1983. Later, he went on to complete his Ph.D. and to a successful career at the United States Institute for Peace. He concludes the interview with advice for students of international relations.
In this interview, Vazil Hudak describes key programs that the EastWest Institute undertook in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s and early 2000s, including cross-border cooperation programs funded through the Carpathian Foundation. He explains the importance of bottom-up cooperation efforts in fostering dialogue and points to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia as evidence of what can happen without consistent efforts at cooperation and dialogue. He also talks about the Bratislava Process, and the Central Asia Leadership Academy, important programs that marked the EastWest Institute’s efforts moving eastward throughout the decades.
In this interview, Vazil Hudak describes how he became involved in the EastWest Institute after having served in the Czechoslovakian Army and the Czechoslovakian Foreign Ministry. He discusses joining the staff of the new EWI European Studies Center and helping to plan the 1991 Bardejov Conference, which many important global figures attended. He then discusses his work on building the Carpathian Foundation, a collaborative enterprise in the Carpathian region, which spans the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Ukraine, and Poland. He also shares stories of John Mroz’s leadership and of working to develop leadership programs in the Southeastern United States.
William (Bill) Ide relates in this oral history his time as general counsel for the EastWest Institute. Ide eventually became Co-Chairman of the Board of EWI, and, ultimately, oversaw the winding down of the Institution’s independent activity and the transition to the legacy center at the College of Charleston. He reflects on John Mroz’s ability to connect with people, and on Mroz’s ability to get stakeholders to see beyond their perceptions of foreign countries, developing empathy and unusual insight.
Wolfgang Ischinger talks about his decades-long relationship with the EastWest Institute, from meeting John Mroz at Tufts University during their graduate work, to attending EWI conferences with Hans-Dietrich Genscher, to his later work after German reunification with the Munich Security Conference. Ischinger relates many anecdotes from his life as a prominent West German diplomat during the late Cold War and offers insights into the importance of creative ideas in geopolitics.
Timothy (Tim) Johnson recounts his term as Dean of the School of Languages, Cultures, and World Affairs at the College of Charleston. He discusses his efforts to build global fluency for LCWA students, and the support he received from the College of Charleston administration and President Hsu for his plans. These plans were in the initial stages of development when C of C was approached by the EastWest Institute, and the resulting gift helped establish the Mroz Institute, and build a more ambitious program for the LCWA. Johnson tells the story of this gift, and talks about the future of LCWA.
In this interview, Karl Kaiser describes his many experiences and the motivations guiding his decades-long career as a researcher and political leader involved in international relations. Kaiser was born in Germany in 1934 and was profoundly shaped by his childhood during the Second World War and its aftermath. As a young man, he became deeply involved in East-West relations and activism calling for the end of authoritarian rule in Eastern Europe. He received his PhD in Political Science from Cologne University (1958), and subsequently taught for over two decades at the University of Bonn. He has also held numerous visiting and research positions at Harvard, most recently as a Fellow at the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship at the Kennedy School. Dr. Kaiser published hundreds of articles and fifty books on subjects ranging from German, British, French, and American foreign policies, to transatlantic and East-West relations, European integration, and Asian-European relations. For his efforts connecting research with diplomacy, he has received numerous awards including the Atlantic Award of NATO. Throughout this interview, Dr. Kaiser describes these various efforts, including his work with the East-West Institute. He goes into great detail explaining the context and personal commitments that kept him focused on European integration, democracy-building, and reconciliation despite old prejudices dividing the people of Europe and the Atlantic world.
Raymond Karam describes in this interview his career at the EastWest Institute and in Washington, D.C. As an intern at EWI in 2010, he became involved in planning the Institute’s board meeting in Abu Dhabi and, given his Arabic language skills, was soon hired to help develop the Institute’s growing Middle East programs. His work was mainly on developing a report on nuclear diplomacy and on cultivating contacts for a U.S.-Iran Track II dialogue. After leaving the Institute, he assumed a position at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, D.C.
Sandor Koles talks about his employment at the EastWest Institute, which began under the aegis of the Carpathian Foundation, an organization established with the help of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. The Carpathian Foundation aimed to develop Carpathian identity and civil society institutions in a region spanning five countries in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Koles discusses the work he did to foster cross-border cooperation, combat destructive nationalism, and institutionalize the Carpathian region as an arena for exchange and collaboration. He explains the challenges of running an NGO across five countries, and the changing political atmosphere in Eastern Europe at the start of the 21st century, as democratic transitions faced totalitarian opposition and poor funding.
Her Serene Highness Maria Pia Kothbauer, Ambassador of Lichtenstein to Austria, recalls in this interview her long career in diplomacy, particularly the critical years in Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War. She describes a board meeting she planned for the EastWest Institute in Vienna, and the particular style of dialogue that John Mroz specialized in. She also talks about the feeling of optimism in Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall and about the importance of international institutions.
In this interview, Robert Legvold discusses his decades-long efforts to study and engage in US-Soviet, and later US-Russian, relations, from the early 1960s into the present (2022). In particular, he describes his experiences and perspectives of Track II diplomacy. Robert grew up in the American midwest paying close attention to the events of the Cold War, and from those early lessons, he decided to focus his undergraduate and graduate studies on international relations. After dissertation research in West Africa in the late 1960s, analyzing the influence of the Soviet Union in the region, Robert’s interests expanded to a global analysis of US-Soviet relations. Under the mentorship of Marshal D. Schulman, a former US diplomat and scholar of Soviet studies, Robert became one of the foremost experts on diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. He taught at Tufts University in the Department of Political for over a decade, before relocating to Columbia University to fill the teaching position previously held by his mentor, Marshal Schulman. Robert recounts, in this interview, his first-hand experience of the Cold War, its end in the early 1990s, and the dangers of increasing tensions between the United States and Russia in the twenty-first century.
Sonja Licht explains how she became involved with the EastWest Institute during her long career in democratic and civil society activism in Belgrade. She recounts her and her husband’s experiences with the 1968 student uprisings, their proscription under Tito’s regime and the time her husband spent in prison, her antiwar activism under Slobodan Milosevic, and the opposition unification efforts of the Bratislava Process. She discusses the importance of dialogue and unification to ensure that democratic backsliding does not happen.
Sergey Maksimenko recalls his time working at, and eventually running, the EastWest Institute center in Kiev, Ukraine. Maksimenko helped develop EWI’s programs for municipal governance in Ukraine, supporting Ukraine’s ongoing post-Soviet transition. Maksimenko relates how Mroz felt it was important for the West to support Ukraine’s independence from Russia, and how he personally worked to encourage the growth of civil society in Ukraine.
Mark Maletz shares in this interview how he met John Mroz during a Harvard Business School workshop for organizations considering major changes. EWI was at the cusp of a transformation, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Maletz recounts how he was struck by John Mroz’s leadership style and agreed to become involved with EWI’s Board of Directors, eventually spearheading the Institute’s efforts to develop young leaders in the Middle East. Beyond his work with the Central Eurasian Leadership Academy, Maletz talks about his investment in EWI’s growth and future after John’s death.
Justin McMahan relates his exposure to the EastWest Institute and how it shaped his life, from encountering John Mroz as a teenager with his father at Aspen Group meetings, to meeting John Mroz as a young adult and leaving his job at a Big Four accounting firm to work for EWI, to his later career and international experience. He talks about EWI’s work in the early 2000s, especially in relation to China, and his own career choices between Wall Street and the U.S. State Department. He also reflects on John Mroz’s unique leadership qualities and the importance of Track-II diplomacy.
In this interview, Karen Mroz discusses the final years of the EastWest Institute, chronicling how fundraising and political challenges made the work of the Institute increasingly difficult, despite the great need for the services EWI provided. After conversations with Ross Perot, Jr., and other prominent members of the Board, EWI’s leadership decided to create a legacy institute at the College of Charleston, establishing a center that would teach John Mroz’s leadership and diplomacy style to future generations of global leaders.
In this Interview, Karen Linehan Mroz discussing the early founding of the EastWest Institute, from initial conversations between John Edwin Mroz and Ira Wallach, to the first classes of Resident Fellows from Eastern Europe at the height of the Cold War. Karen explains some of John’s approaches to international relations and Track II diplomacy.
In this interview, Karen Linehan Mroz explores the growth of the EastWest Institute during the 1980s and 1990s, set in the context of historical changes occurring at the end of the Cold War. Karen discusses the complicated political environment in Eastern Europe in the twighlight years of the Cold War and how things shifted after the fall of the Soviet Union. She goes on to explain how her career moved away from Europe, as she went on to work in the Middle East with UNRWA and the Middle East Children’s Institute.
Cameron Munter recalls his long career in the United States Foreign Service and his decades-long contact with John Mroz and the EastWest Institute. Munter served as EWI’s CEO after Mroz’s death, and he discusses the evolution of the Institute in the mid-2010s as well as the challenges it faced in the United States from a changing philanthropic culture and increasing political polarization. Munter concludes with reflections on the importance of public diplomacy and his assessment of future prospects for organizations like EWI.
Interview with Dr. Eva Nowotny (Vienna, Austria), who was an Austrian foreign service officer and played a crucial role in the Resident Fellows program of EWI. She suggested Austrian visiting fellows for the Resident Fellows program and was herself a board member of EWI and one of the first class of Visiting Fellows. In the late 1970s early 1980s, Nowotny worked with United Nations in New York and was assigned to Middle East affairs and Security Council affairs in the Austrian mission. During her time in New York, Nowotny started working with John Mroz. She discussed in-depth John Mroz’s leadership style and the Institute’s achievements. One of those was the dependence in Czechoslovakia, a workshop on women in politics, and another workshop in Warsaw with Sam Huntington, which focused on questions of transition, institution building, and democratic forms of government. Later in 1983, she was asked to join the Prime Minister of the Federal Chancellor in Austria as a foreign policy advisor. Nowotny stayed in that role until 1992 when she went to her first ambassadorial appointment in France. In addition to discussing her involvement with EWI, Nowotny reflects upon her diplomatic career, her role, and her experience as an Ambassador and in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Austria after the Cold War. During the interview, Nowotny stresses the importance of creating dialogue, listening, and collaboration, as guiding principles for a successful diplomatic career in a bilateral setting. In addition, Nowotny discusses the role of “neutrality” in Austrian history and as a guiding principle for Austria’s role in the EU and for EWI. The interview closes with a reflection on the role of higher education and future challenges and opportunities for universities.
In this interview, Joseph Nye recalls some of his early inspirations for starting a career in international relations and how his academic work intersected with and supported his diplomatic efforts, including with the East-West Institute. Born in 1937 in South Orange, New Jersey, Nye attended Princeton University as an undergraduate before winning a Rhodes Scholarship. It was at Oxford, meeting students from around the world and particularly the decolonizing countries, that Nye began to develop his research interests. In 1964, he earned his PhD in Political Science from Harvard University, where he also began his career as professor of government (1964-1995). Professor Nye is the author of numerous books, including The Future of Power, The Power Game: A Washington Novel, and Do Morals Matters? He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the British Academy, and the American Academy of Diplomacy. He has also served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Chair of the National Intelligence Council, and a Deputy Under Secretary of State, and won distinguished service awards from all three US agencies. In a recent survey of international relations scholars, he was ranked as the most influential scholar on American foreign policy, and in 2011, Foreign Policy named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers.
Laurent Roux relates his experiences on the Board of Directors for the EastWest Institute, recalling discussions with John Mroz around the Russian invasion of Georgia, military-to-military talks with Chinese leadership, and the importance of dialogue and Track-II diplomacy.
In this interview, Hilton Charles Smith Jr. recalls his initial engagement with the EastWest Institute and why he and his family were drawn to the organization and its commitment to Track II diplomacy. Hilton grew up in Washington D.C. and his family had many personal and business connections in the Middle East. He had an early interest in international relations. After graduating from Georgetown University in 1976, Hilton took a job at the World Bank and worked there for two years focused on industrial projects. Eventually, he and his family moved to Charleston, South Carolina where he began to work in real estate development and management. Through his philanthropic efforts, Hilton has helped forge important partnerships with the EastWest Institute, private donors, and the College of Charleston. Hilton outlines some of these activities in this interview, and explains why he believes they are important to the future of higher education and international relations. As Hilton explains, the founder of EWI, John Mroz, was also essential in conceptualizing and founding the School of Languages, Cultures, and World Affairs (LCWA) at the College of Charleston.
In this interview, Mitchell Sonkin, who served as legal counsel to the EastWest Institute for many years, discusses his legal career in non-profit organizations, the U.S. federal government, and the corporate world. Having watched EWI grow since its inception, Sonkin took on a variety of challenges over the years, from brokering leases on offices to ensuring that EWI was taking on no liabilities in its many international endeavors. Sonkin recalls several memorable EWI board meetings, particularly one in Potsdam, East Germany, right before the end of the Cold War, and another in the far north of Russia. He explains that John Mroz’s ability to connect with people as human beings was part of what made EWI so unique among similar organizations.