2017
The Track Two IAN program also held a conference at Esalen in 2017. This was also a planning conference. We received updates from the many projects our network is engaged with – from Huda Abuarquob’s Women Wage Peace and an announcement of her Laudato Si award from the Vatican – to Souli Khatib whose Combatants for Peace is again nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Stories of reconciliation, new friendships and extraordinary giving were abundant and provided much inspiration. The group has agreed to hold a large conference in Northern Africa in 2019 to convene practitioners of the Human Potential and peacebuilding practices to work together, learn from one another and put firmly in place Track Two’s approach to citizen diplomacy in this ever more fractured world.
In 2017 the Russian-American Program held a small conference in Saint Petersburg, Russia to plan for a larger conference to be held in 2018. Fourteen members of our Russia group spent five days calling on Universities, meeting young high school students, visiting cultural venues and developing a plan and topic for the 2018 conference. The 2018 conference, to be titled “Next Generations: A discussion of Russian-American Relations,” will bring together Russian and American students from both high schools and universities to delve into the question, “Whom do we trust?” We held a short, moderated discussion amongst five high school students – four American and one Russian. One interesting observation when asked where they get their news: “Russian young people, Uliyana said, trust the voices on the Internet because they “are dealing with our problems every day.” Despite their different nationalities, the young Americans felt much the same. Emma gets her news from YouTube, Instagram and news apps on her phone. Another American, Katia, gets her news from Facebook, while Ty will get his news from many online places but he does check the sources. Gabby acknowledged that she gets her news by watching social satire.
On April 9 – 14, 2017, Esalen Institute and TRACK TWO: An Institute for Citizen Diplomacy joined colleagues from Russia and the US for a planning conference in New York to prepare for a Russian American Project conference to be held in St. Petersburg in September 2017. In consideration of the increasingly worsening relations between the United States and Russia and mindful of the undercurrents in the government circles of both nations, a renewed need for citizen diplomacy has emerged. Three distinct Projects emerged from this planning session: 1) a Yeltsin visit archive transfer; 2) a possible “Spacebridge”-style media production; and 3) a conference in St. Petersburg in mid-September to focus on youth and their perceptions regarding Russia – US relations.