Bosnia/Brčko: Back To The Future, A Simulation In Four Rounds
Participation Requirements
Advanced Registration on Eventbrite is required. Participants must attend both sessions. This event is not open to the public. GU students must provide their Georgetown email addresses to participate.
Event Details
Mandatory Simulation Pre-Brief | Friday, September 27 | 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM ET
Simulation Exercise | Saturday, September 28 | 8:30 AM – 4:30 PM ET
Join Georgetown University’s Master of Arts in Conflict Resolution and International Criminal Justice Initiative for a special learning exercise that will provide Georgetown University students unique insights on atrocity prevention, diplomacy, and decision-making in complex humanitarian crises. Participating students will be organized into five teams that will portray the roles of the U.S., the E.U. the U.N., Croatia, and NGO. Each team will be lead by an expert in diplomacy and/or atrocity response.
The simulation is designed to reflect what it would be like if we were to go to our government or NGO office one morning and turn on our computers. Before we have even finished our first cup of coffee, alerts and information begin popping up on screen. Suddenly, we’ve got to make sense of, and respond to, this flood of unexpected information.
The simulation is designed to allow students to wrestle with:
•Cascading information
•Limited time
•Information gaps, disinformation, contradictory information
•Distance (physical and technical)
•Limited expertise; (You are being asked to become instant experts on Bosnia and Brčko.)
•Traditional definitions of interest, bureaucratic culture, and our own hardwiring.
Participants must be prepared to attend both sessions in full! Attendees must arrive 15 minutes early to check-in and claim a seat. Both sessions will begin promptly at their scheduled time. Late arrivals will not be admitted. GU faculty, staff, and students only.
Participating Subject Matter Experts
Jim Finkel, Nonresident Fellow, Protecting Civilians in Conflict Program, Stimson Center
Jim Finkel is a Nonresident Fellow with the Protecting Civilians in Conflict program, and the co-founder of the Atrocities Prevention Study Group. Finkel ended his 35-year career as a member of the senior civil service in May 2013. During the final 20 years of his service, he held positions that provided him an insider’s eye view of the evolution of U.S. policy toward the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities. Finkel assisted in crafting Presidential Study Directive 10 (PSD 10), which created the Interagency Atrocities Prevention Board, and frequently attended meetings throughout the first year of the Board’s activities. He also served as the Center for the Prevention of Genocide’s Leonard and Sophie Davis Genocide Prevention Fellow from 2013-2014. Finkel holds a Master’s degree in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a Bachelor of Arts from Rutgers College, Rutgers University.
Amb. (ret.) Alexander Arvizu, Director, Donald F. McHenry Fellows Program, Georgetown University
Ambassador (retired) Alexander Arvizu is the Director of the Donald F. McHenry Fellows Program at Georgetown University. In that capacity he works as an administrator, instructor, and mentor/coach for a select cohort of master’s degree students in the School of Foreign Service who have dedicated themselves to pursuing transformative careers in global public service. Mr. Arvizu spent 36 years as a Foreign Service officer with the Department of State, retiring in 2017 with the rank of Minister-Counselor. Most of his overseas assignments were in the Asia-Pacific region. As a young political officer in Seoul, Korea (1985-88) and Bangkok, Thailand (1991-94), he worked on US Embassy teams that supported democracy advocates and human rights activists. As the Deputy Chief of Mission in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (2000-03), Mr. Arvizu led US Embassy efforts to combat human trafficking and abusive practices with respect to overseas adoptions of abandoned infants. After returning to Bangkok as the Deputy Chief of Mission (2004-07), he directed the US Government crisis management response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami in December 2004. Mr. Arvizu’s last overseas assignment was as US Ambassador to Albania (2010-15). While in Tirana and traveling across the country, he developed great admiration and respect for the ongoing courage of the Albanian people to overcome the legacy of decades of harsh dictatorial communist rule.
Mike Brand, Director of Policy and Partnerships, Sudanese American Physicians Association (SAPA)
Mike Brand is an atrocities prevention, human rights, and peacebuilding professional with over 15 years of experience in policy, advocacy, organizing, and education. He has worked for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the United States, Rwanda, and South Sudan, and has done fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. Mike considers himself a “pracademic” with a foot in both the policy/programs world and academia. He currently serves as the Director of Policy and Partnerships with the Sudanese American Physicians Association (SAPA), a Sudanese-led humanitarian aid provider and diaspora membership organization. Mike is also an Adjunct Professor who teaches mass atrocities prevention and human rights courses at Georgetown University and the University of Connecticut. Driven by the Nelson Mandela quote, “It always seems impossible until it’s done,” Mike is an unabashed idealist who believes we can make the world a better place.
Ashleigh Landau, Research Associate, Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Dr. Ashleigh Landau is a research associate for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, where she is responsible for conducting quantitative and qualitative research on a wide range of issues related to atrocity prevention, with a primary focus on the Center’s Early Warning Project. Ashleigh is also an adjunct instructor at Georgetown University, where she teaches courses on mass atrocity prevention. In graduate school, Ashleigh and her colleagues at the University of Oregon developed a tool to measure and assess patterns of exclusionary thinking that are associated with mass killing. She has worked with government officials, practitioners, and NGOs on these topics. She has an ongoing partnership with the Oxford Consortium for Human Rights and is a recurring speaker at their workshops. She has also co-directed and implemented large-scale conflict-analysis simulations. Ashleigh has a BS in psychology from St. Mary’s College of California and an MS and PhD in social psychology from the University of Oregon.
Jonathan Mennuti, Foreign Service Officer, U.S. Department of State
Jonathan Mennuti is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, class of Minister Counselor. He served as the Principal Deputy High Representative in the Office of the High Representative in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina from June 2022 – July 2024. He served concurrently as the international Supervisor of Brčko District, a distinct administrative area within Bosnia and Herzegovina. Prior to arriving in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mr. Mennuti was acting Chief of Staff to the Under Secretary of State for Management and Director of Career Development and Assignments for the U.S. Foreign Service in Washington, D.C. Previous assignments in Washington include Deputy Executive Director for the Bureaus of European Affairs and International Organization Affairs, and Deputy Executive Director for the State Department’s Executive Secretariat. His overseas assignments include Istanbul, Turkey; Belgrade, Serbia; Almaty and Astana, Kazakhstan; and Moscow, Russia. Prior to joining the State Department, he worked for the U.S. Department of Commerce at the U.S. Embassies in Athens, Greece and Seoul, South Korea. Mr. Mennuti holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and a Master of Arts in International Relations from Yale University. He has studied Bosnian, Turkish, Serbian, Russian, and Greek.
Daniel Solomon, Research Associate, Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Daniel Solomon is a foreign policy researcher focused on the causes of political violence and the effects of international efforts to prevent and halt mass atrocities. He received his PhD from the Department of Government at Georgetown University, where his dissertation research focused on pogroms—informal, state-supported violence against specific groups—in Nazi Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Daniel’s research has been published or is forthcoming in a variety of academic journals, including Comparative Politics, Journal of Peace Research, Genocide Studies and Prevention, International Journal of Transitional Justice, and multiple edited volumes; and by media outlets including Dissent, The New Republic, and the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog. He has also taught undergraduate and graduate courses at Georgetown University and George Washington University in research methods, the history of concentration camps, and international atrocity prevention policy. Beyond his academic work, Daniel is a Research Associate at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, where his research focuses on international efforts to help prevent and respond to genocide and mass atrocities. He is also an Affiliated Scholar at the International Justice Lab at the College of William & Mary.
Amb. (ret.) Clint Williamson, Lead Coordinator, Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group
Ambassador Clint Williamson (Ret), currently serves as the Lead Coordinator of the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group (ACA) for Ukraine, a joint initiative of the United States, European Union and United Kingdom. He is the Senior Director for International Justice at Georgetown University. He also serves, on appointment by the International Court of Justice, as the Presiding Arbiter of the Brčko Arbitration Tribunal in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Previously, Ambassador Williamson served as Lead Prosecutor of the Brussels-based European Union Special Investigative Task Force (2011-2014), overseeing the investigation of atrocity crimes committed at the end of and in the aftermath of the 1999 war in Kosovo. As Special Expert to the Secretary-General of the United Nations (2010-2011), he coordinated diplomatic, policy and operational support from the UN and donor governments to the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Cambodia. During his service as a Trial Attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (1994-2001), he led the investigations of atrocity crimes committed by Serbian forces in the attacks on Vukovar and Dubrovnik, Croatia; by the paramilitary group led by Željko Ražnatović, aka “Arkan,” for crimes in Bosnia and Croatia, and by Serbian military and police forces for crimes in Kosovo. He authored indictments against the accused in all of these cases, including the 1999 case against then-Serbian president Slobodan Milošević – the first ever indictment brought against a sitting head of state by an international tribunal. Prior to his posting to the Yugoslavia tribunal, Ambassador Williamson served as a federal prosecutor in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the U.S Department of Justice and as an Assistant District Attorney in New Orleans. He is a graduate of the Tulane University School of Law and Louisiana Tech University.