Diplomat Jim Patterson at International Student House Global Leadership Awards Gala 2014

Diplomat Jim Patterson with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel at the Great Hall of International Student House (ISH) DuPont Circle, Washington , DC. Oct. 16, 2014.  The event was ISH's Global Leadership Awards. Defense and security issues aside, we talked about Nebraska politics. During the Reagan administration, I was often sent to farm states to discuss farm and foreign policy. One of my destinations was Grand Island, Nebraska, for Husker Harvest Days. Hagel told me his grandmother lived in Grand island for 50 years. "As a politician in Nebraska," Hagel said, "I never missed attending Husker Harvest Days." 

Hagel's "job" at the event was to introduce Vice President Joe Biden. Hagel and wife, Lilibet, were Honorary Chairs of the event. Hagel, a former GOP senator, was a controversial nominee for Secretary of Defense because he was slow to "evolve" on LGBT issues. Log Cabin Republicans spent considerable resources to convince Senators not to confirm him for SecDef. Others were critical of him for perceived anti-Israeli views. He has largely avoided controversy as SecDef and is seen as an "outsider" of the John Kerry-Susan Rice-Obama "brain" trust.

Hagel served Nebraska in the US Senate from 1996-2008 and he served on the Foreign Relations Committee. He is a Vietnam vet and a double Purple Heart recipient. He supported fellow Vietnam vet Arizona Senator John McCain for the GOP presidential nomination in 2000. When George W. Bush was nominated and elected, Hagel was a critic of Bush's claim Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Vice President Joe Biden who spoke of his long friendship with Senator Richard Lugar on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.  Vice President Biden said there were "not enough Dick Lugars [in the Senate] to  face our global challenges." (Jim Note: I applauded and the audience joined in.)

Concerning America's changing demographics, Biden said being America is a value set based on the what we hold as self evident life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He noted that many of today's world crises are about ethnicity, religion, and other life circumstances. Biden called Lugar a global citizen and an exceptionally intelligent man and a man of simple truths. 

Biden credited Lugar and former Democratic Georgia Senator Sam Nunn with eliminating 7,6000 nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union, which may have prevented a nuclear war between Ukraine and Russia during their 2013/14 conflict. The Vice president said Lugar's contributions across the board on food security, foreign policy will reverberate for generations. He urged all to continue to engaged in global citizenship. He told the audience that when they stand next to Dick Lugar they will never stand next to a man of greater character. Biden read a congratulatory letter to Lugar from President Barack Obama.

Of Irish descent, Biden, a native of Scranton, PA who served 36 years as a US Senator from Delaware, looked at Lugar and quoted William Butler Yeats, "Think where man's glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends." 

Diplomat Jim Patterson with former US Senator Richard Lugar, Republican-Indiana, recipient of the Global Leadership Award from ISH for "advancing international dialogue, intercultural exchanges, and peaceful global citizenship."  

Lugar represented Indiana in the U.S. Senate from 1977-2013. During this time, he served as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1985-87, and from 2003-2007. From 2007 until his retirement in 2013, Senator Lugar was the Ranking Member of the Committee. Additionally, he twice served as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry. Prior to his election to the Senate, he was mayor of Indianapolis from 1968-1976. (Patterson lived in Indianapolis from 1982-84 and worked for the State of Indiana and held an elected Lawrence Township position with the Marion County Republican Party.) 

Senator Lugar is respected globally as an international statesman. He has been an exceptional leader in efforts to reduce  the threat of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. In 1991, he forged a bipartisan partnership with then Senator Sam Nunn, D-Georgia) to destroy these weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union. To date, the Nunn-Lugar program has deactivated more than 7,600 nuclear warheads that were once aimed at the United States.

   

After leaving the Senate, Senator Lugar created the Lugar Institute, a nonprofit organization that focuses on food and energy security, the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and effective bipartisan government. He also serves as a Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund. 

In his remarks, Lugar mentioned graduating Oxford, serving in the Navy and being Mayor of Indianapolis. He spoke of his pride in working on a bipartisan basis with his Senate colleagues and his peaceful constructive engagement with world leaders. He mentioned his Lugar Center is based in Washington DC. He said President Obama is a global leader. Being a global citizen, Lugar said, means a commitment to public service in the world, water, food security, fuel, governance, and human rights. He said leaders must listen and learn together whether they seek elected or appointed office. Those who reject ideas, with the mindset and character of "my way or the highway"will create disaster time and gain. (Jim Note: I led the applause on this.) 

Lugar said when he first when abroad he marveled at how the big the world is and how extraordinary the problems were. It is still true and he said he was happy to see so many in the room looking forward to meeting global challenges.

 Diplomat Jim Patterson with Lt. General Brent Scowcroft, a partner of the ISH Global Leadership Gala. Scowcroft served as National Security Adviser to Presidents Gerald R. Ford and George H. W. Bush. Scowcroft is a prolific author and among his books is A World Transformed, co-authored with Bush, received wide acclaim upon publication in 1999. The New York Times Book Review called it, "The most important book yet written about the end of the Cold War."  Eugene V. Rostow, in the Wall Street Journal, called it "Among the finest expositions of modern American foreign policy. . . . An excellent book."  Scowcroft is the subject of a new January 2015 book.

Reading a few pages from Time and Chance (University of Michigan, 1998) in the Borwick Room, International Student House. Author "James Cannon, formerly national affairs editor at Newsweek and Ford's domestic policy adviser, has written a superbly provocative and arresting biography that traces Ford's life from his July 4, 1913, birth in Omaha, Nebraska, to his September 8,1974, decision to pardon Nixon of the Watergate conspiracy." --Washington Post Book World.

The ISH bestowed its Global Citizen Award to the family of family of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, epresented by son Bahaa Hariri. The Hariri family has acheived international prominence in the fields of statesmanship, business and philanthropy.

The ISH Distinguished Alumni Award went to Abraham Akoi, an ISH resident, named Policy and management Officer in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development of South Sudan. His Excellency The Ambassador of Italy and Mrs. Claudio Bisogniero served as Diplomat Chairs for the event.

The International Student House of Washington DC began 78 years ago as an inspiration of the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) seeking greater peace though community among young people from across the globe. ISH has had over 10,000 residents, including me, since its founding.