New Canaan Library and the UN Committee of New Canaan are pleased to announce that Sarah Chayes, Senior Fellow in Carnegie’s Democracy and Rule of Law Program and author of Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security, is guest speaker for the 10th Annual Anita Houston Lecture.
The lecture will be held on Sunday, January 15, 2017 at 2 p.m. in the Library’s Adrian Lamb Room. Please register for this program online at newcanaanlibrary.org.
New Canaan Library and the UN Committee are honored to welcome Ms. Chayes. As Senior Fellow, Democracy and Rule of Law Program for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Washington, D.C.) and a former award winning journalist for National Public Radio, as well as a miltary advisor, Chayes has a unique perspective and much to impart on the lecture’s topic. As well as speaking about her experiences in the Middle East, she will touch upon her Los Angeles Times Book Prize winning narrative, Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security. Copies of the book will be available for purchase, courtesy of Elm Street Books.
Sarah Chayes is Senior Fellow in Democracy and Rule of Law Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and author of Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security (W.W. Norton, 2015), which won the 2016 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her work explores how severe corruption can help prompt such crises as terrorism, revolutions and their violent aftermaths, and environmental degradation. Before joining Carnegie, Ms. Chayes served as special assistant to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen. She participated in cabinet-level decision-making on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Arab Spring, and traveled with Admiral Mullen frequently to these regions. After covering the fall of the Taliban for National Public Radio, Chayes left journalism in 2002 to settle in Kandahar, Afghanistan until she took a post advising commanders of the international military force in Kabul in 2009. From 1996 to 2001, Ms. Chayes was NPR’s Paris correspondent. She shared the 1999 Foreign Press Club and Sigma Delta Chi awards for her work on the Kosovo conflict.
For over 50 years, until her death in March, 2007, Anita Houston was so prominent an advocate for the United Nations and international cooperation among nations that she was designated by official Town Proclamation on her 90th birthday as “New Canaan’s Ambassador for World Affairs.” In tribute to Anita for her long service as chairperson and member of the UN Committee of New Canaan and head of her UN Study Group, friends and family started a fund for an annual lecture series on topics related to international affairs and the United Nations.