Professor Gurcharan Singh was a beloved member of the Marymount Manhattan College community and founded the International Studies major in the early 1980s. After his passing in 2007, students, alumni, and friends joined together to create the Gurcharan Singh Memorial Fund. This fund was created to establish a lecture series and a student essay competition focusing on Professor Singh’s core values and fields of interests: mutual respect and understanding across cultures and nations, justice for the oppressed, and conflict resolution.
The 2018 Gurcharan Singh Lecture featured Alison Giffen, Director of The Center for Civilians in Conflict’s Peacekeeping program. Prior to joining CIVIC, Ms. Giffen served as the Senior Advisor for UN Peacekeeping with the US State Department’s International Organizations Affairs Bureau where she contributed to the drafting of the 2015 Presidential Policy Memorandum on U.S. Support to UN Peace Operations and facilitated its implementation across the US government.
In November 2015, the Obama administration appointed Robert Malley as its “point man” on the Middle East, leading the Middle East desk of the National Security Council. In November 2015, Malley was named as President Obama’s new special ISIS advisor and he served as Special Assistant to the President and White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf Region from 2015 to 2016.
Radhika Balakrishnan, Faculty Director, Center for Women’s Global Leadership, and Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers University, has a Ph.D. in Economics from Rutgers University. She is on the Board of the Center for Constitutional Rights and is a Commissioner for the Commission for Gender Equity for the City of New York.