The Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination will hold a lunch seminar, "Transition in Afghanistan," on Monday, February 12, 2018, at 12:00 p.m. in the LISD Map Room (019 Bendheim Hall). Professor William Maley, Professor of Diplomacy at the Australian National University, and LISD’s visiting senior practitioner and former German Ambassador to Afghanistan, Amb. Hans-Ulrich Seidt, will lead a conversation on Afghanistan. The discussion will focus on the paradigms that have created significant challenges in the nation’s transitional period, with reference to the wider geopolitical neighborhood. These themes are also the subject of Maley’s forthcoming book, Transition in Afghanistan: Hope, Despair and the Limits of Statebuilding. The lunch is open to Princeton University faculty and students only. To attend, RSVP to Angella Sandford.

William Maley (AM) is Professor of Diplomacy at the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy, Australian National University, where he served as Foundation Director from 2003 to 2014. In 2002, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM). In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (FASSA). Maley taught for many years in the School of Politics at ANU, as well as at University College, University of New South Wales, and the Australian Defence Force Academy. He has served as a Visiting Professor at the Russian Diplomatic Academy, a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde, and a Visiting Research Fellow in the Refugee Studies Programme at Oxford University. Maley is a Barrister of the High Court of Australia, Vice-President of the Refugee Council of Australia, and a member of the Australian Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP). He is also a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Global Responsibility to Protect, and of the International Advisory Board of the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University. Maley's most recent book are Transition in Afghanistan: Hope, Despair and the Limits of Statebuilding (Routledge, available spring 2018) and What Is a Refugee? (Oxford University Press, 2016), and he has written extensively on diplomacy and on Afghanistan. His other books include, Global Governance and Diplomacy: Worlds Apart? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), Rescuing Afghanistan (Hurst & Co., 2006), From Civil Strife to Civil Society: Civil and Military Responsibilities in Disrupted States (United Nations University Press, 2003), The Afghanistan Wars (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, 2009), Fundamentalism Reborn? Afghanistan and the Taliban (editor, New York University Press, 1998, 2001); Russia in Search of its Future (Cambridge University Press, 1995), Regime Change in Afghanistan: Foreign Intervention and the Politics of Legitimacy (Westview Press, 1991), Political Order in Post-Communist Afghanistan (Lynne Rienner, 1992); and The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan (co-editor, Cambridge University Press, 1989).

Ambassador Hans-Ulrich Seidt has served most recently as Inspector General of the German Foreign Office. Seidt was Director General for Culture and Communication of the German Foreign Office from 2012 to 2014 and Germany’s ambassador to Korea from 2009 to 2012. He served as Germany’s ambassador to Afghanistan from 2006 to 2008. His diplomatic postings have included Moscow, Nairobi, Brussels NATO, and Washington, DC. During the Balkan wars Seidt served from 1994 to 1997 as deputy director of the Special Task Force Bosnia of the German government. Seidt studied law, history, and international relations at the universities of Tübingen, Geneva, Bonn, and at the Ecole Nationale d’Administration in Paris. He passed both legal state examinations and received a PhD in contemporary history and international relations from Bonn University. He taught international relations at the Otto-Suhr-Institute at the Free University Berlin. Seidt is a member of the board and vice-chairman of the Dresden Cultural Foundation, a member of the board of the Swiss Afghanistan Institute/Bibliotheca Afghanica, and has received honorary doctorates from Valparaiso University (USA) and Chonnam National University (Gwangju, Korea).