NOTE: Advance registration is closed - tickets may be purchased at the door.

Diplomacy is an art and foreign policy is not short on challenges. The world is experiencing a 25-year peak in violent conflict, trapping millions of innocent families in cycles of poverty and displacement and leading to costly and prolonged military and humanitarian responses, challenging the U.S.’s role on the international stage.

Join us and hear from former U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker (and Mercy Corps board member) as he shares his thoughts on diplomacy and its role in the state and future of U.S. policy across the Middle East– from withdrawal in Afghanistan, conflict in Syria, proxy war in Yemen, and Iran’s role in the region, to the ongoing question of Saudi Arabia’s influence in a very complex geopolitical landscape.

Copresented by WorldOregon and Mercy Corps.

About Ryan Crocker
Ambassador Ryan Crocker is one of America’s most respected and honored diplomats, a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Crocker has served 6-terms as a U.S. Ambassador during some of the most tumultuous times in U.S. history with the Middle East, including surviving the 1983 embassy bombing in Beirut. In a foreign-service career that spanned four decades, Crocker served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait, and Lebanon, as well as serving as Dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. In 2013, Ambassador Crocker joined the Mercy Corps Board of Directors.