Speakers T

Dr. Ronald Tammen is a Professor of International Relations and the Director of the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. Dr. Tammen specializes in world politics, with particular reference to power relationships among the great powers, present and future. His research currently centers on the emergence of China and India as potentially dominant nations and the challenge this presents to US foreign and national security policy.

Paul B. Thompson is W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State University. He was present at the founding of three professional societies for food ethics, and has served in an advisory capacity for the U.S. National Research Council, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Genome Canada, and Wageningen University and Research Institute in the Netherlands , among others. He edited the Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics and writes a blog for Thornapple Community Supported Agriculture in Lansing, MI.

Irene Tinker is a pioneer in the field of women in development. Prior to appointments at the University of California, Berkeley, she served as founding director of the Equity Policy Center, assistant director of ACTION and director of its policy & planning office, and founding director of the office of international science at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She also founded the International Center for Research on Women, and has held various committee assignments for the United Nations. Called the “The doyenne of street-food studies” by Gourmet magazine, Irene Tinker is one of the world’s foremost expert on food carts and urban street food and and is the author of Street Foods: Urban Food and Employment in Developing Countries (Oxford University Press), one of the definitive books on the subject.

Peter Tomsen was President George H. W. Bush’s Special Envoy on Afghanistan with the rank of Ambassador from 1989 to 1992. Tomsen entered the Foreign Service in 1967 and served in Thailand, Vietnam, India, China, and the Soviet Union. He was United States Deputy Chief of Mission in China from 1986 to 1989, deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian Affairs from 1992 to 1995, and the American Ambassador to Armenia from 1995 to 1998.

Dr. Nohad A. Toulan is Dean Emeritus of the College of Urban and Public Affairs at Portland State University, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Urban Studies and Planning. He is an internationally recognized urban planner who contributed extensively to the development of major urban and regional plans in the U.S., the Middle East, North and West Africa. Dr. Toulan has been an adviser to the United Nations Development Program and to local and foreign governments on development issues.

In 1978 Desmond Tutu was appointed general secretary of the South African Council of Churches and became a leading spokesperson for the rights of black South Africans. During the 1980s he played an unrivaled role in drawing national and international attention to the iniquities of apartheid, and in 1984 he won the Nobel Prize for Peace for his efforts.