Dean Rusk Lecture: George Butler and Lauren Van Metre

George Butler is an award-winning illustrator but has reinvented the role of the Artist Reporter drawing conflict zones, climate issues, humanitarian crisis and social issues for the news.  His drawings are done in situ - in pen, ink and watercolour.

 August 2012 George walked from Turkey across the border into Syria, where as a guest of the rebel Free Syrian Army, he drew the Civil War-damaged, small and empty town of Azaz.

A decade later he spent several days in the Metro in Kharkiv, Ukraine recording the lives of those that lived underground to avoid the Russian bombardment. These drawings can be seen in the National Archive at V&A Museum. (London) 

Over the last 15 years George has been commissioned to offer a deliberately slow alternative to the headlines.  He attaches his drawings to the personal testimonies of those that he meets and records their resolve and resilience alongside the vulnerability of their situations. This has included in a Leprosy Clinic in Nepal, a militia in Yemen, the Mass Graves in Bucha, a caesarean-section in Afghanistan, the artisanal oil fields of Myanmar and most recently for the Guardian documenting the aftermath of the Earthquake in Turkey and Syria. (22/2/23) 

"In Ukraine I learnt that the stories of those I was trying to draw, were in fact, far more significant than my attempts at figurative likeness on the page. The drawings became an introduction to something and someone more meaningful that we would have otherwise never known”.

His drawings have been published by The Times (London), Monocle, New York Times, the Guardian, SZ Magazin, VQR, BBC, CNN, Der Spiegel, ARD television (Germany) and NPR.  His work has been shown in the Imperial War Museum North, Lambeth Palace and is in collection at the V&A Museum and the National Army Museum.

In 2014, with three friends, George set up the Hands Up Foundation. The aim was to remind the people they had met in Syria that they had not been forgotten. The Hands Up Foundation supports salaries of professionals inside Syria and has to date raised £7.8 million.  

Lauren Van Metre is a peace and security expert, having worked on major diplomatic initiatives and peace and conflict resolution processes at the Pentagon, the State Department, the US Institute of Peace and the Atlantic Council.  She joined NDI in 2018 and, in 2022, was asked to lead the Institute's Peace, Climate and Democratic Resilience division, which will develop innovative democracy and governance approaches to some of democracy's major challenges -- malign influence, the climate crisis and violence.  Dr. Van Metre is a leading expert on community and democratic resilience, having conducted research and led field initiatives on building the strength and capacity of communities and governments to resist different forms of shock, such as violent extremism, hybrid warfare and environmental degradation.  She has published frequently on issues of governance and fragility, including, most recently, Solving the Failure of Governments to Respond to the Climate Crisis, Strengthening Democracy is a Better Counterterrorism Strategy, Strengthening Democracy with the Global Fragility Act,  A Typology of Community-Based Armed Groups:  From Self-Defense to Vigilantism, Community Resilience to Violent Extremism in Kenya, and two Issue Briefs for the Atlantic Council -- The Trip from Donbas:  Ukraine's Pressing Need to Defend its Veterans and Ukraine's Internally Displaced Persons Hold a Key to Peace.

Dr. Van Metre is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council where she writes frequently for Ukraine Alert, and, an Associate Fellow at the University of Louvain la Neuve in Belgium.  She is also an adjunct professor at The Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University where she teaches on strategy and leadership in the Master's in International Policy and Practice program.  

Dr. Van Metre holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University's School for Advanced International Studies and an M.A. in Russian and East European Studies from Georgetown University. 

 This event is FREE and open to the public.

Event is Co-Sponsored by the Pulitzer Center and Dean Rusk International Studies Program.