Dean Rusk Lecture: Hope Behind the Headlines- Why Now is Not the Time to Forget Ukraine
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.
In 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 Davidson graduate Dr. Lauren Van Metre is the Director for Peace, Climate, and Democratic Resilience at the National Democratic Institute (NDI). She has extensive experience in conflict resolution and prevention, having worked on major policy initiatives at the Pentagon, the State Department, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the Atlantic Council.
Dr. Van Metre is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, where she writes for Ukraine Alert on the war in the Donbas and its impacts on Ukrainian politics and society. Additionally, she serves as an Associate Fellow at the University of Louvain la Neuve in Belgium and as an adjunct professor at The Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, where she teaches strategy and leadership in the Master’s program in International Policy and Practice.
Dr. Van Metre has published extensively on issues of peace, fragility, and violence. Her recent publications include Peacebuilding and Resilience: How Society Responds to Violence, Community Resilience to Violent Extremism in Kenya, and Building Gender Equality in Ukraine for the U.S. Institute of Peace; Youth and Radicalization in Mombasa, Kenya: A Lexicon of Violent Extremist Language on Social Media for USIP’s PeaceTech Lab; and The Trip from Donbas: Ukraine's Pressing Need to Defend its Veterans and Ukraine’s Internally Displaced Persons Hold a Key to Peace for the Atlantic Council.
She 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.
Event Details
Date / Time
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Location
Chambers Hance Auditorium (CHAM-4121)