KINGSTON, R.I. – March 24, 2022 – University of Rhode Island President Marc Parlange will join Arnaud Mentré, consul general of France in Boston, and Mary Thompson-Jones, former acting ambassador to the Czech Republic and a career foreign service officer, for a conversation on March 30 about “The ‘West’ and the War in Ukraine.”
Organized by URI’s International Studies & Diplomacy Program and Karen de Bruin, program co-founder, chair of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures and URI associate professor of French, the free, virtual public discussion will be held Wednesday, March 30, at 11 a.m. Register here.
A goal of the International Studies & Diplomacy Program is to provide students and the larger Rhode Island community with expert perspectives on global events from the vantage points of international politics, economics, cultures and languages.
“There is no bigger, confounding event at present for Americans and Europeans — the so-called ‘West’ — than the war in Ukraine,” de Bruin said. “In this conversation, Consul General Mentré, representing both France and its presidency of the Council of the European Union, and former Ambassador Thompson-Jones will help us make sense of the diplomatic maneuvering of European nations and the United States in this conflict. President Parlange, speaking with Mentré and Thompson-Jones, will help us better understand the role academic communities can play during this unprecedented and terrifying time.”
“As a global university, we are keenly aware of how the events in Ukraine are impacting our community,” Parlange said. “It is important now, more than ever, for institutions like ours to refer to our core values and beliefs, modeling good citizenship and creating an environment that is diverse and welcoming. As an academic institution, we have a civic responsibility to provide opportunities for our students and our community to learn about, support, and engage with people and places beyond our borders.”
Prior to his assignment in Boston, Arnaud Mentré was deputy assistant secretary for North America in the Bureau of the Americas at the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs from 2015 to 2018, responsible for bilateral relationships with the U.S. and Canada.
Mentré joined the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2006 in the Bureau of Strategic Affairs, International Security and Disarmament.
From 2009 to 2011, he served as counsellor at the French Embassy in Moscow, then became adviser to the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Russian, Eastern European, and defense and security issues from 2011 to 2012. From 2012 to 2015, Mentré served as senior counsellor and spokesman at the French Embassy in New Delhi.
He is an alumnus of the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Ecole Nationale d’Administration. He holds a master of arts degree in civil law from the University of Paris II and he graduated from Sciences-Po.
He teaches global affairs at the Paris School of International Affairs–Sciences-Po.
Former Ambassador Thompson-Jones spoke earlier at URI about diplomacy in the Trump era, and this year she is the 2022 featured diplomacy scholar for the International Studies & Diplomacy Program. Her instructional roles at URI include teaching a course in Diplomacy and International Challenges, offered to students in the international program and students in the diplomacy track of the graduate program in International Relations.
“One of the less explored aspects of this tragic conflict is the underlying role of corruption and its impact on national security,” Thompson-Jones said. “The longstanding failure of previous Ukrainian leaders to tackle an entrenched and systemic-wide problem of corruption left the country vulnerable. The underperformance of the Russian military can also be seen in the light of funds meant for badly needed modernization that were diverted and embezzled by Russian oligarchs. Those mega-yachts tell quite a story.”
Thompson-Jones is a career diplomat, professor, and published author on U.S. foreign policy and the practice of diplomacy. Her book “To the Secretary: Leaked Embassy Cables and America’s Foreign Policy Disconnect” (Norton 2016) was praised by Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus Joseph Nye as “a fascinating account of how diplomacy really works from the bottom up.”
Her diplomatic experience spans 23 years as a foreign service officer in leadership roles in the Czech Republic, Canada, Guatemala, Spain, and Washington, D.C. She retired with the rank of minister-counselor and is the recipient of several Superior and Meritorious Honor awards. Before joining the U.S. Naval War College as a professor of national security affairs in 2017, she directed a master’s program at Northeastern University.