Committee meeting scheduled for April 6 was canceled due to the Covid 19 epidemic. Instead, the committee decided to hold on-line candidate interviews, organized by Chair Gary Eisenberg, which took place on May 8 and 11. Participating were Gary Eisenberg,’86, Neela Banerjee,’86, Hugo Faria,’86, Caroline Fredrickson,’86, Bill Monahan,’86, Doug Guiler,’60, Chuck Schmitz,’60 and Jim Trowbridge,’60.
The committee interviewed 8 of 17 candidates who submitted revised applications to do remote internships (i.e. working from home with online links to appropriate agencies). The committee was impressed by the excellence of all these final candidates and granted each of them a $4,000 award. Their projects include work for private foundations advising on national security matters, analysis of competition between the U.S. and China, work for a foreign security service working with the U.S. government on threat prevention, developing curricula for the National War College, and analysis of Argentina’s latest debt debacle. The 2020 Aspin awardees are Anisha Arcot, Isha Dalal. Grace Jin, Allison Rice, Hadley Copeland, Milan Vivanco, Claire Zalla and Grace Baghdadi.