Semester at Sea Announces Summer 2009 Guest Lecturers

The Summer 2009 voyage of Semester at Sea will focus on the academic theme "Human Rights and Social Justice in the Mediterranean World" and feature three distinguished guest lecturers: Zornitsa Stoyanova-Yerburgh of the Carnegie Council, New York Times correspondent Randy Archibold, and Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez.

"We are delighted to welcome these experts on international relations to the robust academic community of our upcoming summer semester," said Michael Zoll, executive dean of the summer voyage and VP of enrollment and student affairs for the Institute for Shipboard Education, the non-profit organization that administers the Semester at Sea program.

Academic Dean Michael J. Smith, Sorensen Professor of Political and Social Thought at the University of Virginia, the academic sponsor of Semester at Sea, added: "These three distinguished guests will enrich our program across the curriculum by sharing both their specific expertise and real world experience with students and faculty."

Zornitsa Stoyanova-Yerburgh is managing editor of Ethics & International Affairs, the flagship scholarly journal at the Carnegie Council, an independent, nonprofit educational institution established by Andrew Carnegie in 1914 to study and address issues of world peace, conflict, human rights violations, ethics of globalization, global economic inequalities, and the increasing role of religion in politics around the world.

Together with Dean Smith, Zornitsa will be piloting an onboard version of the Carnegie Ethics Studio, a program of the Carnegie Council that offers materials, outreach, and collaboration with a worldwide network experts on the range of ethical choices inherent in contemporary global issues. Students on the summer voyage who write on issues of ethics will have the opportunity to submit essays for recognition and posting on the Carnegie Council website.

Zornitsa holds an M.A. in European politics and policies from New York University where she was a European Studies Fellow and an MA in English philology from Sofia University, Bulgaria. Her interests include normative dimensions of the European Union's external relations, transatlantic relations, Islam in Europe, E.U. enlargement and neighborhood policy, and processes of democratization in East-Central Europe and the Balkans.

She also serves as adjunct faculty at NYU where she teaches a course on the European Union and prepares students for participation in the transatlantic EuroSim (EU simulation) conference.

Randy Archibold is a national correspondent for The New York Times based in Los Angeles. He covers a large swath of the southwestern United States and has written extensively on immigration and the border. He covered the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the aftermath and has had reporting assignments in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. His political reporting has included coverage of John Edwards's 2004 presidential campaign and the 2005 New York City mayoral election.

Before working for The New York Times, Randy worked for five years at the Los Angeles Times as a reporter and editor. He also has worked at the Los Angeles Daily News, the San Diego Tribune, The Asbury Park Press, and other newspapers. Randy, who is fluent in Spanish, graduated from Rutgers University and afterward spent several months in Panama studying history and Spanish.

Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D-California) represents the 47th Congressional District of California, which encompasses the cities of Anaheim, Garden Grove, Santa Ana, and some of Fullerton in Orange County. She began her congressional career in November 1996 and is serving her seventh term in the House of Representatives.

Congresswoman Sanchez is the ranking woman of the House Armed Services Committee and sits on the Oversight and Investigations, Strategic Forces, and Military Personnel Subcommittees. She has fought for pay raises, improved healthcare, and a myriad of benefits for military families including: educational benefits; quality child care; military housing, and support services.

Her seat on this panel helps bring jobs to Orange County's growing high-tech industrial base. Loretta was instrumental in requiring the Department of Defense to include the City of Palmdale, California when it investigates cost alternatives for Joint Strike Fighter production. She has served on the Terrorism Panel of this Committee, where she joined other Members to investigate intelligence progress and terrorist threats to the United States.

Congresswoman Sanchez was selected by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to serve as Vice Chair of the full Homeland Security Committee, and Chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism were she works to improve the nation's homeland security policy by strengthening and allocating federal funding to protect against potential terrorist plots. The Committee provides oversight to the Department of Homeland Security to assure it is working effectively and quickly. The Committee has legislative jurisdiction over matters relating to the Homeland Security Act and plays a central role in fighting the war on terrorism. She is also a member of the Emergency Communications, Preparedness and Response Subcommittee.

While serving on the Homeland Security Committee, Congresswoman Sanchez took a leave of absence from the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which oversees education and labor issues. During her tenure on the Committee, she has protected parental involvement initiatives and successfully saved national gender equity in education program. She spearheaded efforts to promote school safety, including the well-being of children walking and bicycling to and from local schools in Orange County. She is also the author of legislation to facilitate tax-free bonds to encourage school construction across the country.

Loretta attended Chapman University, in Orange, California, where she was selected in January 2002 to serve as the university's first Latina member of the Board of Trustees. She received her bachelor's degree in economics in 1982 (voted "Business Student of the Year"), and then entered American University in Washington, D.C. to obtain her master's in business administration with an emphasis on finance, which she received in 1984. During the second year of her MBA program at American, Loretta spent a year in Rome, Italy, attending European Community's Market Management School.

For more information about the Summer 2009 voyage, its courses, faculty, staff, and itinerary, please see the voyage website.