In the wake of September 11, 2001, Civitas decided to have a thoughtful discussion on the essence of terrorism and how it might best be addressed by individual citizens, the United States, and the world as a whole. That Fall we had a two day conference, giving students opportunities to consider the ramifications of the attack and what options were available to address the immediate problem and to try to prevent similar future incidents. Sixty students participated and most work was done in three sub-committees of twenty.
The students were interested; the format worked; and the desire was there to have similar conferences each year. Since then, Civitas has sponsored two-day conferences on the following topics:
- The United Nations and the Middle East
- The United Nations and the continent of Africa
- Reinventing the United Nations (twice)
- Revenge & Reconciliation
- Global Population Issues
- Who Gets to Belong to the Nuclear Club?
Each of the conferences have followed the format of most work being done in small committees with final reports made to a plenary session. In three of the conferences we had keynote speakers:
- The United Nations and the Middle East (Keynote Speaker: Jon Sawyer, then Washington Bureau Chief of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and now director of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting)
- The United Nations and the continent of Africa (Keynote Speaker: Henry Iwenofu; St. Louis, MO)
- Revenge & Reconciliation (Keynote Speaker: Laura Blumenthal, Reporter, Washington Post and author of the book Revenge: A Story of Hope.