U.S. Statesman, Writer Kael Weston speaks about Drones at USU

How does the emergence of drone warfare shape the international community’s response to imminent threats? Do drones serve as a symbol of unbarred power, creating internal backlash? Or do they ultimately enable global stability by carefully targeting dangers?

These are some of the questions J. Kael Weston will seek to answer when he delivers a Morris Media and Society lecture at noon Tuesday, April 15, in Utah State University’s Merrill-Cazier Library, Room 154.

“The timing could not be more appropriate,” said USU journalism professor Matthew LaPlante. “April 15 is, of course, a day when Americans are a little more mindful of their tax dollars and how those dollars are being used. More and more, our taxes are funding programs to put armed drones into the sky — and the implications are staggering.”

Weston has called for deeper public contemplation about drone warfare, and what it means for the future of the United States and the world.

Weston served with the U.S. State Department for more than a decade, including seven consecutive years in Iraq and Afghanistan, alongside U.S. Marines and soldiers in Fallujah, Khost, Sadr City and Helmand. He left government service in 2010.

A regular columnist for The Daily Beast, Weston’s insights into modern warfare — and its impacts both broad and narrow — also have been shared with millions of listeners and readers on National Public Radio and in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Newsweek and Harper’s Magazine among other publications. He is also writing a book on his experience in both wars, to be published by Knopf (Penguin Random House) in early 2015.

Weston graduated from the University of Utah with degrees in political science and history and received a master’s in philosophy from Cambridge University. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Amsterdam and a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he studied international relations.

The Morris Media and Society Lecture Series is facilitated by the Department of Journalism and Communication. The series was founded in 1995 and has brought to USU’s Logan campus a wide range of academics and media professionals, from columnist Jack Anderson to hostage Terry Anderson, and from NPR’s Bob Edwards to the U.S. Senate’s Bob Bennett. The goal of the series is to engage students, faculty and community members in discussions concerning the intersection of mass media and society.

USU College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Source: USU Department of Journalism and Communication

Contact: Thomas Terry, (435) 797-3002, thomas.terry@usu.edu