You are invited to a Distinguished Speaker Series dinner event on Oct. 3, 2023, at the Riverfront Community Center in downtown Leavenworth, Kansas (123 S. Esplanade St.). A reception begins at 5:30 p.m., the buffet dinner starts at 6 p.m. and the presentation will begin at 7 p.m.
In this presentation of the “Distinguished Speaker Series” brought to you by the CGSC Foundation’s Simons Center, retired Col. Matt Dimmick, European Regional Program Manager for Spirit of America, and retired Lt. Col. Donald Wright, Ph.D., Deputy Director, Army University Press, will provide a background and an update on the war in Ukraine. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has had profound effects on the European security situation, U.S. national security interests, and broader economic and political impacts worldwide. Dimmick and Wright will discuss the current situation on the ground and provide historical context on the factors that set the conditions for today’s conflict.
Tickets are $35/person in advance. Tickets are $40/person at the door.
Register/purchase tickets below.
Col. Matt Dimmick, U.S. Army, Ret., served 29 years in uniform, retiring in 2021. He is currently the European Program Manager for Spirit of America, a non-profit organization that has delivered more than $40 million dollars in nonlethal aid to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Previously, Dimmick was the Director for Russia and Eastern Europe on the National Security Council Staff during the Trump and Biden administrations. He also served as the Russia Director for the Secretary of Defense from 2016 to 2019. Additionally, he held positions as Defense Attaché in Tbilisi, Georgia, Deputy Foreign Policy Advisor for the Chief of Staff of the Army, and Assistant Army Attaché in Moscow. Dimmick is a graduate of the United States Military Academy, holds a Master of Arts in National Strategy from the Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy, and a Master of Arts in Russian and Eastern European Studies from the University of Kansas.
Don Wright currently serves as the deputy director of Army University Press at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Wright holds a Ph.D. in European History from Tulane University. While a graduate student, he traveled to Russia on a Fulbright scholarship to research the Russian Imperial Army at the beginning of the 20th century. He has published several articles on how the Tsarist Regime prepared the empire’s population for war, including one in the Journal of Military History that won the Vandervort Award in 2019. As a historian for the U.S. Army, Wright has published on the Global War on Terror, including the books On Point II on Operation Iraqi Freedom and A Different Kind of War on the US Army in Afghanistan. Wright retired as a lieutenant colonel having served as an Army officer for 22 years, first in the infantry and then in the reserve component as a military intelligence officer.
The CGSC Foundation through its Simons Center conducts the Distinguished Speaker Series (DSS) program to offer extracurricular, educational lectures intended to help enrich the Command and General Staff School curriculum and provide opportunities for outreach to the public. Topics covered in the Distinguished Speaker Series of lectures span the gamut of leadership and ethics, organizational effectiveness, collaboration, as well as current events and issues in business, government and the military.
Thank you to our 2023 DSS Sponsors:
Questions about registration? – Contact Lora Morgan, lora@cgscf.org or call 913-651-0624.
For questions about the DSS contact Col. (Ret.) Robert Ulin, Simons Center Director, at rulin@cgscf.org or call 913-240-1495.
REGISTRATION IS CLOSED
