Giving Las Vegas a global view

By Ed Koch

Wednesday, June 14, 2006 | 7:11 a.m.

In a town that increasingly fancies itself as sophisticated and cosmopolitan, Benjamin Duchek struggles to promote discussion on global issues.

Last month he brought to Las Vegas the ambassador from Sudan, who audaciously suggested that the bloodshed in its Darfur region was not the result of genocide.

Last week he brought to Las Vegas the Palestinian ambassador to the United States.

In two weeks, the ambassador from Afghanistan will speak to Las Vegans at Duchek's request.

Duchek hopes people care. But only a few dozen people are showing up to listen.

Duchek is a 27-year-old master's degree student in UNLV's political science program who set out two years ago to elevate the discussion of international affairs in Las Vegas.

With the help of Ron Morse, a retired UNLV professor of Japanese studies, and Daniel Villanueva, a UNLV professor of German studies, Duchek in 2004 established a local chapter of the World Affairs Council, a nonpartisan organization that says it operates the largest international affairs speakers program in the country.

Speakers hosted by the fledgling Las Vegas group have included Netherlands Ambassador Boudewijn van Eenennaam, German Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger and Los Angeles' Israeli Consul General Ehud Danoch.

"Getting the public interested is an extremely difficult task, but at least we are doing better now than a year ago," Duchek says. "Last year we were drawing 20 people for our speakers, now we're getting 60 to 65 per event. The public's interest is improving."

When Danoch spoke in March, only nine people attended.

The World Affairs Council joins two other organizations in bringing national and international speakers to Las Vegas - UNLV's College of Fine Arts and the five-year-old Nevada Committee on Foreign Relations.

The Nevada Committee on Foreign Relations promotes itself as a nonpartisan organization affiliated with the American Committees on Foreign Relations.

Among the speakers it has brought to Las Vegas are ambassadors of Chile and Argentina, as well as retired diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, who is the husband of former CIA operative Valerie Plame. The two are at the center of a Washington scandal that has led to the indictment of former vice presidential Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

All three organizations struggle, with varying degrees of success, to provide audience-filled rooms for their speakers.

"The sad thing is that the turnouts for such speakers in Las Vegas are terrible," says Jerome Snyder, a businessman who is a member of the Nevada Committee on Foreign Relations. "You do not necessarily have to agree with a speaker to come out and listen to him."

Snyder's group recently hosted Juan Hernandez, Mexico's former presidential adviser on Mexicans living abroad. Despite heated national debate over toughening immigration laws and tightening the U.S.-Mexican border, just 50 people attended.

"Unless you can bring in a really big name, you will have trouble getting an audience," says Larry Henley, director of artistic programming and production at UNLV's Performing Arts Center, who has booked speakers since 1997.

Former Soviet Premier "Mikhail Gorbachev drew 5,400 at the Thomas & Mack Center," Henley said. "Then again, he's a legend."

A more typical example, Henley says: an appearance by exiled Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka of Nigeria that drew 450 people at UNLV. Last week, American political analyst James Carville drew three times as many.

Duchek acknowledges that he is trying to bring more provocative speakers to Las Vegas - witness the two most recent ones, Sudanese Ambassador Khidir Ahmed and Palestinian Ambassador to the United States Afif Safieh.

"We have over the last two years enhanced our profile so that people want to come here and speak," Duchek says. "And we want and need interesting speakers who will, through free speech, open up channels of communication and the flow of ideas.

"We are not selling their points of view. We are saying here are their views, now think for yourself. We have set a goal of becoming Las Vegas' leader in international debate and education."

In addition to speaking before a World Affairs Council audience of about 60 people, Ahmed spoke to a group of advanced social science students at Palo Verde High School. He told them that government efforts to quell rebels in the Darfur region of Sudan was not genocide, despite a U.N. conclusion to the contrary.

Safieh, speaking last week at the Four Seasons Hotel, called Israel the oppressed victims of the Holocaust who in turn became the oppressors .

Safieh also drew about 60 people, mostly from the local Arab-American community .

The approximately 100 members of the World Affairs Council pay annual dues ranging from $25 for students and $40 for educators and retirees to $500 for corporate sponsorship. The organization charges nonmembers $85 to attend its speakers programs that include a lunch.

The Nevada Committee on Foreign Relations, which has about 130 members who pay $120 in annual dues, charges the public $20 to hear its speakers.

The lecture series at UNLV is free .

Promoters of international discussions wonder what more they can do to generate interest for their speakers in Las Vegas, beyond a greater publicity push.

"If interest in international issues is not on the rise since 9/11, it never will be," says Patrick Clary, a local attorney who co-founded the Nevada Committee on Foreign Relations.

But, he adds hopefully: "I believe there will be even more interest locally because we are becoming more cosmopolitan and sophisticated."

Morse, who heads the World Affairs Council's local chapter, said that despite Las Vegas' tremendous growth in population, sophistication is still lacking.

"There is little in the way of culture here, which is why Las Vegas needs the World Affairs Council to bring people together," he says.

Palestinian-born Matt Taha, an Arabic interpreter for Clark County District Court who attended Safieh's speech, says he isn't surprised that people born in the United States show little interest in international affairs.

"From a young age I was taught by my mother to care about the world," says Taha, who became a U.S. citizen in 1973. "In the United States our interest is more in our local and federal governments."

Not that the two organizations have a shortage of speakers to discuss international issues.

Speakers to the Nevada Committee on Foreign Relations receive a stipend from the American Committees on Foreign Relations.

The local World Affairs group does not pay its speakers. But this is, after all, Las Vegas, and the organization offers its speakers a free hotel room and tickets to a show.