The Center for Security Research and Education (CSRE) is welcoming Dr. Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, for a talk at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 12, in the Sutliff Auditorium of the Lewis Katz Building.

Egeland’s talk, “Protecting refugees in an age of global insecurity,” is free and open to the public. No registration required.

Jan Egeland has been the Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council since August 2013. In 2015 he was appointed as Special Adviser to the UN Special Envoy for Syria. Within this position he chaired the humanitarian task force responsible for the safety and protection of Syrian civilians. He stepped down from this role in December 2018.

From 2011 to 2013 Jan Egeland served as the European Director at Human Rights Watch. He was appointed Special Adviser to the UN Secretary General for Conflict Prevention and Resolution from 2006 and 2008. Prior to that, Jan Egeland was UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator from 2003 to 2006. In that role he helped reform the global humanitarian response system and organized the international response to the Asian Tsunami, and crises from Darfur to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Lebanon.

In 2006, Time magazine named Jan Egeland one of the “100 people who shape our world.”

CSRE reflects Penn State’s commitment to focusing the full range of interdisciplinary academic endeavor on the threats facing our world today.

The Center has two primary focus areas. First, because security challenges consistently have social, scientific, and technological dimensions, CSRE brings scholars from diverse disciplines together to pursue holistic, interdisciplinary research and solutions. Second, because public understanding enhances security, CSRE works with Penn State faculty and outside experts to educate policy-makers, the media, the public, and Penn State students on the critical security issues of the day.