Dr. Anthony Fauci, vice president of Costa Rica to lead 6th annual Hemispheric Security Conference

May 13, 2021 at 12:10pm

Dr. Anthony Fauci's panel has been rescheduled to 3:30 p.m. It will also stream via webcast.fiu.edu.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, and Vice President of Costa Rica Epsy Campbell Barr will join thought leaders and security experts from across the Western Hemisphere to discuss the region’s security landscape at the 6^th Annual Hemispheric Security Conference.

Hosted by FIU’s Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy and the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center (LACC), the Hemispheric Security Conference (HSC) will include 10 security-focused virtual discussions from May 17-21. The sessions will stream live and be available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

“After successfully hosting last year’s HSC virtually, we were eager to keep the same format this year,” said Brian Fonseca, director of the Gordon Institute. Nearly 1,800 people from 30 different countries attended last year’s conference.

This year’s HSC will include a variety of discussions including a fireside chat on May 20 at 3:30 p.m. with Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and chief medical advisor to the president, conducted in partnership with Southern Command. He’ll be discussing vaccinations and the pressures to open the country back up despite COVID-19 variants and constrained healthcare systems.

On Tuesday, May 18, at 1 p.m., Barr will be discussing the political and security challenges in Central America and the Caribbean with Luis Guillermo Solis, former president of Costa Rica and director of LACC.

Other notable speakers include Juan Gonzalez, special assistant to the president and NSC senior director for the Western Hemisphere; Rafael Guarín, national security advisor for Colombia; Gerry Gouveia, national security advisor for Guyana; and Alison August Treppel, acting executive secretary of the Inter-American Committee against Terrorism (CICTE) of the secretariat for multidimensional security at the Organization of American States.

The conference is free and open to the public.

For HSC updates, follow @gordoninstitute and @fiulacc on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

Dr. Anthony Fauci will discuss vaccinations and the pressures to open the country back.

Epsy Campbell Barr will discuss the political and security challenges in Central America and the Caribbean.