The Board of Governors of the International Society for Panetics met November 3 in Washington, DC to plan the Society’s development during the first half of 2001.

Some of the key decisions made at the meeting:

Annual Meeting in April 2001

The Annual Meeting of the Society will be held in April 2001 in Washington, DC in conjunction with the Ralph G.H. Siu Memorial Lecture and Symposium.

Ralph G. H. Siu Memorial Lecture and Symposium

The public profile of the Siu Lecture and Symposium will be raised significantly through collaboration with an organization or organizations able to help attract an international audience of policy makers, scholars and journalists. The topic of the forthcoming meeting will be "International Humanitarian Intervention: What Should be the Ground Rules and Means?"

A major policy-maker will be invited as principal speaker. Persons suggested included UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, former President Jimmy Carter, General Colin Powell, Richard Holbrooke and Harvard Professor Stanley Hoffman. Additional suggestions are invited.

The lecture will be followed by a symposium organized around a panel of distinguished commentators who will critique the proposals advanced in the Siu Lecture.

Research and Development Project for 2001

The Board reaffirmed that panetics is devoted to the study of infliction of suffering by humans on humans and ways to reduce it.

The major research project for 2001 will be development of a prototype annual "handbook", report or compendium on human suffering throughout the world.

Part of the book will be devoted to statistics and indicators developed by other organizations to measure human suffering.

A second data or indicators section will attempt to reflect ISP’s particular focus upon the infliction of suffering by humans on other humans.

A third part of the book will consist of essays or reports on inflictions of topical interest in the year just past (2000). The purpose of the book will be to focus public attention upon human suffering caused by governments, institutions, professions and social groups and ways to reduce them. The goal is to develop a rough prototype of an annual panetics report for discussion by the April Annual Meeting. The timetable is as follows:

November 2000: Assemble a volunteer "Editorial Committee" that will agree on the content and organization of the prototype.

December 2000: The Committee will meet in a 3-day retreat some time in December. Volunteers are welcome—indeed, invited. "Teams" will be organized to assemble components of the agreed-upon report.

Early March 2001: The team will assemble and evaluate and integrate the separate work of each of the teams. Then the prototype will be assembled and duplicated.

April 2001: The prototype will be used as the basis for discussion at the Annual Meeting of members. It will then be distributed to the media. Each year, the report will be further refined and perfected.

Nominations for Election to the Board of Governors

The Board of Governors nominated the following persons whose terms on the Board expire on December 31, 2000 for re-election to three year terms:

Simon Auster

Associate Professor of Family Medicine and Psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences.

Glenn Geelhoed, MD

Current ISP Secretary, Glenn is Professor of Surgery and of International Medical Education at the George Washington University Medical Center and author of "Out of Assa: Medical Adventures in Central Africa." He was chosen this year as a "Man of the Year" by George Magazine for his work as a medical missionary.

Robert Graetz

Formerly a Secretary of the Society, Bob is an organizational psychologist now retired from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and lives in Florida.

David R. Schwarz

Chairman of ISP’s Finance Committee and a founder and major benefactor of the Society, David is Chairman of the Center for a Science of Hope in New York City; a Founding Member and Director of the Interfaith Council for Affordable Residence in Mamaroneck, NY; former Vice-President of Becton-Dickinson Corporation and President, Schwarz BioResearch, Incorporated.

Carl F. Stover

Current Chairman of ISP, Carl was personally responsible for suggesting to Ralph Siu that the International Society for Panetics be organized. He has been a leader of the Society since its inception. Formerly, he was President of the National Institute of Public Affairs and President of the National Committee on US-China Relations where he was instrumental in starting the "ping-pong" diplomacy that led ultimately to renewed diplomatic relations between the US and China.

New Candidates for Election

The Board also nominated the following two candidates for election as new members of the Board:

Floyd B. Galler, MD

Dr. Galler is a practicing psychoanalyst with the Baltimore Group and has worked with Forensic Youth Services of the District of Columbia. He works with troubled youth as a volunteer.

Rear Admiral Gene R. LaRocque (ret.)

As a young officer, Admiral LaRocque was in Pearl Harbor on the day the US entered World War II. Through the years he rose to become an outstanding strategic planner in the Pentagon. For that service, he received the Legion of Merit. Prior to his retirement, he was Director of the Inter-American Defense College. Following his retirement, he organized the Center for Defense Information and served as its Director for 21 years. In 1985, he received the Distinguished Peace Leadership Award from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation for his efforts to convince defense strategists about alternatives to the use of nuclear weapons.

Ballots have been sent to all Society members so that they may elect the Board of Governors to take office effective January 1, 2001.

Election of Officers for 2001

The Board of Governors elected the following to serve as officers of the Society in 2001:

Chairman Emeritus: Carl F. Stover

Chairman: William L. Lanouette

President: Ralph R. Widner

Vice President and Editor: Robert Lamson

Secretary: Glenn W. Geelhoed, MD

Treasurer: Kenneth D. Fisher

An Executive Secretary?

The Board recognized that the extent of Society activities is now such that it has stretched the time and energies of its volunteer officers to the limit and that it is appropriate to retain the services of either a part-time Executive Secretary or occasional paid assistance for some of the Society’s routine administrative operations. The Executive Committee was authorized to conduct a search for suitable candidates.

Modifications to the ISP Website

After evaluating the effectiveness of the Society’s website (www.panetics.org), the Board decided to modify the homepage to accomplish two objectives:

o Make the Panetics Global Forum more obvious and inviting in order to increase participation in its discussions; and—

o Make it clear that the Society invites collaboration in research on the infliction of human suffering.

A "Meeting Room" for Society members and the Board of Governors will also be created.

ISP AS A Publisher

Approximately 400 sets of ISP books will be distributed to selected research libraries and public libraries. The costs for this distribution have been underwritten by an anonymous donor.

The Society will affiliate as an "associate" with amazon. com and barnesandnoble. com to market and distribute its books.

The Society will function as a publishing house for suitable works on the infliction of human suffering. It will take advantage of new technologies for "instant publishing" in order to avoid the costs involved in maintaining a large inventory of printed works.