The Howard S. Brembeck Fellowship was launched in January 2023 by the Fourth Freedom Forum Board of Directors and is named to honor the memory of the Fourth Freedom Forum founder, Howard S. Brembeck.
The Fourth Freedom Forum has awarded the 2024 Howard S. Brembeck Fellowship to Amina Ahmed from Afghanistan, who is recent graduate of Smith College with a double major in Government and Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies.
The Brembeck Fellowship is an academic fellowship focused on promoting fair opportunities for aspiring students to develop practical skills in the field of international peace and security. Ahmed’s fellowship will take place with the Charity & Security Network, a partner organization of the Fourth Freedom Forum that works to promote and protect the ability of nonprofits to carry out effective programs that support peace and human rights, aid civilians in areas of disaster and armed conflict, and build democratic governance.
Ahmed’s upbringing in war-torn Afghanistan and her background as an Afghan refugee as well as her experience working as a U.S. State Department Fellow in the United States and Central Asia, and providing volunteer interpretation services with Catholic Charities for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Afghan refugee camps, affords her a firsthand perspective on the delicate balance between counterterrorism measures and the imperative for peace and humanitarian development. Fluent in six languages including Pashto, Persian-Dari, Russian, English, Hindi, and Urdu, Ahmed’s journey reflects a commitment to bridging cultural gaps and advocating for marginalized communities.
Ahmed finds the Brembeck Fellowship “crucial for amplifying underrepresented voices, especially those of young individuals, enabling their engagement in shaping foreign policy. Howard Brembeck’s visionary approach to fostering multigenerational engagement in foreign policy serves as the cornerstone of this fellowship, and I am eager to contribute as an emerging scholar to the pivotal role of peacebuilding. Through this fellowship, my aim is to expand my knowledge and leverage my experiences to advance Brembeck’s mission, actively engaging in the collective pursuit of Integrated Cooperative Security.”
As the Brembeck Fellow, Ahmed will work at the Charity & Security Network to support its work in cooperation with a range of external partner organizations, universities, and coalitions.
The Howard S. Brembeck Fellowship was launched in January 2023 by the Fourth Freedom Forum Board of Directors and is named to honor the memory of the Fourth Freedom Forum founder, Howard S. Brembeck. He had a vision of multigenerational engagement on these issues and this fellowship will continue his legacy of promoting and supporting young scholars and future leaders whose work will also help to advance the Fourth Freedom Forum’s mission.
The scope of work for this fellowship is not limited to traditional views of state-centric international security, rather we encourage applicants to embrace the concept of Integrated Cooperative Security. That is: the collective promotion and attainment of sustainable peace, dignity, and well-being for all of humanity including active measures to safeguard the health of the environment. It involves a holistic, inclusive, and multi-stakeholder approach to preventing and addressing threats from intimidation and violence in all forms and from humiliation and human rights violations. It requires providing civilian-led protection from economic, food, health, ecological, personal, community, digital, and political inequities and insecurities, through the use of good governance initiatives, diplomacy, peacebuilding, harm reduction, development, advocacy, technology, and other peaceful means of governmental and non-governmental action without overreliance on the use of military force.