Class Notes: 1985

Barry Zelleb, M.A. ’85 writes: On July 26, 2024, my 14th book, Arctic Exceptionalism: Cooperation in a Contested World, a structural realist analysis of the enduring geopolitical roots of Arctic cooperation and the stabilizing impact of the fourth image (indigenous polities and tribal dynamics) on Arctic international relations, came to press (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Books, 335 pages).

For more than three centuries, the Arctic region has been a zone of increasingly collaborative, multilevel and multilateral governance and diplomacy.The interests of diverse sovereign states, indigenous peoples, NGOs, and other stakeholders have largely aligned across this impressive duration. Now, however, its consensus-based foundations are being tested once again, straining the collaborative dynamic known as Arctic exceptionalism.

While many scholars suggest Arctic exceptionalism is now dead, or on life support and fading fast, I argue that it is alive and well, albeit undergoing a regional realignment under the pressures of Russia’s military resurgence. Dr. Christopher Kirkey, Director of the Center for the Study of Canada and Institute on Québec Studies at the State University of New York College at Plattsburgh, describes this book as a “timely, compelling account of the international forces that influence and constrain the foundations and functions of Arctic collaboration.” Dr. Alan Tidwell, Director, Center for Australian, New Zealand and Pacific Studies, Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University observes: “Barry Zellen delivers a thoughtful and inspired analysis of the Arctic world. His insights weave between the world of great power competition to the intricacies of indigenous identity. No scholar or policymaker interested in the Arctic can miss Zellen’s views. Arctic Exceptionalism: Cooperation in a Contested World will long be a standard against which Arctic scholarship will be measured.”​

Author Susannah Kennedy‘s memoir will be published September 12, 2023, by new women’s publishing company Sibylline Press. Kennedy was a student at U.C. Berkeley and earned her BA with honors in political science in 1985.  

Daring to “read” Jane-45 years of her mother’s hidden diaries-after Jane’s death is like unlatching Pandora’s Box. For a year, Susannah reads, twisting and turning to the truths she uncovers, comparing what she remembers with what her mother put down in words. Through revelations about her father and the years in India and New York, about the fight not to be too tall, about the flash of cigarettes, about modeling and teenage first loves and her mother’s secret lovers, and their disagreement about answering a baby’s cry, Susannah reads and fills out the details of her own life against the strange pull of her mother’s public tale. 

Berkeley and Oxford-educated anthropologist Susannah Kennedy was born in India before returning to the US, the only child of an ill-fated alcoholic journalist and a larger-than-life inner-city teacher. As an adult, Kennedy traveled extensively on her own, first in Italy, and then through the Middle East and India, settling for two years in Egypt before moving as a reporter to Dallas, Texas. At Oxford University, she specialized in Arab culture and politics, receiving her DPhil in social anthropology. 

Book signing and reading events are planned for the Bay Area and beyond.

John Randall “Randy” Stephenson is pleased to announce the publication of his first book entitled: “Blood In Your Boots: Navy SEAL Stories from the Silver Strand (1957-1967)”. The book consists of a series of true stories about his father, Capt. John M. “Maxie” Stephenson, Jr. USNR, who served as an officer and operator in Navy SEAL Team One and Underwater Demolition Team 12 from 1957 to 1967 in Coronado, California. 

As the oldest son of a prominent ranching and farming family in Wyoming, who does not even know how to swim when he is drafted into the Navy, the book chronicles Maxie’s completion of the famous Navy SEAL training in Coronado, and some of the challenges he faced as an officer in the early days of Navy Special Warfare. 

Patrick Slavin has accepted a letter of appointment as the Communications Lead at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Previously he worked for the United Nations for 25 years, serving in Pakistan, Jerusalem, Haiti, New York, and across Africa.