The State of the State Department with Lawrence Cohen

Lawrence Cohen is a retired diplomat with the U.S. Department of State. During his Foreign Service career, Mr. Cohen served in Mexico, Honduras, India, Hungary, Nigeria, Brazil, and Afghanistan. His Washington, D.C., assignments included stints in the Office of Environmental Policy working on bilateral U.S.-Mexico and NAFTA issues, and as State Department Desk Officer to the Inter-American Development Bank. Mr. Cohen has also served on short-term Foreign Service assignments in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan Region; Tunis; Jeddah; and Kuwait.

Mr. Cohen created the Foreign Service Institute’s Afghanistan pre-deployment training program, facilitated Afghan training for USAID personnel, and developed diplomatic tradecraft training for the South Sudanese Foreign Ministry in Juba. Mr. Cohen served as the Retiree Vice President on the Governing Board of the American Foreign Service Association (2013-15). He delivered a presentation on Afghanistan to the Reading World Affairs Council in September 2008.

Mr. Cohen earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in history and Mideast Studies from Dickinson College and his Masters of Arts degree in International Relations, specializing in Middle East Affairs from the University of Chicago. He resides in Schwenksville, Montgomery County.

This event starts at 12:00 PM on Wednesday, July 29th.

Members are invited to join by Zoom and participate in the live Q&A. Zoom details will be emailed in our weekly email newsletter. If you are a member and have not received this email, please send a message to contactus@wacreading.org.

The public is invited to watch the meeting via Facebook Live. The link will be posted one week prior to the event.