IAF's Big Get

Former NYC lawyer, Middle East peace facilitator, and D.C. think-tank brain Leila Hilal comes home

By Patrick Sullivan | Aug. 24, 2019

Leila Hilal grew up in Petoskey, but she left home at 18 and moved around the country through college, law school, and grad school. She spent time as a lawyer in New York City, then became a peace facilitator working in the West Bank.

But after a decade spent living and working in the Middle East, and yet more years working on Middle Eastern affairs at Washington, D.C. think tanks, an unlikely opportunity arose. Hilal learned of a job post that aligned with her interests and for which she was uniquely qualified: the opportunity to return to northern Michigan to lead Northwestern Michigan College’s acclaimed global speaker series, the International Affairs Forum.

Now, as IAF’s first-ever full-time director, Hilal is guiding the series into its next quarter-century. Northern Express sat down with Hilal to talk about her work during pivotal moments of world history, her plans for the IAF, and why a deeper understanding and engagement in international affairs is critical for all of us here in northern Michigan.
 
Northern Express: Tell me how you ended up the director of the IAF.
 
Leila Hilal: So, I grew up in Petoskey. When I was 18, I left and went to the West Coast for college and then slowly made my way back across the United States. I lived in Chicago for a period of time, and went to law school in New York state, did a year at Harvard Law School, and then worked in New York City as a lawyer for a while. After two years I got a call to go to the West Bank and participate in a technical assistance project supporting the Palestinians’ negotiations with the Israelis, which sort of set my international trajectory.
 
Express: What year was that?
 
Hilal: That was in 2002, right after the invasion.
 
Express: At a time when things weren’t going well over there.
 
Hillal: No. The Oslo Accord had happened in 1994, and then it didn’t really move forward, and the Israelis reinvaded areas that they had withdrawn from earlier in the context of the Second Intifada. So, I arrived when it was tense conflict.
 
Express: How did you go from being a New York City lawyer to working to support Palestinians in the West Bank? That seems like a drastic life change.
 
Hilal: When I was at Harvard, I sort of built a community of people that were interested in Middle East affairs, and many of them were recruited to work on this assistance project, so it was part of my network that led me to this job. But I had studied international human rights and focused on that at SUNY-Buffalo Law School.
 
Express: So, you wind up in the West Bank.
 
Hilal: I found myself at the West Bank. Very happy to be back on the international path working on justice issues, essentially. I lived in the Middle East for a decade working on this project with the Palestinians at the “negotiations support unit,” and then I went on to the U.N. Agency for Palestinian Refugees, and then I ended up in D.C. at a think tank directing a program on the Middle East. I started that work at the time Arab Spring was kicking off.
 
Express: You worked in Middle East affairs during a fascinating time, but also a time when things deteriorated so much. It’s been frustrating and upsetting to see what’s happening from a distance, through the news. It must have been heart-rending to experience that up close.
 
Hilal: Absolutely. I think I suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, indirectly. Particularly because I was working quite a bit on Syria. And the conflict there was so brutal and awful. But the difference between observing the conflict from afar, by way of newspaper, and actually working with people in conflict doing peace-building work, is that you see more opportunity and progress when you’re actually very close up. One of the best things that came out of Syria was the explosion and proliferation of civil society. I mean, volunteer organizations, young people and women, different people who were involved in their community, creating and building a narrative of what the future of Syria could look like, should look like. Their future is looking a little difficult for many reasons, but the civil society exists, and they found their voice. And that was hopeful. I also got to serve as an election monitor for the Constituent Assembly elections in Tunisia, where the uprising led to very positive change. So, I don’t look at the Arab Spring as being completely a mess.
 
Express: So, tell me how you go from working on projects on the West Bank, Syria, and Tunisia to an office in northern Michigan.
 
Hilal: I’m not really motivated by self-promotion, which is what you need to be to survive in the think tank world in D.C. I guess what really brought me here is when I saw this job, I thought it would be very interesting to explore what international looks like from a small town.
 
Express: As someone who grew up in northern Michigan, left for years, and now has returned, what are your observations?
 
Hilal: The world has changed. When I left, there was no such thing as social media. People’s understanding of the world, in northern Michigan, was much smaller. Now, there’s more domestic, global migration. The retiree population over the past 10 years has exploded. That has made northern Michigan a different place. There’s a lot more diversity — not racial and ethnic diversity — but more diversity in terms of experience and background. The Traverse City area has seen a lot of growth in the last 10 years among the retiree community, though it has also attracted a lot of younger entrepreneurial types. Ideally, we seek to engage and blend these groups to develop a rich, engaged interest in international affairs across generations.
 
Express: How do you go about doing that? Where do you start?
 
Hilal: I think NMC has a big role to play. What surprised me — it didn’t jar me, but it surprised me pleasantly — is the quality of programming and service offered at NMC. The NMC Foundation is ranked 13thin the nation. The culinary school is 11thin the nation. I’ve met through this work so many students who have gone on from NMC to top Ivy League schools and who pursued careers in international institutions, the military, global affairs, and are doing really amazing things. Also, NMC, by taking in IAF, has shown it’s very interested and committed to serving as a conduit between the community and for the community to advance and learn and engage.
 
Express: How do you see IAF fitting into the local community?
 
Hilal: The International Affairs Forum has grown a lot under the leadership of Jack Segal and Karen Puschel Segal; they were co-chairs of the board for five or six years, and they really grew the programming to increase the number of events and grow the audience to some 400 people average at each event. And so, I think IAF has increased the appeal of this community for people who are seeking a place where they can continue to be intellectually and culturally engaged. It is an intellectual and cultural asset for the community. And it’s proven that it’s on par with the National Writers Series and the Traverse City Film Festival. It’s not as large; its membership is smaller, its programming is slightly less, but it’s part of that constellation of actors that make this area an appealing place to settle and live.

I think now because IAF is a full-fledged program of NMC, it has a director position, it has the opportunity to think about how it can continue providing this quality programming, but also, what kind of programming can we do to advance thinking about the critical issues of our times, in a way that’s not one-off, but sustained. And maybe think about attracting people, internationally-minded and engaged people, to come here as a center for thinking through those critical issues, so that we’re bringing knowledgeable/authoritative people in for local consumption, but we’re also offering a place for people externally to come for their benefit.
 
Express: In some ways northern Michigan somehow seems separate from the world. Like we are kind of in a bubble, a beautiful setting that’s far away from the world’s problem spots, where people live quiet and peaceful lives. Maybe this would be a good place for people to come to talk about international affairs. Neutral territory for hashing out disputes.
 
Hilal: I’m speaking less about bringing people in conflict here, and I’m speaking more about bringing thinkers here, from around the world. Let’s say, if we want to go really big, bringing all of the diplomats, journalists, civil society, humanitarian leaders to come and think about critical issues of our time, like changing climate, healthcare, refugees, and migration — all of these issues that are important to us locally, national, globally — bringing people to a place like Traverse City to spend time together to think, to come to the bubble and have that time and space to think through and utilize the assets and resources that we have locally through the college and the wider community to do more in-depth sort of reflections on these issues and produce ideas.
 
Express: Let me ask an obtuse question: What is the value in learning about international affairs?
 
Hilal: It broadens your range of solutions, essentially. And it broadens your understanding of the issues that you’re facing locally. And, I think there is a responsibility. The United States has the largest military in the world. It spends the most on the military of all countries in the world. It has the largest economy in the world by GDP. It has a huge global footprint. So, you can live in a place like northern Michigan and think that you are separate from the world, but ultimately, you’re not. I guess there’s a value in terms of community development in thinking about local issues from a global perspective, but there’s also a responsibility and a duty to engage, because we’re all, yes, voters.
 
International Affairs Forum Fall Lineup
Although the venue often changes, each event begins at 6pm; tickets are $15 each, available at the door.
 
Sept. 19
Autocrats and Revolutions: Lessons Learned from the Arab Uprisings
Milliken Auditorium at the Dennos Museum Center
Former Tunisian Ambassador Hatem Atallah comes from a country that was transformed in a positive way in the Arab spring. That means he will offer a unique perspective on the region’s recent history. “Tunisia is one of the great success stories of the Arab Spring because it survived without descending into conflict and it transitioned from autocracy to democracy,” said Leila Hilal, IAF director.
 
Oct. 17
Asia Rising: Will Japan Remain America’s “Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier”?
Milliken Auditorium at the Dennos Museum Center
Get a perspective on American interests in Asia from James Zumwalt, a diplomat with a long list of accomplishments: he is the CEO of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation and he once served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Senegal, the deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of East Asian Affairs, and the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo.
 
Nov. 21
Engaging for Good: Can One Individual Change the World?
Hagerty Center at NMC’s Great Lakes Campus
Halil said she hopes this speaker has even broader appeal than a typical IAF speaker forum.
Carrie Hessler-Radelet, a Frankfort native, former Peace Corps director, and president and CEO of Project Concern International will talk about volunteerism and the value that individual effort can offer the community.