Los Angeles World Affairs Council
The Los Angeles World Affairs Council is Southern California’s largest foreign affairs forum. Founded 60 years ago, the Council’s mission is to engage Americans with the outside world through a series of speaker events, debates and film screenings with international themes. There is a particular focus on the links between Los Angeles and the Pacific Rimnations, on the international business of entertainment, and on education here and overseas. The Council also has a student program to engage high school and university students in world affairs.
Our board and members are drawn from the corporate, civic and cultural leadership ofLos Angeles. The Council’s speaker list over six decades reads as a veritable “Who’s Who” of international affairs, including eight US presidents, more than 250 foreign heads of state, and a host of foreign ministers, lawmakers, military leaders, corporate and financial executives and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists. It was at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council where Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev famously said to America in 1959 that “We will bury you”, where US President Ronald Reagan suggested in 1988 US Presidents should not be limited to two terms and where British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a call in 2006 to counter global extremism with the force of ideas as much as with military force.
We program approximately 50-75 events every year, many of them seated lunches and dinners for 100-300 attendees. Our programs are held at different venues aroundLos Angeles. Our membership levels range from $75 to $5,000.