by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
The interests of the Center for Strategic Governance and International Initiatives range far beyond the compact campus on Beach Boulevard.
Its influence may also be felt just down the block.
When the Center opened in 1997, it was seen as a way to connect Florida Coastal Law School to the community.
FCSL’s “core founding ideal” was that it be relevant to Jacksonville and Northeast Florida, said Chancellor Donald Lively.
“When we came here, we felt Jacksonville was poised to jump into the future,” he said. “A significant part of that future was an international presence.
“We brought in people; we brought in ideas. We did not do what a lot of people do when they come into a new environment, and that was be presumptuous.”
Helping throw some light around the world was one part of the prescription, said Eric Smith, director of the Center and associate dean for External Affairs. Tending the home fires was the other.
“I remember when I made my inaugural speech as [City] Council president, one of the suggestions I made was that we would become much more intent in terms of reaching into neighborhoods and across oceans,” he said.
Over the past six years, the Center has established relations and swapped speakers with countries in South America and Eastern Europe. Relationships are being built in Africa.
“International awareness is changing,” said Lively. “Modern technology is to the process of internationalization what the automobile and the airplane were to the process of going beyond regional insularity to a more sophisticated version of national identity.”
As a member of City Council, Smith recalled, “I said that Jacksonville has the potential to be Florida’s next great international city. I still believe that.”
“There are some logical connecting points, with certainly a sharp focus on the Caribbean and South America,” Lively added. “We’ve gotten very aggressive with developing some relationships with the Dominican Republic.
“We’re hopefully going to be part of the legal education of prospective and actual lawyers in those parts of the world where lawyers are commonly code-trained instead of trained in the common law.”
The assistance the center provides touches the economic, political and social lives of the nations it works with.
“You can’t help it; it’s all multi-faceted,” said Lively. “Some programs highlight one aspect more than the other, but its application is broad spectrum.”
With so many powder kegs planted around the globe, helping pull some fuses can be challenging, rewarding . . . and daunting.
“There are certainly challenges that are beyond any single entity,” said Lively. “I think one way to characterize the Center’s orientation is that — like any other individual or entity that is concerned about change for the better — the Center will not change the entire world.
“But it aspires to take responsibility to change what it can in its corner of the world.”
The Center has also worked to change negatives into positives within the state and around the region.
Visiting speakers have included former attorneys general Edwin Meese and Janet Reno, as well as Florida Supreme Court justices and Chief Justice Harry Lee Anstead.
The law school’s International Hall was bursting at the seams for the Center’s two-day Northeast Florida Environment Summit 2003.
An even larger event is being planned for April.
The working title of the conference is “The Art of Forensic Science,” said Tom Wippman, principal with FCSL’s new owners, Sterling Capital Partners.
“It will show how the art of forensic science interacts with the law,” said Wippman. “It is going to bring in front of the Jacksonville community some of the nation’s leading experts in the forensic science field.”
Those who have already committed include Dr. Henry Lee, chief emeritus of the Connecticut State Police Laboratory; Dr. Michael M. Baden, co-director of the New York State Police Medicolegal Investigation Unit; Dr. Cyril Wecht, one of the best-known critics of the Warren Commission report; and Barry Sheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project.
“Barry’s pitch is going to be, ‘Forensic science means good law enforcement,’ ” said Wippman. “It will be why law enforcement, the judiciary and lawyers should be using forensics.”
FCSL and the Center will continue identifying issues that concern the public and organizing workshops to discuss them, Lively said. The process will continue to create explosive growth and greater influence
“The Center has been a primary agent for our definition and an indication of what we can do,” he said. “I think you’ll see the growth and development of this institution over the next five years to be somewhere in the range of spectacular.”