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It could be said that the summer James Reavis (MPA ’12) spent learning Arabic as part of the Monterey Institute Summer Intensive Language Program (SILP) was transformative, in more ways than one.  One day as the program was nearing its end, James said that he made the decision not to lose contact with the “amazing people he had spent the summer with,” and collected their email addresses with the intention to keep in touch.  And keep in touch he did.  “The Jim Report” started arriving in about one hundred inboxes of his friends and relatives every month.

Recipients got to follow James through his adventures in the Middle Eastern desert and all through the painful path to a law degree at the University of Montana School of Law.  “The Jim Report” was such a hit among James’s fellow law students that a group of them organized an effort to have the writings collected and printed on the Law Review printer.  Those original 362 copies were devoured on campus and somehow a copy ended up with interested publishers.  “The Jim Report: My Life in Law School” was published just after Thanksgiving by Carolina Academic Press.

The events on September 11, 2001 had a profound effect on James and he decided very soon thereafter that he would find a way to have a positive impact on the world as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer.  His SILP Arabic studies, his focus on international law and now his pursuit of a Masters degree in Public Administration (MPA) at the Monterey Institute are all steps taken with that goal in mind.  “The Jim Report” should leave no one in doubt that his diplomatic dispatches would be both informative and distinctly entertaining.

For More Information

Jason Warburg
jwarburg@middlebury.edu
831.647.3156

Eva Gudbergsdottir
eva@middlebury.edu
831.647.6606