OpEd Writing Seminar for Women in Peace and Security

Women In International Security-New York in partnership with The OpEd Project
presents a full-day op-ed writing seminar, "Write to Change the World."

Date: January 9, 2010

Time: 10am to 5pm

Cost: WIIS Members: $150; Student WIIS Members: $50; Non-members: $300

To register, click here: http://www12.georgetown.edu/sfs/rsvp/index.cfm?Program=WIIS

Please send your name and full payment in cash or checks made payable to Women In International Security to:

3600 N Street, NW, Lower Level | Washington, DC 20007

If you have not yet joined WIIS, you may do so online at: http://wiis.georgetown.edu/membership/

This seminar is about more than writing; it's about making a bold case for what you believe in and making a difference in the world.

Why this matters: Our position is not that women need our help, but just the opposite: we think public debate needs women. Our national conversation currently reproduces the voices and opinions of only a small fraction of society: mostly white, privileged and overwhelmingly (85%) male. Worse among academics: a 2008 Rutgers University study found that 97% of op-eds by scholars in the Wall Street Journal are written by men. What is the cost to society when half of the nation’s best minds and best ideas— women’s minds and women’s ideas—are missing?

The OpEd Project’s highly interactive and energetic day-long seminar will push you to hone the ideas and causes that you care about, and write about them to make a difference. We will explore the source of credibility and how to establish it quickly; the patterns and elements of a powerful argument; the difference between being “right” and being effective; how to preach beyond the choir, how to think bigger about what we know, and how to make a bigger impact on the world. Time permitting, we will also develop these concepts into concrete op-eds or op-ed drafts for each participant; explore strategies for increasing impact; discuss etiquette and strategies for pitching and how to build relationships with editors and publishers. We may also discuss a sampling of the greatest arguments of all time—essays, speeches and op-eds that have changed the world—so that we can consider why they were so powerful and what approaches and techniques we might borrow.

Participants will be networked with each other and with the larger OpEd Project community, and will have ongoing access to our events and resources, including the option of being matched with one of our highly experienced Mentor-Editors, who have volunteered to read the draft op-eds of women who come through The OpEd Project seminar.

This seminar is for women only, and is capped at 20 people. It is equally suitable for those with and without publishing and professional writing experience.

The OpEd Project—featured by The New York Times, Katie Couric and The San Francisco Chronicle—is an initiative to radically expand and enrich public debate, and to increase the number of women in thought leadership positions to a tipping point. Working with universities, think tanks, nonprofits, corporations and community leaders across the nation, we target and train top women experts in all fields to write op-eds, connect them with each other and with our network of mentor-editors, and channel them to media gatekeepers in print, online, television radio, and more. Read more about the project at http://www.theopedproject.org/

Participants have published pieces in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Salon.com, Huffington Post home page, and also one piece that was #2 on Google news and had 20,000 hits in the first hour.

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