Roundtable Discussions

examining current challenges

There are a variety of different events that AHS chapters can host without a speaker (and do not require a Speaker Request Form).

Both vigorous and respectful, group discussions offer a unique forum for students to engage in serious and informed conversation on ideas discovered in the classroom. To support group discussions, the AHS national office highlights weekly group discussion topics in its Hamilton Dispatch. These topics are complemented with brief analysis, relevant articles, and questions for discussion.

There are multiple forms these discussions can take, such as the Model UN and Socratic Seminar formats, and certain questions to consider when guiding conversation. You can find out more about these by clicking the link below.

Reflecting on key Speeches and Documents

As a student of international affairs, it is crucial to understand the history of the United States’s role in the field and why things developed the way that they did. To this end and to complement the group discussion model, we want to offer resources in helping you familiarize yourself and your chapter with articles, essays, and speeches from the past that were critical to the development of national security and foreign policy at the time or provided insightful commentary on these subjects. These modules will be focused and require less of a time commitment than something like a book club might, but they should nonetheless be rewarding and interesting for engaged students.

Our first Key Ideas module focuses on democracy promotion, which you can find clicking the button below. From the beginning of our country’s history, the idea of spreading our values to other nations was prevalent among American leaders and went hand-in-hand with the process of defining what a liberal democracy actually looked like and entailed.

Other Group Activity Ideas

It is important that your chapter meets in person to discuss event and recruitment planning, and to evaluate your chapter's effectiveness in achieving its goals. Chapter organizational meetings are appropriate times to organize elections for officer positions and reflect on recently held events.

Other types of non-speaker events include:

• Book club meetings

• Trivia nights

• AHS on tap, social outing to a local restaurant with chapter members

• Movie nights

• Gatherings with a local professor