Hollowing Out the State: Status and Redistributive Politics in Colonial India
"Hollowing Out the State: Status and Redistributive Politics in Colonial India" featuring: Pavithra Suryanarayan, Assistant Professor of International Political Economy, Johns Hopkins SAIS in conversation with: Bilal Baloch, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) and Non-Resident Fellow, Johns Hopkins SAIS Foreign Policy Institute. Click here to listen to the podcast on SoundCloud.
Only the Libyan people can build a brighter future for their country
Few people in Washington are as knowledgeable about Libya as Jonathan Winer, who was the United States special envoy to the country from 2013 to 2017. He is also a former deputy assistant secretary of state and was counsel to senator John Kerry, later secretary of state. What has happened there before? What is happening now? Where might it all be heading? Winer knows. We start with the fact that US President Barack Obama, in 2011, was not keen to join the call for action in L
Identity and Global Politics: A Discussion with Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama, Mosbacher Director of the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University Dr. Francis Fukuyama joined the school for a discussion on the impacts of identity on global politics, drawn from his new book, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. Fukuyama stated that identity has been underestimated in the current world where new forms of national
The Legacy of Zbigniew Brzezinski: Remarks by Madeleine Albright
Madeleine K. Albright, Former U.S. Secretary of State Moderated by Carla P. Freeman, Associate Research Professor of China Studies and Executive Director of the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins SAIS Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited the Johns Hopkins SAIS community to deliver remarks on the lifetime achievements of Zbigniew Brzezinski. Dr. Brzezinski, or "ZBig" as he was familiarly known to colleagues and students, served as the National Secur
Migrants don’t harm society, they improve it
There has been a surge in far-right groups and populist politicians driven by an ideology that suggests immigration is an unwelcome development of globalization. The most worrying aspect of this trend is that this fervor is now influencing key policy decisions, as governments increasingly bow to the pressure of raucous, even violent, protests urging an end to the flow of migrants. As societies, cultures and languages became increasingly mixed in the pursuit of trade, some nat
"Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism" with Ian Bremmer
Speaker: Ian Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media Moderator: Dean Vali Nasr, Johns Hopkins SAIS Opening remarks: Dr. Carla Freeman, Director of SAIS Foreign Policy Institute Presented by the Dean's Forum and SAIS Foreign Policy Institute. Event photographs (click here to view the full gallery)
An uncomfortable truth: Canada’s wary ambivalence to Chinese corporate takeovers
This article examines the behavioural patterns of successive Canadian governments in responding to three takeover attempts of iconic high-value Canadian corporates by large state companies from China. The first is China Minmetals Corporation’s attempt to acquire Noranda in 2004–2005 during the Liberal government of Paul Martin, the second is China National Offshore Oil Corporation’s acquisition of Nexen in 2012 during the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, and the thi
The cryptic puzzle of Bitcoin and the Arab world
When the history of the first two decades of the 21st century is written, along with the paradigm shifts caused by 9/11, the Arab Spring and the Great Recession there will be noted a new-found appreciation for decentralized systems and, in particular, the cryptocurrencies they spawned. There is some merit to the argument that the rise of Bitcoin, and a multitude of other cryptocurrencies, was a direct challenge to the centralized financial systems that failed to curb the abus
Here's What A True U.S.-Pakistan 'Reset' Should Look Like
As he boarded his flight to Pakistan earlier this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo explained the purpose of his visit: "New leader there, wanted to get out there at the beginning of his time in an effort to reset the relationship between the two countries." There is plenty to reset. Relations between the U.S. and Pakistan are badly strained. And while it would be unrealistic to expect the two countries to start completely anew overnight, by the end of Pompeo's brief visit
American Institutions Are Holding Up—But Are Americans?
"Democratic publics can make mistakes, but if they fail to correct those mistakes, they are in deep trouble." From the standpoint of a political scientist who has studied democracies around the world, Donald Trump from the beginning has seemed to pose a threat to the American system unlike any president in living memory, willing to use his mandate as a democratically elected leader to weaken the check-and-balance institutions of the American constitutional system. In January