On Shifting Ground

In this special episode, we feature three conversations from speakers at our 2016 Global Philanthropy Forum conference. 

Antony Blinken, United States Deputy Secretary of State, Elias Bou Saab, Minister of Education and Higher Education of Lebanon, and Alexander Betts, Leopold W. Muller Professor of Forced Migration and International Affairs and Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, discuss the Syrian refugee crisis and how government, enterprise, and civil society can bring solutions to the issue.

For more information about these programs please visit: https://www.philanthropyforum.org/conference/gpf-2016/

Direct download: 10_24_16_GPF_Meeting_Displaced_Needs.mp3
Category:News & Politics -- posted at: 9:55am PDT

South Sudan is the world’s youngest nation. Tragically, the euphoria of liberation following its independence in 2011 was soon undermined by deep-seated political, ethnic and geographical tensions. For the past 3 years, this power struggle has played out as a full-scale civil war in the country. Over 2 million South Sudanese are internally displaced, and over half of its 11 million population is facing famine.

This discussion reflects on important questions facing South Sudan 5 years after gaining its independence. Is there hope for peace and stability in South Sudan? What role will the international community play in bridging ethnic tensions in the country? What is the future for the UN South Sudanese peacekeeping mission that is opposed by the very government it aims to support? Can the UN impose peace on a reluctant nation? What is the role of youth and the diaspora in paving the way to sustainable peace?

Valentino Achak Deng, prominent South Sudanese advocate, will be joined by acclaimed author Dave Eggers in a conversation on these important issues.

As a boy, Valentino fled Sudan during its civil war and spent nine years as a refugee in Ethiopia and Kenya before eventually resettling in Atlanta. In collaboration with author Dave Eggers, his experience was memorialized in the acclaimed novel, "What Is the What."

Valentino Achak Deng, Co-founder, Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, speaks with author Dave Eggers.

For more information about this event please visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/events/event/1642

Direct download: 09_28_16_South_Sudan.mp3
Category:News & Politics -- posted at: 3:01pm PDT

ISIS surged to international prominence following its audacious prison camp raids in 2013 in Iraq, freeing more than 500 Iraqi insurgents. ISIS has since carried out increasingly bold attacks in Syria and beyond, cementing its reputation as a group more violent and ruthless than any that came before it. No longer an insurgency, ISIS’ focus is to establish its own rule on conquered territory, and declare a worldwide caliphate. Of course the roots of ISIS trace deeper, and are much more intertwined with the interventions of the West than they first appear.

Today’s ISIS jihadists are the "children of Zarqawi," General Michael Flynn would later warn Congress, referring to Abu Musab Zarqawi, the once-obscure jihadist who led Al Qaeda in Iraq and laid ISIS’ philosophical foundations. How did Abu Musab Zarqawi, a “small-time thug,” rise to such world-changing prominence? How did ISIS emerge so forcefully from the chaos, and power struggles, of competing jihadist groups? Did the efforts of the West to crack down on Al Qaeda, inadvertently fuel the growth of ISIS ten years later?

Pulitzer Prize winner Joby Warrick, a reporter with The Washington Post since 1996, will address these issues in a conversation at World Affairs about the birth of ISIS. His latest book, “Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS,” pursues a thoughtful reflection on the origins the most notorious terror group in the world today.

As part of our "Engage" series, this event features a post-discussion Q&A, when you will have the chance to participate directly with the speaker and gain incredible insights that you won't get anywhere else.

Speaker Joby Warrick is Author and Reporter at The Washington Post.

The conversation is moderated by Kori Schake, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

For more information about this event please visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/events/event/1636

Direct download: 09_15_16_Joby_Warrick.mp3
Category:News & Politics -- posted at: 7:24am PDT

The frequency of epidemics is increasing, driven by surging populations, environmental change and globalized trade and travel. The SARS, pandemic influenza, MERS, Ebola and Zika virus outbreaks illustrate that the world is ill-prepared to deal with a large-scale viral pandemic. Experts have so far identified only a tiny proportion of viral threats, and few of these viruses have had vaccines or other counter-measures developed. Over the coming century we will witness spillover from a pool of over one million "unknown" viruses into human populations. The Global Virome Project is a global initiative to identify and characterize every significant viral threat circulating in the world. Only by identifying these potential threats can the world begin to prepare for the next great outbreak. In conversation with Jonna Mazet, Dennis Carroll and Nathan Wolfe, three experts from the Global Virome Project, this program will explore the extent of the viral threat to human populations and what can be done to stop it.

The panel features:

Dennis Carroll, Director, Global Health Security and Development Unit, US Agency for International Development (USAID), Jonna Mazet, Executive Director, One Health Institute, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, and Nathan Wolfe, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Metabiota.

The conversation is moderated by Larry Brilliant, Chair, Skoll Global Threats Fund.

For more information about this event please visit: http://www.worldaffairs.org/event-calendar/event/1629

Direct download: 07_20_16_Global_Virome.mp3
Category:News & Politics -- posted at: 7:40am PDT

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