Carnegie Council Podcasts

Don't miss this remarkable conversation with Joyce Dubensky, CEO of Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, and one of Tanenbaum's peacemakers, Rev. Bill Lowrey, who spent a decade in South Sudan. They explain the work of Tanenbaum's international network of peacemakers--the people on the ground who never quit.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island passionately argues for the need for Congressional action on climate change. In this excerpt, Senator Whitehouse, speaking with Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Ted Widmer, discusses exactly why Republican senators have been so resistant to climate bills.

BC--before the Constitution--the history of the world was the history of kings, emperors, and tsars. AD--after the document--the world would never be the same again, says Constitutional law scholar Akhil Reed Amar. And the Constitution is particularly important in a fraught presidential election like this one.

Afghanistan, terrorism, U.S.-Russia relations: Col. McCausland gives an expert analysis of all these security challenges and more. Yet he concludes on a hopeful note: "We need to remember that we are a great country. There are a lot of reasons to be optimistic. We endured in the past and by golly, we're going to endure in the future."

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Columbia University’s Robert Legvold discusses the troubling state of U.S-Russian relations. In this excerpt, Legvold, author of "Return to Cold War," offers some thoughts on how to get the conversation moving in the right direction, while acknowledging mistakes on both sides.

What attracts young people to terrorism? Targeted killings, indefinite detention, mass surveillance--have Americans allowed too much power to be vested in the presidency? How are different governments grappling with the tension between civil rights and security? Security expert Karen Greenberg discusses these difficult questions.

Moshe Yaalon: "Military excellence has handed us an advantage on the battlefield, but this edge can only be maintained if we preserve our ethical superiority. And as the war on terror develops and intensifies, so must our determination to deliver an unequivocal moral response to the challenges it brings."

In today's connected world--a "cosmopolis" dominated by the "four superpowers" Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon--what we need is to have more but also better free speech, declares Garton Ash. The West, particularly the U.S., should strive to promote global free speech, and we must foster a "robust civility" despite our differences.

Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Johns Hopkins University’s Alec Ross discusses artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and the dangers of our new technologies. In this excerpt, Ross, formerly Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s senior advisor for innovation, speaks about big data and how it is changing norms like privacy.

"The world is on fire," says Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former secretary general of NATO and former prime minister of Denmark. He goes on to make a strong case for the U.S. to be world policeman to restore international law and order: "I don't see any capable, reliable, and desirable candidate for that function other than the United States."