Global I.Q. Podcast

Today, American democracy faces a polarized population. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham has found a timely message to American leaders in the example of Abraham Lincoln: the survival of democracy demands a firm conscience. A frail, imperfect man, Lincoln overcame his limitations and was willing to risk his career to uphold his deep faith in liberty and equality. Meacham joins the Council December 6 to discuss his new biography, And There Was Light.

About the Author:

Jon Meacham is an American historian and Pulitzer-prize winning author who holds the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Chair in the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University, where he is also a visiting professor and co-chairs the Vanderbilt Project on Unity & Democracy. Meacham has chronicled the lives of a range of U.S. political figures including John Lewis, George H.W. Bush, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Andrew Jackson in his multiple New York Times bestsellers. Meacham is celebrated for democratizing larger-than-life characters, showing their intimately human motivations. Meacham is a contributing writer to the New York Times, a contributing editor at TIME, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has been awarded the Anti-Defamation League’s Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Prize, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s Founders Award, and the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute’s Spirit of Democracy Award. A true Tennessean, he lives in Sewanee and in Nashville.

About the Moderator:

Talmage Boston is a partner at the Shackelford Law Firm in Dallas. He is also a former board member of the World Affairs Council and a member of the Mallon Circle, an honorary body comprised of members who have served the Council with distinction. He is a historian, author, speaker, and interviewer. Boston has spoken at the National Archives, six presidential libraries, 12 World Affairs Councils, and many universities.

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Do you believe in the importance of international education and connections? The nonprofit World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth is supported by gifts from people like you, who share our passion for engaging in dialogue on global affairs and building bridges of understanding. While the Council is not currently charging admission for virtual events, we ask you to please consider making a one-time or recurring gift to help us keep the conversation going through informative public programs and targeted events for students and teachers.

Donate: https://www.dfwworld.org/donate

The political polarization of America in 2022 is not a new phenomenon, but what is often missing is the political will to find a middle ground. Even while in fierce opposition to the policies of President Ronald Reagan, who was swept into office in a landslide, Democrat House Speaker Tip O’Neill said, “In the best interest of America, the hand of cooperation ought to go out.” Last year, the Pew Research Center found that 86% of Trump supporters and 89% of Biden supporters wanted their elected official to address the needs of all Americans “even if it means disappointing some of his supporters.”

Join us for the Mike Rawlings Endowed Lecture as Democrat Mayor Mike Rawlings, Republican and former Texas Speaker of the House Joe Straus, and Rudy Bush of the Dallas Morning News discuss how to slow the polarization of our electorate and find a middle ground where opposition does not become obstruction.

About our Speakers:

The Honorable Mike Rawlings was the longest serving Mayor of Dallas (2011-2019) in over 50 years. This annual lecture was created to honor him for his service to our city, and especially for his success in raising the city’s international prominence. Rawlings is a founding partner of CIC Partners, its current vice-chairman, and has been with the firm since its inception in 2004. He is a graduate of Boston College.

The Honorable Joe Straus served as Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives from 2009 until 2019, the longest-serving Republican Speaker in Texas history. A native of San Antonio and a fifth-generation Texan, Speaker Straus began attending Republican meetings as a child with his mother, Joci Straus, who played a key role in building the Texas Republican Party in the second half of the 20th century. A graduate of Vanderbilt University, Speaker Straus served in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He represented northeaster Bexar County in the Texas House for 14 years.

About the Moderator:

Rudolph Bush became editorial page editor and vice president at the Dallas Morning News in 2022 after serving as deputy editorial page editor. He previously served as deputy editorial page editor, Dallas City Hall and investigative reporter, and city desk news editor. Bush covered crime and the federal courts at the Chicago Tribune and later became a national correspondent in the newspaper’s Washington Bureau. He has an M.A. and an M.B.A. from the University of Dallas, where he served as the director of journalism from 2014-2022.

Our challenge is to remain good citizens in a politically and socially divided world. The Freedoms Foundation’s David Harmer says, “When we recognize what we share in common and work through our differences with civility, we can preserve and advance freedoms for all.” At the Bill and Barbara Benac Human Dignity and Fairness for All Lecture, Harmer will focus on the twin ideals of freedom and individual responsibility and the effect our political past, social structure, and economic entity have on them and on citizenship today.

About the Speaker:

David Harmer: David Harmer is currently the CEO of Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge and previously served as counsel to a subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. A fellow of the Heritage Foundation who has been published by the Cato Institute and is considered an expert in constitutional law, Harmer has litigated in defense of personal and economic freedoms recognized by the First and Fifth Amendments. He has spent the heart of his career at the Los Angeles firm of O’Melveny & Meyers.

About the Moderator:

Katherine Carté Engel is an Associate Professor of History at Southern Methodist University, specializing in early American and Atlantic history. She is an award-winning author, and her articles have appeared in a variety of academic journals and collections. Carté has been a Charles A. Syskamp Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, and affiliate fellow of the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University, a Franklin Fellow of the American Philosophical Society, and a Barra Postdoctoral Fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies. She received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin.

The annual Bill and Barbara Benac Human Dignity and Fairness for All Lecture is intended to promote human dignity, equality, and civil discourse.

Sponsored By

Bill & Barbara Benac

Thank you to our Promotional Partner

Freedoms Foundation at Valley forge - Dallas area Chapter

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Do you believe in the importance of international education and connections? The nonprofit World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth is supported by gifts from people like you, who share our passion for engaging in dialogue on global affairs and building bridges of understanding. While the Council is not currently charging admission for virtual events, we ask you to please consider making a one-time or recurring gift to help us keep the conversation going through informative public programs and targeted events for students and teachers.

Donate: https://www.dfwworld.org/donate

Do massive floods worldwide and soaring heatwaves foreshadow changes in the global climate status quo? Last February, the freeze in Texas caused massive power outages, damage to infrastructure, and 172 people lost their lives. What does a system more resilient to catastrophic risk look like? Is our response coming too late? Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment Alice Hill will talk with us about confronting the dangers ahead in our November 1 webinar.

About the speaker:

Alice Hill is the David M. Rubenstein senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations. She previously served as a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and as senior counselor to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2009. Hill led developments of policy regarding national security and climate change as special assistant to the President and senior director of resilience policy at the National Security Council during the Obama Administration. In 2015, Hill was honored with the Meta-Leader of the Year award from Harvard’s University’s National Preparedness Leadership Initiative. Her 30-year career includes experience as a federal prosecutor, judge, and White House insider.

About the Moderator:

Brendon Steele is Future 500’s resident expert on all things energy, oil and gas, and climate policy. He grew up with one foot in the San Francisco Bay Area and the other in an oil family, where he was able to find common ground in uncommon places. Steele holds a B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of California, Davis and a masters in Climate and Society from Columbia University. While at Columbia, Steele worked with the Urban Climate Change Research Network at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies to facilitate knowledge sharing on climate change and cities. He spent six years working in the environmental chemistry field, where he was a liaison between federal regulators and his team of chemists and data analysts.

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Do you believe in the importance of international education and connections? The nonprofit World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth is supported by gifts from people like you, who share our passion for engaging in dialogue on global affairs and building bridges of understanding. While the Council is not currently charging admission for virtual events, we ask you to please consider making a one-time or recurring gift to help us keep the conversation going through informative public programs and targeted events for students and teachers.

Donate: https://www.dfwworld.org/donate

In this year’s Gail Koppman History Lecture Series, the Civil War may have ended on April 9, 1865, but over 150 years later, the fight for a stable democracy continues with polarizing civil tension in the United States. The fight to preserve the Union is more tightly knit with the fight for democracy than any of can imagine. What are the implications of our forgotten history and what impact does it have on our future? Join us and Suri at the Gail Koppman History lecture for a book signing and discussion on our country’s history. We’ll discuss his argument that there was never a united country post the Civil War and what emerged was a country striving to rebuild and unite, but ultimately unable to.

About the Speaker

Jeremi Suri is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin in the Department of History and the LBJ School of Public Affairs, where he holds the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs. Suri teaches award-winning graduate and undergraduate courses on strategy and decision-making, leadership, globalization, international relations, and modern history. His accolades include being named America’s “Top Young Innovators” and the Pro Bene Meritis Award for Contributions to the Liberal Arts, in 2007 and 2018, respectively. Outside of University work, Suri writes for various major publications – including the New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Dallas Morning News, among others – and has authored and edited 11 books on modern-day politics and foreign policy.

About the Moderator

Jim Falk, president emeritus of the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth, retired in March 2021 after serving as the organization’s president since 2001. Now residing in Santa Fe, New Mexico he is member of the Board of Global Santa Fe where he chairs the program committee. Additionally, Jim co-hosts The McCuistion Program, a public affairs program, that airs weekly on KERA-Dallas (PBS). He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and honorary consul of Morocco.

About the Gail Koppman History Lecture

Gail Koppman was a passionate educator, voracious reader and lifelong learner. Born in Philadelphia, Gail graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pennsylvania in 1964. She began teaching in the Terrell and Richardson school districts and later taught economics at Richland Junior College. After raising her children, Gail taught social studies for more than 20 years at Good Shepherd Episcopal School.

In addition to teaching her students study skills and instilling a work ethic that would benefit them throughout their lives, Gail hoped to spark a lifelong curiosity about history, current events, and the world. Her dedication to education was recognized over the years in the countless letters and emails that she received and treasured from former students and their parents.

Gail valued the educational contributions of the Council to the DFW community. Not only did she enjoy attending programs, she also appreciated bringing her students to various events and introducing them to different views and ideas.

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Do you believe in the importance of international education and connections? The nonprofit World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth is supported by gifts from people like you, who share our passion for engaging in dialogue on global affairs and building bridges of understanding. While the Council is not currently charging admission for virtual events, we ask you to please consider making a one-time or recurring gift to help us keep the conversation going through informative public programs and targeted events for students and teachers.

Donate: https://www.dfwworld.org/donate

No recent administration has been so intensely scrutinized as that of President Donald Trump. “Insiders,” media, and Congressional hearings attempt to interpret what happened behind the scenes at the Trump White House. Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, staff writer at The New Yorker and founder/editor at Politico, offer their front-row perspective in "The Divider: Trump in the White House 2017-2021" based on sources including President Trump himself. Join us for this timely conversation with these historians as the former President considers a 2024 reprise of his political campaign.

Peter Baker is an award-winning journalist who has covered Washington for more than 30 years. He is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times. Susan Glasser is a staff writer at The New Yorker and has served as a top editor for several Washington publications as well as editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy. This is the third book the married couple has co-authored. Their 2005 book, “Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the End of Revolution,” chronicled the four years they spent as Washington Post bureau chiefs in Moscow.

Moderator: Jeffrey A. Engel is founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University and Professor in the Clements Department of History. Engel has authored or edited twelve books on American foreign policy. A frequent media contributor on international and political affairs on venues including MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, National Public Radio, and the BBC, his scholarly and popular articles have appeared in such journals as Diplomatic History; Diplomacy & Statecraft; American Interest; USAToday; The Los Angeles Times; International Journal; The Dallas Morning News; The Houston Chronicle; Air & Space Magazine; and The Washington Post.

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Do you believe in the importance of international education and connections? The nonprofit World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth is supported by gifts from people like you, who share our passion for engaging in dialogue on global affairs and building bridges of understanding. While the Council is not currently charging admission for virtual events, we ask you to please consider making a one-time or recurring gift to help us keep the conversation going through informative public programs and targeted events for students and teachers.

Donate: https://www.dfwworld.org/donate

The monarchy is a national symbol of the UK and a traditional unifying point, as we have just witnessed. As the United Kingdom said goodbye to its longest-reigning monarch, questions arose about how many of the 56 commonwealth nations would retain King Charles III as their sovereign. What is the impact of the Queen’s passing on the world? Does it change global order? Will the monarchy remain relevant, be slimmed down, or shift to a republican system?

The World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth will present a webinar featuring Lord Mark Sedwill, a British diplomat, member of the House of Lords, and former civil servant who served as Cabinet Secretary to Prime Ministers Theresa May and Boris Johnson and Head of the Civil Service (2018-2020), and as National Security Adviser (2017-2020). He was previously the UK’s Ambassador to Afghanistan, NATO Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan, and Permanent Secretary at the Home Office.

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Do you believe in the importance of international education and connections? The nonprofit World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth is supported by gifts from people like you, who share our passion for engaging in dialogue on global affairs and building bridges of understanding. While the Council is not currently charging admission for virtual events, we ask you to please consider making a one-time or recurring gift to help us keep the conversation going through informative public programs and targeted events for students and teachers.

Donate: https://www.dfwworld.org/donate

Hacking is no longer a far-off, fictional plot from science fiction. We all participate in the digital world. The threats to individuals and their identities are real and inevitable; no person or corporation is exempt from identity theft or data breach. Last year, Microsoft was infiltrated by at least 10 different hacker groups as a result of software flaws and unsuspecting users. Cyber-tech leaders Shawn Wiora and Mike Echols will show Global Forum members how to manage cyber risks and be empowered to safely navigate the tech world.  

About the Speakers:

Mike Echoles headshotMike Echols is the CEO of IACI, a Kennedy Space Center nonprofit, and CEO of Max Cybersecurity LLC. Echols spent 10 years at the Department of Homeland Security in critical infrastructure protection and cybersecurity leadership and served as the point person for President Obama’s Executive Order Promoting Private Sector Cybersecurity Information Sharing, Chair of the Communications Sector and Network Security Information Exchange, and designated federal official for the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee. Echols is a graduate of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative – Harvard Kennedy School of Public Health, and the Federal Executive Institute.    

Shawn Wiora headshotShawn Wiora is the co-founder and CEO of Maxxsure, a leading cyber risk quantification and blockchain company in DFW. Known as a cyber industry expert, Wiora has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, CIO.com, and CNNMoney and is a frequent keynote and conference speaker for SOX, PCI, NIST, and HIPAA. Additionally, he took the first healthcare company in the U.S. to the cloud, a company which received the designation of the most cyber-resilient healthcare company in the U.S.

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Do you believe in the importance of international education and connections? The nonprofit World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth is supported by gifts from people like you, who share our passion for engaging in dialogue on global affairs and building bridges of understanding. While the Council is not currently charging admission for virtual events, we ask you to please consider making a one-time or recurring gift to help us keep the conversation going through informative public programs and targeted events for students and teachers.

Donate: https://www.dfwworld.org/donate

Over the past century, Americans have seen several iterations of the Republican Party, from the post-WWII Eisenhower days to Reaganomics to the rise of Trump’s MAGA movement. Amid so much change, how does one define the modern-day Republican Party, and what does it mean to be a conservative in 2022?

Political scholar Matthew Continetti seeks to answer these questions and more in his book, The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism. In The Right, Continetti takes readers through the history of the party and how the ideology that drives it has evolved over the decades, in the face of changing social, political, and economic circumstances. From a “network of intellectuals” to a 21st century political organization, Continetti explains the intricacies behind what many see as the party’s “desire for mainstream acceptance and the pull of extremism.”

Matthew Continetti is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies American political thought and history, emphasizing on the Republican Party and conservative movements throughout the 20th century. Continetti has written two books, The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star and The K Street Gang: The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine. He is also the founding editor of The Washington Free Beacon, as well as a contributing editor at National Review. He holds a B.A. in history from Columbia University.

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Do you believe in the importance of international education and connections? The nonprofit World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth is supported by gifts from people like you, who share our passion for engaging in dialogue on global affairs and building bridges of understanding. While the Council is not currently charging admission for virtual events, we ask you to please consider making a one-time or recurring gift to help us keep the conversation going through informative public programs and targeted events for students and teachers.

Donate: https://www.dfwworld.org/donate

When facing technical difficulties with your computer, the easiest solution is often just to reboot it. But can you hit control, alt, delete on a political party? In his book, American Reboot: An Idealist’s Guide to Getting Big Things Done, former Republican congressman and CIA officer William Hurd argues you definitely can. Dubbed “the future of the GOP” by Politico and Texas Monthly, Hurd reveals his secrets to success in turning red a large district that has traditionally voted blue. He provides a clear-eyed path forward for America, grounded by what Hurd calls "pragmatic idealism"—a concept forged from enduring American values to achieve what is actually achievable.

From his critical analysis of the GOP’s foggy vision for the future to discussing the impact of rapid technological advancements, Hurd will tackle five seismic problems facing the U.S. as outlined in his book. Join us as Hurd shares his unique experience as a Black republican in the House, with a vibrant career in intelligence, articulating what domestic policy can look like by appealing to the middle and empowering people.

William Hurd served as the U.S. representative for Texas’s 23rd congressional district from 2015-2021. He is currently a managing director at Allen & Company and most recently served as a fellow at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. Additionally, he is growing the U.S. transatlantic partnership with Europe as a trustee of the German Marshall Fund and an OpenAI board member. Hurd worked for the CIA from 2000 to 2009, completing a tour of duty as an operations officer in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. He has a B.S. in Computer Science and a minor in international relations from Texas A&M University.

Moderated by Lee Cullum, journalist at Public Media of North Texas (KERA/PBS) and Senior Fellow at the John Tower Center for Public Policy and International Affairs at SMU.

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Do you believe in the importance of international education and connections? The nonprofit World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth is supported by gifts from people like you, who share our passion for engaging in dialogue on global affairs and building bridges of understanding. While the Council is not currently charging admission for virtual events, we ask you to please consider making a one-time or recurring gift to help us keep the conversation going through informative public programs and targeted events for students and teachers.

Donate: https://www.dfwworld.org/donate