On the Record

Rebecca Granato, associate vice president for global initiatives at Bard College and program director of the Open Society University Network’s Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives in Eastern Africa and the MENA region, leads the conversation on migration, refugees, and education.

FASKIANOS: Welcome to CFR’s Higher Education Webinar. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach at CFR.

Today’s discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/Academic. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

We are delighted to have Rebecca Granato with us to discuss migration, refugees, and education. Dr. Granato is associate vice president for global initiatives at Bard College, and program director for the Open Society University Network’s Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives in Eastern Africa and in the MENA region. She also serves as an associate at Bard College’s Institute for Writing and Thinking, and has developed and delivered teacher professional development in Myanmar, Jordan, and Kyrgyzstan, among other places. Her work focuses on contextualized, learner-centered experiences in undergraduate courses, teacher professional development, and research-oriented training in places affected by crisis and displacement for refugees, internally displaced people, and those in host communities.

So, Rebecca, thank you very much for being with us today. I thought we could begin with you sharing your insights on some of the barriers refugees and migrants face in higher education.

GRANATO: Thank you, Irina. And thank you to CFR for having me here today. I’m just going to share a few slides. And I’ll talk for just ten or twelve minutes to Irina’s question. Let me share my screen.

So what I thought I would do is give you some background on higher education in displacement context, including some of the barriers, challenges, successes, and goals. And I was also going to talk a little bit about the need for close collaboration across seemingly disparate actors in order to open opportunities for those affected by displacement.

So some of you may know this, but as of the month of May 2022, the number of forcibly displaced individuals across the globe crossed the 100 million mark. This is significant. I mean, this is the largest jump in displacement since World War II. And what this really means in real terms is that one in every seventy-eight people on Earth have actually been forced to flee. Nearly half of these individuals are youth. I think as many of us know, sustainable development goal number four demands that we ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. But we have a long way to go when it comes to full participation of refugees and exercising this right to a full educational experience.

That said, a lot of work has gone into awareness-raising of the barriers that this population faces, as well as into establishing and promoting global markers for success. Sone example of a really important marker out there is something that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) established, a global goal called the 15by30 Roadmap, which sets a target of enrolling 15 percent of refugee youth into higher education by 2030. Which means about a half a million individuals. This would raise the numbers up to 15 percent from 5 percent, which is what we have today in terms of enrollments, which hovers around 90,000 refugees taking advantage of higher education opportunities.

In order to reach this goal, as this roadmap articulates, there are five education pathways that refugees can pursue. And the five are intended to ensure that refugees’ needs are met in different ways. Just like our needs when we want to go to university are also met in different ways. One would be national university enrollment in countries of first asylum. Another would be UNHCR tertiary scholarship programs, which could be in universities of—universities and countries of first asylum, or also in third countries. Connected higher education programs, which use online education and blended learning. Complementary education pathways for admission to third countries, which are third country scholarships that include a durable solution. And then TVET opportunities, technical and vocational education and training.

So through these five pathways is how UNHCR intends for the global community to help refugees actually move in greater numbers into higher education. The UN has also launched a campaign called Each One Take One. This was launched quite recently. And what it asks is that universities across the globe each take at least one refugee student onto their campus. So it’s a catchy tag. It won’t have a major impact on its own, but the goal of some of these catchy tags is really to help promote the idea of refugee inclusion in higher education. But in order to make this a reality, there are still a number of barriers that need to be overcome.

So I’m going to go back a little bit to some data that isn’t just focused on the tertiary education numbers. So we’ll look at a couple of global data points. All of these numbers are actually drawn from UNHCR’s Global Trends report, which they publish annually. And they collect data from across the globe, across many, many countries that host refugees. So when it comes to the number of youth who are actually eligible for higher education opportunities in refugee contexts, this chart, as you can see, does not tell a very promising story. Sixty-eight percent of refugees have access to primary education. This is compared to a global average of about 91 percent for primary school. So there’s a big gap there.

When it comes to secondary education, we’re looking at about 37 percent of refugees accessing secondary education, compared to a global average of about 84 percent. And then, of course, when we get to tertiary, which I’ll come back to, we’re looking at 5 to 6 percent, compared to a global average of about 37 percent. And as you can see here from this slide, the enrollment numbers drop off precipitously after primary education. And this happens for a number of reasons. It could be caretaking of younger siblings, wage-earning possibilities, a sense of hopelessness that education actually isn’t opening up opportunities, hearing from bigger brothers and sisters and others that a university education, while it might have been possible for a refugee, resulted in no additional livelihood opportunity within a camp setting. And for girls, of course, there are additional barriers—early marriage, safety concerns, cultural barriers.

Second, I would say that—and as indicated by this chart too—that the quality of K-12 education is often very poor in displacement contexts. Primary and secondary education for refugees is most frequently treated as an emergency response, so as a kind of temporary stopgap measure before the refugees are repatriated. But we also know that the average refugee status lasts around two decades, which is a number that extends far beyond the typical school years. So treating primary and secondary as an emergency response is actually—it’s very damaging. When education is treated like this, as a humanitarian issue, what partners end up doing is they end up setting up special schools in parallel systems.

So you can see here on the slide, I note three different ways in which emergency response education plays out at the K-12 level. Partially integrated systems, like what you have in a case like Jordan where students in some cases are in what are called second-shift schools. The refugees go in the afternoons. The host communities go during the day. Often there are less-qualified teachers teaching the afternoon. Jordan’s trying to move away from that, slowly, slowly. But it’s just an example.

A parallel system is like an example of what Kenya does, where all of the students in the K-12 system go through the Kenyan national curriculum, but the teachers are actually employed by NGOs. And they have no training, or virtually no training, and they also do not have the—they don’t have the Ministry of Education pay scale. So they’re treated like what we call incentive workers. They make about $110 a month.

And then we have the example of an informal system, which is probably the weakest of all. And an example of that is what we have in the Cox’s Bazar camps for the Rohingya in Bangladesh, where the students actually, up until recently, were completely blocked from attending any kind of formal school system. And they were attending four levels only of a curriculum that was designed by the British Council.

So very few host countries actually allow for inclusive educational opportunities in which refugee education is fully embedded into the host country education system. And an inclusive system would really mean that teacher quality, school infrastructure, financing, access to learning materials, and other resources are the same for all students, citizens, residents, and refugees alike. And of course, refugee students before they get to tertiary often need even more support beyond what is needed by the host community. They need assessment of prior learning when their certificates are not verifiable, when they’re coming from another country. They might need language learning and will certainly need psychosocial support.

So this is the—this is a major barrier leading up to the attempt to get more students into higher education. And even for those who do make it, and the numbers have slowly crept up, there are significant and often paralyzing barriers to actually accessing or being successful in these tertiary education environments. Language is one of them. Most refugees are displaced to countries in which the language of instruction is different from their own. And graduation from secondary school in that country of first asylum does not necessarily mean academic fluency, as many of these refugee contexts are in rote learning environments.

Even in places where refugees do speak the same language as their hosts, such as Syrians in Jordan, there are limited higher education opportunities for refugees in, for example, Jordan, in the country of first asylum. So in many cases, even if they make it through the secondary school system in their native language, they still have to learn another language to be competitive in a tertiary environment. There’s a major skills gap, especially when applying to university programs more so than TVET or some of the other certificates or diplomas. Between interrupted education and poor-quality opportunities in host countries, even the brightest youth often lack the necessary skills.

And this could be as simple as they don’t have the basic ICT skills to fill out a college application. They don’t have the ability to frame and promote themselves. They don’t have the confidence to do so. They don’t have the content knowledge to pass entrance exams, not to mention the more advanced skills like critical thinking and academic writing. Navigating the system is a major barrier. Lack of access to quality information on higher education opportunities and scholarships. Refugees often have to rely heavily on word of mouth, on social media, on WhatsApp groups, on NGOs and informal networks in order to know where they can get access to higher education. And most of them, even when they identify that opportunity, they don’t have the support in understanding the application procedures, the prerequisites, how to obtain study visas if they need them, or how to even arrange for recognition of prior learning.

And then finally, I mean, there’s the obvious one of limitation on numbers of scholarships and places for study. Opportunities in host communities are extremely limited. And this often has a very politicized aspect to it, you know, where refugees sometimes are treated as foreign students. Like in Jordan, where they have to pay foreign tuition. And then there’s the issue of the possibility of, say, complementary education pathways, where they go to a third country but many of the scholarships out there right now don’t have a durable solution attached to them. So a student may go to study in another country, but there’s no sustainable post-graduation option for them. And they risk being left in kind of an administrative limbo, which is a serious protection risk.

So as you can see, in spite of these many barriers the numbers have gone up over the past few years. Since the Global Refugee Forum in 2019, we have been able to move from 3 percent to 6 percent, which is not insignificant. But the goal of reaching 15 percent by 2030 is a lofty one, especially considering that almost 90 percent of the world’s refugee population is hosted by developing countries. So just to give a kind of comparative data point, in places like sub-Saharan Africa, the enrollment rate of non-refugee youth in higher education across the region still hovers only around 9 percent. So if we’re trying to get to 15 percent with the refugee population, we also need to think about the host community. And this is another sort of political issue that comes up a lot.

So there are many different actors working in the field to address some of these barriers to reach the goal of 15by30. There are foundations providing significant funding for scholarships for displaced learners. MasterCard Foundation, Education Above All, some of which you might have heard of. There are regional actors working to open places for learners at national universities and countries of first asylum. I live in Kenya. I’m talking to you from Nairobi. We have a network here called the African Higher Education Network. And then there’s another network that works in Africa that is called the Men’s Network, that works primarily in francophone Africa. And they work on complementary education pathways. So there’s lots of actors doing lots of work.

And then there are networks that are working along multiple lines and with diverse actors, such as the network I work for. And I’m going to talk a little bit about what OSUN has done just for a couple of minutes, and what makes us unique in our ability to support the opening of higher education opportunities for refugees. So OSUN is a truly global network. We have representation on almost every continent. Partners are quite diverse, including higher education and research institutions. All of them are at various stages of their own institutional development, but all of them also share a set of similar values, including a commitment to open society and also to collaboratively addressing inequality.

Because we work horizontally across partners, we’re able to support new and continued educational access in both emergent and protracted crises. And it’s important to keep both emergent and protracted crises in mind. When we have, you know, the news inundating us with Ukraine and Afghanistan, there are many refugees who have been displaced for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years. So we do a lot of work as well through connected learning programs, also by supporting student movement to institutions across our network for the purposes of education. And, luckily, we also work in countries of first asylum, where we might be able to take students into national universities.

And when it comes to emergent crises, networks are a really important contributor. Not just OSUN, but all networks. In our case, we’re capable of mobilizing human and financial resources for really rapid response. And we’ve done this in three different—three very different contexts over the past nineteen months, with Myanmar, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. For example, we were able to support over two hundred students from Afghanistan to continue their education after displacement. Still a drop in the bucket, though.

And by working across multiple partners, we’re also able to support students in the more protracted situations in Africa, the Middle East, and Bangladesh. In urban settings and in refugee camps, which are the places where I work. As Irina mentioned, I direct something called the OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives. And we have what’s called the Refugee Higher Education Access Program, which is a bridging program. It takes about fifteen to eighteen months and it’s really intended to prepare students to really be ready to go into any academic English-language university program.

Critical thinking, writing, analysis. All of these things they’re not getting in their very poorly equipped secondary schools. And some of the content knowledge upskilling that’s needed. So working within our network, these students are also eventually integrated into classrooms alongside matriculated students at campuses across the globe. And this has an added benefit for those students of humanizing the refugee student and exposing them—exposing the non-refugee matriculated students—to the very different perspectives that the refugees can bring.

So even these very diverse networks can only impact a finite number of students. But what they can do, and the reason I’m mentioning networks—and what OSUN is working hard to do—is really to create models that can be locally contextualized, and also replicable in other contexts and by other institutions. Likewise, I mentioned earlier UNHCR’s Each One Take One campaign. Again, a catchy little slogan, but once a university sets up a system for one student, it becomes much easier to take in many more. Universities realize it’s possible.

And in the context of the American system, there’s going to be the opening of a new refugee category—a visa category in the coming months, which some of your universities—if you’re dialing in from the States—might be involved in down the line. And the initial pilot will be asking universities to just take one or two students through a complementary pathway, with the intention that it would be scaled up over time.

So I guess one question is, why should we be putting so much emphasis on higher education for refugees? And, first, I would say there’s the moral imperative. Many of us who work for universities have social missions attached to our universities. And we try to emphasize this element, of course, with our institutions and also with other university actors. But beyond that, there are many other players who need to be convinced at this importance of this, particularly governments, state actors, people that we deal with a lot on the ground.

And we need to make a different argument there. The moral imperative does not hold weight for them. We need to show them that educating refugees is a good investment of human and financial resources. And as actors in the refugee education space, I believe we really need to think of higher education as an instrument that fosters growth, reduces poverty, and boosts shared prosperity, not only for the individual receiving the education but for the country in which the individual is residing.

We can clearly articulate the global gains of tertiary graduates, OK. So we have that data. And I’m sure many of you are familiar with this. For example, some of the World Bank data shows that tertiary education graduates—and not just refugees—experience a 17 percent increase in their earnings. In sub-Saharan Africa, which of course is hard hit by many refugee crises, it’s a 21 percent increase in earnings for tertiary education graduates. So in addition to wage-earning capacity, there’s data indicating that tertiary education graduates are more environmentally conscious, they have healthier habits, they have a higher level of civic participation.

So when refugees, if we expend that argument, are allowed to study and work in host—in third countries, they have the potential to contribute to societies and economies. So there needs to be a lot more data collection on this, in order to make a convincing case. But I’m going to give a couple of quick examples before I end, upon which we could base an argument for opening higher education opportunities and increasing potential earning power.

So when refugees travel to Canada for higher education through complementary pathways, they’re granted permanent residency upon arrival. The World University Service of Canada, WUSC, leads on this movement of refugee students between countries of first asylum and Canada. And they’ve been able to show that 90 percent of the refugees who were brought into their universities contribute to the economy as taxpayers within several months after graduation. They too need more data on actually what the numbers are.

In 2017, the U.S. government completed a study that looked at a period that’s now a little bit distant, they need to update this, but 2005 to 2014. And what they found is that while resettling refugees can cost thousands of dollars in the first couple of years, the tax contributions outweigh the cost. So during the period studied, the federal government spent approximately 206 billion on refugees. And yet, over that same period the refugees contributed more than 269 billion in tax revenue. So that’s a positive—net positive economic tax contribution of 63 billion. And then finally, if we’re looking beyond first-world countries, refugees often send remittances back to their country of origin. And one example is Liberia, which is a big refugee providing country. And about 18.5 percent of their GDP comes from remittances abroad.

So I’ll just conclude by saying that, there’s a couple of things that we need to—we need to do to promote further access. One is, we need to be thinking differently about how to prepare youth in the countries that—the countries of first asylum, before they get to the tertiary level. What’s happening now with the donor community, there’s a lot of investment in primary education. There’s a lot of attention on tertiary. And secondary is just being left out. Teachers are not trained. Students are just falling behind. And then we have this major drop off of ability before they can get to tertiary.

We also need to rethink refugee participation. Those of us who work on the ground, we think we’re always including refugee voices. We need to do a lot more on that. The refugees themselves are the experts in what their informal economies look like. So in many countries they can’t work legally, but they have informal economies. What do they really need to be studying? What skills do they need? We need to be tapping that. And UNHCR’s working on a kind of refugee-led mentoring program that might tackle some of this.

And then finally, the last point I would make is that we really need to create pathways and pipelines between different higher education institutions and programs. We need to include connected opportunities, scholarships in countries of first asylum, and also third-country opportunities so that students can move between degree possibilities, like any of us would, who want to get a higher education. So there needs to be options out there. So I think I’ll end there and turn it back to Irina.

FASKIANOS: That was fantastic. Thank you so much, Rebecca. And we’re going to turn to all of you now for your questions and comments. You can share what you’re doing and your thoughts.

(Gives queuing instructions.)

So the first question is from Patricia McCormick, who I think is at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, because she says she hopes you will reach out to her.

How are universities contacted to admit refugee services? Who pays for the housing and tuition of refugee students?

GRANATO: I think I had a moment of internet instability. Can you hear me, Irina?

FASKIANOS: I can hear you now, yes. So start at the top. Did you hear the question?

GRANATO: I think it’s the question that’s in the Q&A, how are universities contacted to admit refugee students?

FASKIANOS: It is.

GRANATO: OK. Sorry about that. Sometimes Kenya has unstable internet. If you can’t hear me, please let me know. Flag it.

FASKIANOS: I will.

GRANATO: So that’s a good question. Admitting refugee students. So in the U.S. right now there isn’t currently what we call a durable solution. That’s what’s being designed. In order for those of us who work in the field to responsibly send refugees to countries—to what we call third countries, there really needs to be a legal framework in place so that they can remain after. Once refugees leave camp settings, they’re often not allowed to go back. So what that means is they become not only stateless but they become campless. They’re statusless. They’re in this kind of administrative limbo, was the term I used earlier.

So when—the U.S. is currently designing this process that many of us are very involved in. And what will happen is a coalition of NGOs will reach out to universities and try to find interest in universities taking in students. The question, though, you had was about all the wraparound services, because many universities are often willing to forgive tuition. I know in OSUN we do that all time. But there are so many other costs associated with bringing a refugee student to another country. There’s the cost of the flight, the cost of the visa, the housing, the living stipend, all of that. So some of that’s going to be covered by the U.S. government during this pilot, but really what needs to be looked at is what a more sustainable mechanism is for this.

And there are different ways it’s done in different parts of the world. So in Canada, they use a—they use a community sponsorship model. So sometimes—well, they do two things. The community sponsorship model, and what’s called the student levy. I don’t think this would work in the U.S. But the student levy, there’s also money put on the tuition bill—like a dollar or two dollars—on every single tuition bill. And that money goes to cover refugee students at a given institution. And community sponsorship involves the community coming together and identifying pots of money that can be used for these wraparound services. And then, of course, universities need to also spend both human and financial resources on building out what’s needed in terms of the structures on campus to support these students, because there’s always legal advising, there’s psychosocial support, there’s all of the upskilling that might not have happened on the end when they’re being sent from their country of first asylum into the third country.

I hope that answers your question. But if institutions are interested, though, you should pay attention to what’s coming, because there will be a call for interest for universities to participate in this new refugee visa category pilot program. And you can also contact me. I’ll be—I’ll know what’s going on and be involved in some ways, too.

FASKIANOS: Great. I’m going to go next to a raised hand from Beth. And you’ll need to share your last name and your affiliation. If you can unmute yourself, that would be great, or accept the prompt.

Q: Can you hear me?

FASKIANOS: We can.

Q: OK, great. My name’s Elizabeth, I go by Beth, Bryant. I’m with Texas State Technical College.

I’m on a campus about twenty miles from the Texas-Mexico border. We specialize in associate degrees and technical training for occupations that are in demand in Texas, of course, since we’re such a big economy, and, you know, other places—wind technology, cybersecurity, nursing, education, things like that. I teach state and federal government. We’re all online now. Some of the technical courses have hybrid classes.

So my first question is, I know the definition in the dictionary of a refugee, but one of the things that we face here is just an influx of people from Mexico and Central and South America that are not necessarily fleeing war or famine. I think those folks, it’s easy to look at them as a refugee. What we have here are folks that are fleeing economic crises, societal unrest. I have two immigration lawyer friends who I used to help students whenever I can, and they’ve been very generous. One story is a guy got sent back to Honduras when he finally had his trial, was not granted asylum, and was killed two weeks later. So that’s what we’re dealing with here.

It’s like an administrative backlog and these people are fleeing difficulty, but it’s hard to get them classified as a refugee. And with the backlog, with the administrative courts that determine asylum, has people just sort of hanging out for two years, and then they make their way into the country and the best they can do is get a job washing dishes at a restaurant, or working at South Padre Island cleaning hotel rooms. So all these countries that you mentioned, it’s easy to see. But for us here on the border, we have a difficult time actually thinking of some of these immigrants—some of these immigrants as refugees.

So in order to access what OSUN is doing, how can—what are some of your thoughts on that? And then, just to follow that up, access to technology. Access to the computers. I have students that are trying to do their assignments on a smartphone because they don’t have a computer. We do have funds. We try to get them to those students to help them. These may be first-generation Americans or immigrants. So the technology, the digital divide, is really wide with this group.

And this is in our own country. This isn’t a first or second world issue. This is a—I mean, a second or third world issue. This is—this is right here in the United States. And it is a—it is a big problem, because we can’t get these folks to that next level because of the classification and because of the access to technology. So just—just some thoughts on how we could work with our administration, here at TSTC on that.

FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you.

GRANATO: Those are big questions. They’re really big questions. I would say, what you pointed to, Beth, of this person who ended up being sent back to, I think it was Honduras you said, and killed, I mean, that’s exactly—when we’re thinking about more traditional refugee pathways, I think there’s also a consideration there that needs to apply to immigrants into the United States. I guess, illegal immigrants. I’m not sure I know the politically correct term for the U.S. right now. But that kind of unofficial immigration into the U.S., because asylum does take a long time, and often fails, and then it leaves people in, again, this kind of limbo where they end up having to go back to a place where it’s not safe. So having that legal framework planned out in advance before taking students into an institution is really—I think that’s just a—that’s an important starting point.

I think that was one of your points, but your other point is really about this technological gap. And I guess what I’m not sure I’m understanding, Beth, is, are these students—they’re enrolling in your university as fully matriculated students?

Q: Yes. Yes, they’re—I mean, TSTC has open enrollment. And, you know, I’ve taught DREAMers before, who came over here when they were babies because their mother was fleeing, you know, economic insecurity, et cetera. And then I have, you know, people who have—who have migrated. It’s not hard to do. And we take them. And we try to get them into an English as a second language course, et cetera. But it’s—now that so much—even if my courses weren’t online, you still have to have a computer to complete higher education. I mean, period. It’s one of the things that I noticed. I mean, when I tell my students I had to type all my research papers on a typewriter, it freaks them out, you know?

And so there are funds available, since we’re a state institution. We’re state-funded. The state of Texas funds us. So we do have access to funds to try to get the computers to those that need them. But it’s coming out of hiding, interacting with the government. A lot of my students won’t apply for the funds because they’re scared. And they’re bright people. Mexico has a pretty good secondary education system. So do you see that as an issue with the people that you deal with? And how do you—

FASKIANOS: And then we’ll—if you could take a crack at that, and then we have several other questions. We’ll move on.

GRANATO: One of the—one of the things we do, though, is we really work with our faculty on adjusting assignments so that the assignments work in these lower-resource settings, so that students don’t have to have a computer. There actually is quite a bit that students can’t do on their phones. And students—we find that our students, who are very used to not having access to technology, are very adept at being creative in how they’re going to get some of these assignments done. They often handwrite them, and then they’ll type them up in WhatsApp, you know. But we do a lot of faculty work around how to kind of adjust content so that it works in the environment, because you can’t—we simply can’t provide a computer for every student. That would be an unsustainable model. So faculty development is one way we grapple with it. And then upskilling the students so that they know how to kind of adjust and how to be flexible.

FASKIANOS: Great. I’m going to next to a written question from Dr. Damian Odunze. Does the refugee education program include internally displaced persons, especially in countries in East and West Africa? Is there a collaboration between your organization and local communities? And Dr. Odunze’s with Delta State University in Cleveland, Missouri.

GRANATO: Thanks, Dr. Damian. So, yes, we do—we do work with internally displaced students, and many other programs in the region do as well. I would say that, in terms—when you ask about collaboration with local institutions, we—at least from the perspective of OSUN. I can speak from OSUN’s perspective. We attempt to collaborate with local universities here. And there’s a lot less flexibility with local institutions, say in Kenya, in terms of the ways in which refugees are credentialed, the ways in which their qualifications are kind of framed, than there would be with, say, an online program in the United States or even a third-country pathway. There’s often just more flexibility with foreign institutions.

So we try to work on opening opportunities for students here with local institutions, but the other ways in which we work with local institutions is we do a lot of work with refugee-led organizations. And those refugee-led organizations work with us on developing the contextualized programming. It also builds their capacity. So some of our attempt at local work is also just with sort of organizations that have been developed by the refugees themselves, which are also educationally oriented, but not higher education institutions.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. And just to correct myself, Delta State University is in Cleveland, Mississippi. My apologies.

So I’m going to go next to Candace Laughinghouse.

Q: Good afternoon. Well, first, thank you for this presentation. It’s really opened my eyes to a lot. I teach at a HBCU, St. Augustine’s University. And we have students—it’s in Raleigh, North Carolina. We have a lot of international students I was unaware of until I joined the faculty. And a lot of that is through the Episcopal Church. Because the school is an Episcopal University. But I just had some questions. And I’m wondering, in our attempts to provide education to students—I’m going to do some research further myself—I was just wondering, also as a—probably because as—(inaudible)—and the importance of listening to our language as instructors—because I actually have to engage in this with some professors in addressing our larger student population of African American students—is, I guess, educating our language and how we’re creating a community to transform.

It reminds me of a book by bell hooks called Teaching to Transgress. And a lot of that—and what I’m hearing some of the questions, and some of the things I know, things are sometimes kind of intention or not being aware of addressing certain things. But how does it impact a student’s learning? Because we often feel that the desire to learn just makes us all equal. These students want to come learn, but then even when I just use the language these students, like, you know, what does it—how does it impact our ability to teach and the students’ ability to learn at whatever level, when they are pretty much labeled and categorized in the different areas I’ve heard? Like, you’re an immigrant. You’re a DREAMer. You’re a—you know?

That definitely has an impact, even when—I have three small children. And one went through some troubles because of COVID. And they’re even in private school. So the learning development for my youngest was a challenge. But even then, at a private institution, I had to address how she was then being labeled immediately by performance or labeled by even from where she comes from. So I was wondering, has there been any sort of investment or consideration of this type of thing? Because that does—wouldn’t you agree that that would impact, one, a teacher’s ability to teach at a certain level, and also a student’s connection with receiving the education, if you have these labels that are, like, these folks, those people, these refugees, do they deserve this?

Instead of, these are young adults experiencing refugee status. These are young adults—because then it reclaims the humanity of them. Just like my girls know, I’m African American, our ancestors were not slaves. They were enslaved. Because we are aware now of what that denotes when you place labels. So I was wondering, has there been any sort of inquiry into that? Because I really believe that that could be a strong—there could be a correlation to the outcome of these programs as well, and how we are addressing the students. Because it kind of places a barrier between us and these young adults.

GRANATO: I think it’s a really excellent question. And, again, an area that needs more research, especially when we’re talking about integrating displaced learners into—primarily into environments where the majority of students are not displaced. So a student going to your university, for example, there by necessity needs to be an awareness of the context of where this person came from, at least among the staff, administrators, and faculty, because they will bring with them—they will bring with them a certain experience that needs attention. Definitely trauma that might or might not need attention, but legal questions that will need attention. So that has to be—there has to be awareness.

But the question of how they are perceived by their classmates and the ways in which they kind of categorize themselves, I mean, I certainly can’t speak for the refugee population. But I’ve heard a number of our students speak to when they go to third countries and they enroll in universities, where they’re not surrounded by their compatriots in the same way. And they don’t want to identify as refugees. They don’t want to be labeled that way. They want to be identified as students. Now, what kind of psychological studies have been done on that, I think that’s an area that’s somewhat under-researched still. But there’s—I think there’s a difference between awareness and labeling too. And that awareness is critical in these university settings, where these students are going to come with a very different set of needs and requirements.

Q: OK. So I guess—I guess my only question is—and you’re seeing what I’m saying about research. So is that something separate from what you’re doing? That cannot be integrated into the praxis in what your—and the pedagogy in which you’re—which you brilliantly presented earlier? Because I’m saying that that is a huge impact. Because we can have all the tools to say, hey, this can work, and this can work, and this can work. But something like that, in its—you know, it has a huge impact. And I’m not just speaking for the students, because the students, yeah, they bring their own things. But I’m talking about—I’m speaking as an educator. And as educators, how that can be perhaps—or, not perhaps—how that should be included in faculty around what you’re addressing. But thank you for letting me ask the question.

GRANATO: Yeah. And I mean, I think you’re absolutely right. And, the work that we do with students in the bridging program, again, this is my example from the context I work in, we do a lot of work, you know, you mentioned bell hooks. We do a lot of work in trying to get the students to think – to think about content and ideas outside of their own contexts. And yet, they’re very much in their context there. And the label in a camp is important to them. They use it. You know, in their camp setting, it becomes a tool. But that’s very different when they’re then removed from that kind of majority area, where everybody is the same as them. So, no, I mean, you’re raising a really important question, and one that needs to be thought of, especially in third countries.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to take the next question from Sana Tayyen, who’s at the University of Redlands in California.

When developed countries, like Sweden and Germany, accept refugees, do they usually have an agenda as to the types of jobs and pathways they want refugees to end up in? Not 100 percent sure on this, but I’ve heard of Syrian refugees being brought into Sweden to fill service jobs for an aging population. Will higher education cater to government agendas?

GRANATO: It’s a good question. So the path—this question is really about what we would call third country pathways, where refugees are moved from a country of first asylum to a third country for the purposes of higher education. I think that’s what you’re asking, Sana. You know, in the programs that we work with, as OSUN but also OSUN co-chairs what is called the Global Taskforce on Third Country Higher Education Pathways, we work with institutions and governments that don’t have that agenda. Promoting an agenda like that, that refugees should be coming in to fill a particular service, undermines the purpose of higher education and the mission of a higher education opening up possibility.

So if you look at Germany, higher education pathways, students can come in and they can study—they can study anything at an institution that they’re accepted to. They have to be accepted to the institution. In France, it’s the same. There are many different options that the students can choose from in terms of majors. The important part is that they have the ability to work after, and that their ability to work—that their work permit allows them to work across sectors. So those are the pathways that are under development. And those are the ones that we, for example, support. I’m not—I don’t know about that case you’re referring to in Sweden. I can’t really speak to that because I’m not sure. But I can’t imagine that’s 100 percent accurate, but I will look that up.

FASKIANOS: Great. So next question from Ellen Chesler.

Can you speak in more detail about OSUN’s program for Afghan refugee students at Bard College in the U.S. and the American University of Central Asia in Tashkent? And how are these programs going?

GRANATO: So Bard took in—Bard, and our partner, American University of Central Asia, took in a number of students, it’s around two hundred, into BA and MA programs. The number will go up. There will be another intake. The program is partially—the scholarships are partially funded by Bard itself. You know, we do tuition remission. AUCA does tuition remission. There’s donors that contribute. I guess how is it going? It’s been a heavy lift. You know, it’s very different from bringing in international students. And international students, they’re already quite complicated to bring into a university setting, as you all well know.

But bringing in the Afghan students into America was particularly complicated because we don’t yet have this refugee visa category. So the students came in through referrals, the P4 process—sorry—the P3 process. But many of them came in on student visas. And student visas are not a sustainable mechanism. They only last for the duration of the degree. So now what Bard is trying to do is figure out what’s next for these students. And we’re having to do it on a case-by-case basis. You know, figuring out what’s going to happen to them after, what kind of legal status they’re going to have. Are they going to claim asylum and be stuck in that system, and not be able to work? Are they going to be able to transition to some kind of residency?

And this is all because this special refugee visa category does not exist yet. Next year, hopefully, it will be a very different scenario. At the American University if Central Asia, it’s also had a different set of struggles. I know that the university there has struggled with a lot of—a lot of trauma. I mean, there’s been a lot of psychosocial issues that have come up, and a lot of issues with students attending classes, because they’re really struggling. And the university—Bard and AUCA, you know, it’s a bit lift to equip your staff with the extra skills they need to deal with this, and the extra staffing you need. I mean, you need more people. And it happened so quickly that I feel like there’s been kind of a catch up.

So I think—I hope that answers your question. I’m not sure if your question was how is it going was a different one, but I hope that answers it.

FASKIANOS: Great. So we have two more questions I’d love to get in, from Dr. Adegbola Ojo, who’s at the University of Leeds in the UK.

Apart from financial remittances, is there evidence of other forms of positives, e.g., brain gain, in home countries resulting in the human capital flight of refugees?

GRANATO: When you say “home countries,” do you mean their countries of origin, or do you mean the countries they are going to becoming their home countries.

FASKIANOS: Right. I’m not sure. Dr. Ojo, do you want to unmute and clarify? Because I read exactly what was in the question. (Laughs.)

Q: Yes. Yes, thank you very much.

FASKIANOS: Thank you very much.

Q: Yeah, yeah. It’s countries of origin.

GRANATO: Countries of origin.

Q: Yes.

GRANATO: That’s a good question. And, again, it’s an understudied area. The number—you know, an understudied area of people who have gone and sought an education, gone from a third country—sorry—a country of first asylum, to a third country for education, who have then gone back. I don’t actually know the exact numbers. I don’t know what the exact numbers are of people who might have gotten a university education—say, in the UK—and then they return to their country of origin. I imagine it’s quite small. So I don’t—and there aren’t studies on that particular question.

When it comes to brain gain, of course, most refugees who leave, say, a camp-based setting, they don’t—the vast majority do not go back to the camp. Most of them can’t. In Kenya, you can return to a camp. In a place like Cox’s Bazar you wouldn’t be able to. In a place like Rwanda, you could. So it’s different in every—in every place. In Jordan, you wouldn’t be able to return. So it would also be difficult to track if people return what kind of impact it would have because most of them actually don’t. Most of them remain in the country that they go to educate—to be educated. But it would be interesting to look at the numbers that return to their countries of origin, and what that net brain gain is. I think it’s a really good question. I’m sorry I don’t have an answer.

Q: Well, thank you. I do think that that would be a knowledge gap there, and potentially area for further research. Yeah, something to think about.

GRANATO: It’s a good research question, yeah.

Q: Thank you.

GRANATO: What I can say—although, maybe there’s another question. I was going to add something, but maybe—

FASKIANOS: No. No, go ahead. Just have a—go ahead.

GRANATO: OK. I was just going to say, it’s a little different from your question about brain gain, but there have been some recent studies on refugees who don’t leave the camp but get an education, and have a degree, and then actually have really no very pronounced livelihood opportunity that’s connected to their degree. And some of those studies have looked about the increase in things like depression and anxiety. And the sort of negative impacts of higher education, when then there’s no livelihood opportunity that really is connected to the degree itself. So I know it’s different from your question, but just it made me think of it.

FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. So we’ll take the final question from Sneha Bharadwaj, who’s a professor at Texas Woman’s University. How can we get involved in this mission? So that’s a good question to end on, on what administrators and educators can do in their own institutions.

GRANATO: So I think there’s a couple of things. First, I’ve already mentioned a few times that there will be this initiative in the U.S., and of course, Texas Woman’s University would be an institution that could participate in this, with this new refugee visa category and taking students in from countries of first asylum. But that’s going to still be a very small number. I mean, the vast majority of refugees will not be traveling for third-country opportunities. The vast majority will need to be educated in their country of first asylum.

And, you know, offering online opportunities for students is always something that refugees are interested in, in camp-based settings. We find that online opportunities really only work if there’s also some infrastructure on the ground to support them. Very remote instruction, often, there’s just major attrition. But if you have online offerings, you could come together with other partners, you could think about ways that you could offer some kind of online degree, if that’s something that your institution is accredited for. Again, getting back to this network idea. Networks of institutions can do that collaboratively, so it’s not as much of a heavy lift.

There’s always opportunities as well, and need, in refugee settings for additional research to be done, and for collaboration on things like faculty development inside camp settings, and training of teaching assistants. Those are also areas where there’s quite a bit of need.

FASKIANOS: Fantastic. Well, we are at the end of our time. So I thank you for taking your evening—giving your evening to us, Rebecca. You are in Nairobi, so it’s late there. And to all of you for being with us, and for your questions and comments. We really appreciate it.

GRANATO: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

FASKIANOS: You can follow Rebecca Granato on Twitter at @rebecca_granato. And you will receive an invitation to our next Higher Education Webinar shortly. But in the meantime, I encourage you to follow us at @CFR_Academic on Twitter and visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues. Thank you, again, for joining us today. And we look forward to your continued participation in the Higher Education Webinar Series.

(END)

Panelists discuss recent developments in Iran, including the ongoing protests and the government’s response, the future of the current regime, the country’s nuclear program, and how these factors influence U.S. policy.

Our panelists discuss U.S. immigration policy, prospects for immigration law reform, and the political and economic implications of immigration in the United States.

With its Renewing America initiative, CFR is evaluating nine critical domestic issues that shape the ability of the United States to navigate a demanding, competitive, and dangerous world. This project is made possible in part by the generous support of the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation.

Zongyuan Zoe Liu, fellow for international political economy at CFR, leads the conversation on global economics.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. Welcome to today’s session of the Fall 2022 CFR Academic Webinar Series. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach at CFR.

Today’s discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/academic. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

We’re delighted to have Zongyuan Zoe Liu with us to talk about global economics. Dr. Liu is a fellow for international political economy at CFR. She previously served as an instructional assistant professor at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service in Washington, D.C. And before that, she completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Columbia-Harvard China and the World program and the Center for International Environment and Research Policy at Tufts University.

She served as a research fellow and research associate at many institutions—the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies, NYU’s Stern Center for Sustainable Business, and at the Institute for International Monetary Affairs in Tokyo. Dr. Liu is the author of Can BRICS De-dollarize the Global Financial System?, published by Cambridge University Press; and Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances its Global Ambitions, forthcoming in 2023 by Harvard University Press. So we will stay tuned for that.

So, Dr. Liu, thank you very much for being with us. This is a very broad topic, but it would be great if you could give us your analysis of the state of the global economy today.

LIU: Yeah, thank you very much, Irina, for inviting me to do this. I really, truly appreciate the opportunity to engage with our college and national universities, both the faculties and the students. This makes me feel I’m very much still part of the academia community. So thank you very much, Irina, and thank you, everybody, for tuning in today.

So I wanted to begin by saying that as an economist one thing that I learned is that we are very bad at making forecasting. And, once that forecasting is already very bad, but—and forget about the long run. But that being said, I hope our conversation today can at least exchange some perspectives in terms of how we think about global economy and how we think about some policy-relevant natures. So the first—I will begin by saying two statement, and then I will delve into it. The first statement I would say that I’m afraid that geopolitics probably would make economic forecasting, which is already a very difficult business, but geopolitics would likely make this business even more difficult going forward.

And this is because global economic prospect will be more influenced by geopolitics and geopolitical tensions, in addition to pure supply and demand. So that is to say, for our—all our college students and our graduate students, who are either pursuing a political science degree, international relations, or economics, or anybody who are vaguely interested in understanding global economics, now this is the time to realize, well, the models may not—the models had their limitations before, and their limitations are probably going to be even more pronounced going forward. The pure supply-demand dimensions—price is set in certain ways—probably are not necessarily going to go that way.

One such example would be the European Union and the United States are considering putting a price cap on Russian oil. And what does that mean? That probably means, well, it almost feel like for a long period of time there was this global cartel called the OPEC or OPEC+. These are the so-called sellers’ cartel. And they have the power, the monopolistic power almost, in terms of setting the price of oil in the global market. But now we are probably going to see the other part of the story, which is what about a global buyers’ cartel? And that is essentially what a price cap means. So long story short, I think geopolitics would play a lot into our analysis of global economics forecasting going forward.

And then my second sort of quick statement would be in terms of global economic status today. I would say the key—like, let me take a step back. When we think about economic development, we tend to think about factors of production. Like, for our—again, for our students who probably learned this at the beginning of the semester, this is the time to refresh your concept. But key factors of production—one is resource, the other is technology, and then the other is labor. In terms of resources, you can think about natural resources as well as capital.

So these three fundamental factors of production, I would say, they are all going through a period of changes. And these changes are not necessarily in a good way. So that, long story short, a lot of the changes now in global economic conditions may not necessarily be good. And I’m happy to go into a detailed analysis of why resources are not necessarily changing in a good way, or technology, or in terms of labor and demographics. But I’m also happy to stop here and then sort of answer questions or explain further going forward as well.

FASKIANOS: Great. We will go to all of you to ask your questions.

(Gives queuing instructions.)

So we already have a question. It’s from Fordham University. Raised hand. So you’re going to tell us—have to tell us who you are and unmute yourself, or accept the unmute prompt. There you go.

Q: Can you hear me?

FASKIANOS: Yes.

Q: OK, great. Yes, so I’m a third-year student at Fordham University. My name is Valerie Bejjani.

And my question for you, Dr. Liu, pertains to your paper—your Cambridge-published paper—about non-dollar alternatives, which I find very fascinating. And it made me think about something I read for an international political economy class about how Keynes first introduced a non-dollar alternative called the bancor during the Bretton Woods Conference, but the U.S. shot it down. So I was curious about your opinion on this, whether you think it was a mistake for the U.S. not to accept it, and what you think the implications—the historical implications are for BRICS countries today that are trying to devise their own non-dollar alternatives?

LIU: Thank you very much, Valerie, for your great question. And I have to—since we’re on the record—I just have to say, this is not a planted question. (Laughs.) And I very much appreciate that you’ve given me the opportunity to talk about the research that I did before.

So just a quick background about that research that I did, I finished the research last year—yeah, last year in the summer, in July. So when I submitted my manuscript, there was a review process, right? And then that was the moment when not everybody were interested in SWIFT, in SPFS, in China’s cross-border banking—Cross-Border Payment System, or CIPS. So a lot of these alphabetic soups that everybody here are familiar with now, last year before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nobody was even interested. And one of the reviewers was even telling—had a comment there saying that, well, you know, don’t necessarily think that these are good examples that deserve to—so many real estate. (Laughs.)

But and then my publisher somehow engineered it such that my—that Cambridge publication came out right on the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which was—that was—as a researcher, you probably can never hope the timing in that way. So going back to your question, Valerie, I would say I highly appreciate that you raised the question. And I respect that—highly respect that you are already getting yourself familiarized with Keynesian and all the other historically speaking alternative monetary system or monetary concept as well. So that’s all good. So keep doing what you are doing now and I look forward to continuing our conversation going forward.

So your question, if I understand it correctly, so is it a good idea for the United States to shut it down, right? So I mean, if I were—I was obviously not in the policymaking room in those days, but I can certainly understand why the United States would want to maintain the dollar’s dominant currency status in the global financial system. That’s because if you are able to—if the dollar were the dominant currency, in the existing dollar—in the existing global financial system, that basically means on the one hand we can issue debt cheaply. And that literally means the U.S. Treasury is the proxy for risk re-asset. That has huge implications not just for our government debt and our physical expenditure. It also has a tremendous amount of stabilizing factor for our domestic financial institutions and the expansion of our banks in the international market. So from both public perspective and the international perspective, those are good. And the United States has, from a policymaking perspective, all our financial policymakers had their right to shut it down.

Now, but if you ask this question from an alternative perspective—say, if you ask the question for—to, let’s say, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney—former governor. If you ask him, he would probably tell you, well, this is a terrible idea that the United States would shut it off, because he specifically said in 2019 at the Jackson Hole symposium, when all the major central bankers were gathered in the big hall and talking about monetary policies, he was the one standing in front of everybody saying that, well, it’s a terrible idea to have one single currency, which is the U.S. dollar, to dominate the global financial and monetary system. That is the reason why the system is not stable, hence we need to have an alternative system. Like a basket currency or something like that.

So, if you ask people like him, he would be—like, be in favor of the diversity—of a more diversified global monetary system. And again, if you ask the countries like China or, for that matter, Russia or Iran, they would be way much more in favor of a much more diversified monetary system as well. And that may not necessarily, from, exchange rate perspective, exchange rate risk is an important aspect, but the more important aspect probably is from the geopolitical hegemonic power of the U.S. dollar. Which means, the U.S. sanctioning power really resides in the dollar being the dominant currency. So right now, we hear about U.S. can sanction Russia, sanction other countries. How that is being executed, it is literally being executed by our banks no longer processing the bank transactions of all the Russian banks. Hence, when people talk about kicking Russia off the SWIFT system, it’s not just that the transaction cannot go out. It literally means in practice nobody can send a message with Russian banks. Like, there was no communication.

So the entire dollar system is based upon the SWIFT system, which 90 percent of the messaging to process the transactions are using dollar. And then, because the expansive power of our U.S. banks, it literally means all international trade literally has to be settled—the settlement has to be done by U.S. bank, who has U.S. dollars. And in order to access that transaction mechanism, only SWIFT can get the job done. You also have to literally tap into either the Fedwire System or the CHIPS system, which is the clearinghouse system based here in New York. So in order for this whole system—in order to have this whole system to make your dollar payment work, you literally have to maintain on the one hand a connection, on the other hand have connections with the dollar settlement system.

And that’s why when Russia was kicked out of SWIFT, a lot of other countries who are not necessarily on the good side of the United States started to get worried because people used to think, well, kicking somebody—kicking some banks off the SWIFT system is almost the financial version of a nuclear bomb. It’s the nuclear option of cutting somebody from the international financial system, of which the U.S. dollar is the dominant currency, the primary invoicing currency as well. And then on the other hand, lesson learned from this sanction experience, especially from the perspective of China, is that, well, previously we’ve already laid out a lot of this planning system—meaning the infrastructure used to internationalize the renminbi, such as the China—the China’s CIPS system. Policymakers inside China started to wonder, well, since the planning is already there, it’s not too much to ask just to add additional function.

So the previously, from a functional-wise, China’s renminbi payment infrastructure is really not about bypassing sanctions, because in my research I realized when—I interviewed people who actually participated in the designing of the system. And I remember talking to three people on three different occasions, and they all mentioned one point, which is without the CIPS system, the international using of renminbi, really—the user experience was really, really terrible. And the reason it was terrible was simply because there are more than two thousand of small and medium-size banks in China. You are familiar with the big four—ICBC, Bank of China and all that—but those are the major banks. More Chinese bank—more than two thousand of the smaller Chinese banks, they don’t have a direct connection with the SWIFT system. Which basically means in order to make transactions across border, it really takes time and the cost of transactions are extremely high.

Therefore, in order to improve user experience, they literally had to design a system that can facilitate this cross-border transaction. But when geopolitics plays into it, especially since 2018 when U.S.-China trade war started to get really escalated to a higher level, a lot of those conversations started domestically. And then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine really accelerated this whole process. So I hope that sort of give you a broader—it’s a long answer, but I hope that gives you a deeper understanding of what has been going on, and what are the—what are the instrument—the functions of the instrument.

FASKIANOS: Fantastic. I’m going to take a written question from Abraham—he goes by Abe—Borum.

Dr. Liu, you mentioned OPEC within the context of NATO and the U.S. efforts to limit Russia energy policy. What are the second- to third-order effects on other sectors of global markets? And Abe is a graduate student at the National Intelligence University.

LIU: Abe, that’s a great question, I have to say. And I would strongly encourage everybody here, especially our undergrad and graduate students—to think not just the first-order or direct impact, but also the second-order effect. So I appreciate this question, because then you give me a little bit opportunity to elaborate on why I think on the natural resource aspect our global economy is not necessarily heading towards the right direction.

So just tie back into Abe’s question to begin with, right now since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the hydrocarbon prices, and more specifically oil prices, oil prices have been increasing. Although in recent—in recent weeks, it has relatively been stabilized a little bit, but it’s still way much higher than pre-pandemic, that would be 2019, right, Irina? 2019, right? (Laughs.) My timeline is all blurred. So I checked this morning, price might have changed slightly. But when I checked it this morning Brent today, this morning when I checked, it was trading about $88 per barrel. And remember in 2019 what the price was? That was something around—the average price in 2019, that was $64. So we are literally talking about more than $20 per barrel more expensive.

And then WTI, that is, what, U.S. benchmark, right? WTI was trading at $96 per barrel – close to 96 (dollars). Like 95.99, something like that. And in 2019, Brent was trading on average $57 per barrel. So close to double. So higher energy prices, that basically would directly translate into higher production costs across the board for energy—because every sector need energy, whether it is electricity, whether it is other types of energy. So it directly translate into higher electricity prices. This is important for the United States. This is very relevant for the European Union as well. So higher production costs would literally raise the price of the output. And that is going to further exacerbate the inflationary pressure. And that is going to make the Federal Reserve, and the ECB, and the Bank of England measures to curb inflation even more difficult.

And then on the other hand, I also wanted to mention that right now the added layer of geopolitics making this even more difficult. We already see this happening, which is, Biden made his trip to Saudi Arabia, but it did not get the intended consequence or intended result, which is trying to get Saudi Arabia and OPEC in general to stabilize the global oil market. And OPEC+, about a week ago, decided that they are going to cut their production by about two million barrels per day. That is about the daily consumption of, I believe it’s China, or something like that. So from that perspective, by limiting production, that is going to further—that is from a pure supply/demand perspective, right? If we hold supply—we hold demand constant and if you reduce the supply, that is going to further raise the upward pressure for the prices. So geopolitics is probably going to further put upward pressure for the prices as well.

And then finally, the final point I would want to make there is that right now OPEC countries—OPEC+ countries in particular—they might be—have this existential threat, which is the net zero transition. Right now, what is most valuable for Russia, or for Iran, for UAE, for Saudi Arabia—their most valuable export comes from hydrocarbon. It could be oil. It could be natural gas. So in the long run, when the entire global economy moved to zero dependence on hydrocarbon, that basically means for Russia—that’s probably more close to 70 percent of their GDP and government revenue. That is going to be gone. Think about how the Russian economy can make up that much amount of revenue in the short run? That’s very difficult to think about, especially these days. And this can be applied for countries like Saudi Arabia as well.

Therefore, these countries—these hydrocarbon-exporting countries—they have this existential threat. Which is their most valuable export might become no longer valuable in the long run. So that’s why they are—they are inherently very interested in carving a closer relationship and, more importantly, a relatively stable relationship with their stable buyers. And the buyers these days are going to not necessarily be the United States because, you’ve heard all these stories about the U.S. are energy independent and so on and so forth. But, you know, we can—that’s a different story. And when people say U.S. is very largely energy independent, there are so many reasons that argument can be rebutted. But let me just say, U.S. does not necessarily consume a lot of energy from—exported by Saudi Arabia.

But who does? China and India. So right now, China’s largest energy—in terms of volume—largest energy supplier is Russia. But in terms of pure monetary value that China actually pays, and the largest receiver of Chinese money for energy, that is Saudi Arabia. Therefore, earlier this year you probably read the news about Saudi Arabia might consider allowing renminbi to pay for Saudi oil. There might be more opportunity in there, because they might be very interested, especially MBS, because of all his behaviors, might expose a lot of the Saudis individuals under U.S. sanctions. And on the other hand, China already established a renminbi denominated oil futures market. And that—although, the volume today is relatively—the volume today is relatively low, but the growth is very rapidly.

So if all these major oil-exporting countries hypothetically—if they decided to suddenly switch their—the pricing of their oil overnight into renminbi instead of the dollar, we could potentially see the dollar’s pricing power and invoicing power in global trade would be diminished. And that is because the infrastructure, the facility is already there. Although the volume of renminbi-denominated oil futures is still relatively low, the plumbing is there. And once you have the plumbing there, there is no way to go back.

So now what the United States should do is to make sure that everybody is still very much interested in maintaining the existing dollar-based system and maintaining the pricing of commodity using U.S. dollar. And that brings in the discussion about putting an oil price to Russian oil instead of just a wholesale sanction of Russian oil. As long as we are putting a price cap to it, that basically means we are—yes, we are hurting Russian export, but still we are allowing Russian oil flowing into the international market. That still makes the dollar’s pricing power in global commodities relevant. So from that perspective, I think it’s the right move to preserve the dollar system. But on the other hand, those countries that are not—again, not necessarily on the geopolitical good side of the United States, they do have the intention to hedge against the risk of being sanctioned. And they need the—they need buyers to buy whatever that they have are valuable today. I hope that makes sense to you.

FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you. I’m going to take the next question, a spoken question, from Dr. Seebal Aboudounya, an associate lecturer at the University of College London. You can correct me on the pronunciation of your name.

Q: Yes. Hi. The pronunciation is perfect. Thank you very much.

So I have two students here from the international public policy program. And they would like to ask questions. So I will just hand over to them. Thank you.

Q: Hi, professor. I’m Cici and I’m a graduate student from UCL. I’m really glad you can give me a speech and answer my questions.

And I want to ask questions about Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). As we all know, that Belt and Road Initiative has employment more than ten years, since 2013. And it seems as the most important foreign policy for China and their President Xi. And it has already achieved many success. So I want to ask, what’s the core purpose of Belt and Road Initiative, and how can we evaluate it? And do the countries in BRI view it in a positive or a negative way? Thank you.

Q: Thank you very much. And the second student will now ask a question.

Q: Hi, Doctor. My question is, what’s the future of global economy under the impact of Ukraine war, China-U.S. competition, and COVID-19? Thank you.

Q: Thank you very much.

LIU: All right. Thank you very much, Professor Aboudounya.

And let me just being with the first question from Cici, right? Thank you very much, Cici, for asking this important question. And I’m so glad that you are asking something about BRI, because I do think it’s important for people to understand this whole Chinese initiative. You are absolutely right that the BRI is a very important Chinese foreign policy initiative. And I would even say that the BRI is—or, the Belt and Road Initiative—is Chinese President Xi Jinping, his signature foreign policy initiative during his first two terms. Now he just recently got his—as the general secretary of the party—he just got this third term. So we’ll see how BRI being played out going forward. But at least during his first term as the president of China and as the party general of the Chinese Communist Party, that was his signature foreign policy initiative, or grand strategy, if you will.

So in terms of what it is and how we think about it, those are great questions. So there are very simple answer to say—to describe what BRI is. You can think about it as a global-spanning infrastructure project. So that’s what it looks like. If you just put—if you just—if we have an Excel spreadsheet and we just look at, at least all the—every single project that BRI has been doing, it’s really about infrastructure. And more specifically, more than 70 percent of BRI infrastructure projects are related to energy, are energy-related infrastructure projects. Therefore, you can also think about BRI as infrastructure orientated and combined with the idea of establishing China’s access to global energy resources.

And then, if you think about it from China’s domestic perspective, why Xi Jinping decided to start this BRI initiative and what are the connections of the BRI with previous Chinese policies? I would say the reason—fundamental reason why Xi Jinping started this BRI was because of the fundamental domestic problem which is the overcapacity in China’s production sector, especially steel, concrete, and a lot of these infrastructure-related sectors. And that takes place after global financial crisis, and then China’s spending four trillion—four trillion yuan to stimulate its economy, and it created the major overcapacity issue at home. And the international economy—or international demand or demand from outside of China was not enough—or especially the Western market like United States or European market, they were not growing as fast to be able to absorb China’s overcapacity. Therefore China really have to think about how to distribute in a broader global market to solve its overcapacity issue.

So Xi Jinping, in one of his meetings, he had this saying—and I think it’s very revealing, so I quote him. So he did say this, and I translate it, obviously, into English. So he said: Our overcapacity problem might be other countries—might be beneficial to other countries. In other word, we are producing a lot of this stuff that we do not use, and we are losing money. But if we are able to sell it to other countries, that might be good for them and good for us, as well.

So that was—could we—if we give him the benefit of the doubt, is that a good way—is that a good intent? Sure. If we give him the benefit of the doubt, if everything he implemented perfectly, that could be mutually beneficial. And indeed, if you look at all these BRI forums or BRI summit, a lot of these are related to improve their connectedness, solve overcapacity issue, and even BR specific government-to-government level industrial production coordination fund. In other word, if government are establishing lots of money to coordinate—so much you are going to produce, how much I am supposed to produce. The idea is really to tackle the problem of overcapacity.

But again, reality when you are looking at how this is being implemented, nowadays it varies. There’s a very good Rhodium Group report that you probably—if you just google Rhodium Group BRI, they have this report analyzing the BRI lending. And that’s where BRI really come into—really encountered a lot of problem.

So you are probably familiar with the whole narrative of the data trap, so depending upon who you are talking to—so if you talk with—if you talk to Chinese project managers, or if you talk to Professor Deborah Bräutigam at SAIS/Johns Hopkins who runs the China Africa Research Initiative—if you talk to folks like them, they might tell you, well, you know, it’s really not about the data trap but really speaks to the fact that China is really, really inexperienced in terms of the development finance and in terms of lending, and that the reason is that they really have a limited capacity to do, on the one hand, the environmental impact assessment. Many of these—you will be shocked. Many of these projects they do not even have a real environmental impact assessment. And on the other hand, because a lot of these lendings are directly being lent out by Chinese policy banks—and more specifically, if you look at Africa, that would be China import and export bank, they have a limited capacity to evaluate all these business plans.

And I remember talking to a project manager in Mali, so I asked him, have you interacted with all those folks on how you do your—how you do your bidding in order to get the money. So this person, he was very frank with me, and he said, well, I understand how the—I understand how they want the number to look like in order to give me the loan, so I just cook the numbers so that I can get the loan. In other word, there is not necessarily an internally robust risk management process in getting out of these loans. Therefore, am I surprised to see that so much of Chinese—so much of China’s BRI loan now are in trouble, like in countries like Zambia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and a couple of others.  

So am I—am I surprised about that? I’m not surprised because if you followed this and if you realized that there is a lack of the internal risk management process, that’s the result you are going to get. And it is also because of the debt, combined with the contract term, which is when you are signing a contract like—it’s like, I go to the bank and I say, I am Zoe, and I bank with Charles Schwab or Bank of America. Hey, I’m going to buy a house, so how about you lend me the money. This is literally the way how contract negotiating works. And then, guess what? The banks are going to say, hey, Zoe, I do not know who you are, although you look like a good person. I do not want to lend you the money at this rate. I’m going to lend you the money, and you have to put down a collateral. So collateral is the idea that, in case I, Zoe, can no longer pay back my loan, I literally have to give up some sort of tangible asset to the bank.

Now in the case of Sri Lanka, that was what happened to Hambantota. So long story short, is that combined with the collateralization of this BRI debt really feeds this debt trap narrative because, well, if it looks like you are setting the countries up to debt, and you are collateralizing their critical infrastructures, this looks like debt trap to many observers.

So I can’t—I have a lot of sympathy to this debt trap narrative, but really, when we think about BRI debt and how BRI is being implemented, we really need to think about two sides: on the one hand, the policy side; and the other side is really about implementation, because without implementation the policies are only a piece of paper, isn’t it?

So, I really encourage you to look more specifically into the details, and if you are interested in learning more about BRI, there are a lot of data set that are available. On the one hand, William & Mary—William & Mary have the aid data. If you just google William & Mary and google aid data, you will see their entire data related to BRI. And then the other website that—I would have to say, my colleague and I here at the Council, we have this BRI tracker. My colleague Benn Steil, he run—he had this BRI tracker. So you can take a look at that.

And then the Council also published a BRI report last year—last year, right, Irina? We have a BRI Task Force report, so definitely check that out. And then finally there is also Boston University has the global policy institute. They have this China—they have a specific China-oriented research team, and they have—they also run seminars occasionally, and webinars—you can sign up for it and you can have access to their research. We also have this BRI data, so make sure that you check those out so that you can look at all the contract, you can look at what are the—where exactly—at what level project are being implemented. I hope that sort of covered the ground for that with BRI.

And then go back to the other question—the other question about the future of global economy, especially the impact on Ukraine. I really appreciate this question as well because it’s—it’s really dear to my heart, too, and the research in itself is dear to my heart and to many of my colleagues here at the Council. And then, on the other hand, we also—everybody are surprised about how fast and how coherent the sanctions on Russia were able to take place. It used to be like—I myself included—like when the Europeans decided—the European Union decided, basically the next day after—following the U.S. sanctions, they basically decided that they are going to do the same. I was like, oh, gee, looking across the Atlantic, I don’t think I understand you guys. It almost feel like you guys could never agree on anything anytime soon, but now, it’s like overnight there is this agreement on sanction of Russia. I feel like, oh, this is unprecedented.

So from that perspective, I do think the—Russia’s war on Ukraine, it reunited the U.S. alliance system, and from economic perspective, I think it’s very important in the sense that a lot of the economic differences that we used to have—for example, the Eurozone or, in particular, the ECB might have interest in letting the euro play a bigger role in the global system and all that. So a lot of these are—a lot of these disagreement are going to be surpassed by the priority, which is to address Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.

And then on the other hand, we are also seeing that, yes, European Union, despite of their heavy dependence on Russian oil and gas—and Russian gas in particular, they are willing to participate in setting a deadline to say by this—by the end of this year we are going to phase out Russia’s—our dependence on Russian energy. And in that context, it is good for American energy industry in the sense that we can—here in the United States we can—in the context of making sure that our domestic energy security is secured, right, or we can’t export our LNG to our—to meet the need of our European allies.

So that is another good aspect of it, and then in terms of—and then finally, I would—along the line of energy I would also say this probably is also going to accelerate the transition to net zero in terms of technology and putting more resources into this technology related to energy transition. That might be related to hydrogen. Canada is already exporting its hydrogen energy to Germany and German trains are now—some German trains are now run on hydrogen power. It would be cool to check it out—how it looks, right?

So that means, from energy perspective at least we are seeing the realignment of this energy supply, energy demand dynamic. And because energy is so important for production and for energy growth, that is sort of a stabilizing factor. But that being said, still we are not—I am not saying that the Europeans aren’t going to—are no longer having problems. And the Europeans are still going to have problems and the IMF revised downward European growth prospect next year. They downgraded to—even further to a lower point. I believe it’s point—it used to be—it used to be about 1.3 in the energy outlook earlier in July, but I think this time—a few days ago when I checked again, there are new economic outlook. They’ve revised it down for EU—European advanced economies that it was revised down to .06 percent growth. From that perspective combined with high inflation, literally we are seeing that Europe—the advanced European economies—or broadly speaking, Eurozone as a whole—probably are going to head towards, maybe recession is a very, very harsh word, but it definitely going to run into serious economic troubles. So in the long run, this is not a good—this is not good looking. And in the short run, at least, this is not good looking, right, and in the—if we broaden the horizon back, focusing on the economy.

Another factor that constrained European growth are, in particular, let’s say, the major powerhouses like Germany. A critical part of that is, they are suffering from two issues. One is their cost of electricity is simply too high, and I’m talking about this relative to—it’s much higher than the United States for sure, but they are not—they are much higher than China, as well. So China energy per kilowatt is in the magnitude of 0.002 or 0.003 magnitude. And where is Germany? Germany is something like ten times of that. We are talking about .38 per kilowatt. So that basically means if your fundamental electricity cost is high, and when energy price goes up higher, electricity price is also going to go up high, and then your entire manufacture industry is going to face a higher cost. And that, combined with demographic challenges, refugee challenges, it simply means that the government are going to have a whole lot of difficult time to deal with their expenditures.

So again, both from energy perspective, from cost-of-production perspective, from the demographic perspective—aging population, refugee problem—and on top of that you probably would also have to think of—take care of the aging population, meaning added social welfare costs and pension costs, so those are—those mean slowing economy, especially on advanced economies, are not necessarily looking nice.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to go next to Isaac Alston-Voyticky, who has written a question but also said, happy to ask it, so why don’t you unmute yourself, please, and give us your affiliation.

Q: Hello, my name is Isaac Alston-Voyticky. I am at CUNY School of Law and CCNY’s Colin Powell School.

I am actually graduating this semester, so—(laughs)—anyway, so my question is you posed the three classic core components of economics. Would you think in the modern day, given the immaterial nature of so much of our global market and marketplace, that knowledge as the foundation of neoclassical economics, plays an equal role as a component of modern economics? And I mean that obviously in the concept that knowledge is known, unknown, real, surreal, and unreal, of course. But also, to your first kind of opening point when you said that, you know, it’s really hard for economists to model out and do predictions. When we talk about improving data sets and analysis across like IPE, international affairs, you know, implementation of international law, one of the issues we have is a lot of our economic models are still too variable-based, and that we haven’t really gone past that. So if we think about it from the quantum computing, we have X, Y, Z, and T, and that’s just your bare, you know, next level. And I would imagine we can do that if we find the right components so, hopefully—and, I mean, I don’t know what kind of answer you have, but I’m very interested to hear.

LIU: Yeah, Isaac, first of all, congratulations for getting—you are in CUNY, right? And so you are right here in the neighborhood, so you know—right? So feel free to—feel free to, on the one hand definitely check out our award-winning website, and then if me or our colleagues could be of help, just feel free to stop by.

And so these are two great questions obviously, and you touch upon a lot of the complaints and the frustrations that I have with modeling—(laughs)—right? So the first question, knowledge, I fully agree with you that so far our economic models have not been able to fully appreciate, or fully absorb, or fully model the role of knowledge; for that matter, even finance. Finance, at least has this term called the intangible asset when you are evaluating a firm, and therefore your mergers and acquisitions, you pay the so-called goodwill based upon how much you value the intangible asset; meaning like knowledge, expertise, and so on, so forth—so patent and all that.

So from that perspective, I think the knowledge is definitely going—knowledge is definitely going to be extremely more important going forward, and I say that both—from three aspects. The first is knowledge can improve the quality of your human resources, which touch upon basically the labor force which reverts back to one of our three factors of production. And then knowledge also is necessary for technology, and that is another factor of production. And then finally the other would be knowledge, technology, and other resources. So resources, there is capital and non-capital, meaning natural resource and all that. And there are—then the confounding factor of knowledge is being played more here because better financial expertise—well, obviously, depending upon how you use it, but sometimes, financial expertise tend to run itself in trouble. It outsmart itself; it’s not necessarily good. But if we are able to—if we have better knowledge about financial market, about our debt—I go back to your second question—better data about financial market and better knowledge to improve our use of natural resources or the efficiency—improve the efficiency. Or the next day, if we all have a battery and move toward renewables—these are going to be extremely—go back to the Schumacher model—these are going to be extremely disruptive, but in a very good way.

But the reason I am cautious about, you know, we may not necessarily going there overnight is because, on the one hand—technology R&D takes some time, it’s expensive, but then on the other hand, it’s just in the processing, the implementation part.

It’s really—a lot of geopolitical factors plays into it because when we think about knowledge, knowledge and the technology, those are the things that we tend to think they tend to diffuse themselves, like knowledge—you exchange knowledge, and that’s the foundation of new knowledge being created. You stand on the giant’s shoulders, right?

Knowledge and technology tend to diffuse itself, and right now what we are observing is, on the one hand, there are a lot of—there are a lot of export controls towards certain countries, and then on the other hand, countries like China are also—are trying very hard to lower the cost of the relatively cheaper technology, right, or the less advanced technology. And that basically means if a country can or—especially a country like China can quickly achieve economies of the scale, are able to find an alternative that is cheaper but at a lesser technology, but will still get the job done, then probably that—in the short term, it can service China and also service a lot of developing economies. But for a country like China, that is not necessarily good in the long run.

And then on top of that, because of export controls, because of a lot of geopolitical tensions between China and the rest of the world, but the long-run trajectory over China’s indigenous development capacity is still there; China’s people—there are still U.S.-trained Chinese scientists going back to China, but it is going to tremendously slow China down and making it very difficult and very costly.

So if we think that, for the past forty years or so—or for the past twenty years since China joined WTO, if we believe that cheap Chinese goods tend to be—tend to benefited the rest of the world in many ways, then a slowed-down Chinese economy is bad news for the global economy, probably more true than not. China is the largest trading partner for more than 120 countries in the world, so if Chinese economy slow down, that have major ramifications for the rest.

And then go back to your second question with regard to, you improve the database and in terms of modeling the limitations—that’s a frustration that I have nowadays. Yes, the model themselves—oftentimes I go into a meeting, listen to a talk—especially in the econ papers, the econ paper would begin with—it’s very sterilized. You begin with assumptions, and then you talk about your independent variables, your dependent variables. Right now we are really in a world where your independent variables can be—your independent variables might be suddenly changed because of geopolitics, or because of some disruptive technology, or simply because supply chain means you used to be able to get rare earth, but then if you are Japan in 2007, you were no longer able to get rare earth reliably from China. So those are going to significantly shift your calculation.

Therefore I would say, I really don’t have a good answer in terms of how to improve at researcher perspective, but hopefully, as you said, quantum computing, artificial intelligence might help us to get as much better information as possible. But that being said, quantum—a lot of these quantum computing and artificial intelligence is—it used to be the case that a lot of statistics are garbage in, garbage out. Hopefully, our AI and the quantum computing, as we train themselves, they can learn better than the human beings.

I’m not exactly comfortable about saying that, but that’s my hope.

FASKIANOS: I have some—a written question from Todd Barry, adjunct professor at Hudson County Community College in New Jersey.

Is it possible that China would turn inwards and switch an economy to import substitution industrialization, producing all goods domestically, without imports, like Latin America tried to in the 1970's?

LIU: Right, that’s a great question, and when you were asking that I was immediately thinking about the Chile and its car industry. And that was a disaster.

The East Asian model, in terms of the import substitution—that’s the East Asian miracle, especially applicable to, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea to a certain extent, as well. In the case of China I would say I would be really hesitant to—in retrospect if we have this conversation twenty years down the road, I would be really, really—I would be really sad to realize that this year is the moment—or October is the—October 2022 is the moment when China started to turn inward because that is going to be disastrous for China’s long-term growth.

China’s decade-long of double-digit growth benefitted from an open economy, benefitted from being able to trade with the rest of the world, and the United States actually welcomed China into the global system. Therefore I would be very, very sad to see this is the moment.

Now is there a—is there the risk? I do see the risk, and I do see the narrative there, especially with President Xi Jinping’s emphasis on domestic circulation. If you think—I would argue—in my latest publication with the CFR.org, I made this argument to say the important—the dual circulation, especially the domestic circulation, it is a departure from previous going-on strategy because going out is starting from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao. These are really the idea of prioritizing the international market. It’s really about using international market to develop the Chinese economy. And dual circulation is a departure from that. It’s not to totally abandon globally—the global market, but it really is—it prioritizes domestic market: domestic demand, domestic supply, domestic technology and—domestic technological innovation capacity, and making international market relatively supplementary.

And if even—and Xi Jinping even—if Xi Jinping even intend to make the international market more dependent on China’s domestic market, meaning making the rest dependent more on China. So there is the narrative there.

However, in practice, I don’t—I don’t see how Chinese companies are able to do this because the Chinese company—a lot of Chinese companies, especially multinational Chinese companies, they still need to have access to global capital, global technology. And although it becomes—especially on the technology side has become increasingly difficult. But it is to the benefit of the Chinese company, Chinese people, and China’s long-term growth potential to maintain an open economy.

But there is the chance that might not happen, and if we think—if we do believe that Xi Jinping has a timeline with reference to Taiwan, then he—obviously, if there is a war breaking out, then obviously there will be consequences, and we can imagine Western sanctions, and that basically means the Chinese economy is going to be severely isolated from the global system. So from that perspective, right now a lot of these zero-COVID policies are very much—the way that I think about it is it could be interpreted as it’s a drill, or it’s a preparation to make sure that China is developing internal capacity to be able to absorb as much sanction shock as possible.

But I don’t think that—I do not think Xi Jinping is going to make up a decision and going to make a move to Taiwan, say, tomorrow. As long as we can kick the can down the road, I think that’s good.

FASKIANOS: Out of time, and I am sorry to say that we couldn’t get to all the questions, but we appreciate it.

Zoe did mention a few resources that our task force on the Belt and Road Initiative, as well as the Belt and Road tracker—we dropped the link in the chat, but we’ll also send a follow-up note with links to some of those things. She also does a lot of writing on CFR.org In Briefs and articles, so you should go to CFR.org. And you can follow her on Twitter at @zongyuanzoeliu. So I encourage you all to do that.

This has been a terrific hour, so thank you again, Zoe. We appreciate it.

LIU: Thank you, Irina, for having me. And I really do appreciate this opportunity to engage with every participant here. If I did not get a chance to answer your questions, or if you have other questions, just feel free to reach out to Irina or feel free to reach out to me. We are here, and the Council really appreciate and the—really appreciate the colleges and student, and the Council actually—we do a lot of stuff related to education, you know—not just at a college level. We also do at high-school level—

FASKIANOS: High school—

LIU: —middle-school level, and even—we also even have games for kids. So if you haven’t tried those out yet, just try it out.

FASKIANOS: Thank you, Zoe.

So our next academic webinar will be on Wednesday, November 9, at 1:00 p.m. (EST) with Lauren Kahn, who is here at the Council, on military innovation and U.S. defense strategy.

And again, I just wanted to shout out. We have our CFR fellowships application deadline for educators is available. You can check it out at CFR.org/fellowships. The deadline is October 31 so it’s right around the corner. Follow us at @CFR_Academic. And again, go to CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org.

So thank you all for being with us. Have a great rest of your day.

(END)

A discussion of the U.S.-China relationship, including how Chinese domestic politics are influencing the country’s agenda abroad, the state of security in the Asia-Pacific with a focus on the future of Taiwan, and U.S. priorities and policy options in the region.

John Kerry discusses the U.S. international climate effort ahead of COP27, the upcoming 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Nick Clegg discusses the role of Meta and social media in global politics, including its use as a platform for political movements, efforts to combat the spread of misinformation, and measures in place to support international election security.

U.S. Senator and Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Jack Reed discusses how the United States can best leverage its military and economic power to compete with China on the global stage.