The Big Picture

Join Belabbes Benkredda and Raheel Khursheed for the inaugural Public Sphere Salon @Yale. Belabbes and Raheel will discuss “Elon Buys Twitter: What’s Next for the World’s Town Square?”. The Public Sphere Salon @Yale is brought to you by the International Leadership Center at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs.

Laura Alonso has an extensive and unique cross-sector career promoting democracy, transparency, and citizen participation. She has previously held positions as Head of the Anti-corruption Office in Argentina, twice elected member of the National Congress, and CEO of the domestic chapter of Transparency International. Because of her leadership in integrity and anti-corruption policies, Argentina reached its highest score in the Index of Transparency International in 2020. We discuss the global “democratic recession”, current challenges democracies are facing, unpack some of the root causes of this decline. We end on a positive note by discussing the immense opportunities for democracy to be reinvigorated through innovation, new technologies, and the enduring appeal of the idea of rule by the people.

Today’s episode of the Big Picture was produced by Wissal Zebda and Ryan McEvoy. It was made possible with the support of the Yale World Fellows program at the Jackson School of Global Affairs. Our theme music was composed by Ravi Krishnaswami at COPILOT Music. For updates on future episodes, you can follow me on Twitter (@abulavinia). Thank you so much for tuning in!

In this episode, Kirsten Rulf joins me to discuss how artificial intelligence might change geopolitics in the 21st century. Kirsten is a 2022 Yale World Fellow and Head of Division for General Digital Policy Issues and “Nerd-in-Chief” at the Federal Chancellery of Germany in Berlin. In her strategic leadership position, Kirsten has shaped Germany’s and Europe’s role in the geopolitics of tech, first under Chancellor Angela Merkel and now under Chancellor Olaf Scholz. We discuss the rapid developments in the field of AI; challenges of AI regulation, national security implications, and more.

Today’s episode of the Big Picture was produced by Wissal Zebda and Ryan McEvoy. It was made possible with the support of the Yale World Fellows program at the Jackson School of Global Affairs. Our theme music was composed by Ravi Krishnaswami at COPILOT Music. For updates on future episodes, you can follow me on Twitter (@abulavinia). Thank you so much for tuning in!

Emma Sky, OBE is the founding director of Yale’s International Leadership Center. She teaches Grand Strategy, Great Power Competition, and Middle East Politics at the Jackson School of Global Affairs and runs Yale World Fellows – the university’s signature fellowship for mid-career leaders from around the world. She is a best-selling author of two books.

When the Cold War ended, Francis Fukuyama famously asked if we were witnessing the “end of history”: Liberal democracy had prevailed against communism in the global competition of political systems that shaped the decades since World War 2. The bipolar world order gave way to a unipolar world, with America as the only global superpower. In 2022, when Putin started his war of aggression against Ukraine, many therefore asked: Are we witnessing “the end of the end of history”?

In this wide-ranging conversation with Emma Sky, we unpack some of these concepts and attempt to trace a world history of the past 30 years. We start by reviewing the inspiring Yale World Fellows 20-year reunion, which took place from 14-16 October, 2022. About half of all World Fellows came to New Haven to connect, celebrate, and discuss the great challenges facing the world in the 21st century.

We then discuss key world events of the past three decades – the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process, 9/11, the Iraq War, the 2007/2008 financial crisis, the Arab Spring, Brexit, the election of Donald Trump – and attempt to define the place of the war against Ukraine in this broader historical picture.

Today’s episode of the Big Picture was produced by Wissal Zebda and Ryan McEvoy. It was made possible with the support of the Yale World Fellows program at the Jackson School of Global Affairs. Our theme music was composed by Ravi Krishnaswami at COPILOT Music. For updates on future episodes, you can follow me on Twitter (@abulavinia). Thank you so much for tuning in!

When an entire country can’t do social distancing, when thought leaders tell citizens COVID is a hoax, when a healthcare system can’t even handle a day-to-day basics – what does a national response to COVID look like? And how is it possible that countries across much of the world are completely unprepared for this crisis? What international systems are in place to fight global pandemics, and why are they failing now? For answers to these and other questions, join me as I explore the impact of COVID in the Global South with two extraordinary guests.

Benjamin Mason Meier has dedicated his life to thinking and writing about the intersection of public health and global justice. He is an Associate Professor of Global Health Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A prolific scholar, he is the author of Human Rights in Global Health: Rights-Based Governance for a Globalizing World (2018), available on Amazon. His forthcoming text will be published in June 2020 by Oxford University Press: “Foundations of Global Health and Human Rights”. You can follow him on Twitter, where he is @benjaminMmeier.

My second guest, Dr. Deqo Mohamed, is an OB-GYN and the founder of the Hagarla Institute, a public health initiative in Somalia. She’s been recognized globally for her work and holds an honorary doctorate from Chatham University. For over a decade, she ran an IDP camp of over 90,000 people outside Mogadishu. Prior to that, she worked with Doctors Without Borders during Somalia’s measles outbreak. Today, she is once again bringing her intelligence, strategic thinking, human compassion, and resourcefulness to help her country brace itself for the ravages of disease – this time, COVID-19. Her Twitter handle is @dwaqaf.

The Big Picture is made possible with the support of Yale Law School’s Gruber Program on Global Justice and Women’s Rights. My producers for this episode were Tasnim Idriss and Ryan McEvoy; Allison Rabkin Golden contributed research. Our theme music was composed by Ravi Krishnaswami at COPILOT Music. For updates on future episodes of the Big Picture, you can follow me on Twitter or Facebook.