Public Affairs

Overview

Public Affairs hosted speakers who are prominent people in the world of international affairs, from acclaimed authors, to Nobel laureates, to high-ranking UN officials.

Book "Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution" by Francis Fukuyama

MAY 10, 2002 Transcript

Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution

"We need to steer technology towards aims that are clearly therapeutic and away from ones that involve essentially human redesign, trying to improve our human ...

book cover image Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam

MAY 7, 2002 Transcript

Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam

The communications revolution of the late 20th century made Muslims around the world aware that they were part of a global community, a development that ...

APR 17, 2002 Transcript

Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam

Today, Islamist movements in the Middle East are fragmented, according to Gilles Kepel, and no longer have the capacity to mobilize different social groups simultaneously ...

The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianityby Philip Jenkins

APR 17, 2002 Transcript

The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity

Christian influence on world events is less likely to originate in the United States or Europe than in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where a ...

Al-Jazeera: How the Free Arab News Network Scooped the World and Changed the Middle East by Nawawy and Farag

APR 15, 2002 Transcript

Al-Jazeera: How the Free Arab News Network Scooped the World and Changed the Middle East

The Qatar-based television network Al-Jazeera has been a hugely positive force in the Middle East, according to Mohammed el-Nawawy and Adel Iskander Farag, because it ...

APR 11, 2002 Transcript

A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide

Why did the United States largely ignore the Rwandan genocide and yet devote endless time to the contemporaneous Bosnian crisis? According to Samantha Power, the ...

Detail from book cover.

MAR 26, 2002 Transcript

What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response

In this learned talk given just six months after 9/11, Lewis explains that in the Middle East there are two prevailing opinions about why the Islamic ...

Kenneth Roth

MAR 14, 2002 Transcript

Human Rights and the Campaign Against Terrorism

Governments around the world are wrong to use the war on terrorism as an excuse to disregard human rights principles, says Kenneth Roth. "The war ...

Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline by Richard Posner

MAR 11, 2002 Transcript

Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline

"The nature of modern academic life is inimical to creative public intellectual activity," says Richard A. Posner. In his view, today academic public intellectuals serve ...

The Paradox of American Power: Why the World

MAR 6, 2002 Transcript

The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone

Joseph Nye argues that U.S. leaders must create a framework that preserves American values congruent with those of other people in the world. "If ...