Events

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As we start a new semester, we are confronted with a world that has seen significant changes and major global events. In a year that will see more people than ever before going to the polls, there have already been multiple elections of consequence—including in France, India, Iran, Venezuela, and the UK. Conflict continues in the Middle East, Ukraine, and Sudan – and too many other places. Technology is rapidly shifting the global landscape through advances in AI, blockchain, and autonomous systems. And climate change continues to wreak havoc on weather systems—with 2024 on track to be the hottest summer in history and massive storms and flooding affecting people around the globe. Please join a panel of PWH-affiliated Penn faculty discuss what they see as some of the most critical events facing the world, including some of the key stressors and bright spots on the horizon. The panel will be looking at the world through the lens of their own expertise of democracy, climate change, security, and human rights and global justice—the key themes of PWH’s work – setting the stage for all our work this year.

Speakers

Sarah Banet-Weiser, the Walter H. Annenberg Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, is also its Lauren Berlant Professor of Communication. In addition, she is a research professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the founding director of the Center for Collaborative Communication at the Annenberg Schools (C3).

Her teaching and research interests include gender in the media, identity, citizenship, and cultural politics, consumer culture and popular media, race and the media, and intersectional feminism. Committed to intellectual and activist conversations that explore how global media politics are exercised, expressed, and perpetuated in different cultural contexts, she has authored or edited eight books, including Believability: Sexual Violence, Media, and the Politics of Doubt (Polity Press, 2023), the award-winning Authentic™: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture (NYU Press, 2012), Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny (Duke, 2018), and dozens of peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and essays. In 2019-2020, she had a regular column on popular feminism in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Michael C. Horowitz is director of Perry World House and Richard Perry Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of The Diffusion of Military Power: Causes and Consequences for International Politics and the co-author of Why Leaders Fight. He won the Karl Deutsch Award given by the International Studies Association for early career contributions to the fields of international relations and peace research. He has published in a wide array of peer-reviewed journals and popular outlets. His research interests include the intersection of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics with global politics, military innovation, the role of leaders in international politics, and geopolitical forecasting methodology. Professor Horowitz previously worked for the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy in the Department of Defense. He is a senior fellow for defense technology and innovation at the Council on Foreign Relations. Professor Horowitz received his PhD in government from Harvard University and his BA in political science from Emory University.

Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2014 to 2018. He was awarded the Stockholm Prize for human rights in 2015 and the Tulip Prize in 2018. He is currently the President and CEO of the International Peace Institute and Perry World House Professor of the Practice of Law and Human Rights at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2019, Al Hussein was appointed a member of The Elders, an independent group of global leaders working for peace, justice, and human rights, founded by Nelson Mandela. He served twice as Jordan’s ambassador to the United Nations (in New York) and once as Jordan’s ambassador to the United States. In January 2014, he served as president of the UN Security Council and earlier, in 2002, was elected the first president of the governing body of the International Criminal Court (ICC) -- guiding the court's growth in its first three years from 2002 to 2005. He also represented Jordan twice before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). From 1994 to 1996, he served as a UN civilian peacekeeper with UNPROFOR. Al Hussein holds degrees from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Cambridge.

Michael Weisberg is deputy director of Perry World House, as well as Bess W. Heyman President’s Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. A renowned philosopher of science and senior negotiator at United Nations Climate Conferences, he is editor-in-chief of Biology and Philosophy, director of the Penn Laboratory for Understanding Science, and director of the Galápagos Education and Research Alliance. He is the author of Simulation and Similarity: Using Models to Understand the World and co-author of the landmark photographic study Galápagos: Life in Motion. Professor Weisberg also serves as senior adviser to the Maldivian Minister of Environment and advisor to the Maldivian Ambassador to the United Nations. He received a PhD and MA in Philosophy from Stanford University and a BS in Chemistry and BA in Philosophy with Highest Distinction from the University of California at San Diego.

Moderator

Marie Harf is executive director of Perry World House. She comes to Penn from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where she served as the executive director of external relations and marketing. Previously she worked as a senior advisor and deputy spokesperson for Secretary John Kerry at the U.S. Department of State, as the foreign policy director on Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, as the executive director of political organization Serve America, and as a Middle East analyst and spokesperson at the Central Intelligence Agency. Since 2017, Harf has been an on-air commentator for Fox News. She holds a BA degree in political science from Indiana University with concentrations in Jewish Studies and Russian and Eastern European Studies, and a master's degree in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia.