Description:

Please join Northwestern's Center for International and Area Studies and the Evanston Public Library for this roundtable discussion examining the prospects for U.S. foreign policy under the incoming Biden administration, with a panel of experts on China, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.

Speakers

Mariano Aguirre is an Associate Fellow in the International Security Programme at Chatham House. Previously, he was senior advisor on peacebuilding at the Office of the Resident Coordinator of the United Nations in Colombia (2017-19), director of the Norwegian Centre for Conflict Resolution (NOREF), program officer on peace and security with the Ford Foundation, director of the Peace Research Center in Madrid and deputy director of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. He is fellow of the Latin America Network of Sustainable and Inclusive Security and a board member of the Washington Office on Latin America. He has written and edited several books on issues including imperialism, fragile states, humanitarian intervention, exclusion and violence in the Global South and, more recently, on the domestic and international crisis of legitimacy of the US.

Zachariah Mampilly is the Austin Marxe Endowed Chair of International Affairs at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at the City University of New York (CUNY). Before that he was Professor of Political Science, Africana and International Studies and Director of the Program in Africana Studies at Vassar College, and a Fulbright Visiting Research Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. He is the author of Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life during War (2011), co-author of Africa Uprising: Popular Protest and Political Change (2015), and co-editor of Rebel Governance in Civil War (2015) and the two-volume Peacemaking: From Practice to Theory (2011).

Sarah Leah Whitson is the Executive Director of the new organization Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN). Previously, she served as executive director of the Middle East and North Africa Division Human Rights Watch (2004 – 2020), overseeing the work of the division in 19 countries. She has led dozens of advocacy and investigative missions throughout the region, focusing on issues of armed conflict, accountability, legal reform, migrant workers, and human rights. She has published widely on human rights and foreign policy in the Middle East in international and regional media, including The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Los Angeles Times, and CNN. She appears regularly on Al-Jazeera, BBC, NPR, and CNN.

Suisheng Zhao is Professor and Director of the Center for China-US Cooperation at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, and Editor of the Journal of Contemporary China. His many books include China’s New Global Strategy: The Belt and Road Initiative and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (2019), China in Africa (2017), The Making of China's Foreign Policy in the 21st Century (2016), China and East Asian Regionalism (2012), In Search of China’s Development Model: Beyond the Beijing Consensus (2011), Village Elections in China (2010), China and the United States: Cooperation and Competition in Northeast Asia (2008), China-US Relations Transformed (2008), Debating Political Reform in China (2006), and Chinese Foreign Policy (2003).

This event is free and open to everyone, but registration is required:

https://bit.ly/biden-foreign-policy

co-sponsors:

Program of African Studies (PAS)

Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS)

Middle East and North African Studies Program (MENA)