Please join the International Studies program for a special talk with Northwestern Alum Prof. Mary Ellen O’Connell (University of Notre Dame - Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law and Professor of International Peace Studies).
Reception with light refreshments to follow the talk (4:30pm - 5:30pm)!
Prof. O'Connell will be introduced by Roberta Buffett Visiting Professor of International Studies Denise Garcia!
Saving the World from AI Catastrophe
The States deeply invested in miliary force are fighting the last war—the Cold War that ended in 1989. They are still racing to lead in lethal technology, which today means AI. They are racing despite the warnings. On the current trajectory, experts predict AI will alter life beyond recognition and even lead to its end. Diverting this race from world-ending to peace and the common good is possible. But it requires an urgent first step: Countering the primitive Cold War ideology of political realism for the sophisticated concepts of enduring international law.
Mary Ellen O’Connell is the Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law and Professor of International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She has published, lectured, and commented extensively on armed conflict, military technology, international dispute settlement, and international legal theory.
From 2023-2025, she served on the Global Commission on Responsible AI in the Military Domain established by The Netherlands. In August 2023, she presented lectures on international law and the use of force at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, sponsored by the OSCE. In 2018, she was a Fulbright Scholar at the Norwegian Nobel Institute. From 2014-2015, she was the senior law fellow at the Center for Theological Inquiry, Princeton. Also in 2014, she gave the Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lectures in Cambridge, UK. From 2010-2012, she was a vice president of the American Society of International Law, and from 2005-2010, she chaired the International Law Association Committee on the Use of Force.
From 1995-1998, Professor O’Connell served as a professional military educator for the U.S. Department of Defense at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany. She practiced law at Covington & Burling for four years and holds degrees from Northwestern, LSE, Cambridge, and Columbia. From 1980-1982, she was a British Marshall Scholar. O’Connell earned her BA in history at Northwestern with highest honors.
Tiffany Williams-Cobleigh
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