CONFERENCES & EVENTS

The History and Future of Planetary Threats: Fareed Zakaria’s Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World

December 8, 2020
12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. EST
WEBINAR

Lenin once said, "There are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen." This is one of those times when history has sped up. CNN host and best-selling author Fareed Zakaria discussed the nature of a post-pandemic world: the political, social, technological, and economic consequences that may take years to unfold. His book, Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, speaks to past, present, and future, and, while urgent and timely, is sure to become an enduring reflection on life in the early twenty-first century. Written in the form of ten "lessons," covering topics from natural and biological risks to the rise of "digital life" to an emerging bipolar world order, Zakaria helps readers to begin thinking beyond the immediate effects of COVID-19. 

In the History and Future of Planetary Threats series, the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP) convenes meetings to examine modern-day catastrophic risks and hazards, whether natural, accident or deliberate, in the following domains: geological, biological, epidemic infectious disease, environmental, chemical, extreme weather, food security, radiological and nuclear, or combinations of these. By catastrophic we understand to mean classes of events that could lead to sudden, extraordinary, widespread disaster beyond the collective capacity of national and international organizations and the private sector to control, causing severe disruptions in normal social functioning, heavy tolls in terms of morbidity and mortality, and major economic losses; in sum, events that may well cause a change in the direction of history.

EVENT MATERIALS

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  • The History and Future of Planetary Threats: Fareed Zakaria’s Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World

Video

Speakers

FAREED ZAKARIA hosts Fareed Zakaria GPS for CNN Worldwide and is a columnist for The Washington Post, a contributing editor for The Atlantic, and a bestselling author. He frequently contributes his thoughtful analysis of world events and public affairs to CNN.com; Fareed’s Global Briefing, a daily digital newsletter; and other programming across CNN’s multiple platforms. Zakaria was named a “Top 10 Global Thinker of the Last 10 Years” by Foreign Policy magazine in 2019, and Esquire once called him “the most influential foreign policy adviser of his generation.”

LAWRENCE R. STANBERRY, M.D., Ph.D., is the Associate Dean for International Programs and the Director of the Programs in Global Health at Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is a pediatrician and infectious diseases expert. His work has focused on viral diseases and drug and vaccine development. His current work focuses on the preparedness of children’s hospitals globally to prevent, detect, and respond to disasters and infections of pandemic potential.

ANYA SCHIFFRIN is the director of the Technology, Media, and Communications specialization at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a lecturer who teaches on global media, innovation, and human rights. She writes on journalism and development, investigative reporting in the global south, and has published extensively over the last decade on the media in Africa.

Moderator

WILMOT G. JAMES is a Senior Research Scholar at the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), College of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University. An academic by background with a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, he was previously a Member of Parliament (South Africa) and opposition spokesperson on health.

Welcome

SAFWAN M. MASRI is Executive Vice President for Global Centers and Global Development at Columbia University and a Senior Research Scholar at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). In his role as EVP, Masri directs a number of Columbia’s global initiatives and is responsible for the development of an expanding network of Global Centers, located in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Mumbai, Nairobi, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, and Tunis.

Event Co-Sponsors

Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP)
Columbia Global Centers
Columbia University | Programs in Global Health at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons
Columbia University | The Earth Institute
The Academy of Political Science

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