The rise of social media and the fragmentation of traditional news media has led to a global crisis of disinformation. Governments, non-government actors, and shadow groups are spreading misleading and often false information, which undermines democracy around the world. Democratic nations that depend on a certain level of social and political trust to function properly face an existential crisis as that trust is eroded. How can democratic governments face this crisis to rebuild faith in democratic practices and values?
National Defence Course: Strategic Communicaton (Helsinki) 4/23
The FDR Foundation is thrilled to return to Finland to help their government, in our own small way, conduct the National Defense Course on Strategic Communication.
The “students,” selected by the Advisory Board for National Defense Education, will be a Communications Directors from combination of the Government, Regional Authorities, State owned and private companies, the Finnish Church, etc.
Information and Influence in Sweden
Sweden is overhauling their approach to national defense, greatly expanding military budgets, restoring conscription, and hardening defenses.
Part of the increasing pressure on Sweden comes in the form of insidious information campaigns, some originating within the country, some coming from right-wing political groups beyond Sweden’s borders, and some sponsored by antagonistic states.
Since 2016, the FDR Foundation has been honored to periodically work with the Swedish government on countering disinformation campaigns. Now we’re taking the work from Harvard to Stockholm, where four professors will work directly with Swedish decision makers and practitioners in November, 2019. We look forward to both being of assistance and to bringing our findings back to Harvard for further research
Iraq, 2003-2004
In the Summer of 2003, a young man fresh out of grad school decided to go to Iraq to make a difference and to find himself. He was quickly thrown into a world completely foreign from anything he previously knew, in an office with 12 local Iraqi translators who welcomed him, but at the same time were suspicious of his intentions. His book, Tales From The Tigris, tells the story of how one American and his team of Iraqi translators learned to put aside their differences to work together and learn from each other amidst a confusing conflict that challenged and threatened their relationship on a daily basis.
A Fireside Chat with Bill Putnam, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army
7-8pm, Monday, May 6
FDR Suite (B-17), Adams House
12 students only. RSVP required: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0E44AEAD29A4FA7-iraq
Capitalism: What’s working. What’s not. 4/8
Join Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn for an intimate off-record discussion about capitalism by FDR’s fireplace.
In this age of globalization, automation, inequality, and climate change, do we need a new reckoning around capitalism and regulation like the one FDR provided in the 1930s?
Monday, April 8, 7:30-8:30pm, at the FDR Suite (Adams House B-17)
Limited to ten students. Undergraduates only. RSVP required.
Sheryl WuDunn
Hauser Visiting Leader, HKS Center for Public Leadership (Spring 2019)
Founder, FullSky Partners; Pulitzer Prize Winner
Sheryl WuDunn, the first Asian-American reporter to win a Pulitzer Prize, is a business executive, lecturer, and best-selling author. Currently, she is co-founder of FullSky Partners, which works with socially-driven ventures, and a Venture Partner at Piedmont Partners Group Ventures, a small private equity group based in San Francisco.
Previously, Ms. WuDunn served as a vice president in the investment management division at Goldman, Sachs & Co. and as a commercial loan officer at Bankers Trust. She also worked at The New York Times as both an executive and journalist notably as a foreign correspondent for The Times in Tokyo and Beijing, where she wrote about economic, financial, political and social issues.
She is co-author of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, a New York Times best-selling book about the challenges facing women around the globe.
With her husband Nicholas D. Kristof, she has co-authored two best-selling books about Asia: Thunder from the East and China Wakes. She and her husband are recipients of a Pulitzer Prize for their work covering China. Most recently, WuDunn and Kristof authored A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity that also inspired a PBS-documentary, which both provide a unique and essential narrative about making a difference in the world — and a roadmap to becoming a conscientious global citizen.
Ms. WuDunn received the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Lifetime Achievement in 2011. That year Newsweek cited Ms. WuDunn as one of the “150 Women Who Shake the World.”
She graduated from Cornell University, where she is a member of the Board of Trustees. She earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and an MPA from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. She is a recipient of honorary degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Middlebury College. She was a Senior Lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs in fall, 2011.
Nicholas Kristof
Hauser Visiting Leader, HKS Center for Public Leadership (Spring 2019)
Op-ed Columnist, The New York Times; Pulitzer Prize winner
Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The Times since 2001, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who writes op-ed columns that appear twice a week. Mr. Kristof grew up on a sheep and cherry farm near Yamhill, Oregon. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College and then studied law at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship.
After joining The New York Times in 1984, initially covering economics, he served as a Times correspondent in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo. He later was Associate Managing Editor of The Times, responsible for Sunday editions. In 1990 Mr. Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, then also a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China’s Tiananmen Square democracy movement. Mr. Kristof won a second Pulitzer in 2006, for commentary for what the judges called “his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and that gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world.”
In his column, Mr. Kristof was an early opponent of the Iraq war. He among the first to warn that we were losing ground to the Taliban in southern Afghanistan and raise doubts about WMD in Iraq.
Mr. Kristof and Ms. WuDunn are authors of China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, and Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia. Together they wrote Half the Sky: From Oppression to Opportunity for Women Worldwide, which was the inspiration of The Half the Sky Movement that seeks to ignite the change needed to put an end to the oppression of women and girls worldwide. Most recently, Kristof and WuDunn authored A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity that also inspired a PBS-documentary, which both provide a unique and essential narrative about making a difference in the world — and a roadmap to becoming a conscientious global citizen.
Death in the Polis: Warfare and Urban Centers in the 21st Century 4/23
Renewed great power competition, the continued rise of forces challenging the nation state, climate change, and increasing levels of urbanization and global interconnectedness will ensure the world’s urban areas increasingly factor into US national security interests. Any effort to secure US interests will likely involve the US military, but is it trained and ready to conduct urban operations in an era of increasing urbanization?
Come and join Lieutenant Colonels Goedecke and Putnam for a fireside chat that will provide some deep insights.
Tuesday, April 23, 7-8pm, in the FDR Suite (Adams B-17)
Twelve students, only.
RSVP required, here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0e44aead29a4fa7-urban