Join IIS and Ethan Chorin, Founder and Director Red Sea Futures, for a lunchtime talk to discuss the intense competition between regional and global powers in the Red Sea. Over one fifth of the world’s trade passes through this critically important waterway.
Mary Saunders in conversation with Debra Miller Glass, PhD
As artificial intelligence, biotechnology, quantum technologies, and other innovations rapidly advance, global standards - rather than binding regulations - are increasingly shaping how these tools are developed, governed, and deployed.
China's Rare Earth Monopoly: Hong Kong Finance and Threats to Taiwan & the Pacific
Organizer: Hong Kong Affairs Association of Berkeley
Learn how Beijing’s dominance in rare earth mineral mining is enabled by Hong Kong’s USD-pegged markets, banking networks, dollar clearing, and sanctions evasion. Join us for an assessment of risks to Taiwanese security, and potential countermeasures via the US led Rare Earth Alliance.
April 09, 2026| 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM|820 Social Sciences BuildingCloud Capitalism and the AI TransitionWith Kathy Thelen, Ford Professor of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Join MIT political scientist Kathy Thelen at BESI as she explores the origins and implications of the new cloud business model powering the AI boom. She’ll elaborate on how this model differs from the traditional platform model out of which it grew, as well as the technological, political, and distributional impacts of the rise of this new business model. She...
April 9, 2026 | 3:30 - 5 PM | 223 Philosophy Hall IIS Spring 2026 Speaker Series - Rupture: The U.S. and the Fate of World Order Register
Rupture #3: Trade
Is the Trump administration’s winner-take-all, “America First” embrace of economic nationalism and protectionism sustainable economically, politically and environmentally?...
Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Nobel Laureate Michael Spence for a discussion of his new book, The Next Convergence. Professor Spence discusses his intellectual odyssey focusing on his Nobel Prize research on information and market structure. He then explains how his work as Chairman of the Commission on Growth and Development led him to write his new book. Tracing the impact of the internet, globalization, and domestic and international policy on the trajectory of economic growth in the emerging economies, he highlights the implications of the resulting high speed...
Host Harry Kreisler welcomes Martin Wolf of the Financial Times to discuss the economic crisis, including its global origins focusing on the interplay between surplus countries such as China and debtor countries such as the United States. Wolf evaluates the response of America's political and financial leaders, defines a course of action for the Obama administration, and offers a formula for the revitalization of global economic institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. He also speculates on the future of capitalism and assesses the role of politics in preventing the...
Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Sebastian Mallaby, Director of the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, for a discussion of his new book, “More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite." Topics covered include: managing risk in international finance; the function and evolution of hedge funds; how the game is played; the changing relationship of hedge funds to international political and economic structures; the causes of the 2008 economic collapse; regulation and government intervention; and the future of...
Conversations Host Harry Kreisler welcomes Olli Rehn, Vice President of the European Commission, for a discussion of Europe's response to the 2008 Economic Collapse. Topics covered include a comparison of the U.S. and European institutional situation at the time of the Lehman collapse and the divergence of response; Europe's complex institutional structure; why political/economic analysis is necessary for understanding Europe's policy making; why timing, power and sequencing of priorities are so consequential; the role of the commission and its goals; the use of language in...
