Michael Barnett is University Professor of International Affairs and Political Science at the George Washington University. His research interests span the Middle East, humanitarianism, global governance, global ethics, and the United Nations. Among his many books are Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda; Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in Regional Order; Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism; Rules for the World: International Organizations in World Politics (with Martha Finnemore); Security Communities (co-edited with Emanuel Adler); Sacred Aid (co-edited with Janice Stein); Power and Global Governance (co-edited with Raymond Duvall); Humanitarianism in Question (co-edited with Thomas Weiss). His most recent books include The Star and the Stripes: A History of the Foreign Policies of the American Jews; the edited volume Paternalism Beyond Borders; and the edited collection Humanitarianism and Human Rights: Worlds of Differences? Global Governance in a World of Change (co-edited with Jon Pevehouse and Kal Raustiala); and Israel and the One State Reality (co-edited with Nathan Brown, Marc Lynch, and Shibley Telhami).

His current book projects are: The End of Humanity: An Autopsy of the Present and Future (with Unni Karanukara and to be published with Cambridge University Press; The Oxford Handbook of International Institutions (co-edited with Duncan Snidal); and The Spectre of the West ( to be published with Oxford University Press and co-authored with Janice Stein).

Minseon Ku is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Diplomacy Project at the Global Research Institute and a faculty affiliate at William & Mary. She is also a member of the 2024 cohort in the NCAFP’s Korea Peninsula Emerging Leaders Program. In September 2025, she will join the Grace School of Applied Diplomacy at DePaul University as an Assistant Professor.

Her research interests focus on theorizing the social practice of diplomacy as an extension of international security. Her book project, The Power of Performance: Summit Diplomacy and World Politics, which was selected for the Scholar's Circle at the 2024 ISA Northeast Baltimore, is based on her dissertation. The project develops a theoretical approach to understanding the function of summit diplomacy in world politics by emphasizing the performance and audience dimensions. She argues that summit diplomacy serves as a performance of the international system, shaping the international political reality for the audience. Through an original dataset of bilateral summits, survey experiments, and focus group studies, she demonstrates that the ritual-like effects of summitry allow for a reimagination of world politics.

Her other research interests include public diplomacy, the identity-security nexus, and the foreign policy and diplomacy of the United States and South Korea.

Previously, she was the Spencer Fellow in US Foreign Policy and International Security at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College. She earned her PhD in Political Science from Ohio State University, as well as her Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees from Yonsei University in Seoul.

January 25, 2025

“International Cooperation on Climate Change”

Dr. Celeste Greene

Hampton University

The 2015 Paris Agreement established a UN-sponsored framework for negotiations on climate change and global warming. In subsequent COP meetings, experts and political leaders have come together seeking common cause for this growing global crisis. What is the future of these efforts, and what have they yielded? What is the U.S. role in fostering cooperation on climate change? In a divided country, what are the possible futures for American policy leadership?

Dr. Murphy-Greene serves as Executive Director of the Center for Environmental Justice and Resilience, a non-profit organization focused on education, research, and consulting.  Dr. Murphy-Greene has over 25 years of experience in higher education, working as a professor of Public Administration at several universities including Florida Gulf Coast University, San Diego State University, and University of Virginia, where she served as the Founding Faculty Member and Program Coordinator of the Graduate Certificates in Public Administration and Leadership.  Her research focuses on environmental justice, local government financial management, and community resiliency issues.  Dr. Murphy-Greene has written many peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters. Her most recent project is a book published in 2022 titled Environmental Justice and Resiliency in an Age of Uncertainty, where she serves as editor and lead author.  Her work has appeared in Public Administration Review, International Journal of Public Administration, Public Administration Quarterly, Journal of Health and Human Services Administration, Review of Policy Research, Journal of Business and Public Affairs, and Journal of Emergency Management. Prior to her career in academia, Dr. Murphy-Greene worked at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as an Environmental Protection Specialist and served as a Legislative Aide to former Congressman Leon Panetta.  Dr. Murphy- Greene graduated from UCLA with a BA in History.  She earned her Master of Public Administration (MPA) from The George Washington University, where she focused on Environmental Policy and Urban Economic Development.  She earned her Ph.D. in Public Administration from Florida Atlantic University where her dissertation focused on the issue of environmental justice and migrant farmworkers.  For more information, visit www.celestemurphygreene.com.

February 1, 2025

Dr. Jordan Tama specializes in the politics, institutions, and tools of U.S. foreign and national security policy making. His research has investigated polarization and bipartisanship, presidential-congressional relations, the use of economic sanctions, public and elite attitudes on foreign policy, national security strategic planning, independent commissions, and efforts to connect research and policy making on international issues.

Dr. Tama's publications include five books: Bipartisanship and US Foreign Policy: Cooperation in a Polarized Age (Oxford University Press, 2024); Polarization and US Foreign Policy: When Politics Crosses the Water's Edge, co-edited with Gordon M. Friedrichs (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024); Rivals for Power: Presidential-Congressional Relations, Sixth Edition, co-edited with James A. Thurber (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018); Terrorism and National Security Reform: How Commissions Can Drive Change During Crises (Cambridge University Press, 2011); and A Creative Tension: The Foreign Policy Roles of the President and Congress, co-authored with Lee H. Hamilton (Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002). He has also authored numerous articles and policy reports; delivered talks in a dozen countries; and conducted many media interviews.

Dr. Tama is a leader in efforts to connect scholars to policy makers and convey policy-relevant research to public audiences. He is a Senior Director of Bridging the Gap and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. His work has been supported by the American Political Science Association, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, IBM Center for the Business of Government, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, National Science Foundation, Raymond Frankel Foundation, Social Science Research Center, and Woodrow Wilson Center.

Dr. Tama has served as a fellow on the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in the U.S. House of Representatives, a foreign policy speechwriter to former U.S. Representative Lee Hamilton, and a national security advisor to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

“U.S. Changing Leadership of the World Economy”

Dr. Dale Copeland

University of Virginia

February 8, 2025

“American Foreign Policy at a Crossroads”

Dr. Jordan Tama

American University

Under President Biden, the U.S. has advanced new ideas about trade, technology, industrial policy, competition with China, and the organization of the world economy. For most of the postwar era, the U.S. has tied its global leadership to cooperative agendas aimed at creating a more open-world trading system, but that has apparently come to an end. What are America’s options and opportunities as a leader of the world economy? How will America’s “foreign policy for the middle class” and strategic competition with China impact its leadership role? How can the postwar rules and institutions of the world economy be made safe for economic nationalism and great power competition?

Dale Copeland is Professor of international relations, with a focus on IR theory (security studies and international political economy).  His research interests include the origins of economic interdependence between great powers; the logic of reputation-building; bargaining and coercion theory; the interconnection between trade, finance, and militarized behavior; and the impact of the rise and decline of economic and military power on state behavior.   His most recent book is Economic Interdependence and War (Princeton UP, 2015), which was the winner of the International Studies Association Best Book Award for 2017.   The book was the subject of two recent symposia, the first in the International Security Studies Forumin Spring 2016 (with Benjamin Fordham, Richard Maass, and Patrick Shea), and the second in Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research, Fall 2018 (with Timothy McKeown, Sherry Zaks, and Erik Gartzke).   Prof. Copeland is also the author of The Origins of Major War(Cornell UP, 2000) as well as numerous articles in journals such as International Security,Security Studies, and the Review of International Studies.   He is currently completing a book for Princeton University Press on commerce and American foreign policy from the founding of the republic to the present era, and is developing a new book project on the conditions under which states can use coercion and bargaining to achieve their ends without war.   He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including MacArther and Mellon Fellowships and a post-doctoral fellowship at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.

Dr. Aseema Sinha is the Wagener Chair of South Asian Politics and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College in California, USA. She previously taught at University of Wisconsin-Madison and was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in DC.  Her research interests relate to political economy of India, India-China comparisons, International Organizations, and the rise of India as an emerging power.  She teaches courses on South Asia, Social Movements, Globalization and Developing Countries, and on Comparative Politics.  She also teaches in the Philosophy, Politics, Economics (PPE) major at CMC. She has authored a book, The Regional Roots of Developmental Politics in India: A Divided Leviathan (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2005), which received the Joseph Elder Book Prize in the Indian Social Sciences.  She is also an author of journal articles on trade policy, federalism, subnational comparisons in India, India and China, business collective action in India, and public expenditure across Indian states.  Her articles have appeared in the British Journal of Political Science, World Development, Polity, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Business and Politics, Journal of Democracy, Studies in Indian Politics, and India Review.  Her latest book titled, Globalizing India: How Global Rules and Markets are Shaping India's Rise to Power was published by Cambridge University Press (2016). She has recently published, “A Theory of Reform Consolidation in India: From Crisis-Induced Reforms to Strategic Internationalization,” India Review, 18 (1): 54-87, “India’s Porous State: Blurred Boundaries and the Evolving Business-State Relationship in India,” In Christophe Jaffrelot, Atul Kohli, and Kanta Murali eds., Business and Politics in India and Aseema Sinha, and Andrew Wyatt, “The Spectral Presence of Business in India’s 2019 Election,” Studies in Indian Politics, Special Issue on Indian 2019 Elections, Volume 7, Issue 2: 247-261. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2321023019874914

Magnus Nordenman is the author of “The New Battle for the Atlantic: Emerging Naval Competition with Russia in the Far North,” published by the U.S. Naval Institute. A noted NATO, Arctic, and maritime expert, Magnus has served as the Director of the Transatlantic Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC. He has provided commentary about Arctic security and European defense for several outlets including the New York Times, the Atlantic Monthly, C-SPAN Washington Journal, the BBC, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Defense News, Defense One, and Al Jazeera. He has also lectured at numerous defense institutions, including NATO’s Maritime Command, the Norwegian Defense Academy, NATO’s Allied Command Transformation, the US Naval War College, NATO Defense College, and the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School

As part of his work Magnus has traveled extensively in the Arctic region and has spent time underway aboard U.S. and allied aircraft carriers, amphibious ships, destroyers, frigates, and submarines. 

A graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, he earned his MA in national security affairs from the University of Kentucky. He is currently a non-resident fellow with the Atlantic Council and a strategist with the Lockheed Martin Corporation.

India is an emerging major power in world affairs, occupying a pivotal position between China, the United States, and the Global South. Its population size, economy, and geopolitical location ensure that it will be an influential voice in debates and political struggles over global order. What are India’s choices and opportunities for regional and global leadership? How will it maneuver between China and the United States, and what is its role as a voice of the Global South? What opportunities exist for Washington to work with India?

February 15, 2024 Online

“India: Between China, the West, and the Global South”

Dr. Aseema Sinha

Claremont McKenna College

This chapter will explore the contours of the U.S. foreign policy debate as it plays out in a world of multiple and escalating crises and domestic polarization.

February 22, 2025 Online

“AI and American National Security”

Mr. Sam Winter-Levy

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

I’m a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where I focus on technology and international affairs, and in particular the intersection of national security and AI. Before that I was a Ph.D. candidate in politics at Princeton University and a Peace Scholar Fellow at the US Institute of Peace, and I’ve worked as a staff editor at Foreign Affairs and a reporter at The Economist. I’ve published academic research in the Journal of Politics, received Princeton’s George Kateb Preceptor Award for teaching, and written for publications including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Lawfare, the New Yorker, War on the Rocks, The New Republic, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the London Review of Books, Scientific American, and the Times Literary Supplement. I received my undergraduate degree in English literature from the University of Oxford and was the Michael Von Clemm Fellow at Harvard in 2014-15.

Contact: sam.winterlevy@ceip.org.

“The Future of NATO and European Security”

Mr. Magnus Nordenman

Lockheed Martin, Atlantic Council

March 1, 2025

The AI revolution is the leading edge of a larger high-tech revolution which promises to transform the world. Experts argue that international cooperation is needed to expand the opportunities these new technologies hold while protecting societies from their dangers. What are the key policy debates in this area, and what are the opportunities and limits on global AI rules of the road? How will the AI revolution impact American national security? What are its policy options to secure the benefits of AI and guard against its dangers?

European security is more uncertain than it has been for decades. Putin’s Russia has launched a war with Ukraine on its doorstep, and America’s uncertain role as leader of NATO and security provider has been called into question with the failure of Congress to pass supplemental military support for Ukraine. What are Europe’s options, and how might developments on both sides of Western Europe – in Ukraine and across the Atlantic – impact its choices? What are America’s stakes in NATO and Europe’s strategic dilemmas?