The Global Ideas Annual Lecture is a cooperation between the University Research Chair on Global Political Thought, Professor Michael C. Williams, and the Centre for International Policy Studies.

The guiding principle behind the Annual Lecture and the wider research program of the University Chair on Global Political Thought is that ideas matter, and that in today’s world they matter more than ever.  Contests and clashes over ideas about economics, politics, and the global order are at the heart of the tumult that marks our political life. Clashes of interests in international affairs are intimately entwined with contests of ideas.

With the Global Ideas Annual Lecture, CIPS and the University Chair seek to engage with some of the most challenging ideas and issues in contemporary world politics.

February 15th, 2024 – Governing AI: Opportunities and Challenges for Global Governance

Alondra Nelson will examine the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence (AI) governance. As AI systems and tools begin to permeate society, related issues of ethics, rights, accountability, and regulation have become more pressing. The absence of an internationally-coordinated research infrastructure poses a significant challenge for AI governance. Yet even conventional multilateral paradigms predicated on nation-state membership are unlikely to produce an effective way to govern competitive, for-profit industry efforts. AI companies are already offering products to a global and diverse customer base, including public and private enterprises and everyday consumers, and the data that enable AI systems’ development have become a global economic and political force. In such a novel and dynamic context, what values and principles should guide AI development and deployment and what forms of international collaboration and cooperation may be required to do so?

Dr. Alondra Nelson is the Harold F. Linder Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and a distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. A former deputy assistant to President Joe Biden, she served as acting director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Including Nelson in its list of “Ten People Who Shaped Science” , Nature said of her OSTP tenure, “this social scientist made strides for equity, integrity and open access.”

Nelson drove Biden-Harris administration strategy to develop science and technology policy that expands economic opportunity, protects civil rights, enhances security, and advances equity. She was architect of the White House’s landmark “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights,” which is a cornerstone of President Biden’s recent Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. In recognition of this work, Nelson was named to the inaugural TIME100 list of the most influential list of people in AI in 2023.

Nelson regularly advises American lawmakers, including U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, on issues of national importance, including AI governance. As a science and technology policy advisor, she has provided guidance to local, state, and federal governments, legislators, multilateral and international organizations, and others. In October 2023, she was appointed as the U.S. representative to the United Nations High-Level Advisory Board on Artificial Intelligence, and in November 2023, she was a civil society representative to the UK AI Safety Summit.

An acclaimed academic researcher, Nelson served as the inaugural Dean of Social Science at Columbia University and was the 14th president and CEO of the US Social Science Research Council. She writes and lectures widely on the intersections of science, technology, medicine, and social inequality. Nelson is the author of several books including, most recently, The Social Life of DNA. Her essays, reviews, and commentary have been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Wired and Science.

Nelson is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Philosophical Society, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the U.S. National Academy of Medicine.

March 30th, 2023 – Against Decolonisation: On Africa’s Place in the Global Circuit of Ideas

Why doesn’t the world beat its path to Africa’s doors when it comes to intellectual engagement? To finding African insights into the human condition beyond those compelled by pity for the prostrate condition of poor Africans? To identifying, studying, and arguing with African answers to the perennial questions of philosophy? Why is Africa-inflected knowledge produced by African scholars, whether in Africa or its growing new Diaspora, not reckoned with, referenced, or engaged by others both in and outside of academia the world over? I have always been concerned by the erasure of African-produced knowledges in global discourses, even those concerning Africa.  In this lecture, I argue that some of the causes can be traced to some of the motivations behind the decolonization scholarship that I ask that we dispense with in my book, Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously.

Dr. Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò is Professor of African Political Thought and current Chair at the Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, U.S.A.  His research interests include Philosophy of Law, Social and Political Philosophy, Marxism, and African and Africana Philosophy. Táíwò is the author of Legal Naturalism: A Marxist Theory of Law (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996; Paperback 2015), (Chinese Translation, 2013); How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010); Africa Must Be Modern: A Manifesto (Ibadan: Bookcraft, 2012), (North American Edition, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), Can a Liberal Be a Chief? Can a Chief Be a Liberal? On an Unfinished Business of Colonialism (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2021), and Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously (London: Hurst, 2022).   He was joint editor with Olutoyin Mejiuni and Patricia Cranton of Measuring and Analyzing Informal Learning in the Digital Age (Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2015).  His writings have been translated into French, Italian, German, and Portuguese.  He has taught at universities in Canada, Nigeria, Germany, South Korea, and Jamaica. 

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November 1st, 2021 – Academic Freedom, Free Speech and Thinking for Yourself

Academic freedom is threatened from without—by authoritarian regimes in China, Turkey, Russia, Hungary, the list goes on—but it is also threatened from within. What does it take to actually think for yourself in the universities of the 21st century? And how do we strengthen academic freedom, at home and overseas?

Dr. Michael Igantieff is a writer, historian and former politician, author of the forthcoming On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times. Formerly Edward R. Murrow Professor At Harvard’s Kennedy School and Rector of Central European University, he is now a professor of history at CEU, Vienna.

Read Michael Ignatieff’s entire lecture here.

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