World Affairs Lectures

Jack A. Goldstone is the Virginia E. and John T. Hazel, Jr. Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University, and a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Previously, Dr. Goldstone was on the faculty of Northwestern University and the University of California, and has been a visiting scholar at Cambridge University, UCLA, UC-San Diego and the California Institute of Technology, as well as director of research institutes at the Russian Academy of National Economy (Moscow) and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study at Stanford University, a distinguished lecturer at the American Academy in Berlin, and won Fellowships from the J.S. Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies. He is the author of Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World, awarded the 1993 Distinguished Scholarly Research Award of the American Sociological Association; Why Europe? The Rise of the West in World History; and nine other books as well as over one hundred and fifty research articles on topics in politics, social movements, democratization, and long-term social change. He has seven times won awards for “best article” in the fields of comparative-historical sociology, political sociology, and social theory, and received the Myron Weiner award for lifetime achievement from the International Studies Association. His current research focuses on conditions for building democracy and stability in developing nations, the impact of population change on the global economy and international security, and the cultural origins of modern economic growth. He has appeared on NPR, CNN, Al-Jazeera, Fox News, and written for Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, Al-Hayat and the International Herald Tribune. He has also worked extensively on forecasting global conflict and terrorism, and with the US Agency for International Development and the World Bank on providing democracy assistance to fragile states. Goldstone is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and served on the advisory board of the Council’s Center for Preventive Action.

Professor Jack A. Goldstone’s research focuses on conditions for building democracy and stability in developing nations, the impact of population change on the global economy and international security, and the cultural origins of modern economic growth.  He has worked extensively with the US Agency for International Development and the World Bank on providing democracy assistance to fragile states.  Goldstone is the author of Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World [1993; 2016], awarded the 1993 Distinguished Scholarly Research Award of the American Sociological Association; and, Why Europe? The Rise of the West in World History [2008].  He is blog posts can be found at https://newpopulationbomb.com

Sarah Chayes, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security, is an international authority on corruption and its implications.  Her work explores how it exacerbates international crises such as terrorism, revolutions and their violent aftermaths, and environmental degradation.

In May 2016, Chayes participated alongside UK Prime Minister David Cameron, Secretary of State John Kerry and world leaders from more than 40 countries at the first ever international summit devoted to tackling corruption.  

Before joining Carnegie, she served as special assistant to the top U.S. military officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen.  She participated in Cabinet-level decision-making on Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Arab Spring, traveling with Mullen frequently to these regions.  He tapped Chayes for the job after her work as special advisor to two commanders of the international troops in Afghanistan (ISAF).  She contributed her unique knowledge of the Afghan south to the ISAF command.  

It was a sense of historic opportunity that prompted Chayes to renounce her journalism career in early 2002, after covering the fall of the Taliban for National Public Radio, and to remain in Afghanistan to help rebuild the country.  She chose to settle in the former Taliban heartland, Kandahar.  

In 2005, Chayes founded Arghand, a start-up manufacturing cooperative, where men and women working together produce fine skin-care products.  The goal was to revive the region’s historic role in exporting fruit and its derivatives, to promote sustainable development, and expand alternatives to the opium economy.  Running Arghand in downtown Kandahar proved to an extraordinary vantage point for observing the unfolding war. 

From 1996-2001, Chayes was NPR Paris correspondent.  For her work during the Kosovo crisis, she shared the 1999 Foreign Press Club and Sigma Delta Chi awards.  

Along with Thieves of State, which won the 2016 L.A. Times Book Prize, Chayes is the author of The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban (Penguin, 2006).

Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he served as Academic Dean from 2002 to 2006.  He is a contributing editor at Foreign Policy magazine, co-chair of the editorial board of International Security, and co-editor of the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs book series.  He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in May 2005 and received the International Studies Association’s Distinguished Senior Scholar award in 2014.  His books include The Origins of Alliances, which received the 1988 Edgar S. Furniss National Security Book Award, and Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy, which was a finalist for the Lionel Gelber International Affairs Book Award and the Arthur Ross Book Prize.  His most recent book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (co-authored with John J. Mearsheimer) was a New York Times best-seller and has been translated into more than twenty foreign languages.  His weekly FP column is at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/voices/walt