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CC In the World

 
01 Jul 2019
Posted by Lauren Lewis
Category CC In the World, News

CAMDEN CONFERENCE IN THE WORLD-July 2019

Camden Conference alumni are a diverse group, engaged in a remarkable range of issues. Just the last month alone provides an array of contributions spanning everything from the risk of war in Iran to Nigerian domestic politics to the aging of America’s farmers. John Piotti, moderator and star of the 2014 Camden Conference, who subsequently moved up from Maine Farmland Trust to become head of American Farmland Trust, was featured in May in a segment of the BBC documentary series Follow the Food (minute 12) called “Generation Farmer” on the aging farm population and efforts to bring young people back to the land. Also, in the Farm Journal’s Over He(a)rd podcast, Piotti recently outlined the importance of halting the disappearance of farmland. On a strikingly different topic, 2010 Conference speaker Paul Pillar assessed President Donald Trump’s Iran policy in “The Fog of Selling a War” on the investigative and analytical…

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03 Jun 2019
Posted by Lauren Lewis
Category CC In the World, News

CAMDEN CONFERENCE IN THE WORLD-June 2019

With trade and other geopolitical mayhem seeming to greet us in the headlines each morning over the last month, it’s hard not to see the 2018 Camden Conference theme of “New World Disorder” as prescient. Stephen Walt, 2018 keynoter and Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard, has been thinking along similar lines, listing on his Foreign Policy blog five global problems that “are getting worse – and may never get better.” These “Bad Things” start with climate change, move onto the potential collapse of both the two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians and of the European Union, and conclude with a nuclear crisis with Iran and the collapse of America’s long-standing Asian alliances due to its clash with China. Our 2019 keynoter, best-selling author and Cambridge professor Martin Jacques, discussed the impacts of that American clash with China on not just the US’ Asian allies but also on its…

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29 Apr 2019
Posted by Lauren Lewis
Category CC In the World, News

CAMDEN CONFERENCE IN THE WORLD-May 2019

With a conference on “The Role of Media in Global Affairs” in prospect for 2020, it’s a good moment to see what some of the many journalists are up to who have spoken to our community in years past on places and problems spanning the globe. A lot it turns out, and from a lot of directions. From Russia, 2015 speaker and editor of Russia in Global Affairs, Fyodor Lukyanov, recently described the grappling underway in Russia to understand the end of the post-Soviet era and the mix of opportunities and uncertainties the country now faces in a multi-polar world. Soon after, Natalie Nougayrède — a 2018 conference speaker, Guardian columnist and faithful adherent to classic European ideals — celebrated the April election as president of Ukraine of comedian-recently-turned-politician Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Nougayrede sees the election and expected peaceful turnover of power as proof that a pro-European, non-expansionist Ukraine is “the…

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29 Mar 2019
Posted by Lauren Lewis
Category CC In the World, News

Camden Conference in the World-April 2019

The themes that dominated the 2019 Camden Conference on “Is This China’s Century?,” and the speakers who came to the Midcoast to address them, remain in sharp news focus. Two 2019 speakers, MIT professor Yasheng Huang and retired senior US diplomat Susan Thornton, again shared the stage at an Intelligence Squared debate on The “Techonomic Cold War with China.” The two agreed – in opposition to the other three debaters – that China’s Belt and Road initiative is a “Trillion-Dollar Blunder.” With Chinese President Xi Jinping on a tour of Europe in March aimed in part at furthering the Belt and Road initiative, 2019 speaker and University of Michigan professor Yuen Yuen Ang argued in a Newsweek interview that Europe should be cautiously open to working with Beijing. Likewise, when interviewed by France’s RFI during Xi’s visit, 2019 keynoter and author Martin Jacques suggested that good relations with China could…

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04 Feb 2019
Posted by Lauren Lewis
Category All Events, CC In the World, News

Camden Conference in the World-February 2019

Speakers from the 2018 Camden Conference on New World Disorder have been making news of late, on topics including the 2019 China theme. Harvard professor and 2018 keynoter Stephen Walt argued in Foreign Policy that Europeans who want to keep a skeptical US President Donald Trump committed to NATO would do well to join the US in restraining China’s military might. “European concerns about Chinese ambitions have grown in recent years, as have their fears about a total U.S. withdrawal” from NATO. This might provide a rationale for a “new trans-Atlantic” bargain at a time when “China’s rise continues to draw U.S. attention away from Europe and toward Asia,” Walt wrote. Natalie Nougayrede, who also spoke in Camden last year, took on the sprawling trans-Atlantic debate over truth in the media in one of her recent Guardian columns. “Outlandish claims of secret cabals can arguably go further in Europe than…

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30 Nov 2018
Posted by Lauren Lewis
Category All Events, CC In the World, News

Camden Conference in the World-December 2018

Camden Conference speakers past and future have been weighing in on China-US tensions that are dominating headlines worldwide – and will figure prominently in the February 2019 conference Is This China’s Century? The Trump administration has an important story to tell about “the challenge that China poses to the fundamental principles embraced by market democracies globally: free trade and open markets, freedom of navigation, and good governance,” 2019 speaker and director for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations Elizabeth Economy wrote last month in a Council on Foreign Relations blog post. “Understanding the nature of the challenge is the first step toward developing an appropriate strategy to address it,” she continues. American diplomat and author Chas Freeman presents a sharply different take on the tensions in a November interview with Xinhua, the official Chinese state press agency: China and the United States “have no alternative to living and…

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31 Oct 2018
Posted by Lauren Lewis
Category All Events, CC In the World, News

Camden Conference in the World-November 2018

“When developing countries and partners think of the China Model, they often, incorrectly, think of it as purely a top-down model,” 2019 Camden Conference speaker Yuen Yuen Ang told an audience in Cambodia recently, in a display of the “fresh perspectives” for which she was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow earlier this year. In fact, “different parts of China have followed many different paths to economic and social development over the last several decades. Their commonality is the adaptation of central mandates to local conditions.” Praising attempts to revive the traditional Cambodian silk weaving industry, University of Michigan professor Ang suggested that China itself needs to learn that other countries “want to build their future their own way, too.” MIT Professor and fellow 2019 Camden Conference speaker Yasheng Huang, who has his own insightful take on the Chinese development model, argued recently in the MIT Technology Review that China’s adoption…

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01 Oct 2018
Posted by Lauren Lewis
Category All Events, CC In the World, News

Camden Conference in the World-October 2018

Keynoter for the 2019 conference Martin Jacques this summer provided the perfect segue to the China theme from 2018’s New World Disorder, arguing in this interview that as the first leading US politician to recognize America’s decline, President Donald Trump would also be wise to come to terms with — rather than fight via trade wars or otherwise — the “deep historical forces” leading to China’s ongoing rise. Basically answering “yes” to the Camden Conference’s 2019 title “Is This China’s Century,” global best-selling author Jacques says that at the heart of the question is: “How is the West going to handle its own relative decline?” Hear the latest on China’s tumultuous economic situation in this late September podcast by Kaiser Kuo, another speaker on the 2019 conference roster and founder of the Sinica weekly online discussion of events in China. Kuo was previously director of international communications in Beijing for…

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04 Sep 2018
Posted by Lauren Lewis
Category All Events, CC In the World, News, Uncategorized

Camden Conference In the World-September 2018

It’s been an active summer for Camden Conference alumni speakers, including on topics directly related to our 2019 theme “Is This China’s Century?” Hannah Beech explored the state of China’s relationship with Malaysia under Malaysia’s recently returned leader of an earlier era, Mahathir Mohamad. A 2011 Camden Conference speaker on “How Asian Journalists Operate with State-Controlled Media,” Beech is now southeast Asia Bureau Chief for the New York Times, having served for a decade as East Asia bureau chief for Time magazine. Thea Lee defended a thesis that is at the core of the percolating trade war between China and the US — Globalization Has Undermined America’s Working Class – in this Intelligence Squared debate aired on public radio. For the full debate, listen here. Thea is president of the Economic Policy Institute, past deputy chief of staff and chief international economist for the AFL-CIO, and a speaker at the…

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28 Jun 2018
Posted by Lauren Lewis
Category All Events, CC In the World, News

Camden Conference in the World-July 2018

How serious are perceived threats to democracy around the world and at home in the US? A prognosis for democracy that “although hardly inspiring — is less dire than much commentary suggests” was outlined by UCLA political science professor and 2015 Camden Conference speaker Daniel Treisman in the Washington Post last month. Not only do four commonly cited ratings system reviewed by Treisman show the global proportion of countries that are democracies “at or near an all-time high,” but his own historically based research indicates a likelihood of less than one in 3,000 of a democratic breakdown in a country as wealthy and with as long of history of democracy as the US.   Cas Mudde, a University of Georgia professor and widely cited commentator who spoke on the rise of the far right at our 2017 conference on Refugees and Global Migration, argues in The Guardian that liberals, fearful…

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