Events

LIVE VIRTUAL DEBATE | 1pm (EDT) | 7pm (GMT+2)

The second session of the "Debating the Future of Europe" series will examine the relationship between Europe and America in light of the US presidential election, as well as current developments in the EU's relationships with China and Russia.

Join Célia Belin (Brookings Institute), Sheri Berman (Barnard), Jack Snyder (Columbia SIPA), and Pierre Vimont (former French Ambassador to the U.S.), in a debate moderated by The New York Times’s Roger Cohen.

This discussion is part of the series “Debating the Future of Europe,” organized by Columbia Global Centers | Paris, the European Institute and the Alliance Program.

Co-sponsored by: Columbia Alumni Association,Columbia Maison Française, Columbia University Libraries, the Institute for Ideas and Imagination, European Legal Studies Center at Columbia Law School, Le Grand Continent, La Maison de l'Europe de Paris,and Sciences Po American Foundation. With additional support from the Erasmus + programme of the European Union and the Advisory Board of the Paris Global Center.

SPEAKERS

Célia Belin is a visiting fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings. Her areas of expertise include trans-Atlantic relations, U.S. foreign policy toward Europe, French politics and foreign policy, the role of civil society in foreign policy, religion/secularism, and strategic prospective analysis. Prior to joining Brookings, she served for over five years as an advisor on U.S. affairs and trans-Atlantic relations in the French foreign ministry’s Centre d’Analyse, de Prévision et de Stratégie (policy planning staff). She taught U.S. foreign policy to master’s students at University Paris 2 and University of Saint-Denis. Previously, Belin was a guest fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and a visiting research scholar in the Middle East Institute at Columbia University.

Sheri Berman is Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of books on European social democracy, fascism and the fate of democracy. Her latest book is Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Present Day (2019). She has also published in a wide variety of non-scholarly publications, including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, VOX, The Guardian and Dissent. She is currently a columnist for Foreign Policy and Social Europe. She holds an Honorary Doctorate from Uppsala University in Sweden.

Jack Snyder is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations in the political science department and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. His books include Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War (MIT Press, 2005), co-authored with Edward D. Mansfield; From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (Norton Books, 2000). His articles on such topics as democratization and war, imperial overstretch, war crimes tribunals versus amnesties as strategies for preventing atrocities, international relations theory after September 11, and anarchy and culture have appeared in The American Political Science Review, Daedalus, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Organization, among others. His commentaries on current public issues such as the promotion of democracy abroad have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, and on National Public Radio.

Pierre Vimont is a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe. His research focuses on the European Neighborhood Policy, transatlantic relations, and French foreign policy. From March 2016 to January 2017, Vimont served as the special envoy for the French initiative for a Middle East Peace Conference. Previously, he had been nominated the personal envoy of the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, to lead preparations for the Valletta Conference between EU and African countries to tackle the causes of illegal migration and combat human smuggling and trafficking.

MODERATED BY

Roger Cohen has worked for The New York Times for 30 years as a foreign correspondent, foreign editor, and now columnist. Prior to that he worked for The Wall Street Journal and Reuters. He is the author of four books. The latest, a family memoir entitled "The Girl from Human Street: Ghosts of Memory in a Jewish Family," was published to wide acclaim by Alfred A. Knopf in January 2015. He has taught at Harvard and Princeton and his work has been recognized with several awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from Britain’s Next Century Foundation and a prize from the Overseas Press Club of New York. In 2017, he was awarded the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) prize for Opinion writing for a series on Australian mistreatment of refugees. He won the same award in 2018 for a piece about the Rohingya crisis in Burma. Raised in South Africa and England, a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, he is a naturalized American.

ABOUT THE SERIES

From October 2020-March 2021,  the “Debating the Future of Europe” series will present twelve online programs on six important questions facing Europe today:

Oct 6 & 13: How Can Europe Achieve Social Justice?

Nov 10 & 17: Are Europe and America Drifting Apart?

Dec 6 & 15: Can the EU Lead the Fight Against Climate Change?

Jan 19 & 26: Is Europe Democratic?

Feb 2 & 9: Is There a European Identity?

Mar 2 & 9: Can Europe Be Sovereign?

The six issues will be explored in two programs apiece, an interview in French followed a week later by a moderated discussion in English. The twelve programs will feature a mix of leading scholars from Columbia who specialize on European affairs and prominent creative writers, intellectuals, scholars, and journalists from the EU.