The World Today

As we start a new semester, we are confronted with a world that has seen significant changes and major global events. In a year that will see more people than ever before going to the polls, there have already been multiple elections of consequence—including in France, India, Iran, Venezuela, and the UK. Conflict continues in the Middle East, Ukraine, and Sudan – and too many other places. Technology is rapidly shifting the global landscape through advances in AI, blockchain, and autonomous systems. And climate change continues to wreak havoc on weather systems—with 2024 on track to be the hottest summer in history and massive storms and flooding affecting people around the globe. Please join a panel of PWH-affiliated Penn faculty discuss what they see as some of the most critical events facing the world, including some of the key stressors and bright spots on the horizon. The panel will be looking at the world through the lens of their own expertise of democracy, climate change, security, and human rights and global justice—the key themes of PWH’s work – setting the stage for all our work this year.

Sarah Banet-Weiser, the Walter H. Annenberg Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, is also its Lauren Berlant Professor of Communication. In addition, she is a research professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the founding director of the Center for Collaborative Communication at the Annenberg Schools (C3).

Her teaching and research interests include gender in the media, identity, citizenship, and cultural politics, consumer culture and popular media, race and the media, and intersectional feminism. Committed to intellectual and activist conversations that explore how global media politics are exercised, expressed, and perpetuated in different cultural contexts, she has authored or edited eight books, including Believability: Sexual Violence, Media, and the Politics of Doubt (Polity Press, 2023), the award-winning Authentic™: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture (NYU Press, 2012), Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny (Duke, 2018), and dozens of peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and essays. In 2019-2020, she had a regular column on popular feminism in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Michael C. Horowitz is director of Perry World House and Richard Perry Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of The Diffusion of Military Power: Causes and Consequences for International Politics and the co-author of Why Leaders Fight. He won the Karl Deutsch Award given by the International Studies Association for early career contributions to the fields of international relations and peace research. He has published in a wide array of peer-reviewed journals and popular outlets. His research interests include the intersection of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics with global politics, military innovation, the role of leaders in international politics, and geopolitical forecasting methodology. Professor Horowitz previously worked for the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy in the Department of Defense. He is a senior fellow for defense technology and innovation at the Council on Foreign Relations. Professor Horowitz received his PhD in government from Harvard University and his BA in political science from Emory University.

Michael Weisberg is deputy director of Perry World House, as well as Bess W. Heyman President’s Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. A renowned philosopher of science and senior negotiator at United Nations Climate Conferences, he is editor-in-chief of Biology and Philosophy, director of the Penn Laboratory for Understanding Science, and director of the Galápagos Education and Research Alliance. He is the author of Simulation and Similarity: Using Models to Understand the World and co-author of the landmark photographic study Galápagos: Life in Motion. Professor Weisberg also serves as senior adviser to the Maldivian Minister of Environment and advisor to the Maldivian Ambassador to the United Nations. He received a PhD and MA in Philosophy from Stanford University and a BS in Chemistry and BA in Philosophy with Highest Distinction from the University of California at San Diego.

Host or Publisher Perry World House