Friday January 21, 2022
12:30-1:30 p.m.
Online Zoom Meeting
Dear Colleagues:
Greetings from behind a snowbank. In my case it’s on one side of our den window and we thankfully are on the other side. But if we’re going to be stuck with Zoom meetings because of a virus it’s sort of nice to think some of us might have wanted to stay inside anyway.
I hope the new year has begun with health and good things and stays that way for you all. We have also renewed the “Friday Lunch,” a CWRU tradition since 1989. I would like to think we’ll be able to have some in-person meetings sometime during the term, but with classes mostly on Zoom for the first two weeks of the semester, we certainly can’t hold a non-class meeting in-person now. Even if getting to campus were easier.
The Public Affairs Discussion Group presents experts from campus and sometimes beyond to discuss important issues for the university, local community, nation or the international stage. I’m especially pleased to welcome my colleague Professor Kathryn C. Lavelle this week.
This Week’s Program
Her topic is one of the most basic questions in international relations: the future of multilateralism. To some Americans, mostly Republicans, multilateral organizations are a threat to national sovereignty. To others, mostly Democrats, multilateral organizations tend to be dominated by international business interests at the expense of the middle or working class. Such skepticism based on perceptions of bias is common across the world, and as Professor Lavelle emphasizes, is particularly visible in our era of rising nationalism. It might seem logical to look at this conflict and think that multilateral organizations will only get weaker and less important in the years to come.
Yet as Professor Lavelle shows in her recent book with Yale University Press, The Challenges of Multilateralism, multilateral efforts and organizations have always been under attack. She offers a broad overview of multilateral efforts from their origins in the post-Napoleonic Wars Concert of Europe up to the present day. In the course of this history she shows that even periods that look like failures of multilateralism – such as the two World Wars, and the failure of organizations created after the first to prevent the second – have also birthed new forms of international cooperation. During the inter-war period, for example, private actors such as the Rockefeller Foundation fostered international cooperation on issues such as public health (something that may seem a bit familiar at the moment). In one reviewer’s judgment, her “long-term perspective” makes for “an important and timely contribution to the study of international history and diplomacy.”
1945, of course, led to a rebirth of efforts, and that fits another pattern that she identifies: that when things seem darkest people tend to start searching for new ways to enable international cooperation. That might give the impression that multilateralism is a matter of continual hope, but one eminent reviewer argues that, “Lavelle’s most important contention is that multilateralism is less an idealistic aspiration than a pragmatic tool for managing economic and security interdependence.” Perhaps even more important, in this book as in much of her other work Professor Lavelle emphasizes both how domestic politics and international politics interact, and that how institutions work and can work change over time.
I hope you can join us as Professor Lavelle shares her broad and deep perspective on one of the most basic aspects of international politics.
Signing In
This semester’s discussions will begin at 12:30 p.m., the usual time. The meeting will be set up as from Noon to 2:00 p.m., so people are not all signing in at the same time and to allow for the discussion to run a bit long. Each week we will send out this newsletter with information about the topic. It will also include a link to register (for free) for the discussion. Every Monday the same information will be posted on our website: fridaylunch.case.edu.
If you register, you will automatically receive from the Zoom system the link to join the meeting. This week’s link for registration is:
https://cwru.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMrdumrpzwoGNeM5if5ALBFGdULwWCGfLRj
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Please e-mail padg@case.edu if you have questions about how the Zoom version of the Friday Lunch will work or any other suggestions. Or call at 216 368-2426 and we’ll try to get back to you. We are very pleased to be partnering this semester with the Siegal Lifelong Learning Program to share information about the discussions.
Best wishes for safety and security for you and yours,
Joe White
Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and Director, Center for Policy Studies
About Our Guest
Kathryn C. Lavelle is the Ellen and Dixon Long Professor of World Affairs at Case Western Reserve University. Her research specializes in the politics of financial governance. The author of The Politics of Equity Finance in Emerging Markets (Oxford University Press, 2004); Legislating International Organizations: US Congress, the IMF, and the World Bank (Oxford University Press, 2011); and Money and Banks in the American Political Process. (Cambridge University Press, 2013) Dr. Lavelle’s most recent book, The Challenges of Multilateralism, was released in March 2020 by Yale University Press. Professor Lavelle has been a residential fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; the William Steiger Fellow with the American Political Science Association where she served on the staff of the House Committee on Financial Services; and the inaugural Fulbright research chair at the Munk Centre at the University of Toronto.
Schedule of Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:
January 28: In Defense of Judgment. With Michael W. Clune, Ph.D., Samuel B. and Virginia C. Knight Professor of Humanities.
February 4: Cognitive Decline and the Workplace. With Sharona Hoffman, J.D., Edgar A. Hahn Professor of Law.
February 11: What, if Anything, Have We Learned From Cybersecurity Regulation So Far? Wtih Tom Alrich, consultant on cybersecurity regulation especially for the electric power industry.
February 18: TBA
February 25: TBA
March 4: The Present and Future of Cryptocurrency. With Peter Zimmerman, Ph.D., Research Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
March 11: Spring Break
March 18: Inflation. With Mark Sniderman, Ph.D., Executive in Residence and Adjunct Professor of Economics, Weatherhead School of Management; former Executive Vice President, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
March 25: Covid-19 Through Covid-22: The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same? Wtih Mark Cameron, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences.
April 1: The French Presidential Election. Wtih Patrick Chamorel, Ph.D., Senior Resident Scholar and Lecturer, Stanford in Washington, Stanford University.
April 8: TBA
April 15: TBA
April 22: TBA |
