Francis Fukuyama was the first speaker in the Center for the Study of Economy & Society’s fall lecture series, “The American State in a Multipolar World.” His lecture, introduced by Cornell President Martha E. Pollack, highlighted the key challenges facing global democracy: pandemic, climate change, and political polarization.
Photography: Dave Burbank
What do two ongoing crises, the COVID-19 pandemic and the global climate emergency, mean for the future of global democracy and cooperation? Will liberal democracies rise to the challenge? Or will a resurgence of fascism prevent collective action? Francis Fukuyama, Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University, examines the key issues faced by the contemporary international order and delivers a prognosis based on the coming challenges to global democracy.
Join the Center for the Study of Economy & Society for the inaugural lecture by Francis Fukuyama of a new series, “The American State in a Multipolar World.” The series features distinguished scholars and public intellectuals: Francis Fukuyama, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Joseph Nye Jr., and Andrew J. Bacevich as they discuss the issues and choices facing the American state in a multipolar global economy and shifting world system. Does maintaining American democracy rely on American hegemony? Is a new Cold War compatible with the priorities of climate change and the COVID pandemic, which require inter-state cooperation?
Francis Fukuyama is Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Mosbacher Director of FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and Director of Stanford’s Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy. He received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University. He has written extensively on issues in development and international politics. His influential book, The End of History and the Last Man (1992), has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. Before joining Stanford, he has served as a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, on the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. State Department, as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics between 2001-2004, and has taught at George Mason University and Johns Hopkins. His most recent book is Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment (2018).
“[T]he challenge is to specify and explicate the social mechanisms determining the relationship between the informal social organization of close-knit groups and the formal rules of institutional structures.”— Victor Nee
