Merton College, Oxford
23-31 March 2001
| Dr Christopher Coker | London School of Economics |
Peace, security and the UN in the future
| Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi | Special Representative of the UN Secretary General |
Globalization and the changing structure of international relations
| Professor Zaki Laïdi | CERI, Paris |
Constraints and opportunities for the military in future wars
| William Doll | Joint Warfare Analysis Center |
Cyber-war and cyber-terrorism
| Dr Paul Kielstra | 21st Century Trust |
The risk society and the assessment of threat
| Dr Ragnar Lofstedt | University of Surrey |
Transnational crime: case studies
The Mediterranean
| Dr Claire Spencer | Centre for Defence Studies, King's College London |
The Caribbean
| Yolande Forde | Consultant criminologist, Barbados |
South Africa
| Dr Pingla Udit | Special Advisor, Office of the National Director of Public Prosecutions |
Permeable borders
i. Evironmental risks
| Dr Alan Dupont | Australian National University |
ii. Disease
| Julian Lambert | UK Department for International Development |
Privatization of security
| Jed Snyder | Senior National Security Advisor, Dyn Meridian Corporation, USA |
The security agendas characteristic of post-modern states
| Robert Cooper | Foreign Policy Adviser, 10 Downing Street |
Advertised Synopsis
The end of the Cold War encouraged us to think we would feel more secure. Instead developed societies in particular feel even less secure than ever. Rather than the threat of nuclear war we face a variety of risks, some environmental, others social, all potentially demoralising. Our sense of insecurity is now determined by a range of different issues: migration; disease (especially AIDS); environmental pollution and crime. War itself is now less and less immediate in our imagination. What has happened? Why are we less fearful but more anxious than ever? This conference will look at the changing security agenda and the dynamics of insecurity which has emerged since the end of the Cold War: the result of globalisation and the emergence of risk societies. It will focus on individual challenges such as crime and disease in the context of security thinking. It will require us to ask to what extent transnationalism is forcing us to rethink security. And it will ask what strategies are best suited to make people feel more secure in the future, whether universal, regional, or local, government or private. Should we be managing insecurity, containing challenges or going further and trying to resolve problems with the confidence sometimes shown in the past?
Download John Naughton's Introductory Paper
Endicott House, MIT, Boston, United States
26 June - 3 July 2001
What is really new in the New Economy and what will endure?
| Professor Hal Varian | University of California at Berkeley |
The Net and Freedom
| Tom Gibson | Managing Partner, Kirkwood/Gibson Consultants |
What long term changes await business and consumers?
| Professor Jim Norton | Institute of Directors, London |
Shaping the future of the Internet: Economics vs. Technology
| Dr David Clark | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
The Internet, governance and government
| Esther Dyson | Chairman, EDventure Holdings, former Founding Chairman of ICANN |
Politics and the Internet
| Doug Hattaway | Chief spokesperson for Al Gore 2000 Presidential campaign |
E-government
| Daniel Stedman-Jones | Demos, London |
E-democracy
| Monique van Dusseldorp | van Dusseldorp & partners, Amsterdam |
The digital divide: what it means, and how it can be addressed
| Professor Ernest Wilson | Dept. of Government and Politics, University of Maryland |
Case study: Internet radio
| Santoso | Radio 68H, Indonesia |
Society on-line: can the Internet provide new forms of community or new democratic structures?
| Professor Lee Sproull | New York University |
Case Study: njserves.org
| Professor Michael Shafer | Rutgers University |
Innovation and the Internet
| Professor Lawrence Lessig | Stanford Law School, Stanford University |
Advertised Synopsis
The Internet, together with new communications technologies and a precipitous decline in the cost of data transfer look set to transform the infrastructure of the 21st century world. Businesses, governments, NGOs and other organizations are being compelled to transform how they operate and relate to one another, while individual societies and the world in general have to face the danger of 'digital divides' exacerbating existing inequalities. A grasp of the attendant economic, political, social, and cultural implications of these developments is vital for the formation of policy in this area. This conference will consider aspects of the communications revolution, including: how communications technology is likely to evolve in the near future; how it is affecting and will affect the way humans interact, and the impact this might have on society (both domestic and international); the changes the Internet is bringing to how we shop, do business, and invest, including the implications of e-business for traditional economies and governmental structures, as well as claims of a new economic paradigm; how the role of NGOs might develop in the face of these innovations; how technological changes might alter the way societies govern themselves, either in more democratic or more authoritarian ways; the extent to which the Internet should or even can be regulated - and by whom - and the implications for free speech and libel laws; how the technology will transform public education and learning; the danger of the evolution of an information underclass on domestic as well as international scales; and the challenges and opportunities which a wired world will pose to national security. To promote original ideas in this area, the conference will examine these questions as part of a scenario building exercise, designed to encourage an integrated consideration of the disparate strands of the issue at hand and to generate outlines of a series of possible futures which might - without engaging in prediction - illuminate the opportunities and dangers ahead. This conference is being held with generous sponsorship from Equant/Global One.
Madingley Hall, Cambridge
28 October - 4 November 2001
| Neal Ascherson | Journalist and Author |
Minority Rights Amidst Conflict
| Professor Andrew Michels | DePaul University College of Law, Chicago |
Collective rights and their dilemmas: which rights for which groups
| Professor Will Kymlicka | Queen's University, Kingston |
Case study: the Roma
| Dr Michael Stewart | University College London |
Minorities and participatory democracy
| Maleiha Malik | King's College London |
Is unequal treatment of groups ever fair?
| Professor Brian Barry | Columbia University |
Case study: Inuit ideas of ownership
| Hugh Brody | Anthropologist and Film-maker |
Self-determination and its limits: inherent right, threat to peace, or both?
| Edward Mortimer | Director of Communications, Office of the UN Secretary-General, New York |
Case study: collective rights in the South Tyrol
| Dr Jens Woelk | University of Trento |
Righting historical wrongs and the claims culture
| Ian Buruma | Author and formerly Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Institute for the Humanities, Washington DC |
| Chidi Odinkalu | Senior Legal Officer, Interights |
Advertised Synopsis
Human rights considerations play a central role not only in domestic constitutional arrangements, their long-established home, but also more and more in international affairs. A thornier question is what rights can be said to reside in a collective or group - be it ethnic, linguistic or religious. The international community does recognize such collective rights to a limited degree. Self-determination is inherent in a people, not in individuals, and, under the Genocide Convention, states are bound to intervene in other states' affairs because of an attack on an identifiable group in a way which more indiscriminate mass slaughter alone does not compel. This conference will examine some of the difficulties inherent in the question of collective rights, with particular consideration of the place of minorities in national political arrangements and in international affairs, including: How far do such rights go, or are even self-determination and genocide concepts too fraught with difficulty to be used except as justifications? What sorts of groups can make a claim to this kind of right? How can a group with a claim to collective identity and rights assert itself and have its assertion recognized? How can such rights be exercised and who can claim to speak on behalf of a group especially where traditional power structures are not democratic? How can the exercise of collective rights be reconciled with the rights of other groups, or to individual rights both within and without the collective, when there is a clash?
Hotel Richmond, Istanbul
5-7 October 2001
Orientalism and its enemies in the late 20th century
| Sir Michael Weir | British Ambassador to Egypt 1979-1985, and Director of the 21st Century Trust 1990-2000 |
Will new communication technologies make a difference?
| Metehan Sekban | Coordinator of the MBA Programme, Bilgi University |
Transnationalised eyes and the importance of film: new perspectives in contemporary cinema
| Professor Deniz Derman | Bahcesehir University, Istanbul |
Case study: the impact of cultural assumptions at home and abroad on Turkey's role in the international community
| Professor Hüseyin Bagci | Middle East Technical University, Ankara |
Brief Description
Istanbul stands at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. It is an ideal place to consider how people from different cultural backgrounds view each other and how those views affect international relations. Looking at film and the press, what in particular is the role of the media in this? How might cross-cultural views be affected by new communications technologies? How might Turkey specifically be affected by cultural assumptions at home and abroad, given its key strategic role in the Middle East and Central Asia, as a member of Nato and as an aspirant member of the European Union?
Scotland House, Rond Point Schuman, Brussels
16-17 November 2001
The longer view: possible points of tension in the alliance and how they might be resolved
| Guillaume Parmentier | Institut Français des Relations Internationales, Paris |
The view from NATO
| Lord Robertson | Secretary General of Nato |
The evolution of the transatlantic alliance
| Dr Alice Ackermann | The George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, Garmisch-Partenkirchen |
The view from the European Union
| The Rt Hon Chris Patten | European Commissioner for External Affairs, Chairman 21st Century Trust |
Economics and the environment: where do US interests converge with Europe, where do they differ?
| Dr David Victor | Council on Foreign Relations, New York |
Political cultures and world views: how wide is the Atlantic?
| Nicole Renvert | Director Transatlantic Project, Bertelsmann Stiftung, Gütersloh |
| Dr Robert McGeehan | Institute of United States Studies, University of London |
Views of the Middle East and the War on Terrorism
| Sir Michael Weir | British Ambassador to Egypt 1979-1985, and Director of the 21st Century Trust 1990-2000 |
| Maj. Douglas McNary | Senior Analyst, Emergent Information Technologies, Washington DC, Major in US Air Force Reserve |
Brief Description
Relations between Europe and the United States seems as strong as ever, but face a number of difficult challenges, particularly in the fields of security and economics. Nato has not only survived the end of the Cold War, confounding some commentators, but has expanded and been more active militarily than ever before in its intervention in the Balkans. However, there are possible strains in the alliance as the United States, with the advent of a new administration, debates its own national interest and looks to protect it with a missile defence system. Some European allies fear that this will leave them out in the cold and destabilize arms control. Political integration in Europe, on the other hand, is starting to take on a military dimension with plans for a rapid reaction force. This might operate neatly within Nato structures or might, as some critics fear and some supporters wish, outgrow Nato as the European Union becomes more assertive on security matters. In their economic relations, the US and the EU have generally worked together within the WTO and the Bretton Woods institutions to resolve disputes and to manage globalization and its attendant squalls. However, disputes over issues such as intellectual property and trade in bananas have at times been bitter, and may presage further tensions as the political balance and economic conditions change. This seminar will examine what shape the transatlantic alliance is in and discuss the different possible directions it may take in the future.