WA2012

WA2012, a set on Flickr.

We’ll be uploading new pictures from #WA2012 during our conference. You can see all of them on our Flickr page and feel free to submit your shots too.

Via Flickr:
WA2012: Navigating in a Shifting Global Landscape March 30-31, 2012 St Regis San Francisco

Baltic Sea Tour – Changing Tides of History

From June 9-20 our own Vice President of Public Programs, Carla Thorson, traveled with the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia’s “Changing Tides of History” tour of the Baltics as a scholar in residence. She kept a blog during the journey, writing at each port of call. Read her posts about Stockholm, St. Petersburg, Gdansk and many more  here.

If you are interested in future trips, learn more about the Philadelphia Council’s travel programs here.

David E. Sanger: From Wikileaks to bin Laden’s Demise: Six Months That Changed America’s Global Challenges

On June 22, The World Affairs Council hosted David E. Sanger, Chief Washington Correspondent for the New York Times for a Guggenhime Speaker Series event titled “From Wikileaks to bin Laden’s Demise: Six Months That Changed America’s Global Challenges.” Jane Wales, President and CEO of the Council, interviewed Mr. Sanger and moderated questions from the audience.

Sanger’s visit came just hours after President Obama’s speech on the reduction of American troops in Afghanistan. When asked his views on the speech, Sanger described how the original goals of the war have changed over the past few years.  Sanger noted that Obama’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan once included stabilizing the country, training Afghan troops, opening schools, and implementing a “civilian surge.” Obama’s plan to draw down more rapidly indicates a return to the narrower goal of dismantling and defeating Al Qaeda.

Sanger also marked a distinct change in policy with regard to Pakistan. At the inception of the war, the logic was that Pakistan was a necessary partner to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan. Now, says Sanger, Afghanistan acts as a base from which the US can target militants in Pakistan. The raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound was an embarrassment to the Pakistani government, particularly as bin Laden’s presence had gone unnoticed by Pakistan’s military base, which Sanger described as the “Pakistani West Point”.

Asked whether it was possible that the popular movements in the Middle East would return to Iran, Sanger thought that that it was unlikely due to the Iranian government’s brutality in crushing dissident groups. Sanger also brought attention to the Stuxnet worm that temporarily shut down Iranian nuclear facilities. He was impressed by the skill used in the attack and noted it as the first cyber weapon  to successfully attack the infrastructure of a foreign state.

As always, Sanger proved to be a riveting speaker, illuminating a host of global issues faced by the United Sates and the world.

The video of Sanger’s visit can be found here: http://vimeo.com/25692679

Nigeria Re-elects President Goodluck Jonathan

As Nigeria’s president Goodluck Jonathan celebrates his re-election, the rest of the region and the world are waiting to see how his victory will effect his country. This Monday, April 25, the World Affairs Council will host Ambassador John Campbell, author of Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink, for an exploration of Nigeria’s post-colonial history and an explanation of the events and conditions that have carried this complex, dynamic and troubled giant to the edge. Can Nigerians push back against corruption and use the nation’s oil wealth to stoke economic investment and growth, or will Nigeria continue to be a place of a wealthy minority and impoverished majority?

Register for the program here and read more about Jonathan’s win in today’s New York Times.

Author Peter Godwin at Council on April 28

After the controversial 2008 presidential election in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe began a brutal terror campaign against his people which would later become known simply as, “The Fear.” Having entered the country in secret, journalist, author and native Zimbabwean Peter Godwin watched as Mugabe insisted on a runoff election and then launched a campaign against the opposition known as “Operation Let Us Finish Them Off.” Godwin chronicled the election aftermath in his new book, The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe, which he will discuss at the Council on April 28 at 6 PM.

Register for the program here. Listen to an interview with Godwin on NPR’s Fresh Air here.

Dr. Francis Fukuyama at Council April 20

On April 20, we are pleased to host Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama for a discussion of the evolution of government. In his new book, The Origins of Political Order, he traces political history back to the beginning of man. He will join us to discuss why some societies have created stable liberal democracies, while others have failed to form legitimate and accountable institutions. Register for the program “From Tribes to Citizens: The Evolution of Government,” here.

For more about Fukuyama and his analysis of the history of human social structures, check out this recent article from The New York Times.

Videos from WorldAffairs 2011 Now Available

If you were unable to join us for last weekend’s WorldAffairs 2011 conference or wish to experience it again, be sure to check out our video archive. There you can watch keynotes by Robert Reich, Arun Majumdar, David Sanger, James Zogby and Stephen Hadley as well as plenary sessions on economy and energy. View the sessions here.

Additionally, we will be broadcasting these sessions on the radio four nights next week, Monday, March 28 through Thursday, March 31, at 8 PM on KQED 88.5 FM.

Tensions Increase Between US and Saudi Arabia

As unrest continues to spread throughout the Middle East, American officials must re-evaluate relations with longtime allies in the region. Perhaps the most important of these, Saudi Arabia, has taken military action in neighboring Bahrain this week, leading to tensions in the U.S.-Saudi relationship. To learn more about this perilous situation, read this article by WorldAffairs 2011 keynote speaker David Sanger, Chief Washington Correspondent for The New York Times.

Sanger will give an address titled, “Obama’s Dilemma: When Big Uprisings Hit Big Allies (and a few Adversaries)” at the conference this Saturday at 1:15 PM PST, which will be webcasted live. The conference webcast is free to watch. Find out more about the conference and the webcast here.

Can Google Change the World? Or, Has it Already?

Sunday’s New York Times article on Google.org caught my attention. The Times is one of the few daily papers that cover the philanthropic sector, and it does so with the same seriousness it applies to developments in business and government. It is attentive to new philanthropic models that are being tested and refined, and offers a snapshot of a work in progress.

One such experiment is Google’s philanthropy arm, Google.org, or DotOrg for short. Structured as part of the for-profit company, it reflects a fundamental shift in corporate philanthropy.  Whereas corporate foundations used grants and employee volunteer time as their only tools, increasingly corporate executives work to assure that social outcomes are intrinsic to their company’s value chain. Many believe that the right business decisions can unleash market forces that, in turn, can drive positive and sustainable social change.

What sets DotOrg apart is that it is embedded in a search giant in the Information Age, a time when decision-making and authority are decentralized, and the individual, for better or for ill, reigns supreme.

It may be that many of the world’s most daunting problems, as well as their solutions, will be the aggregate effect of millions of individual choices—whether they be to limit the water and energy we consume; to resist taking up arms; to engage in healthy practices; or to vote, and demand that that vote be counted.

Informing those choices can be the ultimate form of philanthropic leverage.

No one understands that better than the executives and employees of a company whose first maxim is “focus on the user and the rest will follow.”

And, so Google has blurred the lines between the company and the philanthropy, naming its brilliant VP for New Product Development as DotOrg’s leader, embedding DotOrg program staff in product teams, and fostering a smart and deep collaboration between Google’s public-spirited engineers and external experts in large problems like poverty or climate change. Their combined talent has produced such products as PowerMeter, which allows the user to track home energy consumption, and in the aggregate, to contribute to mitigating climate change. Google Earth Engine allows the user to monitor deforestation in real time, informing efforts to promote the responsible use of this vital natural resource. Google Crisis Response and Resource Finder enable individual and group relief efforts after natural and man-made disasters. By informing individual choice and action, DotOrg hopes that these products can help to advance the social good more broadly.

Critics argue that these innovations are important mainly in the rich world where computers are ubiquitous. That may be true today. But the introduction and rapidly spreading use of “smart” phones, which provide internet access, is changing that equation.  In the short term, Google has work-arounds like SpeaktoTweet, which shows that states cannot deny the oxygen of unfiltered information to a public yearning for a better life.

But, over the long term, the company’s most significant contribution will likely be its decision to translate the world’s knowledge into the languages of the developing world. Leveraging that innovation will be DotOrg’s largest opportunity to harness information technology to social change. The combination of automated translation and connective technologies can change our world.

The Times article is critical of DotOrg’s prior leadership for making similarly bold claims, thereby raising expectations to a level that could not be met in a period short enough to match our attention span. Fair enough. Perhaps it would have been wise to have been quieter during the philanthropy’s “quiet phase,” as DotOrg defined its goals and honed its method. New models take time to develop and prove their worth.

While that criticism may be fair, in the scheme of things, it seems unimportant.

Like the rest of us, Googlers could not and cannot foresee the full social, economic and political implications of providing the world’s knowledge to those who were previously isolated by poverty or politics. (Although Google Chairman Eric Schmidt co-authored a deeply thoughtful Foreign Affairs article on the subject.)

But Googlers do know one thing, and that is the level at which large decisions will be made–and that is at the level of the individual.

Even for a giant like Google, with 31 billion searches each month, that knowledge alone is humbling—and hopeful.

—Jane Wales

Haiti: One Year Later

Exactly one year ago, Haiti experienced one of the most deadly natural disasters in recent memory. The earthquake that killed an estimated 220,000 people and left many thousands more injured, plunged the country into chaos. Next Tuesday, January 18, the Council will host a panel discussion on how the international community and Haitian people responded to the devastating natural disaster. The panel will highlight how Haiti’s health infrastructure reacted to the initial dire conditions and recent Cholera outbreaks, what role NGOs and the international community can play in fostering long-term peace and recovery and how Haitian culture and political history makes this effort challengingly unique. To learn more about the program and to register, please visit the event page here.

This week, PBS stations are airing a number of programs about the earthquake and Haiti’s reconstruction efforts. Tonight at 11 PM, KQED will present “Nou Bouke: Haiti’s Past, Present and Future,” a documentary produced by The Miami Herald/ El Nuevo Herald and directed by Joe Cardona. It focuses on Haiti’s past, present and future in the light of the apocalyptic earthquake that now marks a new chapter in the nation’s history. The current episode of Frontline, “Battle for Haiti,” asks the question “can Haiti be rebuilt without the rule of law?” That program can be viewed in full here.

Does the Internet Serve Oppressors?

Evgeny Morozov, a contributing editor to Foreign Policy and a visiting scholar at Stanford University, believes that the Internet may not be the friend of the oppressed that many think it is. He argues that while social media and the Internet have worked to the advantage of protesters and revolutionaries, they can also be used by authoritarian governments to crack down on personal privacy and spread propaganda. On February 10, the Council will host Morozov for a discussion of this view, one that he has written about extensively in his new book The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom.

To learn more and register for the program, please visit the event listing here. To listen to a short interview with Morozov from Tuesday’s episode of Talk of the Nation, click here.

Who Will Tackle Tomorrow’s Hard Problems?

In their rush to gain an end of the year tax deal, elected leaders postponed hard choices. In the process, they denied the government the revenues it needs to either respond to unforeseen crises or deliver on promises made.

At the same time, wary corporate decision-makers reported that uncertainty over tax and fiscal policy had discouraged them from creating jobs or making R&D investments essential to prosperity.

As self- imposed constraints limit the agility of these two important sectors, a third—the non-profit sector—worries that the 2010 Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization and Job Creation Act may have a cascading effect, further impoverishing state and local governments, shifting the burden of providing social services from the public to the non-profit sector. Moreover, its leaders fear that the estate tax provisions may reduce incentives for wealthy individuals to make the no-strings-attached donations and bequests that free the sector from the constraints of politics and markets.

Our tax structure has long reflected the value we place on the nonprofit sector’s ability to take risks and try out new ideas without fear of political or market reprisals. Income and inheritance taxes have encouraged donations and bequests, as well as the creation of tax-exempt foundations. As a result, our nation has a diverse charitable sector comprised of grantees and grantors who are tackling issues at home and across the globe. Free from the need to garner votes or generate profits, they needn’t test the political winds before offering services to the most marginalized Americans. Their reach extends to the developing world, where they have created or supported “social enterprises” with for-profit business models for providing off-grid communities with renewable sources of energy. And, globally they have even entered into public-private partnerships to effect high policy, as Warren Buffett did in making his $50-million gift to the UN’s politically-hampered and resource-strapped International Atomic Energy Agency. That grant will help to create a “nuclear fuels bank” upon which states committed to nonproliferation can draw to meet their energy needs.

Whether the tax deal will limit the freedom of non-profits to achieve such salutary outcomes is a matter of intense debate. But, it is up to us to ask and answer that question before the law’s review in 2012. An election year is a particularly poor time for political risk-taking. Policy-makers will need to be armed with the facts, and buttressed by a clear and unswerving sense of the sector’s purpose.

First the data: The law extends several provisions that can affect charitable giving—and provides time to gather data on their effect. It extends Bush-era tax cuts at all income levels and continues favorable treatment of capital gains and dividends. It delays a requirement that high-income tax-payers reduce their itemized deductions, including for charitable gifts. It exempts older taxpayers from treating up to $100k gifted to charities from their IRAs as taxable income. But, what worries some nonprofits is the 35% cap it places on inheritance taxes, while exempting estates of $5m or less. Many analysts argue that these estate tax provisions will remove incentives for bequests as well as giving-while-living aimed at reducing the size of the taxable estate. Others contend that estate tax considerations play a negligible role in the decision to give, but can influence the size of the gifts made. They draw on the 2004 predictions of the Congressional Budget Office, which anticipated a drop off in the number and size of bequests. Indeed fewer dollars were donated in this way during the phase-out of the estate tax, from 2008-2009. But, that year’s economic contraction is likely to have had far greater effect. More time in an improved economic climate can yield more data on which policymakers can base future choices.

And, the purpose – As we undertake that analysis, it is essential that we come to a shared view of the reasons for charitable organizations, and their tax-exempt status, in the first place. Americans value nonprofits because they can take actions and generate ideas that may be unwelcome, unpopular, and unprofitable in the short run, but produce true societal benefit over time. In the process, they can help identify and tackle truly hard problems when others cannot. Among the hard problems nonprofits can help address is the need to get our country on a financially sustainable course. Nonprofits have already contributed by sounding the alarm, providing analysis and offering policy options.

The deficit dilemma has helped to highlight the hurdles political and business decision-makers face when it comes to calling for sacrifice. Elected officials must respond to caricatures of their views repeated in 24 hour news-cycles. Business leaders are required to produce shareholder value as measured in quarterly returns. The nonprofit sector may be the only one that can afford to ask tough questions, test novel solutions and build consensus from the ground up.

In considering our tax laws in 2012 our goals should be straight-forward: to regain our ability to solve problems as a nation. Preserving the nonprofit sector’s freedom to help tackle society’s next hard problem is an essential first step.

—Jane Wales