Join Einaudi Center experts for World in Focus Talks on global events in the news and on your mind. Our faculty's research and policy insights put the world in focus.

This year we’re hosting informal campus discussions on many Tuesday afternoons. This week’s topic:

In the United States and around the world, strict immigration enforcement and violence are being wielded as political tools. Recent U.S. actions include surveillance of communities, indiscriminate detainment, and violence against protestors. Despite being framed as necessary for the safety of citizens, these tactics are rooted in histories of slavery, the prison industrial complex, and xenophobia.

Does this type of enforcement infringe on rights? How can we understand current events through the lens of global and historical contexts? Do present-day immigration policies make communities safer?

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Featured Faculty

Shannon Gleeson (Migrations) | Industrial and Labor RelationsTristan Ivory (EAP, IAD) | International and Comparative LaborJaclyn Kelley-Widmer | LawNatasha Raheja (SAP) | AnthropologyIan Kysel | Law

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Conversations Matter at Einaudi

This conversation is hosted by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and its regional and thematic programs. Find out what's in store for students at Einaudi!

East Asia Program Lecture Series presents Translucent Atmospherics: Media as Utility in China

Speaker: Angela Xiao Wu, Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University

Abstract
Utilities provide essential services like water, electricity, railroads, which societies strive to make affordable and widely accessible. As legacy media lose advertising revenue and “news deserts” proliferate, proposals to treat journalism as a public utility have reemerged. While liberal capitalist societies approach this idea through fragmented evidence and speculative hypotheticals, China has long treated news as a state-supplied, nonproprietary good, akin to earthquake alerts. Since 1978, the state’s stubborn commitment to this utility model has interacted with China's social, economic, and technological transformations, producing surprising configurations of public finance, intellectual property, distribution politics, journalistic forms, and popular culture.
In this talk, I introduce my book-length research tracing the evolution of China’s administration of the socialist press into its regulation of private digital platforms. Reframing media history as utility history, I disaggregate the Chinese state into its lesser-studied roles—as lawmaker, owner, investor, licensor, thinly stretched administrator, and purported guarantor of collective welfare—beyond propaganda and censorship. This perspective sheds new light on post-reform Chinese governance and offers the utility system as a broader framework for thinking about our digital present: What happens to public culture when it is governed through unified computing regimes?

Bio
Angela Xiao Wu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Her research sits at the intersection of media and communication studies and science and technology studies (STS), with broader interests in the politics and infrastructures of knowledge production. Her work spans critical data studies, platform studies, the political economy of media, political cultures, and post/socialism studies. Her book project has received support from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the Henry Luce Foundation, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the American Association of University Women (AAUW), and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, among others.

About East Asia Program

As Cornell’s hub for research, teaching, and engagement with East Asia, the East Asia Program (EAP) serves as a forum for the interdisciplinary study of historical and contemporary East Asia. The program draws its membership of over 45 core faculty and numerous affiliated faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students from eight of Cornell’s 12 schools and colleges.

Rule Breakers tells the true story of Roya Mahboob, a visionary Afghan entrepreneur and advocate for girls’ education who defies rigid societal norms in her country. In a place where educating girls is treated like rebellion, Roya forms the first all-girls robotics team in Afghanistan and guides them to pursue their dreams in science and technology. As the team’s innovation and success draw international attention, they face mounting opposition, cultural resistance, and real threats, yet their courage, unity, and determination spark a broader movement that has the potential to change their nation forever.

The film focuses on themes of female empowerment, resilience, teamwork, and the transformative power of education. It follows the girls as they overcome personal and political obstacles, travel to competitions, and challenge deep-seated gender barriers in pursuit of their shared goals.

Following the screening, join filmmakers Roya Mahboob and Elaha Mahboob, along with Cornell faculty for a conversation on the film, their work, and the current context for Afghan communities in the U.S. today. The discussion will be followed by audience Q&A.

Free admission! This event is co-sponsored by Cornell Law School’s Migration and Human Rights Program, Berger International Speaker Series, Immigration Law & Advocacy Clinic, Gender Justice Clinic, Dorothea S. Clarke Program, and the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy.

Join us for a Chats in the Stacks book talk with Alex Nading, associate professor in the Department of Anthropology, as he discusses his latest book, The Kidney and the Cane: Planetary Health and Plantation Labor in Nicaragua (Duke University Press, 2025). Nading follows activists, scientists, and residents in the sugarcane zone who wrestle with the consequences of plantation life. Along the way, he raises critical questions about the capacity of corporations and states to care for people and ecosystems; the ability of citizens and experts to regulate toxic substances; and the future of work on a warming planet.

To attend the talk virtually, please register here: https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_CZSHaSwXQsm_ZP2dRbc5fg

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program supports U.S. citizens to study, conduct research in any field, or teach English in more than 150 countries. The program is open to graduate students, recent graduates, and young professionals. Undergraduate students who wish to begin the program immediately after graduation are encouraged to start the process in their junior year. Recent graduates are welcome to apply through Cornell.

The Fulbright program at Cornell is administered by the Mario Einaudi Center for International studies. Applicants are supported through all stages of the application and are encouraged to start early by contacting fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.

Register for the virtual session.

Can’t attend? Contact fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.