Guðni Th. Jóhannesson, former President of Iceland and current professor of history at the University of Iceland, explores Greenland’s complex path from colony to emerging nation—and its future, as seen from its closest European neighbor.

Drawing on Iceland’s own experience of gaining independence from Denmark, he examines the historical ties, political tensions, and geopolitical stakes that shape Greenland’s future amid growing great-power interest in the Arctic. The lecture offers a unique perspective from nearby Iceland on Greenland and broader questions of sovereignty, self-determination, and small-state resilience in an era of global change.

About the Speaker

Guðni Th. Jóhannesson is a 2026 Messenger Lecturer at Cornell. He served as the sixth president of Iceland from 2016 to 2024. Running as an independent, he won the 2016 election with a plurality of the vote, becoming the youngest person ever to serve as Iceland's president. His approval rating reached an unprecedented 97% in his first term. During his years in office, he elevated Iceland's international profile and advocated for human rights, inclusive democracy, climate action, and renewable energy solutions. As a historian at the University of Iceland, his research focuses on modern Icelandic history. He has published works on the Cod Wars, the 2008–2011 Icelandic financial crisis, and the Icelandic presidency.

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About the Event

This lecture is hosted by the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies. It is cosponsored by the Einaudi Center's Institute for European Studies and the Cornell Brooks School Tech Policy Institute.

Guðni Th. Jóhannesson's visit is sponsored by the Messenger Lecture series.

“Voices of Resilience” is a lecture-recital presentation developed in collaboration with the Ukrainian Classical Voice Project, a non-profit organization, and enabled by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and sponsored by the Institute for European Studies.

The program interweaves performance with spoken reflection to explore the role of music as a vehicle for peace-making, solidarity, and unity in the face of hardship.

Centering marginalized and underrepresented creative voices, the event highlights music as a powerful site of cultural memory, resilience, and collective expression.

Through music and dialogue, the presentation engages themes of culture, poetry, narrative, migration, and peace pedagogy, affirming the vital role of artistic collaboration in fostering global understanding, shared hope, and a collective pursuit of a more just and peaceful future.

Talk by Suvaid Yaseen (Asian Studies, Hamilton College)

The history of Muslim political thought in the disputed Kashmir region of South Asia has largely been narrated within the national frameworks of India and Pakistan, and often overdetermined by security concerns, especially when it comes to Islamic movements. This talk addresses the politics of the colonial and postcolonial archives regarding such Muslim actors and suggests alternative lines of inquiry. It reflects upon a range of literary materials produced by the intellectuals of Islamic movements in Kashmir. It proposes listening as a practice as well as a metaphor to question the hitherto employed analytical and narrative categories. In doing so, it examines the complexities of Islamic articulations in Kashmir on its own terms.

Suvaid Yaseen is a historian of South Asia with an interest in contested sovereignties, Islam, and intellectual history. He completed his PhD in History from Brown University and is currently a visiting assistant professor in the Asian Studies program at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.

Nebula and Ursula K. Le Guin Award winning author Vajra Chandrasekera discusses his writing with Anindita Banerjee, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, and Suman Seth, Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow and Marie Underhill Noll Professor of the History of Science.

Vajra Chandrasekera is from Colombo, Sri Lanka. His novels The Saint of Bright Doors and Rakesfall have between them won Nebula, Le Guin, Ignyte, Locus, Crawford, and Otherwise awards, been selected as New York Times Notable Books of 2023 and 2024, and been nominated for Dragon and Lamda Awards, among others. He is one of the 2025-2026 Fellows of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. His short stories, poems, and articles have appeared in many publications including Clarkesworld, West Branch, and The Los Angeles Times. He has worked as a fiction editor for Strange Horizons, The Deadlands, and Afterlives: The Year’s Best Death Stories, and as a contest judge for the Dream Foundry and the Salam Award. He is online at vajra.me and probably on whatever social media still exists at the time you’re reading this.

Books will be available for sale and signing after the lecture, from Odyssey Bookstore.

The Laidlaw Scholars Leadership and Research Program promotes ethical leadership and international research around the world—starting with the passionate leaders and learners found on campuses like Cornell. Open to first- and second-year students, the two-year Laidlaw program provides generous support to carry out internationally focused research, develop leadership skills, engage with community projects overseas, and become part of a global network of like-minded scholars from twenty universities worldwide.

At this session, we'll share more information about the program, including independent international projects with the Einaudi Center’s trusted partners around the world for the summer 2026 leadership-in-action portion of the program, and tips for writing a successful application. Applications are due January 12, 2026.

Register here. Can’t attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu.

The Laidlaw Scholars Leadership and Research Program promotes ethical leadership and international research around the world—starting with the passionate leaders and learners found on campuses like Cornell. Open to first- and second-year students, the two-year Laidlaw program provides generous support to carry out internationally focused research, develop leadership skills, engage with community projects overseas, and become part of a global network of like-minded scholars from twenty universities worldwide.

At this session, we'll share more information about the program, including independent international projects with the Einaudi Center’s trusted partners around the world for the summer 2026 leadership-in-action portion of the program, and tips for writing a successful application. Applications are due January 12, 2026.

Register here. Can’t attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu.