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!

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.

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:

The United States helped create the United Nations to protect the sovereignty of independent countries. Now the Trump administration is setting the tone for superpowers with imperial ambitions by waging economic war against democratic allies, violating long-standing treaties, and holding out the possibility of using military force.

What do these unprecedented actions mean for the rest of the world? How are states and peoples in different regions responding? And what may happen if tensions continue to escalate?

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Featured Faculty

Agnieszka Nimark (PACS) | Affiliated ScholarMagnus Fiskesjö (EAP, PACS, SEAP) | AnthropologyAlexandra Blackman (SWANA) | GovernmentSeema Golestaneh (SWANA) | Near Eastern StudiesIrina Troconis (LACS) | Romance StudiesKenneth Roberts (LACS) | GovernmentPeter Katzenstein (IES, PACS) | Government

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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!

April 23, 2026 401 Warren Hall Register Artificial intelligence (AI) is viewed by some as having great promise, while others view the arrival of this novel technology with skepticism or concern. AI is certainly having a significant impact in many arenas of life. What are the specific implications of AI for people living in the Global South? This conference will examine the specific social, political, environmental and economic impacts of AI in and for the Global South, taking a holistic, perspective that considers the historical, socio-cultural, environmental and political-economic context in which AI is embedded in and entangles with across the Global South. Keynote speakers from a range of disciplines will focus on specific themes.

Conference Schedule

8:00am - 8:30am Breakfast

8:30am Welcome Rachel Bezner Kerr Professor, Global Development Section Director, Institute for African Development, Global Cornell

8:45am - 9:00am Opening Remarks: Wendy Wolford Vice Provost for International Affairs, Office of the Provost Robert A. and Ruth E. Polson Professor, Global Development Section

9:00am - 10:00am Keynote Address: AI and Development Impacts Arthur Mutambara Director and Professor, Institute for the Future of Knowledge (IFK) University of Johannesburg (UJ) Q & A

10:00am - 10:15am Networking and Coffee Break

10:15am - 11:15pm Session I: Culture and Representation Rethinking AI Equity: Collaborative Perspectives from Ghana and the U.S

Hua Wang PhD, Associate Teaching Professor, Duffield College of Engineering, Cornell

Nancy Henaku PhD, Lecturer, Department of English, University of Ghana

Kwaku Owusu Afriyie Osei-Tutu PhD, Senior Lecturer, Dept of English, University of Ghana

11:15am-12:15pm Session II: Political Economy and Governance of AI in the Global South Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhungaha Professor, Program in Science, Technology, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Youssif Hassan Assistant Professor, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and School of Information University of Michigan

12:15pm - 1:30pm Lunch and Poster Viewing 1:30pm-2:45pm Session III: Safety and Ethics with AI

Aditya Vashistha Assistant Professor, Cornell Ann. S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science Cornell Ethics of AI in, for, and by the Global South

Trystan Sterling Goetze, Director, Sue G. and Harry E. Bovay Program in the History and Ethics of Professional Engineering, Cornell Duffield Engineering

Technology-facilitated gender-based violence against women in Sudan as a threat to the Women Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda

Lucie George PhD, University of Witwatersrand (Wits) Johannesburg

2:45pm - 3:00pm Tea break and Networking

3:00pm - 3:45pm Session IV: Creativity, Visual Arts, Healthcare and AI

The Problem in Pandamatenga’: Precarity, Power and AI as Actors in Southern African Border Communities

Rebecca Upton Professor of Global Public and Environmental Health; Director, Global Public and Environmental Health Program, Colgate University

Kelly Van Busum Assistant Professor of Computer Science & Software Engineering, Butler University

Artists, Creativity, and the Challenges of AI

Pedro Molina Political Cartoonist

3:45pm - 4:00pm Closing Discussion

cosponsors: STS, Cornell Global AI Initiative, Global Development.

More Auspicious Shores chronicles the migration of Afro-Barbadians to Liberia. In 1865, 346 Afro-Barbadians fled a failed post-emancipation Caribbean for the independent black republic of Liberia. They saw Liberia as a means of achieving their post-emancipation goals and promoting a pan-Africanist agenda while simultaneously fulfilling their 'civilizing' and 'Christianizing' duties. Through a close examination of the Afro-Barbadians, Caree A. Banton provides a transatlantic approach to understanding the political and sociocultural consequences of their migration and settlement in Africa. Banton reveals how, as former British subjects, Afro-Barbadians navigated an inherent tension between ideas of pan-Africanism and colonial superiority. Upon their arrival in Liberia, an English imperial identity distinguished the Barbadians from African Americans and secured them privileges in the Republic's hierarchy above the other group. By fracturing assumptions of a homogeneous black identity, Banton ultimately demonstrates how Afro-Barbadian settlement in Liberia influenced ideas of blackness in the Atlantic World.

Caree Banton is an Associate Professor of African Diaspora History and the Director of the African and African American Studies Program at the University of Arkansas. Banton earned a BPA in Public Administration and BA in History from Grambling State University in 2005. She received a MA in Development Studies from the University of Ghana in July 2012 and completed her Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University in June 2013. Her research focuses on movements towards freedom, particularly around abolition, emancipation, and colonization.
Much of her work also explores ideas of citizenship, nationhood, and race in the 19th century. Her research has been supported by a number of fellowships, including the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship, the Andrew M. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, the Lapidus Center Fellowship at the Schomburg Center, and the Nancy Weiss Malkiel Fellowship.