Bartels World Affairs Lecture

The bestselling author of Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World joins us for a personal journey down the conspiracy rabbit hole to explore why our political sphere has become dangerously warped.

When author and social activist Naomi Klein discovered a writer with the same first name but radically different political views was chronically mistaken for her, it seemed too ridiculous to take seriously—until suddenly it wasn’t. As the pandemic took hold, she absorbed a barrage of insults from her doppelganger’s followers.

Klein’s 2023 book Doppelganger follows Other Naomi into a digital underworld of conspiracies, anti-vaxxers, and right-wing paranoia. Klein’s journey reveals mirrored concerns and unlikely connections between well-meaning liberals and the right-wing voices that relish “owning” them.

After a talk sharing her insights, Klein joins distinguished global democracy experts from Cornell to lift the lid on this surreal election moment and examine how our politics have become so twisted and polarized. What can we do to escape our collective vertigo and get back to fighting for what really matters?

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Panelists

Read election remarks from the panelists in Chronicle coverage of global democracy activities on campus.

Thomas Garrett, Einaudi Center Lund Practitioner in Residence, Distinguished Global Democracy Lecturer (Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy)Suzanne Mettler, John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions, Department of Government (College of Arts and Sciences)Kenneth Roberts (moderator), Einaudi Center Democratic Threats and Resilience faculty fellow, Richard J. Schwartz Professor, Department of Government (A&S)

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This event is sold out.

All free tickets are reserved. If you don’t have a ticket but would like to attend, please arrive 15 minutes early to be put on our wait list.

A reception with refreshments will follow the lecture and panel.

Lecture and Panel: 5:00 | G10 Biotechology BuildingReception: 6:30-7:30 | Biotechnology Building Atrium

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About Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and international bestselling author of nine books published in over 35 languages, including No Logo, The Shock Doctrine, and her most recent book Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (2023). A columnist for The Guardian, her writing has appeared in leading media around the world. She is a tenured professor of climate justice at the University of British Columbia, founding codirector of UBC’s Centre for Climate Justice, and honorary professor of media and climate at Rutgers University.

About the Bartels World Affairs Lecture

The Bartels World Affairs Lecture is a signature event of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. This flagship event brings distinguished international figures to campus each academic year to speak on global topics and meet with Cornell faculty and students, particularly undergraduates. The lecture and related events are made possible by the generosity of Henry E. Bartels ’48 and Nancy Horton Bartels ’48.

Come to the LRC to practice your language skills and meet new people. Conversation Hours provide an opportunity to use the target language in an informal, low-pressure atmosphere. Have fun practicing a language you are learning! Gain confidence through experience! Just using your new language skills helps you learn more than you might think. Conversation Hours are open to any learner, including the public.

Come to the LRC to practice your language skills and meet new people. Conversation Hours provide an opportunity to use the target language in an informal, low-pressure atmosphere. Have fun practicing a language you are learning! Gain confidence through experience! Just using your new language skills helps you learn more than you might think. Conversation Hours are open to any learner, including the public.

Learn about study abroad in Chile from the Resident Director of the CASA Santiago program. Through CASA, undergraduates with advanced Spanish (one class beyond SPAN 2095) study at Chilean universities. CASA also offers a special Chilean history and culture course where you meet local experts and travel to the north and south to explore different ecosystems and meet different cultural groups.

LACS Public Issues Forum

Co-sponsored by Cornell Cinema, Literatures in English and Creative Writing, History of Art and Visual Studies, Performance and Media Arts, Romance Studies, and Society of the Humanities

Chile ’73: Fifty Years Later
Machuca follows the lives, over the course of a school year in 1972/73, of two young schoolboys in Santiago, Chile. One is from an upper-middle-class family; the other from a working-class family. Both attend the private boys school St. Patrick’s, whose principal seeks reduce the class segregation typical to Chile at the time and to follow the lead of Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government. The story follows the boys’ friendship and its relationship to the politics of the time, including the growing tensions in the city around Allende’s government and the right-wing reaction that would eventually result in a coup d’etat on September 11, 1973. Based on a screenplay written by Roberto Brodsky and director Andrés Wood whose own experiences mirror those of the protagonists, Machuca was released to wide acclaim in 2004. For the 20th anniversary of its release, this screening will include a talkback after the film with writer Roberto Brodsky.

Additional details can be found on the Cornell Cinema site.

Abstract:

Sports came to play a significant role in nation building in a number of countries – especially those newly-independent states emerging on the end of decolonising movements in the middle of the twentieth century. Jamaica was no exception. Here, the process of nation-building was one that had to confront the legacies of European colonization and enslavement. It was almost inevitable that sport would play a key role in these processes. Jamaica had intimate experience with the power of sport as a political and ideological weapon in colonial times. Cricket in particular had initially served as a tool of British cultural imperialism and was one of the main ways in which agents and agencies of this mission sought to disseminate British cultural values. It was also initially an exclusive institution characterised by significant race and class prejudices. However, cricket (and other sports) became a medium of resistance to the very ideologies it was meant to inculcate, and in so doing, had by the middle of the twentieth century come to function as an ideological weapon of an anti-colonial, creole nationalism. In post-independence Jamaica, sport increasingly featured in public policy and resources were dedicated to the promotion and development of sporting activities. This presentation seeks to examine the ways in which successive Jamaican governments have employed sport to achieve various developmental objectives; but will also look more broadly at the impact of sport on nation-building on Jamaica. It argues that while sport did indeed help to achieve a number of important objectives, we must be cognisant of ways in which this influence might be overstated as well as ways in which sport served to undermine these objectives.

Bio:

Dr Julian Cresser is Lecturer in History, and Head of the Department of History and Archaeology, University of the West Indies, Mona Campus. His main research interest is sports studies – particularly, the role of sport in nation building in the Caribbean. He has authored and co-authored journal articles on the history of cricket in Jamaica and links between participation in sport and juvenile delinquency in the Caribbean. In addition, Dr Cresser has an interest in the use of digital media in the teaching and presentation of History. His courses include: Digital History, Sport in the Caribbean since 1850, and the Idea of Caribbean Nationhood. He has also taught extensively in the Department’s Heritage programmes, and has served on the board of the Jamaica National Heritage Trust. Before joining the Department, he worked as a Senior Research Fellow at the African Caribbean Institute of Jamaica/Jamaica Memory Bank, where his work involved archival and ethnographic research on Afro-Caribbean intangible cultural expressions. In 2019, Dr Cresser was the O’Connor Visiting Assistant Professor in Caribbean Studies at Colgate University, in Hamilton, New York.