Migrations Program
Bartels Lecture: Samantha Power
Former USAID Director Calls for Rebuilding Foreign Aid
Samantha Power challenged students to “build what comes next” during the Bartels World Affairs Lecture on April 16.
Additional Information
Information Session: Careers for International Relations Minors
April 29, 2026
11:00 am
Join the International Relations Minor for a virtual career information session featuring Cornell alumni working in diplomacy, education, and law. Panelists will reflect on their career paths, share advice on internships, graduate school, and professional transitions, and answer student questions about careers connected to international relations.
Register here.
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Speakers
Eric Andersen is the Political-Economic Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Maputo, Mozambique. Having joined the U.S. State Department in 2009, he previously served as Political Counselor (Acting) in Islamabad, Pakistan. His other assignments have included Cairo, Kyiv, and Khartoum, as well as in Washington, D.C. as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Prior to entering the Foreign Service, he spent four years on Capitol Hill as a Professional Staff Member for the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. In his first stint with the U.S. Government, he flew the SH-60B “Seahawk” helicopter as an aviator in the U.S. Navy. He holds an M.A. in Security Policy from the George Washington University, and a A.B. in English Literature from Cornell University (Class of 1996).
Angie Yucht Swenson, M.S.Ed., Ed.M., is the founder and principal tutor of AYS Tutoring and Consulting, a practice she launched after more than a decade working in both private and public schools across New York City. She specializes in supporting elementary through high school students with learning challenges and has worked with families from diverse international backgrounds, including Russia, Israel, and France. Angie graduated from Cornell University in 2010, majoring in Human Development and minoring in International Relations, followed by a master’s in General and Special Education from Hunter College, and a master’s in School Leadership from Bank Street College of Education. She resides in NYC with her husband, two daughters, and a goldendoodle.
Emma Marshak is a commercial litigator in Washington, DC who specializes in judgment enforcement. She has enforced domestic and international judgments, including awards from investor-state arbitration, in federal and state courts across the United States.
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This session is presented by the Einaudi Center for International Studies. The International Relations minor is open to all Cornell undergraduate students interested in learning about the politics, economics, history, languages, and cultures of the world.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for European Studies
South Asia Program
Migrations Program
Southwest Asia and North Africa Program
Legalized Inequalities: Immigration and Race in the Low-Wage Workplace
April 24, 2026
2:30 pm
Ives Hall, 105
Join us for Legalized Inequalities: Immigration and Race in the Low-Wage Workplace, a Union Days book talk and panel discussion on low-wage work, inequality and the policies shaping today’s labor landscape.
Beyond unlivable wages and limited upward mobility, low-wage work in the United States often includes unsafe conditions and degrading treatment. Immigrants and people of color are overrepresented in these roles, and often feel as though they are unable to change their working conditions.
Drawing on interviews with more than 300 low-wage Haitian and Central American workers and advocates, the authors reveal how U.S. policies produce and sustain job instability and insecurity. They argue that reforming labor and employment law, immigration law and civil rights law is essential to reshaping the low-wage workplace.
Hear from the authors:
Kate L. Griffith, Jean McKelvey-Alice Grant Professor, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Diversity, and Faculty Development, Cornell ILR School
Shannon Gleeson, Edmund Ezra Day Professor, Chairperson of the Department of Global Labor and Work, Cornell ILR School
Patricia Campos-Medina, Executive Director of the Worker Institute, Cornell ILR School
Darlène Dubuisson, Assistant Professor of Caribbean Studies, University of California, Berkeley
This event is geared toward an in-person audience, so we strongly prefer you join us on our Ithaca campus. If this is not possible, please register to join us on Zoom.
Part of the ILR School's 2026 Union Days.
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Program
Migrations Program
Migration in Contentious Political Times
September 18, 2026
12:00 am
Atkinson Hall
The Migrations Program is bringing together migration scholars for a conference about migration, sustainability, and belonging in the contemporary moment. Students, scholars, and researchers from the Cornell community will share work that examines human mobility as a sociolegal and political process shaped by borders, state power, labor markets, and inequality.
Host
This conference is hosted by the Migrations Program, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies, and organized by Migrations graduate fellows Vicente Celestino Mata, Jr. and Adolfho Romero.
Abstract Submissions
Submissions are currently closed, but we may accept new submissions in August – stay tuned for more information. Or email us at migrations@einaudi.cornell.edu.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Migrations Program
Global Scholar Heads to Oxford University
Ariela Asllani '26 Receives National Keasbey Scholarship
Asllani ’26 will study refugee and forced migration, building on her undergraduate work at the Einaudi Center.
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ICE Agents Have Been Deployed to Airports. What's Their Role?
Theresa Brown, an immigration law and policy fellow at Cornell Law School, explains ICE agents' broad legal authority and historic focus.
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Einaudi Spring Showcase
April 20, 2026
4:30 pm
Statler Hotel, Room E/F
Come and explore international research from students at the Einaudi Center for International Studies. Our undergraduate Global Scholars will present posters on their international aid projects.
Global Scholars Showcase
Global Scholars will present a showcase of their capstone projects providing public commentary and perspectives on international aid.
Undergraduate global scholars consider the multiple perspectives that shape the global landscape of international aid and the communities impacted. They have partnered with Einaudi Center practitioner in residence Paul Kaiser and faculty mentor Ed Mabaya—expert researchers and practitioners on international development—to design their projects. Applications for the next cohort will open in fall 2026.
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The Einaudi Spring Showcase is hosted by the Einaudi Center for International Studies.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for European Studies
South Asia Program
Migrations Program
Southwest Asia and North Africa Program
Human Patrols Boost Migrating Amphibians
In Tompkins County and beyond, volunteers are donning reflective vests and headlamps and heading out into that cold, dark rain to help the local salamanders and their frog brethren cross roads safely.
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International Fair
August 26, 2026
11:00 am
Uris Hall, Terrace
International Fair showcases Cornell's global opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. Explore the fair and find out about international majors and minors, language study, study abroad, funding opportunities, global internships, Cornell Global Hubs, and more.
The International Fair is sponsored by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and Office of Global Learning (both part of Global Cornell) in partnership with the Language Resource Center.
Register on CampusGroups to receive a reminder. Registration is not required.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for European Studies
South Asia Program
Migrations Program
Southwest Asia and North Africa Program
Reimagining International Aid
April 16, 2026
5:00 pm
Rockefeller Hall, 201 (Schwartz Auditorium)
Bartels World Affairs Lecture
In this year’s Bartels lecture, Ambassador Samantha Power examines the causes and consequences of dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). While reductions in United States foreign assistance have inflicted harm on millions of people, the principal beneficiaries of the cuts, Power contends, are the People’s Republic of China and other governments that prefer to operate without scrutiny or accountability.
Join us as Power outlines a strategy for revitalizing a broad bipartisan coalition to support foreign assistance. To succeed in building resilient aid structures, politicians and stakeholders will need to demonstrate the effectiveness of aid programs to the public. U.S. resources should be used as leverage to secure new commitments from partner countries and mobilize additional investments from allied governments, the private sector, philanthropy, and members of the diaspora.
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Speaker
Ambassador Samantha Power served in the Biden-Harris administration as the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the world’s premier international development agency. She was the 28th U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Obama-Biden administration. Her first book, "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide, won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
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About the Bartels World Affairs Lecture
The Bartels World Affairs Lecture is a signature event of the 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.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for European Studies
South Asia Program
Migrations Program
Southwest Asia and North Africa Program