Go global in summer 2026! Global Internships give you valuable international work experience in fields spanning global development, climate and sustainability, international relations, communication, business, governance, and more.

Applications will open in the fall.

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

***

The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

Go global in summer 2026! Global Internships give you valuable international work experience in fields spanning global development, climate and sustainability, international relations, communication, business, governance, and more.

Applications will open in the fall.

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

***

The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

Go global in summer 2026! Global Internships give you valuable international work experience in fields spanning global development, climate and sustainability, international relations, communication, business, governance, and more.

Applications will open in the fall.

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

***

The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

Go global in summer 2026! Global Internships give you valuable international work experience in fields spanning global development, climate and sustainability, international relations, communication, business, governance, and more.

Applications will open in the fall.

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

***

The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

Join us to learn about opportunities for graduate students with the Einaudi Center for International Studies. This session will discuss how to discover or strengthen global interests, including research and travel grants, guest lectures, fellowships, and more!

Can't attend? Email programs@einaudi.cornell.edu for more information.

Join us to learn about opportunities for undergraduate students with the Einaudi Center for International Studies. This session will discuss how to discover or strengthen global interests, including academic minors, guest lectures, summer research and travel experiences, and more!

Can't attend? Email programs@einaudi.cornell.edu for more information.

For close to a decade, the U.S. government has been preoccupied with the threat of China, fearing that the country will “eat our lunch,” in the words of President Joe Biden. The United States has crafted its foreign and domestic policy to help constrain China’s military power and economic growth. This talk will argue that great-power competition with China is misguided and vastly underestimates the costs and risks that geopolitical rivalry poses to economic prosperity, the quality of democracy, and, ultimately, global stability. Great-power competition exacerbates inequality, leads to xenophobia, and increases the likelihood of violence around the world. In addition, it distracts from the priority of addressing such issues as climate change while at the same time undercutting democratic pluralism and sacrificing liberty in the name of prevailing against an enemy “other.” A better, saner, more democratically accountable grand strategy of easing tension and achieving effective diplomacy is possible.

About the speaker

Michael Brenes is Co-Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy and Senior Lecturer in Global Affairs at Yale University. He is the author of For Might and Right: Cold War Defense Spending and the Remaking of American Democracy (University of Massachusetts Press, 2020), the co-author with Van Jackson of The Rivalry Peril: How Great-Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy (Yale University Press, 2025), and co-editor with Daniel Bessner of Rethinking US Power: Domestic Histories of US Foreign Relations (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024) and Cold War Liberalism: Power in a Time of Emergency (Cambridge University Press, 2026). He is currently writing a history of the War and Terror from the 1990s to the present, to be published by Grove Atlantic.

Host

Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies

Drawing from extensive experience and research on the policy impacts of peace movements, the presentation will identify lessons for contemporary protest movements to preserve democracy. History shows that movements are able to shape policy if they employ wise strategies, attract widespread public support, articulate compelling narratives and are persistent in applying pressure for change. Effective change requires linking non-institutional protest with institutional politics.

Cortright will recount organizing experiences in the Vietnam peace movement, Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, and Iraq antiwar movement. He will summarize key social science and case study research findings on social movement effectiveness. He will share principles on the development of strategies, tactics and methods.

The presentation will assess the historic significance of the massive Hands Off, No Kings and Good Trouble mobilizations of recent months and the challenges of channeling activist energy into constructive outlets for policy change.

Cortright will examine the domestic policy agenda of contemporary protests and the importance of addressing military spending and nuclear weapons issues. He will discuss option for linking concerns for social justice with opposition to the nuclear arms race and excessive military spending.

About the speaker

David Cortright is a Visiting Scholar at Cornell University’s Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and Professor Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. He is the author or editor of 23 books and has written widely on peace policy, nonviolent social change, soldier dissent, nuclear disarmament, and the use of multilateral sanctions and incentives as tools of international peacemaking.

In 2002 Cortright was a co-founder of Win Without War, which opposed the US invasion of Iraq and remains an active voice today in promoting progressive foreign policy issues. He continues to serve on the group’s board of directors.

As director of policy studies for Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Cortright initiated policy advocacy campaigns to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons; refine the utilization of economic sanctions as instruments of diplomacy; reduce the adverse humanitarian impacts of sanctions; develop effective nonmilitary means of countering violent extremism; and support the UN Women, Peace and Security agenda in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Cortright helped to create and for four years directed the Kroc Institute’s Peace Accords Matrix Barometer project monitoring implementation of the Columbia Peace Agreement.