Just before the coronavirus pandemic, Bernard-Henri Lévy’s reporting took him to eastern Ukraine, as part of an eight-part journey to cast light upon human rights abuses in global hotspots that have escaped international attention or active response.

Now, with the Ukraine crisis making global news headlines, Lévy recounts his experience in a dispatch from eastern Ukraine, as reported in his new book The Will To See: Dispatches from a World of Misery and Hope (Yale University Press, 2021). In a chapter he calls, “Donbass: Trench Warfare Lives on in Europe,” Lévy shares what he witnessed in 2020. And he will connect how that period foreshadowed what the world is paying close attention to today.

Bernard-Henri Lévy will be in conversation with Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ), co-chair of the bipartisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission (formerly known as the Congressional Human Rights Caucus) and former Representative Steve Israel, director of the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy.

Speaker

Bernard-Henri Lévy, French philosopher, filmmaker, activist, and author

Moderators

Rep. Chris Smith, Senior Member on the Foreign Affairs Committee and Ranking Member of its Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations Subcommittee (R-NJ)

Steve Israel, Director, Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at Cornell University and former U.S. Representative (D-NY)

About the book

The Will To See: Dispatches from a World of Misery and Hope
Blurb: An unflinching look at the most urgent humanitarian crises around the globe, from one of the world’s most daring philosopher-reporters. Over the past fifty years, renowned public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy has reported extensively on human rights abuses around the world. This new book follows the intrepid Lévy into eight international hotspots—in Nigeria; Syrian and Iraqi Kurdistan; Ukraine; Somalia; Bangladesh; Lesbos, Greece; Libya; and Afghanistan—that have escaped global attention or active response.

In a deeply personal introduction, Lévy recounts the intellectual journey that led him to advocacy, arguing that a truly humanist philosophy must necessarily lead to action in defense of the most vulnerable. In the second section, he reports on the eight investigative trips he undertook just before or during the coronavirus pandemic, from the massacred Christian villages in Nigeria to a dangerously fragile Afghanistan on the eve of the Taliban talks, from an anti-Semitic ambush in Libya to the overrun refugee camp on the island of Lesbos. Part manifesto, part missives from the field, this new book is a stirring rebuke to indifference and an exhortation to level our gaze at those most hidden from us.

Since 9/11, the U.S. has used armed drones to combat terrorists. Bush initiated the use of strikes; Obama accelerated the practice, especially in Pakistan; and, Trump institutionalized it further. Biden’s “over-the-horizon” counterterrorism strategy suggests he will also continue to rely on strikes. At the same time, other states and stateless actors, including France and the Islamic State, have acquired drones indicating the emergence of a “second drone age.”

What are the implications of the evolving proliferation of drones for international security and global order? How do these consequences, in turn, shape policies to manage the emergence of automated and autonomous remote-warfare technologies? This panel discussion draws on the insights of three experts to answer these and related questions, including:

Mr. John Brennan, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency;Professor Amy Zegart from the Hoover Institute at Stanford University; and,U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Paul Lushenko, a General Andrew Jackson Goodpaster Scholar at Cornell University.This discussion will be moderated by Professor Sarah E. Kreps, the John L. Wetherill Professor at the Department of Government, and hosted by Congressman Steve Israel, Director of the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at the Brooks School of Public Policy.

This event is a collaboration between the Brooks School of Public Policy, Cornell Tech Policy Lab, the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs, and the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.

Ambassador William B. Taylor served as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009. In 2019, he served as chargé d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv. Currently, he is the Vice President for Russia and Europe at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). Taylor visits the Cornell community to discuss diplomacy and the latest developments in the Ukraine-Russia crisis.

Speaker

Amb. Bill Taylor, Vice President, Russia and Europe at the U.S. Institute of Peace

Moderators

Prof. Nicholas Rostow, Visiting Professor of Law at Cornell Law School

Steve Israel, Director, Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at Cornell University and former U.S. Representative (D-NY)

Organizers

This event is co-sponsored by the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

This is a hybrid event. Registration information is below.

Professor Amy Rutenberg will discuss the idea that debates over U.S. manpower policy -because they rest on questions of personal liberty, collective responsibility, and competing visions of national security – end up substituting for much larger debates over the meaning of “America.” In this way, policy proposals end up acting as a cipher. The same basic program idea symbolizes very different things depending on the lens through which individuals decode it. This seminar will use debates over universal military training and selective service in the twentieth century as case studies.

About the speaker

Amy J. Rutenberg is an Associate Professor of History at Iowa State University. Her works focus on the intersection of war, gender, militarization, and American society in the second half of the twentieth century. Cornell University Press published her first book, Rough Draft: Cold War Military Manpower Policy and the Origins of Vietnam-Era Draft Resistance, in 2019, and she is working on a book tentatively titled In the Service of Peace: Peace Activism and Military Service in Post-Vietnam War America.

This seminar is part of the spring seminar series with the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS).

Cosponsored by the American Studies Program.

Register here

In accordance with university event guidance, all campus visitors who are 12 years old or older must also present a photo ID, as well as proof of vaccination for COVID-19 or results of a recent negative COVID-19 test. If you are not currently participating in the Cornell campus vaccination/testing program, please bring proof of vaccination or the results of a recent negative test.

What are the prospects for halting China’s mass atrocities in the Uyghur region, which are now entering their fifth year since the start in 2017? An update and discussion. Our special guest is Tursunay Ziyawudun, a survivor of the Chinese concentration camps in the region known in Chinese as Xinjiang. Translation will be provided by Rizwangul NurMuhammad, MPA student at Cornell and also affected by the atrocities. Faculty hosts and facilitators Magnus Fiskesjö, Anthropology and Allen Carlson, Government.

Co-sponsored by the China and Asia-Pacific Studies Program (CAPS), Critical Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Studies, Comparative Muslim Societies, Anthropology, and the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS).