Past Events

Mi-Ai Parrish (left) and Pardis Mahdavi (right) | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian
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Can Women’s Movements Save The World?

2020 was the year that women emerged indisputably as the world’s most successful leaders, from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s COVID responses to German Chancellor Angela Merkel saving the eurozone and minimizing damage from Brexit. But perhaps more important was the growing success of transnational feminist movements. For more than a decade, networks of …

UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and Grammy Awards winner Angelique Kidjo speakes at the United Nations Observance of International Women’s Day 2020.
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What Does a Feminist Foreign Policy Look Like?

Men have been running the free world since men invented the term “free world.” But from the success of Jacinda Ardern and Angela Merkel at combating the pandemic to the ascension of Kamala Harris to the White House, women are demonstrating their strength as leaders more visibly than ever before. And over the past seven years, Sweden, Canada, France, Luxembourg, …

Has California Ended Mass Incarceration? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian
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Has California Ended Mass Incarceration?

Between 1975 and 2007, incarceration rates in the United States increased nearly fivefold. But over the last decade, California has slowly turned away from mass incarceration, reducing its prison population and changing criminal sentencing and other law enforcement practices to give more people more second chances. What has California done right in this transformation, and where has it fallen short? …

Richard Kreitner and Elizabeth Mitchell | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian
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Is It Time to Consider Lincoln More Critically?

Surely, every debate about Abraham Lincoln has been had, and every story told—from his childhood splitting rails and his battle with depression to his cabinet of former rivals and his assassination. Yet over 150 years after Lincoln’s death, new details about Honest Abe still emerge to surprise us—and even stir up some contemporary controversy. A new exploration of a little-known …

| Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian
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What Would a New Cold War Mean for the World?

Civilization faces existential threats—pandemics, climate change, nuclear proliferation, runaway technologies—that seem to require international collaboration. Meanwhile, China and the United States are engaging in greater conflict with each other, and embracing unilateralism in matters of trade, technology, national security, and the sovereignty of their neighbors. To what extent will nations, businesses, NGOs, and individuals across the globe have to take …

What Does Kamala Harris’s Rise Say About America? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian
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What Does Kamala Harris’s Rise Say About America?

The inauguration of Kamala Harris was a moment of many firsts—the first woman, the first Black woman, the first woman of color, the first person of South Asian heritage, even the first California Democrat to become vice president. But this moment has been punctuated by an eruption of hatred and violence, and further evidence of America’s bitter divisions, making it …