The Buffett Institute hosted book talk with Buffett Faculty Fellow Özge Samancı, author of the new graphic novel "Evil Eyes Sea," a feminist political mystery set in Istanbul during the 1995 elections. It tells the story of two broke students who witnessed an unusual death on a scuba diving expedition. As the case deepens, they become increasingly entangled with political corruption, religious pressure and possibly murder. Watch the recording.

The Buffett Institute is pleased to announce our cohort of non-residential faculty fellowships for the 2024–25 academic year. These fellowships support Northwestern faculty who are conducting research outside of the contiguous United States.

In a new report, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF have officially recommended the Water Insecurity Experiences (WISE) Scales for the global monitoring of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6: Ensure access to water and sanitation for all. The development of the WISE Scales was led by Northwestern University Professor Sera Young, who co-leads the Making Water Insecurity Visible Global Working Group at the Buffett Institute. Current WISE Scales research is supported by the Leverhulme Trust as well as Northwestern University's Buffett Institute and Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy.

Through the Buffett Institute’s Global Learning Office, Northwestern offers study abroad, research and academic internship opportunities that prepare students for success in today’s interconnected world. The Daily Northwestern spoke with Sara Tully, Director of Buffett's Global Learning Office, about students' options for financing their global learning experiences and initiatives to make study abroad financially accessible for all students.

The final episode of the Hidden Economics of Remarkable Women, a Foreign Policy podcast supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Buffett Institute, features inspiring stories about girl power. First, we go to Peru, where reporter Jimena Ledgard interviews Wendy Sulca, a former child pop star who is finding a new voice as an advocate. Then, host Reena Ninan speaks with Bogolo Kenewendo, Advisor and Africa Director to the United Nations Climate Change High-Level Champions, about how her childhood shaped her into the political leader she has become.

In the third talk of this joint speaker series, Elizabeth F. Thompson examined how a League of Nations mandate institutionalized an asymmetry of political and economic power between Jews and Arabs that would empower militants over peacemakers over its 25-year history.

Two Northwestern students were named Truman Scholars, an award regarded as the premier graduate scholarship for aspiring public service leaders in the U.S. Both women worked on their Truman policy proposals while studying abroad through the Buffett Institute's Global Learning Office.

The presidents of 46 universities in the U7+ Alliance of World Universities, for which Northwestern served as the first secretariat, formally committed to the 2024 U7+ Statement on Global Access to Higher Education. The statement was delivered to Anna Maria Bernini, Italian Minister of University and Research, on April 11 as a representative of the Italian government who is playing host to the Group of Nations (G7) this year.

The Buffett Institute's Making Water Insecurity Visible Global Working Group is kicking off a study to measure the accuracy and usefulness of at-home tests for lead in water while exploring how access to testing influences neighbors’ actions to protect themselves from lead. The group is recruiting 100 households for the study: 50 from Chicago’s Southeast Side and 50 from Evanston.

On this episode of the Hidden Economics of Remarkable Women, a Foreign Policy podcast supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Buffett Institute, host Reena Ninan speaks with Julie Mwabe, the team lead at the global advocacy and public policy program at Global Partnership for Education. She leads efforts to mobilize political support at the highest levels for education, including from heads of state. They talk about the state of girls’ education and what the international community can do to close learning gaps, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Buffett Institute hosted a keynote address and reception celebrating Northwestern's Fulbright community and the transformative power of cultural exchange, marking the beginning of Northwestern's Fulbright Week (April 8–12, 2024). We were delighted to have as our keynote speaker Dr. Mary Pattillo, Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and Chair of Black Studies at Northwestern University.

In the second talk of this joint speaker series exploring fundamental history of Israel and Palestine, historian Arie Dubnov delved into the multifaceted history of Zionism, exploring its various ideological strands and historical context from its origins in the late ninteenth century to its impact on contemporary politics in Israel/Palestine.

International journalists Marzio Mian and Alessandro Cosmelli discussed on Friday their recent work reporting along the Volga River in Russia, which produced a cover story for Harper’s Magazine called “Behind the New Iron Curtain.” The event was co-hosted by the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

What do Russians think about the war in Ukraine? How are they reacting to sanctions? In a recent cover story for Harper's Magazine, journalist Marzio Mian and photographer Alessandro Cosmelli tell the surprising story of what they discovered on a trip down the Volga River. The Buffett Institute hosted a conversation with Mian and Cosmelli about contemporary Russia, international reporting and the long shadows of the Cold War, moderated by Ambassador Ian Kelly.

A routine Getty Images caption beside the Princess of Wales’s cancer announcement has fanned disinformation about her. The New York Times spoke with Buffett Faculty Fellow V.S. Subrahmanian, who ran a copy of the video through a system of 15 algorithms his team at the Northwestern Security & AI Lab (NSAIL) has been developing to detect manipulated videos. They found no evidence that the video is fake.

A new initiative, “Israel & Palestine: Joint Speaker Series Exploring Fundamental History,” is being co-sponsored by the Middle East and North African Studies Program, the Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies and the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern. A series of talks by renowned scholars of the region, seven sessions will be held April 4 to May 29 on the Evanston campus and are open to Northwestern students, faculty and staff.

For the first talk of this joint speaker series exploring fundamental history of Israel and Palestine, Awad Halabi examined how Palestine’s different religious communities were able to engage and interact with one another in the era of Late Ottoman rule in Palestine (c. 1850–1917).

The Buffett Institute hosted book talk with Michael S. Kang and Joanna M. Shepherd, co-authors of the new book "Free to Judge: The Power of Campaign Money in Judicial Elections." Watch the recording.

Homosexuality is illegal in Kenya, as it is in more than half of African countries. But public attitudes have begun to shift. The fourth episode of the latest season of the Hidden Economics of Remarkable Women, a Foreign Policy podcast supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Buffett Institute, follows the key people driving this change.

Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting grantees Alessandro Cosmelli and Marzio Mian will speak on their project, Volga Blues, to students at the Northwestern Buffett Institute, the University of Michigan’s Wallace House Center for Journalists and Indiana University.

The Water Insecurity Experiences (WISE) Scales measure human experiences with water and provide insights into whether individuals can reliably access sufficient water for domestic uses. To date, nationally representative water insecurity data have been collected in 40 countries, providing insights into who, exactly, is experiencing water insecurity. The Center for International and Strategic Studies published these data in a new report. Current WISE research is made possible by the Leverhulme Foundation as well as the Buffett Institute and Trienens Institute at Northwestern.

Read about the history and impact of the Water Insecurity Experiences (WISE) Scales over the past decade in this new report. Current WISE research is made possible by the Leverhulme Foundation as well as the Buffett Institute and Trienens Institute at Northwestern.

The negative impact of child marriage is widely documented. Child brides suffer domestic violence more often, drop out of school in greater numbers and are more likely to experience poverty. While Indian girls still account for one-third of child brides in the world, the prevalence of child marriage there has declined about 7 percent in the past eight years. The third episode of the latest season of the Hidden Economics of Remarkable Women, a Foreign Policy podcast supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Buffett Institute, looks at how India has been able to reduce its child marriage rates.

On this year's World Water Day, the Center for Strategic and International Studies hosted a livestream featuring Professor Sera Young, co-lead of Buffett's Making Water Insecurity Visible Global Working Group, on her Water Insecurity Experiences (WISE) Scales, an innovative tool designed to measure universal experiences with water insecurity and inform development action and policy implementation. Current WISE research is made possible by the Leverhulme Foundation and the Buffett Institute. Young will also present highlights from the forthcoming WISE Impact Report during a hybrid event at the Shard in London on Wednesday, March 27 at 10 a.m. CDT.

Family planning is one of the most economically important strategies for women and girls. Access to contraceptives can help women and girls get an education and participate in the workforce. Furthermore, it could reduce maternal deaths by as much as three-quarters, according to the United Nations Population Fund. But nearly 10 percent of women of childbearing age around the world have unmet contraceptive needs and teenage girls report less access to contraceptives than other age groups. The second episode of the latest season of the Hidden Economics of Remarkable Women, a Foreign Policy podcast supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Buffett Institute, looks at the most effective ways to increase family planning services.

Aman Shaikh, a graduate student in the Master of Engineering Management program at the McCormick School of Engineering, traveled to Dubai for the United Nations' annual climate change conference COP28 through the support of the Buffett Institute. He recounts how attending COP28 helped him better understand technology's role in addressing climate change, and the role engineers can play in climate action.

Deborah Cohen, the Richard W. Leopold Professor of History in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, has been named executive director of the Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. A scholar of European and global history, Cohen has served as interim director of the Buffett Institute since January.

Will the lure of deepfakes prove irresistible to democratic governments? What questions should governments ask — and who in government should be asking them — when a deepfake is being considered? Two Northwestern professors, Buffett Faculty Fellow V.S. Subrahmanian and Daniel Linna, co-authored a new report examining several hypothetical scenarios in which democratic governments might consider using deepfakes to advance their foreign policy objectives and the potential harms this use might pose to democracy. Subrahmanian co-leads and Linna is a member of Buffett’s AI and Social Movements Global Working Group.

This episode of the Lawfare Podcast delves into how democracies should think about using deepfakes with Buffett Faculty Fellow V.S. Subrahmanian, Daniel Byman and Daniel Linna, co-authors of a new Center for Strategic and International Studies report examining two critical points: the questions that a government agency should address before deploying a deepfake, and the governance mechanisms that should be in place to assess its risks and benefits.

Buffett Faculty Fellow V.S. Subrahmanian is the lead author of a new report examining hypothetical cases in which deepfakes might be used by democratic governments. Along with co-authors Daniel Byman and Daniel Linna, Subrahmanian argues that deepfakes should not be used without a clearly articulated set of guardrails that consider both the benefits and the risks of a proposed government-run deepfake-enabled operation. Subrahmanian co-leads and Linna is a member of Buffett’s AI and Social Movements Global Working Group.

The Hidden Economics of Remarkable Women, a podcast from Foreign Policy with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Buffett Institute, is back with an all-new season. This time, all our stories are about something that has been getting a lot of media attention lately: Girls. What do they really need to succeed right now? And how can we work with them to get there? For this first episode, we focus on an often hidden aspect of girls’ economic lives that has a significant impact: period products.

The Buffett Institute for Global Affairs hosted a lecture by the former President of the International Criminal Court Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji at the Pritzker School of Law on Thursday, February 29. In his lecture, he argued that peace as a fundamental human right could help achieve global peace. Read about the insights he shared in the Daily Northwestern.

The Buffett Institute and Pritzker School of Law hosted a lecture from Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji, former President of the International Criminal Court from 2018 to 2021. During the lecture, Judge Eboe-Osuji shared insights from his work to foster a more just and peaceful world through international accountability for human rights violations.

The Buffett Institute hosted a book talk with Anto Mohsin, Buffett Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor in Residence at Northwestern in Qatar as well as the author of the new book Electrifying Indonesia: Technology and Social Justice in National Development, which tells the story of the entanglement of politics and technology during Indonesia’s rapid post-World War II development.

Led by Northwestern Buffett's Defusing Disasters Global Working group, the Heat Watch Chicago mapping study results show how extreme heat disproportionately impacts vulnerable communities. The group is working with the city to develop a heat vulnerability index to target resources to the areas that are the hottest and most vulnerable to extreme weather.

The Buffett Institute hosted a discussion exploring global futures of education with Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy (Lumbee), Dean at the Northwestern School of Education and Social Policy, and Noah Sobe, Professor at Loyola University Chicago and former Senior Project Officer at UNESCO's Future of Learning and Innovation team. Watch the recording.

Jennifer Lackey has received the 2024 Daniel I. Linzer Award for Faculty Excellence in Diversity and Equity for her dedication and commitment to the Northwestern Prison Education program. Lackey also co-leads the Epistemic Reparations Global Working Group at the Buffett Institute.

Professor Laura Brueck of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences Department of Asian Languages and Cultures received Northwestern’s 2024 Provost Award for Exemplary Service for her leadership as co-founder of the Race, Caste and Colorism Global Working Group at the Buffett Institute.

For a third year, Northwestern Buffett supported a delegation of 12 faculty and graduate students to attend the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 28th Conference of Parties (COP28), the world’s largest annual international climate summit. Read delegates' reflections on the challenges and promise of global climate action.

Northwestern Buffett's Office of International Student and Scholar Services (OISS) helps international students and scholars as well as faculty and staff navigate the many complexities associated with student and employment-based visa classifications within the Northwestern community. Learn about enrollment trends and statistics on members of Northwestern's international community who receive visa sponsorship through OISS in their 2022–23 annual report.