Prominent journalists with expertise in Europe and Russia will join Cornell professors to discuss the global implications of the war in Ukraine during an upcoming event hosted by the College of Arts and Sciences.
"Aftershocks: Geopolitics since the Ukraine invasion," will take place Sept. 22 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the Kiplinger Theatre of the Schwartz Center, 430 College Ave. The event is free and open to the public.
Ann Simmons
Mark Landler
Featured panelists include Ann Simmons, Moscow bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal and the fall 2022 Zubrow Distinguished Visiting Journalist in A&S, and Mark Landler, London bureau chief for the New York Times.
Faculty panelists include Peter Katzenstein, the Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies (A&S) and Jessica Chen Weiss, the Michael J. Zak Professor for China and Asia-Pacific Studies in the Department of Government (A&S).
Ray Jayawardhana, the Harold Tanner Dean and Hans A. Bethe Professor in A&S, will moderate the discussion.
The event is part of the college's Arts Unplugged series, which brings research and creative works into the public sphere for discussion and inspiration.
"The war in Ukraine has precipitated reverberations across Eurasia and around the world," Jayawardhana said. "We are honored to have these leading journalists and eminent scholars on campus to discuss how international relations, security and trade are shifting in monumental ways."
The event will include insights from each speaker, followed by time for discussion between the panelists and then time for questions from the audience.
"The war in Ukraine has reinforced the resurgence of great-power competition, fragmented global supply chains and shattered Europe's sense of security," Simmons said. "It's also exposed Europe's vulnerability in its reliance on Russian energy. I'm looking forward to our panel discussion on these and other issues and to assessing whether the changes and challenges triggered by the conflict are now irreversible."
In his three decades at the New York Times, Landler has served as bureau chief in Hong Kong and Frankfurt, White House correspondent, diplomatic correspondent and European economic correspondent. He won an Overseas Press Club prize in 2007 for his work on a series about China and the environment. He is the author of "Alter Egos: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the Twilight Struggle over American Power," which was named a best book of the year by the Financial Times.
Simmons served in Moscow for Time Magazine in the 1990s, where she reported on the aborted coup against then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and the ascension of Russia's President Boris Yeltsin. She then moved to Time's Washington D.C. bureau, where her first beat was as a diplomatic correspondent. Later, Simmons joined the Los Angeles Times as bureau chief in Nairobi and Johannesburg and was part of a team that won a 2004 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news for its coverage of wildfires in Southern California. In her role as Moscow bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal, Simmons covers Russia's domestic and foreign policy, Moscow's relationship with Washington, and life in the former Soviet state under the authoritarian leadership of President Vladimir Putin.
Kathy Hovis is a writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.
