Building a Better Future
How does the Center for Global A airs at the NYU School of Professional Studies prepare individuals to confront the significant global challenges we’ve witnessed over the past 15 months?
The pandemic and other recent events, such as the attack on the U.S. Capitol, have highlighted fundamental flaws in the international system and within individual nation-states. However, these events have also demonstrated the incredible resilience of democratic and international institutions when confronted with substantial challenges and offered important opportunities for reflection and much needed reform. At the Center for Global Affairs, we teach future leaders how to anticipate, prepare for, and respond creatively and effectively to global threats and opportunities such as these. We do this through interdisciplinary and interactive coursework and applied learning and networking activities.
During the pandemic, we significantly expanded our consulting practicum o erings. In these courses, students work for a high profile partner on a project of critical importance. Over the years, students have collaborated with the UN Counterterrorism Executive Directorate on terrorists’ use of social media, returning terrorist fighters, the role of technology in counterterrorism, and the rise of right-wing terrorism. They’ve worked with the Global Network on Women Peacebuilders to examine the impact of COVID-19 on women peacebuilders in Colombia, the Philippines, South Sudan, and Ukraine. They’ve partnered with the U.S. State Department’s Global Engagement Center to investigate and propose strategic communications solutions to radicalization and recruitment into terrorism in Nigeria and Somalia, polarization and state sponsored disinformation in the Western Balkans, and racially and ethnically motivated violence in the United States. Other practicum partners now include Mastercard, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Manhattan District Attorney’s
O ice, New York City Cyber Command, the Institute for the Healing of Memories, and the International Center for Transitional Justice.
Can you tell us how you are innovating to build a better future?
Changes in social and economic activity during the pandemic generated an important pause in climate emissions and the improvement of air and water quality in certain locations. Our newly formed Energy, Climate Justice, and Sustainability Lab is at the forefront of informing the debate around a rapidly changing energy sector and climate impacts. Faculty, students, and alumni also examine and publish on a range of timely security issues—the reintegration of violent extremists, including those associated with ISIS, drug cartels’ use of social media, nuclear proliferation, climate change in the Sahel, the CIA’s use of torture—as part of our Initiative on Emerging Threats. Our Peace Research and Education Program is involved in on-the-ground post-conflict peacebuilding e orts in Colombia, Libya, and Iraq. We’ve developed an Executive Education program in Cyber Leadership to help organizations prevent, mitigate, and respond to cyberattacks. Finally, our student body is international and diverse, and we do not shy away from the hard and potentially contentious questions in global a airs. We address them head-on with mutual respect for one another in an e ort to identify solutions that will move us forward.