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Academic Year 2024-25
IGP’s Year in Review
The Institute of Global Politics (IGP) at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) marked an extraordinary second year of growth, engagement, and meaningful impact.
We welcomed 15 Carnegie Distinguished Fellows, hosted more than 100 events, and brought together individuals from across the ideological and political spectrum. We advanced substantive policy work, reached hundreds of thousands of virtual participants, and deepened our engagement with students from across the university.
From launching our inaugural Election Series to addressing major geopolitical crises, we tackled some of the most urgent policy challenges of our time, locally and globally.
This work was made possible through the thoughtful leadership and dedication of our faculty, especially the members of our Faculty Advisory Board, the leaders of IGP’s policy initiatives, and those guiding our contributions to SIPA’s Global Policy Challenges.
As we head into the summer, we’ll be preparing for the year ahead, focused on building on the momentum and progress we’ve made. With urgency, credibility, and a deep commitment to impact, we will continue to rise to the challenges of our time and advance IGP’s mission at a moment when it’s needed most.
We extend our heartfelt thanks to everyone who helped make this an exceptional year—for your partnership, energy, and commitment to our work.
With gratitude,
IGP Highlights from Academic Year 2024-25
102
Total Events
30
Expert Roundtables & Workshops
311.9K
Online Event Views
10
Rapid Response webinars
6.4M
Social Media Impressions
15
Carnegie Distinguished Fellows in Residence
145
Student Scholars and Student Circle Members
3.7K
In-Person Event Attendees
15 Carnegie Distinguished Fellows
This year’s cohort of IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellows included a diverse mix of 15 high-profile practitioners from across the globe. We added a tranche of new Fellows early in the calendar year who will be continuing with us through a portion of this coming academic year (denoted with an asterisk* below). Fellows participated in major public events, small student roundtable sessions, and policy-driven closed-door convenings; held student office hours; advanced policy work; and more. These individuals have contributed to our students’ educations and engaged meaningfully with our community in innumerable ways—we are immensely grateful for their contributions to IGP.
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Former Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Defense and Counselor of the US Department of State
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Chair of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy; Former Congresswoman
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Former Permanent Representative of Kenya to the UN; President and CEO of The Africa Center
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Former Foreign Affairs Minister of Argentina; President and Cofounder of GWL Voices
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Former Chief of Staff to the second Secretary of Homeland Security; Cofounder and CEO of The Chertoff Group
Select Major Events and Key Moments
(L to R) Adam Tooze, Luisa Neubauer, and Ed Miliband address the future of the climate crisis and democracy
Fall Semester
- IGP hosted a series of major events, webinars, student-focused roundtables, and workshops on the 2024 US presidential election.
- IGP and Vital Voices Global Partnership convened a roundtable with Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant to present a jointly published report assessing the state of research on technology-facilitated gender-based violence and to share an update on global progress toward legislative, regulatory, and policy milestones.
- IGP and Mozilla hosted the Columbia Convening on Openness and AI: Safety in San Francisco, bringing together AI experts and practitioners to advance AI safety approaches that embrace the value of open source.
- IGP and SIPA invited over 100 distinguished economists and policymakers to share their research at a two-day academic conference titled “New Thinking in Industrial Policy: Perspectives from Developed and Developing Countries,” convened by Joseph E. Stiglitz, IGP Faculty Advisory Board member and University Professor, and Eric Verhoogen, IGP Affiliated Faculty member and codirector of the Center for Development Economics and Policy.
- Luisa Neubauer, the lead organizer of Germany’s Fridays For the Future climate movement, and Adam Tooze, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History and IGP Affiliated Faculty member, hosted a workshop for students to present their ideas for addressing the climate crisis.
- IGP and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies cohosted two conversations on Lebanon, including a roundtable on clashes in the Middle East with Lebanon’s Foreign Affairs Minister Abdallah Bou Habib and a roundtable on global energy security and de-escalation in the Middle East with Amos Hochstein, Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor for Energy and Investment.
- Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo moderated an IGP panel discussion titled “One Year Later: Israel, the Middle East War, and US-Israel Relations” at the 92nd Street Y, which also featured IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow Hon. Jane Harman, SIPA Research Scholar and IGP Affiliated Faculty member Nadav Eyal, and Ambassador Dennis Ross.
Martin Kimani (left) and Jean-Marie Guéhenno (right) lead a roundtable on Africa's global security challenges
Spring Semester
- IGP hosted part two of a for-credit student workshop on Israel-Palestine negotiations focused on lessons learned from the Camp David negotiations of 1999-2001. The workshop was led by Gidi Grinstein and Ghaith Al-Omari, who worked directly on the negotiations for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, respectively.
- IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn cofounder and bestselling author, joined former US Secretary of State and IGP Faculty Advisory Board Chair Hillary Rodham Clinton to discuss his new book, “Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future,” during a forum at the 92nd Street Y.
- Maria Ressa and Camille François attended the AI Action Summit in Paris, where they announced the launch of ROOST (Robust Open Online Safety Tools), a groundbreaking new technology initiative incubated at IGP that will develop and distribute free, open-source tools to innovate and increase transparency in AI safety.
- IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow Martin Kimani, President and CEO of The Africa Center, addressed Africa’s governance, security, and political future through a series of roundtables, which included conversations with IGP Affiliated Faculty members Ambassador Victoria Nuland and Jean-Marie Guéhenno.
- IGP hosted an event with IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow Wally Adeyemo and a panel of experts discussing the new Trump administration’s trade, fiscal, and energy policies, followed by an event exploring the role of the US on the world stage with IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellows Christiane Amanpour and Jon Finer.
- IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow Reshma Saujani hosted a convening with the IGP Women’s Initiative to present findings from a new Moms First and McKinsey report, “Solving the Paradox of Paid Leave.” The convening featured a spotlight interview with Saujani and New York Governor Kathy Hochul on the success of New York’s paid family and medical leave policy.
- IGP and the Initiative for Policy Dialogue published a policy brief by professors Martín Guzmán and Joseph E. Stiglitz titled “How New York State Lawmakers Can Help Address Debt Crises in the Global South,” explaining how New York State lawmakers can enable more equitable debt restructurings and help address the debt crisis constraining developing nations from investing in education, healthcare, and the green energy transition.
- Secretary Mike Pompeo joined IGP for a wide-ranging, closed-door roundtable discussion on geopolitical conflicts around the world, engaging directly with questions from students and faculty alike.
- IGP’s marquee spring event, Addressing 21st Century Challenges to Gender Equality: Beijing+30, brought together foreign and domestic leaders to address worldwide progress on and backlash against women’s rights and gender equality through a series of panels organized under the leadership of IGP's Women's Initiative Directors Jennifer Klein and Rachel Vogelstein. The event included a discussion with Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, Inaugural IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow President Michelle Bachelet, IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow Susana Malcorra, and President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, moderated by IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow Christiane Amanpour.
Event Series Highlights
In a highly polarized world, IGP provides a forum for open, respectful dialogue across partisan and ideological divides. IGP’s different event series offer vital platforms to exchange ideas, find common ground, and model constructive debate for the next generation of policy leaders.
IGP 2024 Election Series
Throughout the fall 2024 semester, IGP hosted major events, webinars, student-focused roundtables, and skills workshops on the 2024 US presidential election. Timothy Naftali, IGP Faculty Advisory Board member, Columbia SIPA Senior Research Scholar, and CNN commentator with expertise in presidential history, curated this event series.
- State of the Race: The US Presidential Election
- The 2024 Election: What’s at Stake for US Foreign Policy?
- The 2024 Election: The Youth Vote
- The 2024 Election: The Threat of Foreign Interference
- The 2024 Election: Deep Dives on the Economy and on Women Voters
- The 2024 Election: Polling and the Presidential Election
- The 2024 Election: The Battlegrounds
- The 2024 Election: What’s It Like to Work on a Campaign
- The 2024 Election: The Campaigns and The Coverage
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Timothy Naftali moderates an IGP Election Series panel
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Hon. Steve Higginson (left) and Hon. Roy Altman (right) speak at an Across the Aisle event
Across the Aisle
IGP’s Across the Aisle series featured discussions between prominent leaders with often divergent perspectives to model the value and necessity of civil discourse to advance policy solutions. This year's discussions included:
- Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the co-chairs of the bipartisan, bicameral Paid Family Leave Working Group, with IGP Affiliated Faculty member Jane Waldfogel and IGP Faculty Advisory Board member Sandra Black. Watch the discussion »
- Eurasia Group president Ian Bremmer, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, and American Enterprise Institute Director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies Kori Schake, moderated by IGP Faculty Scholar Timothy Naftali. Watch the discussion »
- Richard Clarida, former assistant secretary of the US Treasury for economic policy and IGP Affiliated Faculty member; Abby Joseph Cohen, professor at Columbia Business School and former chief US investment strategist at Goldman Sachs; Ben Harris, vice president and director of the Economic Studies program and director of the Retirement Security Project at Brookings; and Betsey Stevenson, former chief economist of the US Department of Labor, moderated by Lizzie O’Leary, host of What Next: TBD and contributor to The Atlantic. Watch the discussion »
- Hon. Roy K. Altman, IGP US District Court Judge for the Southern District of Florida and IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow, and the Hon. Steve Higginson, Circuit Judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, moderated by Jamal Greene, Dwight Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. Watch the discussion »
Rapid Response
Watch the Rapid Response discussions:
- State of the Race: The US Presidential Election
- Implications of the Israel-Hezbollah Ceasefire
- The Fall of Assad
- Explaining the Gaza Ceasefire and Hostage Deal
- What's Next for Ukraine
- How Much Is Global Health a Matter of Global Politics?
- Ukraine Peace Talks: The Complex Road Ahead
- Governmental Attacks on Civil Society—Lessons for the US from Around the Globe
- Tariffs and Their Implications
- The India-Pakistan Conflict
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IGP's Top-5 Live-streamed Events
IGP streamed 30 events this year, which were viewed over 300,000 times in more than 30 countries around the world. Here are the 5 most viewed.
February 12, 2025
This IGP panel discussion evaluated the global impact of the Trump Administration’s economic policies amidst speculation of tariffs, trade tensions, and rising inflation.
The conversation, introduced by IGP Faculty Advisory Board Chair Hillary Rodham Clinton, featured IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow Wally Adeyemo along with IGP Affiliated Faculty members Mauricio Cárdenas, Richard Clarida, and Merit Janow, and was moderated by Central Banking and Financial Policy Initiative Director Patricia Mosser.
May 12, 2025
IGP hosted a Rapid Response webinar to assess the causes of the recent escalation between India and Pakistan, the outlook for the ceasefire, the broader geopolitical implications, and the role of major powers like the United States to broker an end to the hostilities.
The conversation, introduced by IGP Faculty Advisory Board Chair Hillary Rodham Clinton, featured Shamila Chaudhary, IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow Jon Finer, Rajan Menon, IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow Mike Pompeo, and Rumela Sen, and was moderated by IGP Affiliated Faculty member Stephen Biddle.
February 18, 2025
IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellows Christiane Amanpour and Jon Finer participated in a panel discussion, moderated by SIPA Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo, exploring the evolving role of the United States on the world stage.
March 12, 2025
The Beijing+30 convening celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing by highlighting its transformative impact, featuring young activists at the forefront of the women’s movement, and sharing lessons from world leaders.
The convening featured panel discussions on the impact of the UN Fourth World Conference on Women, the progress of young leaders advancing global gender equality, and the backlash against this progress, as well as a fireside chat reflecting on progress and new challenges in the thirty years since the Conference.
October 9, 2024
This IGP 2024 Election Series event convened two panels of faculty and experts to address the roles that the economy and women voters played in the US presidential election.
The first panel, part of IGP’s Across the Aisle series, featured IGP Affiliated Faculty member Richard Clarida, Columbia Business School professor Abby Joseph Cohen, Brookings Institution Economic Studies program vice president and director Ben Harris, and former chief economist of the US Department of Labor Betsey Stevenson, and was moderated by Lizzie O’Leary, host of What Next: TBD and contributor to The Atlantic.
The second panel featured IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow Reshma Saujani, cofounder and partner of PerryUndem Tresa Undem, and IGP Faculty Advisory Board member Yasmine Ergas, moderated by Natasha Pearlman, executive editor of Glamour.
IGP Student Scholars and Student Circle
IGP welcomed 45 students into the second cohort of IGP Student Scholars. Additionally, IGP welcomed 100 students to the newly established IGP Student Circle, designed to broaden student engagement with competitive applicants to the Scholars Program.
IGP Student Scholars benefited from the guidance of IGP’s Faculty Advisory Board members and Carnegie Distinguished Fellows, and both groups receive priority access to major events, convenings, roundtables, workshops, and office hours, as well as the opportunity to serve as faculty and Fellow research assistants.
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"IGP has exposed me to new perspectives, sharpened my critical thinking skills, and helped me refine my professional goals.
I have benefited from the advice and mentorship of IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellows, Affiliated Faculty Members, and staff. Our conversations helped me understand how spending time in the region I study could take my career to the next level. I knew I wanted to do national security work, but IGP exposed me to different ways of doing that.
I forged a lot of important connections through IGP this year. It's so clear that the IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellows and IGP Affiliated Faculty Members are driven by a desire to mentor students, and I have appreciated their candor and humility during our engagements. I got to work directly with a few of the IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellows this year – conducting research, planning events, supporting their visits – and it was transformative."
- Jordanna Yochai
2024 - 2025 IGP Student Scholar
Meet Our Student Scholars
Engaging the Next Generation of Leaders
IGP provides students the opportunity to engage with their studies beyond the classroom, facilitating connections with practitioners and faculty.
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As part of IGP's 2024 Election Series programming, Democratic policy advisor Zayn Siddique and Republican campaign manager Betsy Ankney met with students to discuss the ins and outs of political campaign work during a conversation moderated by SIPA professor and IGP Affiliated Faculty member Ester Fuchs.
During the spring semester, IGP partnered with the SIPA Career Advancement Center and the Urban and Social Policy (USP) Program to host an event with a panel of USP alumni working in the public sector titled "Careers in NYC Government: Make an Impact & Get Hired." The panelists spoke with students about how they each came to work in city government, even recalling advice Fuchs provided them during their time as SIPA students about the impact of working in local government.
IGP also invited students to events designed to foster a deeper connection with faculty and practitioners, such as the 'lunch and learn' series where faculty members David Shimer, Alex Hertel-Fernandez, and Jacob J. Lew each hosted students for an open hour of questions and answers about their research, fields of study, and career paths. IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellows, including Jon Finer, Secretary Mike Pompeo, and Reshma Saujani, also hosted career conversation roundtables to connect with students and answer questions about their careers and industries.
IGP Publications, Reports, and More
Martín Guzmán and Joseph E. Stiglitz
Nina Jankowicz, Isabella Gomez-O’Keefe, Lauren Hoffman, and Andrea Vidal Becker
Camille François and Maria Ressa
MARGOT FULDE-HARDY AND CAMILLE FRANÇOIS
Camille François, Ayah Bdeir, and Ludovic Péran
IGP Faculty Advisory Board
Faculty-led IGP Initiatives
- American Democracy Initiative, led by Alex Hertel-Fernandez (stay tuned for more on this new initiative!)
- Technology & Democracy Initiative, led by Camille François and Maria Ressa
- Women’s Initiative, led by Jennifer Klein and Rachel Vogelstein
Thank You!
Thank you for all you do to support IGP. Please sign up for our email list and follow us on social media to stay informed about all that’s to come in the months and years ahead.
