Rethinking the World

The Committee on Global Thought presents Rethinking the World, a series exploring the challenges and opportunities in our global crises. Cross-disciplinary discussions with experts, activists, and students from around the world will focus on analysis and lived experience concerning issues of public health and the coronavirus, the global economy, education, racial/social justice, climate, migration, and more.

Upcoming Programs

Stay tuned for Rethinking the World events next semester!

Previous Programs


Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb – Epidemic Empire: Colonialism, Contagion, and Terror, 1817-2020Lunchtime Seminars

March 30, 2021

Raza Kolb’s first scholarly monograph, Epidemic Empire: Colonialism, Contagion, and Terror, 1817-2020 (forthcoming, University of Chicago Press) lays out the literary and discursive history behind the ubiquitous figure of the “terrorism epidemic,” locating the origin of contemporary global Islamophobia in the post-Mutiny British empire, and assessing the contemporary “epidemiological” approach to terrorism as a legacy of therapeutic empire. With readings of the Muslim ban, Rudyard Kipling, the 19th century Anglo-Indian cholera archive, Bram Stoker, Albert Camus, Frantz Fanon, Djamila Boupacha, The Battle of Algiers, Salman Rushdie, and the 9/11 Commission Report, Epidemic Empire calls for comparative and postcolonial methods for the study of the political present.

To view a recording of the program, click here.


Ben Orlove – The Concept of Adaptation – Lunchtime Seminars

March 23, 2021

Benjamin Orlove, an anthropologist, has conducted field work in the Peruvian Andes since the 1970s and also carried out research in East Africa, the Italian Alps, and Aboriginal Australia. His early work focused on agriculture, fisheries and rangelands. More recently he has studied climate change and glacier retreat, with an emphasis on water, natural hazards and the loss of iconic landscapes. In addition to his numerous academic articles and books, his publications include a memoir and a book of travel writing.

Outreach Partners: School of International and Public Affairs, MA in Climate and Society, GlacierHub.

To view a recording of the program, click here.


Durba Mitra – Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought – Lunchtime Seminars

March 16, 2021

Professor Durba Mitra of Harvard University engaged in a discussion of her work Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought. CGT member Yasmine Ergas moderated the seminar. Bringing together vast archival materials from diverse disciplines, Mitra reveals that deviant female sexuality was critical to debates about social progress and exclusion, caste domination, marriage, widowhood and inheritance, women’s performance, the trafficking of girls, abortion and infanticide, industrial and domestic labor, indentured servitude, and ideologies about the dangers of Muslim sexuality.

Outreach partners: The South Asia Institute at Columbia University, The Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Columbia University

To view a recording of the program, click here.


Episode 4 – Manan Ahmed On The Loss of HindustanGlobal Thought Podcast

March 16, 2021

CGT Chair Vishakha N. Desai speaks with committee member Manan Ahmed about his new book The Loss of Hindustan: The Invention of India.

Ahmed provides a radical interpretation of how India came to its contemporary political identity. He argues that a European understanding of India as Hindu has replaced an earlier, native understanding of India as Hindustan, a home for all faiths. Turning to the subcontinent’s medieval past, Ahmed uncovers a rich network of historians of Hindustan who imagined, studied, and shaped their kings, cities, and societies.

Listen here.


Eight Ways of Thinking Unsettlement – Unsettlement

March 4, 2021

A follow-up discussion to last November’s “Insecure Zones: Reflections from Africa and the Indian Ocean,”  hosted by the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University and the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), and sponsored by the Department of Africana Studies at Barnard College. This roundtable discussion will be a space to generate conversation and to reflect on and our ongoing work in defining new concepts and terms to describe and understand the phenomenon of “Unsettlement.” Registrants will be asked to listen to voice notes from each of our eight speakers on themes that emerged from our November discussion and that will help us to “Think Unsettlement.”

Click here for more information


Tech for Social Good? – Undergraduate Committee on Global Thought

February 18, 2021

The rapid rise of tech giants and information networks has had global consequences, from the information-sharing fueled rise of conspiracy-driven populism, to disparate calls for regulatory responses to disinformation and hate speech, to questions on how AI can be used to infringe upon basic human rights. How can the same technological forces triggering disruption be harnessed for social good? What social, legal, and philosophical pathways could pave the way for this paradigm shift? Join the Undergraduate Committee on Global Thought for a discussion of the global implications of the rise of big tech and the possible pathways to achieving digital inclusion on a global scale.

To view a recording of the program, click here.


Re-think, Re-imagine, Re-invent: Higher Education for a Changing World – Youth in a Changing World

Friday, December 4 | 10:00 AM ET

How should institutions of higher education meet the many challenges confronting the world today?  This convening will be led by a group of youth from 12 countries and involve peers around the world.

To view a recording of the program, click here.


Contested Legacies: Public Monuments in Global Perspective – Politics of Visual Arts in a Changing World

Thursday, October 8 | 10 AM EDT

Part of Politics of Visual Arts in a Changing World, an initiative of the Committee on Global Thought. Made possible through the generous support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

A discussion with scholars and activists on the various issues surrounding the removal of public monuments across the globe in the wake of social justice uprisings in the United States.

Outreach partners: Columbia University School of the Arts; Columbia Global Centers; Alliance for Historical Dialogue and Accountability; Historic Preservation Program at GSAPP.

To view a recording of the program, click here.


Democracy and AI: Civics In a New Age – Undergraduate Committee on Global Thought

Wednesday, October 21 | 10 AM EDT

Presented by the Undergraduate Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. This moderated discussion with Tim Hwang, Founder and CEO of FiscalNote, will explore and unpack the role that big tech and artificial intelligence is playing in politics and governance at a global scale. Mr. Hwang will discuss the growth of big tech and AI, highlight some of the most pressing challenges for liberal democracies, and discuss what safeguards are currently in place or need to be, particularly within the framework of the impending 2020 election.

Co-sponsored by the Columbia College Student Council.

To view a recording of the program, click here


On the Edge of the Settled World – Unsettlement

Thursday, October 22 | 10 AM EDT

Hosted by the project on Unsettlement, an initiative of the Committee on Global Thought.

Today, millions of people are stranded in states of permanent displacement. They live in places that lack infrastructures of permanence, but must often reside there for years and even decades. How shall we understand these phenomena? What are the possibilities for a more just response? Join leading journalists from around the globe as they report on the situation in their regions.

Led by anthropologist, Rosalind Morris, the CGT project on Unsettlement aims to enable critical thought and a just response to issues that transcend the category of migrancy and the issues of border security. Beyond the false dichotomy of voluntary or forced movement, in areas where border regimes are mutating and climate change is precipitating profound demographic shifts, the project brings together scholars, policy makers, journalists and artists in forums that aim to inform and to foster new approaches to the challenges of our present and the future.

Outreach partners: Columbia University School of the Arts; The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities

For resources and to view a recording of the program, click here


From the Local to the Global: Business, Debt, Coronavirus – Undergraduate Committee on Global Thought 

Wednesday, October 28 | 12 PM EDT

The Undergraduate Committee on Global Thought presents a discussion on the acceleration of global inequality resulting from the outsized impact of the economic crisis on small businesses across cultures and geographies.

Co-sponsored by the Alexander Hamilton Society and the CU Journal of Politics and Society

To view a recording of the program, click here.


‘Insecure Zones’: Reflections from Africa and the Indian Ocean – Unsettlement

Thursday, November 12 | 10:00 AM ET

This joint workshop constitutes the inaugural event in the new program of ‘Critical Concepts and Regional Issues’ of the Project on ‘Unsettlement’, hosted by the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University, and co-sponsored by the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), and the Department of Africana Studies at Barnard College.

The project on Unsettlement was founded to address the predicament of those who, today, are stranded in states of indefinite displacement, deferred arrival and recurrent departure – people who live in places that lack infrastructures of permanence, but who must reside there for years, decades and even generations. They are often on the move, but lack the freedom and rights of mobility. Unsettlement in this sense is not merely a question of migrancy, and the project is impelled by the need to generate concepts and forms of practice that move beyond that discourse and the associated assumptions of transition. It aims to address the duration, intensity and uncertainty of long-term displacement, while moving beyond oppositions between voluntary and involuntary movement, on one hand, and economic or material exigency versus economic desire on the other.

Speakers: Rosalind Morris, Euclides Gonçalves, Mpho Matsipa, Isabel Hofmeyr, Yvette Christianse, Achille Mbembe, Johannes Machinya

The Project on Unsettlement is excited to partner with WISER, and to join its efforts to reformulate the category of region in Africa and the Indian Ocean.

Click here for more information