In a series of high-profile, free public Conversations presented by the Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center and featuring artists, intellectuals, and policy makers, the Great Issues Forum examines the ways in which various categories of power work in our increasingly globalized world.
    This year’s participants include Nicholas D. Kristof and Mary Robinson on political power, Naomi Klein and Joseph Stiglitz on economic power, Tom Stoppard and Derek Walcott on cultural power, and General Barry McCaffrey and Samantha Power on military power.
    Complementing the Great Issues Forum's public events are Seminars at the Forum (http://www.greatissuesforum.org/blog), a series of online academic seminars.
     Prof. Robin is the current seminar leader. Every two weeks, a prominent guest from the world of journalism, politics, academia, or the arts composes a blog entry responding to a key text that addresses the concept of "power” in the contemporary world, and engages in discussion with select City University of New York faculty (including Prof. Bayoumi) and graduate students.
     Guest bloggers have included New York Times writer Jill Lepore on Hannah Arendt, critic Michael Warner on Michel Foucault, and upcoming are New Yorker writer Ariel Levy on Mary Wollstonecraft, Nation writer Laila Lalami on Edward Said, the novelist and essayist Pankaj Mishra on Claude Levi-Strauss, as well as many others.  
    Funding for the initiative was provided by the 2007 Carnegie Corporation of New York's Academic Leadership Award, presented to CUNY’s Chancellor Matthew Goldstein.
    If you have any questions about Great Issues Forum, the Seminar and Fellowships, please do not hesitate to contact Andrea Jeyaveeran at ajeyaveeran@gc.cuny.edu.