Tuesday, September 16, 2025 lunch meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Alex de Waal
Executive Director, World Peace Foundation/Research Professor, Tufts University’s Fletcher School
“Famine in Gaza and Sudan: Challenges to Humanitarianism”
Alex de Waal teaches at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he is executive director of the World Peace Foundation. He has also been a fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian Institute, program director on AIDS at the Social Science Research Council, and has worked at several NGOs, including Africa Watch, African Rights, and Justice Africa. De Waal is the author of numerous reports and books, including Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa; Darfur: A Short History of a Long War; The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa; and Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine (2017).
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Tuesday, October 7, 2025 lunch meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Robert Keohane
Professor of International Affairs, Princeton University
“The End of the Long American Century“
Robert Keohane is emeritus professor of international affairs at Princeton. He has also taught at Swarthmore, Stanford, Brandeis, Harvard, and Duke. Keohane is the author of eight books, including After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy; Power and Governance in a Partially Globalized World; and Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition. He is also the editor of 13 books and hundreds of academic articles. According to the Open Syllabus Project, Keohane is the most frequently cited author on college syllabi for political science courses.
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Tuesday, October 28, 2025 lunch meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Vipin Narang
Frank Stanton Professor of Nuclear Security & Political Science and the inaugural director of MIT SSP’s Center for Nuclear Security Policy; former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy
“Surviving the New Nuclear Age“
Vipin Narang is Frank Stanton Professor of Nuclear Security and Political Science at MIT, where he is also director of the Center for Nuclear Security Policy. From 2022 to 2024, he was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary and then Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy. Narang is the author of numerous journal articles and opinion pieces, and two books, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era and Seeking the Bomb: Strategies of Nuclear Proliferation.
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Wednesday, November 12, 2025 lunch meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Army Brigadier General Kevin Ryan
Visiting Professor at Kyiv School of Economics
“Russia’s War in Ukraine: An American-in-Kyiv’s View”
General Kevin Ryan has commanded troops in Germany, South, Korea, and Iraq. He has also taught Russian at West Point, served as defense attaché in Moscow, and as chief of staff of the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command. Ryan has also been a senior fellow and executive director for research at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center and was founding director of its US-Russian Institute to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism. He is currently a visiting professor at the Kyiv School of Economics.
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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 lunch meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Joel Wit
Distinguished fellow in Asian Security Studies at the Henry L. Stimson Center and a former US State Department official
“Fallout: The Inside Story of America’s Failure to Disarm North Korea”
Joel Wit is a distinguished fellow at the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington. He has also been a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Columbia’s Weatherhead Institute for Asian Studies. As a State Department official in the 1990s, Wit helped negotiate the 1994 US-North Korea Agreed Framework. He co-authored Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis (2005) and recently published Fallout: The Inside Story of America’s Failure to Disarm North Korea (2025).
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Thursday, January 29, 2026 dinner meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Rana Mitter
ST Lee Professor of US-Asia Relations, Harvard Kennedy School
“Toward the Summit – What to Expect from the Trump-Xi Relationship in 2026”
Rana Mitter is ST Lee Professor of US-Asia Relations at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He has also taught at Oxford, where he was director of its China Centre. Mitter is a fellow of the British Academy and an officer of the Order of the British Empire. He is the author of numerous articles and several books, including Forgotten Ally: China’s War with Japan, 1937-45 and China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism. Mitter also hosts a weekly podcast, Face-off: The US vs China, available on Spotify and elsewhere.
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Thursday, February 5, 2026 lunch meeting at the Union Club of Boston
Kaija Schilde
Associate Dean of Studies, Jean Monnet Chair in European Security and Defense, and Associate Professor of International Relations at the Boston University Pardee School of Global Studies
“Can Europe Defend Itself?”
Kaija Schilde is Associate Dean at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies. She was previously director of its Center for the Study of Europe and Jean Monnet Chair of European Security and Defense. She is also co-director of the Seminar on the European Union at Harvard’s Ginzberg Center for European Studies. Schilde has written numerous articles on Europe, and two books, The Political Economy of European Security (2017) and Outsourcing Security and Defense in the US and Europe (forthcoming).
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Tuesday, March 3, 2026
Jake Sullivan
Former National Security Advisor to President Biden
“The Post Cold War Order is Over: What’s Coming Next?“
Jake Sullivan is the Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order at Harvard’s Kennedy School. From 2021 to 2025, he was National Security Adviser to President Biden, a role he also held when Biden was vice president. Sullivan has served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and director of the State Department’s policy planning staff and deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In this role, he travelled with her to 112 countries. Sullivan also worked on the presidential campaigns of Clinton, Obama, and Biden. In addition to his current position at Harvard, he has taught at the University of New Hampshire, Dartmouth, and Yale Law School.