Trinity College Students Hear from Political Experts at ‘Global Affairs’ CT Forum

Trinity College students recently had the opportunity to hear from experts on world politics at the Connecticut Forum discussion, “Global Affairs: Perspectives on Today’s Changed World and Looking Ahead to 2050.”

On March 6, Trinity’s Office of International Students and Scholars (OISS) and Trinity’s Center for Urban and Global Studies (CUGS) hosted students for a “Night Out in Hartford” that included dinner at Parkville Market, followed by the program at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts.

Founded in 1992, the Connecticut Forum is a nonprofit organization dedicated to “encourag[ing] the free and active exchange of ideas in forums that inform, challenge, entertain, inspire, and build bridges among all people and organizations in our community.” Trinity is one of several education partners of the Connecticut Forum. The “Global Affairs” conversation featured Admiral James Stavridis, a retired 4-star Naval officer and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, and Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer-Prize winning author and journalist, formerly of The Washington Post and currently with The Atlantic. The discussion was moderated by Yamiche Alcindor, an NBC News Washington correspondent and former PBS Washington Week host.

Alcindor opened the dialogue by asking Stavridis and Applebaum if any other time in history reminded them of the present state of global affairs. “World War I has ended, the United States rejects the League of Nations, we pull all of our troops, and we build enormous trade barriers: tariffs,” Stavridis said.

Applebaum responded, “An old era has ended and a new one has not yet been born, and that’s what this feels to me like right now.”

Stavridis related global affairs to an agrarian society that needs to be tended to. “If the United States walks away from those tended gardens of global alliance, the jungle will grow back,” he said.

Both Stavridis and Applebaum warned against the dangers of American isolationism. Applebaum said, “It’s very important for Americans to understand that although we’re not necessarily paying attention to the rest of the world all the time, they’re paying attention to us.” She described the work of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), providing 40% of the world’s humanitarian aid, as an example of “soft power.”

Stavridis picked up this terminology with a metaphor, saying that using soft power was akin to preventative healthcare, including things like eating healthily and taking 10,000 steps a day. “Soft power is incredibly efficient at solving long-term problems at low cost,” he said. “If you don’t do that, you’re left with hard power… medically: surgery, chemo, radiation.” He quoted his mentor James Mattis, former U.S. Secretary of Defense, who said, “‘Okay, you can cut all that soft power, you’re just going to have to buy me more bullets.’ It was a huge mistake to get rid of the preventative care.”

The panelists also addressed the growing threat of authoritarianism around the world. “It’s certainly appropriate to ring our hands in despair about the rise of autocracy and the rise of authoritarianism… and I fully agree with the worry of it all,” Stavridis said. “But we still get a vote, both metaphorically and literally. It’s extremely important to remain optimistic about our society… Optimism matters. Faith in democracy matters.”

Several first-year students were part of the group from Trinity that attended the forum. Fariba Shah ’28 said, “Hearing from a NATO admiral as well as a Pulitzer Prize-winning author really conveyed the urgency of being politically aware and politically active. When [Applebaum] said, ‘Pessimism is irresponsible,’ that stuck out to me because despite politically turbulent times, it is always up to the younger generation to unite and stand up for the right thing.”

Considering her own studies, Shah noted, “As a STEM student, most of my time is spent either in lab or doing math equations, so this Bushnell trip was a refreshing break. Although it wasn’t directly related to my courses, learning about the harsh domino effect cutting NSF funding will have, especially for women and people of color in research, really pushed me to consider how easy it is for society to go ‘backward’ and return to a time when women being excluded from STEM was the norm.”

Klara Geiger ’28 said, “I liked the metaphor about soft power and hard power, where [Stavridis] said that soft power would be the equivalent to caring about your health daily… and then if you fail to do these things you’ll end up needing to use hard power, which would be the equivalent in the metaphor to needing surgery at some point, even chemotherapy and in general painful methods with an uncertain outcome. That makes you think about all of the wars going on right now.”

Gabby Nelson, associate director of Trinity’s Center for Urban and Global Studies, helped to organize the “Night Out in Hartford” for Trinity students. “Attending the Connecticut Forum with a group of international students and visiting scholars meant that almost every time the speakers gave an anecdote from a country, we had someone from that place in our group. Traveling down the stairs of the Bushnell and back to campus, we talked about how these examples were landing with this crew that came to Hartford from around the world.”

Nelson added that offering students opportunities to attend events like this has many benefits. “Taking students to the Connecticut Forum not only introduces them to a place in Hartford they can revisit throughout their time at Trinity, but it also provides rich material for thinking and discussing as they digest and analyze the information through the lens of classroom discussions and readings,” Nelson said.

The Connecticut Forum’s season continues with “Neil deGrasse Tyson: The Search for Life in the Universe” on March 21 and “An Evening with José Andrés”—hosted by Trinity College and moderated by Danny Meyer ’80, P’20, H’24—on April 3. Prior to the April 3 forum, a “Forum Encore!” screening of the film We Feed People will be held on March 27 at Cinestudio on the Trinity College campus. The Ron Howard-directed documentary about World Central Kitchen and its founder, chef José Andrés, will be followed by a talk featuring Jamie McDonald IDP’00, co-owner of Bear’s Smokehouse BBQ and a World Central Kitchen volunteer. The event is free to all, and guests are invited to register early. Watch the documentary trailer here.