The World Today

Welcome back to Penn for the 2026-2027 school year, which is also the 10th anniversary of Perry World House!

Please join us for our first public event of the year, focused on the most important challenges facing the world today. From conflict to climate change, Perry World House’s leadership will unpack the issues and opportunities expected to impact global policy this year.

International security will continue to be a top priority, as countries respond to the ongoing war in Ukraine, a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, continued strife in Iran, and enduring conflicts in every region. Great power rivalry, fracturing international coalitions, and a transactional approach to foreign policy have all helped weaponize the building blocks of cooperation from the last generation, turning them into potential vulnerabilities. These questions impact chokepoints, energy infrastructure, and frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

Democracy will also take center stage this year, as billions head to the polls. This fall, key contests in Brazil, Israel, and, of course, here in the United States will test the health of democracy worldwide. The United Nations, too, will elect new leadership, with the next Secretary-General tasked with reviving confidence in a multilateral system beset by financial and legitimacy crises. Meanwhile, the human rights and global justice agenda faces increasing contention, and the Earth’s climate continues to change in ways that create peril around the world.

Join us for this special event to gain a deeper understanding of the critical issues shaping our world, and to explore how we might respond.

Panelists

Marie Harf comes to Penn with two decades of varied experience in the U.S. federal government, higher education, media, and politics. Previously she worked as senior advisor for strategic communications to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and deputy spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, as the foreign policy director on Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, and as a Middle East analyst and spokesperson at the Central Intelligence Agency. She has also held senior roles at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and for Congressman Seth Moulton’s political organization. Since 2017, Harf has been an on-air commentator for Fox News. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Indiana University with concentrations in Jewish Studies and Russian and Eastern European Studies, and a master’s degree in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia. 

Michael C. Horowitz is Director of Perry World House and Richard Perry Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also Senior Fellow in Innovation and Technology at the Council on Foreign Relations. From 2022 to 2024, Professor Horowitz served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Development and Emerging Capabilities. He is the author of The Diffusion of Military Power: Causes and Consequences for International Politics, and the co-author of Why Leaders Fight. He won the Karl Deutsch Award given by the International Studies Association for early career contributions to the fields of international relations and peace research. He has published in a wide array of peer reviewed journals and popular outlets. His research interests include the intersection of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics with global politics, military innovation, the role of leaders in international politics, and geopolitical forecasting methodology. Professor Horowitz worked for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He is a life member at the Council on Foreign Relations. Professor Horowitz received his Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University and his B.A. in political science from Emory University.

Michael Weisberg, Perry World House Deputy Director, is the Bess W. Heyman President’s Distinguished Professor of Philosophy. A climate diplomat, philosopher of science, climate policy researcher, and experienced academic leader, he has negotiated and achieved collective outcomes in the complex landscape of climate, ocean, and development issues at the highest levels of international diplomacy.

An expert on the climate needs of small island developing states, Weisberg currently serves as senior advisor to Jamaica’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations and as an advisor to the Fiji and Palau negotiating teams at COP. Weisberg was a leading voice in the development of the “mosaic of solutions” for addressing loss and damage due to the adverse impacts of climate change, which led to major breakthroughs on the topic at COP27 and COP28. This framework was developed in collaboration with the Maldivian Government and the International Peace Institute, where he is a Non-resident Senior Advisor. 

Weisberg serves as editor-in-chief of Biology and Philosophy and director of the Galápagos Education and Research Alliance. He is the author of Simulation and Similarity: Using Models to Understand the World, co-author of the landmark photographic study Galápagos: Life in Motion, and a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Weisberg educates the next generation of environmental leaders in the classroom, at the negotiating table, and in the field, ensuring that their voices have maximal impact on addressing the climate crisis.

Moderator

Lara Seligman is a national security reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Washington, where she covers the White House and the Pentagon. She previously spent four years at Politico as a defense reporter. Lara’s reporting on the military and the defense industry has taken her around the world, with time spent covering geopolitics in real time in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Lara previously covered the Pentagon and national security for Foreign Policy. She also has written for publications including the Washington Post and Defense News. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.