About the event: Join us for a special seminar featuring Cambridge scholar Luke Kemp, author of the bestseller Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse. In this new book, Kemp conducts a historical autopsy of hundreds of polities over the last 300,000 years to draw lessons from history on how collapse could unfold in the future and what we can do to avoid it. Drawing on cutting-edge research in anthropology and archaeology, Goliath’s Curse is a radical retelling of human history with many surprising lessons, including the role of inequality in past collapses, how these historical breakdowns often were blessings and not just reversions to a ‘dark age’, and why collapse in the future is a far grimmer prospect.

Dr. Stephen Luby, a physician, researcher, and educator whose global health work has spanned five years in Pakistan and eight years in Bangladesh before joining the Stanford faculty. Dr. Luby brings the perspective of a public health expert deeply familiar with the challenges faced by both fragile and resilient societies on the ground.

Dr. Scott Sagan, Co-Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and a leading authority on international security and political science. Dr. Sagan brings a global security and governance lens, informed by his academic and government experience, to the discussion of how great powers succeed or fail in adapting to existential threats.

Together, Drs. Kemp, Luby, and Sagan will engage in a wide-ranging discussion on what history can teach us about the risks and possibilities of collapse today, from the threats of pandemic and climate crisis to the resiliency of democratic institutions and the fragility of hierarchical power structures. The event will conclude with a moderated audience Q&A.

About the speakers: Luke Kemp researches the end of the world. He is the author of the bestselling book Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse and a Research Affiliate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at the University of Cambridge. He has advised and led foresight studies for multiple international organisations, including the WHO and Convention on Biological Diversity. Luke’s work has been covered by the BBC, The New York Times, and The New Yorker.

Prof. Stephen Luby studied philosophy and earned a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude from Creighton University. He then earned his medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas and completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Rochester-Strong Memorial Hospital. He studied epidemiology and preventive medicine at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Continue reading here.

Scott D. Sagan is Co-Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, and the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He also serves as Co-Chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. Continue reading here.

About the moderator: Rose Gottemoeller is the William J. Perry Lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Research Fellow at the Hoover Institute. Before joining Stanford, Gottemoeller was the Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019, where she helped to drive forward NATO’s adaptation to new security challenges in Europe and in the fight against terrorism.  Prior to NATO, she served for nearly five years as the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the U.S. Department of State, advising the Secretary of State on arms control, nonproliferation and political-military affairs. While Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance in 2009 and 2010, she was the chief U.S. negotiator of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russian Federation. Continue reading here.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.