The withdrawal of US troops from northern Syria has had grave repercussions for the security and stability of the entire region. The Turkish military has invaded northern Syria, killing dozens of Kurdish civilians and forcing over 200,000 Kurds to flee. In the absence of US troops, Russian and Syrian troops have rushed in to fill the power vacuum. Meanwhile, hundreds of ISIS fighters have escaped detention. Brett McGurk, distinguished lecturer at Stanford University and former special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, and David Phillips, director of peace-building and rights at Columbia University and former senior advisor to the US Department of State, make sense of the cascading impacts with WorldAffairs co-host Ray Suarez.
17 February 2020
WorldAffairs: The Promise of Africa: How Foreign Investment Affects Self-Sufficiency
Africa is home to some of the fastest growing economies in the world. By 2050, it will have a population greater than China and up to a quarter of the world’s workforce. More than half of its population will be under 25 – presenting tremendous growth potential with the right opportunities in place and posing significant risks without them. Governments and businesses from all over the world are scrambling to have a strong footing in Africa by strengthening ties and making investments. In this week’s episode, we’ll consider what countries – from within and outside Africa – stand to gain the most and more critically, how Africans might actually benefit from this investment. Amaka Anku, head of the Africa practice at Eurasia Group, Alex Vines, head of the Africa Program and research director for Risk, Ethics, and Resilience at Chatham House, and Jonathan Ledgard, founder of Droneport and Linnaeus, make the case for the promise of Africa's future with WorldAffairs co-host Ray Suarez.
TLDR News: Johnson's 'Power Grab': The Cabinet Reshuffle Explained
Yesterday Number 10 announced some pretty major changes to the makeup of Johnson's Cabinet with the most significant change coming in the form of Javid's resignation. The former Chancellor of the Exchequer was replaced by Rishi Sunak, a chancellor some speculate will be more loyal to Johnson and Cumming's plans. Is this a standard reshuffle or an attempt by Johnson the gain greater control over Number 11.
Nautilus Magazine: This Psychological Concept Could Be Shaping the Presidential Election
Pluralistic ignorance is a discrepancy between one’s privately held beliefs and public behavior. It occurs when people assume that the identical actions of themselves and others reflect different underlying states. The term has been in circulation for nearly 80 years, though more recent experiments have made it a focal point of social psychology. [...]
Over a decade later, psychologists Nicole Shelton and Jennifer Richeson examined whether pluralistic ignorance stymied friendship among black and white college students. They designed an experiment that asked students to imagine approaching a group of people from a different race in a dining hall. Results showed both groups of students wanted to have more contact with each other, but erroneously thought the other group didn’t want to have contact with them. In subsequent studies, Shelton and Richeson documented the real consequences of this miscalculation among Princeton students. They found that people who endorsed divergent explanations for their own actions and the identical actions of racial outgroup members had less contact with people of different races in their daily lives. Pluralistic ignorance deterred Princeton students of different races from interacting with each other.4 [...]
Nate Silver, editor of FiveThirtyEight, reflected on these data in a blog post. “Being a woman was the biggest barrier to electability, based on Avalanche’s analysis of the results, and women were more likely to cite gender as a factor than men,” Silver wrote. “So there are a lot of women who might not vote for a woman because they’re worried that other voters won’t vote for her. But if everyone just voted for who they actually wanted to be president, the woman would win!”9
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