On June 14, the Roth Foundation was pleased and honored to be able to attend our fourteenth Fulbright Distinguished Lecture at Pembroke College Oxford, given by Dr. Fareed Zakaria. In thanking us for our support, Executive Director of the US-UK Fulbright Commission Maria Balinska added: We see fostering dialogue on the key issues facing us globally as a key part of our work. The Lectures are core to this.
In a lecture titled “Towards a Post-American International Order,” Zakaria delved into the dramatic shift in geopolitics taking place today. Eighty years after WWII, the international liberal order is under acute stress around the world, while the U.S., its main supporter, turns increasingly inward. The lecture can be streamed in its entirety here.
In his talk, Zakaria built upon insights developed over the last twenty years in his five New York Times bestselling books, the most recent of which is Age of Revolutions (2024). He was also able to draw on an international poll on global leadership, specially designed to accompany the Fulbright Distinguished Lecture series and carried out by Ipsos and the Policy Institute at King’s College London. Zakaria remarked:
The results of this survey are fascinating. Around the world, when it comes down to it, people still want liberalism in all sorts of ways. What surprised me was that the international paragon of good governance is the European Union. And the great irony is that while people in most countries have a more favorable perception of the United States than they did five years ago, the one place where this was not true was in America itself. It seems it is the inheritors of the liberal tradition who have the most self-doubt about their role in the world.
Zakaria is highly regarded as a WashingtonPost columnist and the host of the Peabody award-winning show GPS (The Global Public Square) and incisive specials on international affairs on CNN. Before his tenure at CNN, he served as an editor of Newsweek International, a managing editor of Foreign Affairs, a columnist for Time, an analyst for ABC News, and the host of Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria on PBS. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Yale, a doctorate in political science from Harvard and numerous honorary degrees.
The Fulbright Distinguished Lecture series has featured an impressive list of esteemed speakers and involves a collaboration between Pembroke, King’s College London, the University of Edinburgh, as well as the Commission and ourselves. It honors the life of Senator J. William Fulbright, who spent four years (1924-28) studying at Pembroke College Oxford. Despite our dismay at Fulbright’s voting record on Civil Rights legislation in the Senate, we feel it is important to continue supporting his incomparable legacy as an internationalist.
In closing, we thank the US-UK Fulbright Commission for organizing this superlative event and congratulate Pembroke on its 400th anniversary!
