Monica Duffy Toft, Academic Dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University, talks about her new book Civil Wars: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press).Toft’s book examines the factors that affect the onset, fighting, and termination of civil wars from a historical perspective.

Digital Planet Chair Bhaskar Chakravorti and scholar-entrepreneur-Fletcher alum Olaf Groth discuss Groth's latest book "The Great Remobilization: Strategies and Designs for a Smarter Global Future."How the turmoil of recent years gives leaders an unprecedented opportunity to redesign global strategies and systems and to remobilize toward a smarter, more resilient, and equitable future.How can leaders faced with tremendous global upheaval create more resilient and trustworthy systems? In The Great Remobilization, Olaf Groth, Mark Esposito, and Terence Tse (along with research partner Dan Zehr) diagnose tectonic shifts in the global economy with an eye toward designing a smarter “operating system” for the world. Through their FLP-IT (forces, logic, phenomena, impact, and triage) framework for strategic leadership, the authors chart a path forward, providing guidance for a new breed of “design activist leader.” Focusing on key tectonic shifts they call the Five Cs—COVID and pandemic management, the cognitive economy and crypto, cybersecurity, climate change and carbon management, and China—they examine the implications that new forces and logics will have on countries, organizations, and individuals.Drawing from one hundred interviews and conversations with top-level executives, entrepreneurs, policymakers, diplomats, generals, scholars, and other leading experts from around the world, the authors show how to create new inclusive visions with the aim of rebuilding the trust that will allow for both human and economic growth. Insightful and forward-thinking, The Great Remobilization powerfully illustrates the rare opportunity that we have in this historic moment to actively redesign our fragile, overpressurized global systems and develop new strategies and leadership approaches for the future. Authored by three scholar-practitioners, their synthetic perspectives and insights are at once rooted in deep research and focused on relevance for leaders and their organizations.

Abiodun William spent years working with Kofi Annan, the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations. His new book Kofi Annan and Global Leadership at the United Nations (Oxford University Press) explores Annan’s legacy, examining Annan’s decisions during a turbulent period in world affairs and offering lessons for contemporary policymakers.Williams is a double alumnus of Fletcher, earning both a MALD and PhD from the school. Today, he teaches at Fletcher and Tisch College as a Professor of the Practice of International Politics.

By studying the causes and patterns of political violence, students can learn to build a more peaceful world, says Academic Dean Monica Duffy Toft.

Professors Abigail Linnington and Dick Shultz describe how the international security field of study asks difficult questions about war and peace to prepare students for today’s security landscape.