Illuminating the Arts-Policy Nexus 

THE UNITED NATIONS AT AGE 60: CAN IT SURVIVE?

A Panel Discussion with

EDWARD LUCK is Columbia University Professor of Practice in International and Public Affairs and Director of the Center on International Organization at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia. He is past president and CEO of the United Nations Association of the USA from 1984-1994. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, Mixed Messages: American Politics and International Organization 1919-1999.

and

JAMES TRAUB is a contributing writer for the New York Times Sunday Magazine and author of an upcoming biography of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. His past books include, among others, The Devil's Playground about Times Square, and City On A Hill about the City University of New York. He is a former staff writer for The New Yorker Magazine.

Moderated by

STEPHEN SCHLESINGER, Director, World Policy Institute and author of Act of Creation, about the 1945 San Francisco Conference that founded the United Nations

The United Nations today, celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, is an organization currently under siege. The Republican president and his leading colleagues in Congress are directing a steady torrent of fire against U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan over an array of problems -- the so-called oil-for-food imbroglio, a recent sexual harassment scandal involving the High Commissioner for Refugees, the abuse of minors by U.N. troops in the Congo and, most of all, the Security Council's refusal in 2003 to endorse America's invasion of Iraq. Recently President Bush nominated John Bolton, an angry neoconservative critic of the United Nations, as the new U.S. envoy to the body, suggesting that Bush wants to punish the organization for its actions. What is the UN's future? Can the organization reform itself? Will it survive these current travails? These and related questions will be the subject of the panel's discussion.

Thursday, April 28, 2005, 6:00-7:30PM . Swayduck Auditorium, First Floor, 65 Fifth Ave (between East 13th-14th).