Democratic dissatisfaction is at levels not seen in decades, generating intense pressure for new policies and reformed institutions. And yet the current landscape — marked by geopolitical contestation, transactional diplomacy, deep interconnectedness, and strategic uncertainty — is increasingly constraining. The challenges facing ambitious, long-horizon, transformative projects are likely to deepen, not ease, in the coming years. In this talk, I examine the major geopolitical, technological, and domestic forces shaping today's environment and argue that what this moment most demands is not incremental adjustment but radical innovation. The catch: the innovation we are missing is not technological. It is social and political and should be designed, to borrow a phrase from former President Eisenhower, to “keep the peace, to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity, and integrity among peoples and among nations."
Avril D. Haines is the former U.S. director of national intelligence. As a member of President Joe Biden’s cabinet, she led the U.S intelligence community and served as the president’s principal intelligence adviser.
Haines has held senior roles across government, including principal deputy national security advisor, deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, legal adviser to the National Security Council, and deputy chief counsel to the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations. She has also worked in academia, having served as a senior research scholar at Columbia University and a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University. She is currently a visiting fellow at All Souls College at Oxford University.
Haines received her Bachelor of Arts in physics from the University of Chicago and a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center. She served as a law clerk for Judge Danny Boggs on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and founded and ran a bookstore café for five years while engaged in community service in Baltimore. In 2017, President Barack Obama appointed her to the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service. She has also served on several boards and advisory groups over the years.
A DRINKS RECEPTION WILL FOLLOW THIS LECTURE, ALL WELCOME.
