Wednesday, March 16, 2022
ClassACT HR73 hosted an in depth conversation about the Russian war against Ukraine. Noted historian and former Washington Bureau Chief for Newsweek Evan Thomas '73 led a discussion with Nobel Prize winning economist Roger Myerson '73 and international security expert and retired Marine Colonel Mark Cancian '73.
Drawing on their knowledge of Ukraine’s past tragedies and its immediate crisis, these panelists analyzed the current state of the war from military, political and economic perspectives. Questions they considered included: what were Vladimir Putin and his Russian Army’s objectives when they invaded this sovereign democratic nation? Why has the Russian Army performed so badly in the early stages of this war? Will Ukraine’s army and its citizens continue to resist despite the gap in air power and other resources? What are the prospects for peace and the dangers of a protracted war? What will the economic consequences of this war and unprecedented Western sanctions be for Russia, Europe, the United States and the rest of the world? The plight of the millions of Ukrainian refugees who have fled the bombing of their homes, schools and hospitals lies at the heart of concerns about the war’s impact, a humanitarian crisis the panelist are certain to address.
We have created 19 videos from this conversation—one of the whole event, and 18 others, divided by question. They are all available by clicking on the playlist in the YouTube video screen below. The playlist is very hard to see! You will find it along the top of the screen just to the right of the title of the forum. It looks like this ≡.
Click on the ≡ button. That will open a drop down menu. You can then scroll down the menu and choose individual videos to play.
RESOURCES FROM ZOOM FORUM CHAT
OUR MODERATOR AND PANELISTS
MODERATOR EVAN THOMAS '73
Evan Thomas is the author of ten books: The Wise Men (with Walter Isaacson), The Man to See, The Very Best Men, Robert Kennedy, John Paul Jones, Sea of Thunder, The War Lovers, Ike’s Bluff, Being Nixon and First: Sandra Day O’Connor. John Paul Jones, Sea of Thunder, Being Nixon and First were New York Times bestsellers. Thomas was a writer, editor, and correspondent for 33 years at Time and Newsweek magazines, including ten years (1986-96) as Washington bureau chief at Newsweek, retiring in 2010 as editor-at-large. He has appeared on many TV shows, including Meet the Press, CBS Morning News, Morning Joe and the Colbert Report. Thomas has taught writing and journalism at Harvard and Princeton, where, from 2007-2014, he was Ferris Professor of Journalism.
ROGER MYERSON '73
Roger Myerson is the David L. Pearson Distinguished Service Professor of Global Conflict Studies at The Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts in the Harris School of Public Policy, the Griffin Department of Economics, and the College . Formerly the Glen A. Lloyd Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, Myerson has made seminal contributions to the fields of economics and political science. In game theory, he introduced refinements of Nash's equilibrium concept, and he developed techniques to characterize the effects of communication when individuals have different information. His analysis of incentive constraints in economic communication introduced some of the fundamental ideas in mechanism design theory, including the revelation principle and the revenue-equivalence theorem in auctions and bargaining. Myerson has also applied game-theoretic tools to political science, analyzing how political incentives can be affected by different electoral systems and constitutional structures.
Myerson is the author of Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict (1991) and Probability Models for Economic Decisions (2005). He also has published numerous articles in Econometrica, the Journal of Economic Theory, Games and Decisions, and the International Journal of Game Theory, for which he served as an editorial board member for 10 years.
Professor Myerson has a PhD from Harvard University and taught for 25 years in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University before coming to the University of Chicago in 2001. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the National Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in recognition of his contributions to mechanism design theory.
MARK CANCIAN'73
Mark Cancian (Colonel, USMCR, ret.) is a senior adviser with the CSIS International Security Program. He joined CSIS in April 2015 from the Office of Management and Budget, where he spent more than seven years as chief of the Force Structure and Investment Division, working on issues such as Department of Defense budget strategy, war funding, and procurement programs, as well as nuclear weapons development and nonproliferation activities in the Department of Energy. Previously, he worked on force structure and acquisition issues in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and ran research and executive programs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. In the military, Colonel Cancian spent over three decades in the U.S. Marine Corps, active and reserve, serving as an infantry, artillery, and civil affairs officer and on overseas tours in Vietnam, Desert Storm, and Iraq (twice). Since 2000, he has been an adjunct faculty member at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he teaches a course on the connection between policy and analysis. A prolific author, he has published over 40 articles on military operations, acquisition, budgets, and strategy and received numerous writing awards. He graduated with high honors (magna cum laude) from Harvard College and with highest honors (Baker scholar) from Harvard Business School.