Open to non-members: please register to receive Zoom details prior to briefing.
As a part of our Democracy Turnaround series, join us for this critical briefing on authoritarianism and power during a pandemic from Garry Kasparov, grand chessmaster, and Uriel Epshtein, of the Renew Democracy Initiative.
Event Description: Authoritarianism both utilizes and contributes to existing crises such as the Coronavirus pandemic. Populist authoritarians generally identify a real problem afflicting our society that existing elites/parties are failing to address. Their proposed cure may well be worse than the disease but because they are the only ones perceived to be prioritizing these issues by the general public, they are able to build a base of support. This talk will both explore historical trends that led us to where we are, and most importantly, put our current moment in global context and talk about how we can combat these trends. As liberal democracies, we need to both address the underlying problems (stagnation in rural parts of the country, a perception that globalism isn’t working, etc), while also speaking out in defense of democratic norms.
Video here.
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Garry Kasparov, Chairman
Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, in the Soviet Union in 1963, Garry Kasparov became the under-18 chess champion of the USSR at the age of 12 and the world under-20 champion at 17. He came to international fame at the age of 22 as the youngest world chess champion in history in 1985. His famous matches against the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in 1996-97 were key to bringing artificial intelligence, and chess, into the mainstream.
Uriel Epshtein, Executive Director
Prior to joining RDI as its Executive Director, Uriel worked in the private sector - first as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group and then in strategy at start-ups in the mobility space including DoorDash and Uber. As a student at Yale University, he founded and to this day, continues to chair the Peace & Dialogue Leadership Initiative (PDLI), an organization dedicated to bridging the civil-military divide and creating a space on campuses for nuanced discussion of the US role in the Middle East.