Philosopher George Santayana wrote those words 100 years ago, between two massively destructive world wars. Unfortunately, they continue to ring true today amidst a growing global epidemic of political and civil conflict. That epidemic takes many different forms—wars between countries, civil wars, brutally violent conflicts among armed gangs, large-scale terrorism, government-sanctioned ethnic cleansing—but the terrible consequences for civilians are the same.  And, more and more people in more and more places are caught up in extreme violence.

What happened to the “peace dividend” after the end of the Cold War? Or the optimism of scholars like Steven Pinker and Yuval Noah Harari who expected mankind’s “better angels” to produce peace and prosperity? Did the Age of Aquarius already come and go?

Clionadh Raleigh believes it is important to understand and document the nature and extent of violent global civil conflict. She founded and leads ACLED, Armed Conflict Location and Events Data and is a professor of political violence and geography at the University of Sussex. Listen as she describes the world as it actually is.

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ABOUT OUR GUEST
Andrew Selee is the President of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and chairs MPI Europe’s Administrative Council. He’s an expert in global migration, with a focus on US, Latin American, and Caribbean immigration policies. Selee has authored books and contributes opinion pieces to various publications. He’s an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, with prior teaching roles at other universities. Selee co-directed the Regional Migration Study Group and served on the Board of Directors of the YMCA of the USA. Before MPI, he spent 17 years at the Woodrow Wilson Center, where he founded the Mexico Institute. Selee holds a PhD in policy studies, an MA in Latin American studies, and a BA, and was selected as an Andrew Carnegie Fellow.