Europe is frightened and frightening for the first time really since the 1980s, when nuclear sabers were rattling as the Soviet Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) both deployed contending intermediate range missiles along the dividing line of the military alliances. With Russia’s continued barbarity in Ukraine there is no escaping that Vladimir Putin intends not to be “European”.

Join WorldBoston for a timely discussion of this topic with Dr. Kori Schake, leader of the foreign and defense policy team at the American Enterprise Institute.

This program will feature an expert presentation, live audience Q&A, and time for networking and discussion with other globally-oriented participants in the Newsfeed Café.

Kori Schake leads the foreign and defense policy team at the American Enterprise Institute. She is the author of Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony, and a contributing writer at The Atlantic, War on the Rocks, and Bloomberg.

Hear from those in closest contact to immigrants in Massachusetts. Their discussion sheds light on the real dangers faced by undocumented individuals and the impact of ICE raids on organizations providing services and care.

Katherine Grandjean is a historian of early America, specializing in colonial history, Native American history, and the history of communication. Her book, 'American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England' (2015), explores how information networks shaped power, violence, and relationships between colonists and Indigenous peoples. Through deep archival research, she reveals how control over communication influenced colonial expansion. A professor at Wellesley College, Grandjean’s work sheds new light on the intersections of media, migration, and conflict in early America, examining the complexities of colonial society and its lasting impact on American history.

Robert A. Gross is a renowned historian specializing in Revolutionary and 19th-century America. His Bancroft Prize-winning 'The Minutemen and Their World' (1976) examines Concord’s role in the American Revolution, blending social history with political change. His second book, 'The Transcendentalists and Their World'(2021), winner of the Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize at Massachusetts Historical Society, explores Concord’s shift into a hub of intellectual thought, focusing on figures like Emerson and Thoreau. Gross’s work masterfully connects local history with broader themes of community and change. A respected scholar, he has held positions at institutions including Amherst College, the College of William & Mary, and the University of Connecticut.

Preeminent scholars Serena Zabin, Carleton College, and Robert A. Gross, University of Connecticut Emeritus convene in Concord where 250 years ago, the "shot heard round the world" ignited the American Revolution. Joined in conversation by Katherine Grandjean, Wellesley College, the scholars discuss New England society's challenges and the epochal day of April 19, 1775, when an outbreak of fighting led to the formation of a republic.

1775: A Society on the Brink of War and Revolution is co-hosted by The Concord Museum, the David Center for the American Revolution at the American Philosophical Society, and the Massachusetts Historical Society.

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Prize-winning historian Matthew Lockwood looks at the impulse to explore, the travels of Pocahontas, Columbus, Sacagawea, and Captain Cook alongside others who rightfully deserve the title of “explorers” including immigrants and fugitive slaves.

According to Lockwood, people of every background imagine new worlds. The impulse to seek new places is universal to humanity. In his new book, “Explorers,” he unfurls a tapestry of surprising and historically overlooked travelers spanning forty centuries and six continents. His illustrated talk will share the stories of such seekers as David Dorr, born into slavery in New Orleans who embarked on a Grand Tour or Europe and Egypt, and the Viking female voyager Gudrid Far-Traveler, who sailed to North America in 1000 AD; among other pioneers.

MATTHEW LOCKWOOD is an associate professor of history at the University of Alabama. He earned his PhD from Yale University and is theauthor of “This Land of Promise: A History of Refugees and Exiles in Britain, To Begin the World Over Again,” ”The Conquest of Death,” and “To Begin the World Over Again: How the American Revolution Devastated the Globe,” which was a New York Times “Editor’s Choice” and a Financial Times “Top 10 Book of the Year.”

When Francis Cabot Lowell revolutionized industrial manufacturing, he could never have imagined that industrialization at scale would change everything about the way we work, live, and even eat. Join us for an eye-opening talk from NYU Professor Amy Bentley as she traces the development of the modern American diet as it became another sector of the mass manufacturing commercial economy. Food could be processed, packaged, and sold faster, more efficiently, and in huge quantities – but there were serious unintended consequences. Her case study – baby food.

By the 1950s, commercial baby food had become emblematic of all things modern in postwar America. Little jars of baby food were thought to resolve a multitude of problems in the domestic sphere, but these baby food products laden with sugar, salt, and starch also became a gateway to the industrialized diet that blossomed during this period.

Today, baby food continues to be shaped by medical, commercial, and parenting trends. Baby food producers now contend with health and nutrition problems as well as the rise of alternative food movements. All of this matters because it’s during infancy that palates become acclimated to tastes and textures, including those of highly processed, minimally nutritious, and calorie-dense industrial food products.

Under the leadership of Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch grew its staff to over 500 and was able to conduct investigations in 100 countries to uncover abuses and pressure offending governments to desist. Roth has grappled with the worst of humanity, taken on its biggest offenders and persuaded leaders from around the globe to stand up to their repressive counterparts.

Roth was the son of a Jewish butcher, who escaped Nazi Germany just before the war began. Roth grew up knowing full well how inhumane governments could be. His work took him all over the world to confront cruelty and injustice on its home turf. Roth arrived in Rwanda shortly after the Genocide; he scrutinized the impact of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait and investigated and condemned Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians. He directed efforts to curtail the Chinese government’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims, to bring Myanmar’s officials to justice after the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims, to halt Russian war crimes in Ukraine, even to reign in the U.S. government. Roth’s strategies included the deployment of an ancient but powerful tool – “shaming” – and illustrates its surprising effectiveness.

His book is a chronicle of the ongoing global battle to redress injustice and tilt the scales toward good.