Each year, governments and the private sector invest trillions of dollars in infrastructure that may not withstand future risks from climate change (Oxford Economics 2017). Most of the world’s new infrastructure will be built in developing countries, which face the dual challenges of disaster response and urbanization (Oxford Economics 2017), but responding to natural disasters is also a major challenge in developed countries. 

Growing up as the son of a Polish immigrant, former New Mexico Education Secretary Christopher Ruszkowski heard regularly from his father that “reading is the key to all knowledge.” According to his dad, reading is the “path to choice, options, conversation, expression and opportunities of all stripes.” Who could argue with him? In his opinion, literacy created life’s possibilities for his children, one of whom became a social studies teacher and went on to lead one of the most diverse school systems in the nation.

No event in its modern history haunts the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as deeply as the protest movement that swept the country during the spring of 1989. Around the world, millions witnessed a tragedy unfold that is now indelibly linked to the square that was its focal point, establishing Tiananmen as a metonym for a government’s punitive war against a remonstrating citizenry. Not long after crushing the protests as a “counterrevolutionary rebellion,” the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) imposed a cone of silence around the entire affair so complete that even to mention it is to touch the third rail of Chinese politics.

On March 28, 2019, Michael McFaul testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The hearing, "Putin’s Playbook: The Kremlin’s Use of Oligarchs, Money and Intelligence in 2016 and Beyond” included testimony by Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia and Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University.