In a recent video with journalist Johnny Harris, Professor Jeffrey Winters addressed the paradox of how inequality widens under democracy, arguing that oligarchy isn't a failure of democracy, but a feature embedded within its very design. Watch the video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S25...

"Can Candan is an outspoken critic of the restrictions on academic freedom, democratic rights, and human rights violations in Turkey, both as an academic and through his documentary films," a recent article in Khrono, a Norwegian newspaper for higher education and research, states.

Do refugees see AI as a threat or an opportunity? Michelle Lee, a Northwestern University Sociology PhD candidate whose research is supported by an International Dissertation Research Award from @buffett.northwestern.edu, shares insights. Read: blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities...

Join the Havey Institute for Global Health's Center for Global Neurology for World Brain Day on July 22! 🧠 🗓️Wed, July 22 ⏰12:00-1:30pm 📍Simpson-Querrey Auditorium, 303 E. Superior St, Chicago Details and registration: spr.ly/63328BDWf7e

Congratulations to Gayle Woloschak, Buffett faculty affiliate & @feinberg.northwestern.edu professor, for her appointment to Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF)'s Scientific Advisory Committee! RERF studies radiation health effects in the atomic bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"Progress here is rarely a single victory. It is the steady refusal to let cooperation break," reflected Northwestern University PhD student Bambang Trihadmojo after attending SB64, the 64th sessions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) subsidiary bodies.

How does it feel to be a global citizen in a language that isn't English? Buffett Faculty Fellow Daniel Majchrowicz, Associate Professor of South Asian Literature & Culture at @weinbergcollege.bsky.social, studies Hindi as a global language.

📣Call for poster abstracts! Stellenbosch University (South Africa) and Northwestern University invite you to participate in the SU/NU Global Health Knowledge Hub Conference, taking place in Chicago September 28–30, 2026. Details and submit by June 15: spr.ly/63325B8tcMb

Our new cohort of Buffett Faculty Fellows is embarking on projects spanning Colombia, France, Jeju, Okinawa, Hawaiʻi, & beyond, researching issues ranging from the hidden costs of civil war to the sacred grounds of Pacific islands, & from the logic of kidnapping to the philosophy of the unthinkable.

How do digital media technologies reshape the ways we experience the world? Explore this question & more at the Transnational Technocultures Research Group's Physics of Technocultural Location workshop. 🗓️Tuesday, June 9 at 11:00 a.m. CDT

Drawing on data from 121 countries, a new study in Nature Food shows how food insecurity, water insecurity, and food safety challenges often go hand in hand in both low-income & high-income countries. Co-authored by @ipratnu.bsky.social's @profserayoung.bsky.social. 📖: www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Thank you to the incredible writer Melissa Gronlund at the Art Newspaper for featuring my work in #Yemen chronicling heroic Yemeni women saving heritage during the war in my work-in-progress #documentary “The Future is Written in Stone”. www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/06/01/y...

Academic freedom isn't only about faculty research and teaching. In a new practitioner brief, our Senior Director Samantha Nissen, PhD, explores how international higher ed staff can help create conditions for global collaboration and student/faculty mobility. 📖: scholarship.shu.edu/cisr/vol6/is...

Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, thousands of Ukrainian children have been separated from their families. New research, supported by @buffett.northwestern.edu's Global Fam DNA Global Working Group, shows that this crisis is not unique to Ukraine.

Join us for a workshop discussing how AI threatens global security in an era defined by chemical, biological, and nuclear risks. 🗓️ May 21 from 9:30–11:15 a.m.   📍 Chambers Hall & online 👥 Attend in person: www.eventbrite.com/e/understand...    💻 Attend online: northwestern.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Kelli Morgan McHugh, Associate Professor at Northwestern University's School of Communication, found little to no literature on musical theatre vocal training for gender expansive performers while searching for resources for her trans and nonbinary students.

Join us for a workshop discussing how AI threatens global security in an era defined by chemical, biological, and nuclear risks. 🗓️ May 21 from 9:30–11:15 a.m.   📍 Chambers Hall & online 👥 Attend in person: www.eventbrite.com/e/understand...    💻 Attend online: northwestern.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

“America’s allies can no longer count on us being the hub of that international order,” Obama tells Northwestern @medillschool.bsky.social professor and Buffett Faculty Advisory Council member Peter Slevin in his new New Yorker piece on Obama in the age of Trump: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Join us for a discussion on threats to journalism at home & abroad with Thomas O. Melia. 📅 May 11 at 12:30 PM  📍720 University Pl. & online 👥 Attend in-person: www.eventbrite.com/e/buffett-co... 💻 Attend online: northwestern.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

@polisciatnu.bsky.social Professor @izading.bsky.social returned from leading the Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs' student delegation to #COP30 this past fall questioning the concept of "soft power" resurfacing in public conversation... 1/2 🧵

The Buffett Institute successfully hosted their 2026 spring symposium, Brave New Futures. The event brought together international thinkers from a wide range of disciplines to explore how we might build a better future in uncertain times. Read more: spr.ly/63329BBP3AF

How effective are gender experts in advocating for women in peace negotiations? Elizabeth Good, a CISAC Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University and a former Buffett Dissertation Fellow, will address this question in her upcoming talk on May 5. To register, visit: spr.ly/63324BBP3gC

Join the China-America Reel Ecology Project (CARE) for the inaugural screening of seven short films, co-directed by Northwestern and Tongji University students, exploring China’s diverse ecologies across time and memory! 📅 April 30 from 5 PM - 9.30 PM 📍 The Block Cinema at the Block Museum of Art

In recognition of this year’s World Intellectual Property Day, we highlight the Fake Online Repository Generation Engine (FORGE), a project developed by the Northwestern Security & AI Lab and led by V.S. Subrahmanian, a Buffett Faculty Fellow and Walter P. Murphy Professor of Computer Science.

Discover Fulbright opportunities and make new connections at Northwestern’s Fulbright Week 2026! From April 20–24, 2026, @buffett.northwestern.edu will host a series of events about Fulbright grants and programs. View the full schedule here: spr.ly/63323BB1Pyd

Sera Young (@profserayoung.bsky.social), Professor of Anthropology and Global Health Studies at Northwestern who co-leads the @buffett.northwestern.edu's Making Water Insecurity Visible Global Working Group, was awarded the 2026 Guggenheim Fellowship in Geography and Environmental Studies.

The Block Museum, co-sponsored by @buffett.northwestern.edu's Shifting Shorelines Global Working Group, will be screening Franco Zeffirelli's documentary FLORENCE: DAYS OF DESTRUCTION (1966) on the deadly 1966 flood in Florence. 📅 April 24 at 7 PM 📍 The Block Museum of Art

What can the shorelines of Lake Michigan reveal about Chicago's history? Join @buffett.northwestern.edu's Shifting Shorelines Global Working Group for a discussion of Michael McColly's book Walking Chicago's Coast. 📅 April 24, 3:00-4:30 PM 📍Hagstrum Room, University Hall

How is AI making its way into courtrooms? Professor V.S. Subrahmanian, a @buffett.northwestern.edu Faculty Fellow, co-authored a study revealing that more than 60% of surveyed judges have used AI in their judicial work. Read more: spr.ly/63321B6AX5V

A game studio founder reimagining our understanding of fundamental truths through play. A research scientist rethinking the human-machine experience. An Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker, and a renowned climate activist. Meet these visionary international thinkers & more at our spring symposium.

The full study, including additional findings and judges’ comments, is available on the Sedona Conference website: www.thesedonaconference.org/publication/...

5. One in three judges permit AI use in chambers · 25.9% of judges permit & 7.4% of judges permit and encourage AI use in their chambers. · Approximately 20% of judges formally prohibit AI use, 17.6% discourage but do not formally prohibit AI use & 24.1% of judges have no official policy on AI use.

4. AI training has not been offered to most judges · 45.5% of judges said that AI training had not been provided by court administration, and 15.7% said that they were not sure. Three out of four judges offered AI training attended the training.

3. Legal research dominates use cases · Legal research is the most common AI use case, reported by 30% of judges. · Reviewing documents is the second most common AI use case, reported by 15.5% of judges.

· 38.4% of judges have never used any of the AI tools listed on the survey in their work. 2. Preference for legal-specific AI tools · Judges are more likely to use "AI for Law" tools (AI tools specifically designed for legal use cases) than general-purpose AI platforms.

1. AI adoption is broad but infrequent · More than 60% of responding judges reported using at least one AI tool in their judicial work. · 22.4% of judges reported using AI tools in their work on a weekly or daily basis.

In “Artificial Intelligence in Federal Courts: A Random-Sample Survey of Judges,” our team conducted a stratified random sample survey of U.S. bankruptcy, magistrate, district court, and court of appeals judges. Of the 502 judges that we surveyed via email, 112 responded (22.3% response rate).

New Research: A significant number of U.S. federal judges are already using #AI tools in their work.

A new study by Buffett Faculty Fellow VS Subrahmanian and Northwestern University Law's Daniel W. Linna surveyed a random sample of federal judges on their AI use and found the majority are using at least one AI tool in their judicial work. Read key insights: news.northwestern.edu/stories/2026...

We are all too familiar with the crises of our time: global warming, uncontrolled technological change, disrupted labor markets, eroding social norms, and new geopolitical conflicts, for starters. But what comes next? And how might we innovate for a better future?

The New Yorker's cover story this week by Daniel Immerwahr argues that Trump's foreign policy represents an acute shift away from decades of US ambition for international order, empire, & hegemony—& many of the constraints that previously limited US military action: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

In December 2019, dozens of Ghanaian-American returnees received citizenship in Accra’s Jubilee House—a spectacle emblematic of pan-African tech optimism. Our video of the week explores the contradictions of Africa's digital future. Ft. Reginold Royston at @buffett.northwestern.edu buff.ly/qLN9NJE

The styles of NYC and LA hip-hop will meet centuries-old storytelling traditions from Damascus at Neo-Hakawati Nights on Thursday, April 9 at 7:30 PM in the Louis Theater. Rapper and poet Omar Offendum will join multi-instrumentalist Zafer Tawil. RSVP required: www.eventbrite.com/e/neo-hakawa...

@fox32chicago.bsky.social interviewed our Making Water Insecurity Visible group leads @profserayoung.bsky.social & Julius Lucks about their research piloting at-home water quality sensors as easy to use as at-home COVID tests to check for toxins in drinking water. 🎥: www.youtube.com/live/tc2J7cQ...

@thedailynu.bsky.social highlighted Buffett Visiting Scholar Georgia Rose, psychology professor at the University of the West Indies, for her powerful talk at @buffett.northwestern.edu on how Jamaicans coped with the traumatic aftermath of Hurricane Melissa. 📖: dailynorthwestern.com/2026/01/07/c...

We capped our yearlong international diplomacy series with a 4-hour peace conference simulation designed by @polisciatnu.bsky.social's Prof. @danigilbert.bsky.social, challenging undergrads to negotiate a fictional peace deal under real-world pressures. 🧵

Congrats to NU undergrads Shraeya Iyer, Jeffrey Tu, & Isabel Su presenting at NetSciX (Feb 17–20), supported by @buffett.northwestern.edu scholarship! Talk: A Multiplex Lens on Influencer Performance, Group Synergy, and Network Centralization Co-Authors: Megan Chan & @noshir.bsky.social

“We normally perceive development as a technology-based route,” says Sarah—but real development is rooted in context, culture & history. That’s the vision behind @buffett.northwestern.edu's Elliott Scholars Program, blending theory + global internships. More: buffett.northwestern.edu/news/2025/re...

What does the US military operation in Venezuela mean for US–Latin American relations & international law? Faculty experts shared insights at the Buffett Inst.: buffett.northwestern.edu/news/2026/the-aftermath-of-operation-absolute-resolve-northwestern-faculty-discuss-us-latin-america-relations.html

How can lessons from past peace agreements shape today's? The last panel of our symposium on negotiating peace featured lawyer Barney Afako, former Ukrainian minister Pavlo Klimkin, OSCE's Kate Fearon, & @fbafolke.bsky.social's Pontus Ohrstedt on the successful implementation of peace agreements.