The overarching question imparting urgency to this exploration is: Can U.S.-Russian contention in cyberspace cause the two nuclear superpowers to stumble into war? In considering this question we were constantly reminded of recent comments by a prominent U.S. arms control expert: At least as dangerous as the risk of an actual cyberattack, he observed, is cyber operations’ “blurring of the line between peace and war.” Or, as Nye wrote, “in the cyber realm, the difference between a weapon and a non-weapon may come down to a single line of code, or simply the intent of a computer program’s user.”
A panel discussion featuring:
Hafez Ghanem, Vice President of the World Bank for the Middle East and North Africa.
Melani Cammett, Professor of Government, Harvard University and MEI Faculty Affiliate.
Chaired by Hedi Larbi, MEI Visiting Scholar, Fall 2015.
Final session of the fall 2015 study group led by MEI Visiting Scholar Hedi Larbi, Rewriting the Arab Social Contract: Toward Inclusive Development and Politics in the Arab World.
RSVP is required for this session. Click here to RSVP. Please note that an RSVP does not guarantee a seat at the session.
Melani Cammett is Professor of Government at Harvard University. She specializes in the political economy of development and the Middle East and North Africa and is the author of four books: A Political Economy of the Middle East (with Ishac Diwan, Alan Richards, and John Waterbury, 2015); Compassionate Communalism: Welfare and Sectarianism in Lebanon (2014), which won the 2015 APSA Giovanni Sartori Book Award and the Honorable Mention of the 2015 APSA Gregory Luebbert Book Award; The Politics of Nonstate Welfare (coedited with Lauren Morris MacLean, 2014); and Globalization and Business Politics in North Africa: A Comparative Perspective (2007, 2010). She has received fellowships and awards from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Qualitative and Multi-Methods Research Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA), the Comparative Politics Section of the APSA, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, the Social Science Research Council, and other organizations, has published numerous articles in scholarly and policy journals, and consults for development policy organizations. Her current research focuses on the politics of welfare and development and she has a variety of ongoing projects on governance and the delivery of social services by public, private and nonstate actors in the Middle East and North Africa.
Hafez Ghanem, an Egyptian and French national, is the Vice President of the World Bank for the Middle East and North Africa since March 2, 2015. He is a development expert with more than thirty years of experience in policy analysis, project formulation and supervision, and management of multinational institutions. Dr. Ghanem leads the World Bank’s engagement with 20 Middle East and North African countries through a portfolio of ongoing projects, technical assistance and grants worth more than US$13 billion. Eradicating extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity through the creation of opportunities are core to his vision for the Middle East and North Africa Region.
Prior to his appointment as Vice President, Dr. Ghanem was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in the Global Economy and Development program leading the Arab economies project, focused on the impact of political transition on Arab economic development.
Between 2007 and 2012, he served as the Assistant Director-General at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
He has many publications in professional journals and was a member of the core team that produced the World Bank’s 1995 World Development Report.
He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Economics from the American University in Cairo and a PhD in Economics from the University of California, Davis. He is fluent in Arabic, English and French.