Wednesday, March 8, 2023Dear Alumni,
You are cordially invited for dinner to welcome a delegation of 16 students and 2 staff/faculty from Perry World House, Penn’s center for global policy engagement.
They will be visiting Geneva as part of the Perry World House Global Policy Perspectives Program and will spend one week meeting various multilateral and non-governmental organizations and gaining non-U.S. perspective on key policy challenges, potentially meeting with representatives from the United Nations system and related organizations.
Students are eager to connect with alumni to learn about your post-Penn lives, careers, and living in Switzerland. Please join us for this opportunity to help inspire the next generation of policy leaders.
Your presence is all that is required to make this event a success. Looking forward to seeing many of you on March 8.
More information on the 2023 Perry World House Student Fellows Global Policy Perspective Program Geneva Spring Break Trip (March 4-11, 2023)
Founded in 2016, Perry World House is a center at the University of Pennsylvania where students engage with eminent international scholars and policymakers on global issues. Notable visitors, scholars, and world leaders of Perry World House in recent years have included former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice, former Human Rights Watch Director Ken Roth, UNFCCC Environmental Scientist Koko Warner, former Prime Minister of Sweden Carl Bildt, former President of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and former Prime Minister of South Korea Chung Sye-kyun. As a hub for international exchange and activity, the Perry World House provides facilities to support innovative research and enhance the flow of ideas between the university community and global thought-leaders through its two research themes on “Global Shifts” and “Global Order.”
Each year, 25-30 Student Fellows are competitively selected from Penn’s four undergraduate schools (The College of Arts & Sciences, Engineering, Nursing and Wharton). The students’ range of talents and interests lends a natural diversity to the group, yet they have two important things in common: their keen interest in global affairs, and their commitment to collectively addressing a pressing policy challenge for a full academic year. A focal point of the program is a year-long policy project, which allows students to work in smaller teams to develop a policy-relevant research project on a particular global issue. This year’s policy projects are looking at:
- Future of Energy Supply and Natural Resource Extraction, which looks at the current energy crisis caused by surging energy prices because of the Russia-Ukraine war.
- Ethiopia-Tigray War, which examines the conflict between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
- Cyberwarfare and Disinformation, which is looking into the world’s first full scale cyberwar that emerged during the Russia-Ukraine war.
- Racial Bias in Asylum-Seeking Process will investigate the various biases in the asylum-seeking process to uncover why some refugees are admitted and others denied on the underlying grounds of their race, ethnicity, or national identity.
- Global Education Deficits Post COVID-19 will investigate three countries Japan, Somalia, and America to compare policies regarding school shutdowns as well as technology access.
- Asia Pacific Economic Diplomatic Cooperation will look into the impact of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue on managing competition in East Asia.
An important element of the Fellowship is field learning—each year, the fellows travel to Washington, D.C. and New York to meet with key policymakers and other leaders in the global policy arena. This year Perry World House is launching a Geneva field trip to engage with a wider range of multilateral and non-governmental institutions and introduce a non-U.S. perspective on key policy challenges. While in Geneva, fellows will meet with experts from various international organizations, including potentially from the United Nations; World Health Organization; World Trade Organization; the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria; the International Labor Organization; the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; etc.
