Alexander Dallin Lecture in Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies presents:
Thomas W. Simons, Jr., Visiting Scholar, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Lecturer in Government, Harvard University, and Consulting Professor in 20th-Century International History, Stanford University
Ambassador Simons will seek to honor the broad scholarship of his friend Alexander Dallin by situating a discussion of emerging states within a vision of Eurasia as a world region equally shaped and driven by its own internal dynamic(s). Simons will argue that across the region shared experience and shared features are just as weighty as differences: civil societies are weak, markets are distorted or incomplete, politics features struggle among elites over resources and tends toward semi-authoritarian rule even where democratic forms take hold. Yet there is cause for hope.