Join us for an engaging conversation with Daunis Auers on:

Don't Panic, Don't Panic! The Baltic States in the New World Order

Russia's annexation of Crimea in early 2014 kick-started a process of reassessing security threats to the Baltic region and profound political and social change in the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 further raised the temperature and saw sharp rises in defense spending, a restructuring of the party system and new nationalizing domestic policies aimed at increasing social cohesion and tackling intelligence and misinformation threats from the East.

However, the first few months of the new presidential administration in the U.S.A. have, arguably, accelerated even greater change in the three Baltic states as they are forced to rapidly adjust to a new world order. 

This talk will reflect on how swiftly shifting US-European relations have led the Baltic states to reconsider their security arrangements, realign diplomatic partnerships and refocus core domestic policies.

Daunis Auers is Professor of European Studies and Jean Monnet Chair at the University of Latvia, Director of the Latvia’s Strategy and Economic Research (LaSER) think tank and a member of the Latvian president’s National Competitiveness Council. His recent research interests are in the comparative politics, economics and regional integration of the Baltic and Nordic states and has recently worked on bureaucratic reform and efficiency. He is a member of the Latvian prime minister's working group on "Cutting Bureaucracy". Professor Auers defended his PhD at University College London and previously studied at the London School of Economics. He has been a Fulbright Scholar at the University of California-Berkeley (2005-2006), University of Washington in Seattle (2023-2024) and a Baltic-American Freedom Foundation Scholar at Wayne State University in Detroit (2014).

Free and open to the public. Registration is requested.

This event is part of Global Conversations, a series of talks, lectures, and seminars hosted by Stanford University Libraries and Vabamu with the goal of educating scholars, students, leaders, and the public on the benefits of but also challenges related to sustaining freedom.