Schedule

Friday, November 13, 2026

3:00 p.m. Registration

Beckham Hall

4:30 – 5:00 p.m. Coffee and Networking

Zelnick Pavilion

5:00 – 5:15 p.m. Welcome Remarks by Basak Kus

Memorial Chapel

5:15 – 6:00 p.m. Opening Keynote Address by Dani Rodrik

Memorial Chapel

6:00 – 6:30 p.m. Reception

Zelnick Pavilion

6:30 p.m. Dinner

Beckham Hall

Saturday, November 14, 2026

8:00 a.m. Registration

Beckham Hall

8:30 – 9:00 a.m. Coffee and Light Breakfast

Beckham Hall

9:00 – 10:00 a.m. Seminar 1: Energy Transitions and the Return of Industrial Policy

Moderator: Thea Riofrancos

Panelists: Isabel Estevez, Thea Riofrancos, and Tim Sahay

While carbon pricing once dominated policy debates, governments are increasingly pursuing decarbonization through direct investment, subsidies, public finance, and long-term planning aimed at transforming energy systems and building domestic manufacturing capacity. The panel will examine how this shift is unfolding across regions and reshaping relations between the Global North and the Global South. It will consider both the promises of green industrial policy, including the possibility of pursuing decarbonization and economic growth together, as well as greater strategic autonomy, and its potential pitfalls, including fiscal constraints, geopolitical tensions, and uneven payoffs. The discussion will also explore how the role of the state is being redefined, how industrial policy can be designed more equitably, and how labor and other stakeholders can be brought to the table more effectively in pursuit of an equitable and effective green transition.

Frank Center for Public Affairs, Room 100

10:00 – 11:00 a.m. Seminar 2: China and the Reordering of the Global Political-Economic Order

Moderator: Basak Kus

Panelists: Kevin Gallagher, Angela Zhang, and Kevin Zongzhe Li

This panel examines China’s role in reshaping the global political-economic order and the evolving responses of the United States and the European Union. It situates China not as an outlier, but as a system-defining actor whose policy choices are forcing realignments across trade, climate governance, and geopolitical strategy.

Frank Center for Public Affairs, Room 100

11:00 – 11:15 a.m. Coffee Break

Frank Center for Public Affairs, Forum

11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. Seminar 3: Middle Powers and the Global South in the New Global Order

Moderator: Benjamin Bradlow

Panelists: Benjamin Bradlow, Navroz Dubash, and Kevin Zongzhe Li

This panel examines how middle powers and countries in the Global South are navigating an increasingly fragmented and volatile global political-economic order. Energy transitions, supply-chain realignments, and great-power competition are reshaping development prospects, often under conditions of severe fiscal constraint, debt dependency, and limited policy space. At the same time, states with greater regional influence, economic capacity, or strategic importance may be able to exercise a degree of leverage, build new coalitions, and pursue greater autonomy within these constraints. New opportunities for industrialization and strategic maneuver have therefore emerged, but they coexist with renewed forms of dependency mediated through finance, trade, technology, and access to critical resources. The panel asks how countries across the Global South, including influential middle powers, are navigating this terrain—pursuing development and climate goals, absorbing external shocks, and working to reclaim economic sovereignty in a world structured by unequal power relations.

Frank Center for Public Affairs, Room 100

12:15 – 1:30 p.m. Lunch

Beckham Hall

1:30 – 2:30 p.m. Seminar 4: Decoupling from the Dollar

Moderator: Benjamin Braun

Panelists: Benjamin Braun, Herman Mark Schwartz, and Aditi Sahasrabuddhe

The dollar’s centrality has long rested not only on economic scale but on institutional trust, liquidity, and the geopolitical reach of the United States. While it endures, it is increasingly contested—not by a coherent alternative, but through a set of partial and uneven efforts by states, driven as much by vulnerability to financial coercion as by aspirations for monetary autonomy.

Frank Center for Public Affairs, Room 100

2:30 – 3:30 p.m. Seminar 5: The Political Economy of AI and Digitalization

Moderator: David Gray Widder

Panelists: Holly Jean Buck, Juliet Schor, Sebastian Zimmeck, and Angela Zhang

The diffusion of AI into production, services, and knowledge work is unsettling long-standing assumptions about what jobs exist, who performs them, and where they are located. At the same time, AI and the infrastructures that sustain it—data centers, chips, and energy grids—have moved to the center of the new global economic order. This panel asks how these transformations are reshaping the global economic order, labor markets, industrial policy, and competition among states; who bears their environmental and social costs; and, as the gains and burdens of digital transition fall unevenly, what role public institutions can play in ensuring that the digital economy serves broader social ends.

Frank Center for Public Affairs, Room 100

3:30 – 4:00 p.m. Coffee

Frank Center for Public Affairs, Forum

4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Seminar 6: The Global Economy—Business, Political, and Media Perspectives

Moderator: Gunnar Trumbull

Panelists: David Lynch, Gunnar Trumbull, and David Lipton

The closing panel of the 2026 Shasha Seminar asks how the defining issues of the new global economic order register in business boardrooms, political chambers, and media narratives.

Frank Center for Public Affairs, Room 100

5:00 – 5:10 p.m. Closing Remarks by Lindsay Dolan

Frank Center for Public Affairs, Room 100