The Jackson Institute for Global Affairs will host an online discussion with French philosopher, filmmaker and activist Bernard-Henri Lévy about his new book, “The Virus in the Age of Madness.”
Sec. John Kerry, distinguished fellow for global affairs at Yale, and Emma Sky, Jackson Senior Fellow and director of the Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program, will join the discussion. Panelists will reflect on the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, its historical significance, and the future of the liberal world order.
Lévy is the author of over 30 books, including The Empire and the Five Kings (2019), The Genius of Judaism (2017), American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville (2006), and with Michel Houellebecq, Public Enemies: Dueling Writers Take on Each Other and the World (2011). His films (Peshmerga, The Battle of Mosul, The Oath of Tobruk and Bosna!, his first-hand account of the martyrdom and resistance of the Muslims of Sarajevo) premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
Lévy’s 1977 book Barbarism with a Human Face launched an unprecedented controversy over the European left’s complicity with totalitarianism. He has undertaken diplomatic missions for the French government. Lévy was appointed by French President Jacques Chirac to head a fact-finding mission to Afghanistan in 2002 in the wake of the war against the Taliban and followed the trail of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan to research his book Who Killed Daniel Pearl? (2003). Lévy was instrumental in the intervention by President Nicolas Sarkozy in Libya to protect the civilian population against dictator Moammar Gaddafi and published a first-hand account of his role in this war (La Guerre sans l’aimer, 2012). An advocate for the Kurds, in 2015, Lévy brought Kurdish commanders, directly from the frontline, to meet with President François Hollande, and after the Turkish invasion of Rojava, in October 2019, met with General Mazloum Abdi Kobane in Syria. His reportages and commentaries are syndicated worldwide.
The discussion is open to the general public, but advance registration is required.