UN Secretary General to Chair Global Colloquium of University Presidents at Yale

Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, will chair the fourth meeting of the Global Colloquium of University Presidents on January 14-15. The meeting will take place on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, USA.

The Global Colloquium is a network of international university presidents and vice-chancellors who are committed to addressing global public policy problems through research and teaching. Attending the meeting at Yale will be the Presidents of Fudan University and Tsinghua University in China, National University of Singapore, Jawaharlal Nehru University in India, University of Cape Town in South Africa, the University of Ghana, Makerere University in Uganda, Bilkent University in Turkey, Colegio de Mexico and Tec de Monterrey in Mexico, and the Vice-Chancellors of University of Oxford and UCL in the United Kingdom.

This year’s meeting, which will be hosted by Yale President Richard C. Levin, is dedicated to the theme of “The Roles of Science in Meeting Global Challenges.” The goal is to provide useful guidance to the Secretary-General as he seeks to ensure that the benefits of technology and science are broadly distributed and mobilized to address pressing world problems.

Keynote speakers at the meeting will include Dr. Bruce Alberts, head of the InterAcademy Council and former president of the National Academy of Sciences; Professor Phillip Griffiths, former director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton; and Chris Field, Co-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II. The speakers will discuss their experiences with organizations designed to promote international collaboration on technical and scientific matters. The presidents and vice chancellors will explore opportunities for cooperation and ways to build research capacity in developing countries.

Ernesto Zedillo, Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and former President of Mexico, will chair a discussion among faculty experts as they examine institutions and policies that promote dissemination of scientific research and the role of science in public policy discussions.

While the Colloquium is not open to the press nor to the public, there will be a report on the proceedings which will be made public this spring.