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Jeffrey Sachs on John F. Kennedy and his Quest For Peace

Professor Sachs analyses JFK’s rhetoric of peace and explains how it began a process that led to détente and eventually to the end of the Cold War.

How can leadership lessons from the past be applied to intractable international problems today?

In this talk from July 2013, shortly before the 50th anniversary of President John F Kennedy’s assignation, the world renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs analysed JFK’s rhetoric of peace and explains how it began a process that led to détente and eventually to the end of the Cold War. How was it that only 8 months after the Cuban missile crisis had brought the world to the brink of self-destruction Kennedy could reach out to the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and persuade him that they shared the same aims and interests? How at such a time of external peril could he dare to ask the American people to look inward and examine their own attitudes towards the Soviet Union? And where, when we need him, is the John Kennedy of the 21st century? Listen to this masterful lecture: part history lesson, part road map for the future.


Speakers

Featuring

Jeffrey Sachs

Renowned professor of economics


Renowned professor of economics, and one of the world’s leading experts in sustainable development and the fight against poverty. He is a bestselling author, and his monthly newspaper columns appear in more than 100 countries. He is the co-recipient of the 2015 Blue Planet Prize, the top global prize for environmental leadership. He is a professor at Columbia University and has advised Pope John Paul II and three UN Secretary-Generals. His latest book is A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism.