Plenary Session of the Third Joint MGIMO-Fletcher Conference

On March 18, 2019, the plenary session of the third MGIMO-Fletcher conference took place. The event was sponsored by the Alexander Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund and Carnegie Corporation of New York.

The event was organized within the framework of academic cooperation between the two universities, which has been in place since 2017. The goal was to promote mutual understanding between the two schools and to jointly search for ways to overcome the tensions between Moscow and Washington.

The conference was kicked off by the co-heads of the project, Andrey Baykov, MGIMO’s Vice President for Graduate and International Programs, and Professor Daniel Drezner of The Fletcher School. The guests were also greeted by Georgy Borisenko, Director of the Department for North America at the Russian Federation Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Thomas Leary, Minister-Counselor of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow; and Roman Grishenin, Deputy Director of the Alexander Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund.

The plenary session of the conference explored different ways of improving the Russian-American dialogue and was attended by Fletcher Professors Daniel Drezner and Chris Miller; Tatyana Shakleina, Head of the Department of Applied International Analysis at MGIMO University; Dartmouth Professor William Wohlforth; and other faculty members. Andrey Sushentsov, Director of MGIMO’s Institute of International Studies, moderated the plenary session.

In the following days, the conference continued in the format of roundtables on the issues of strategic stability; sustainable development in the Arctic; non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and climate change. During the discussions, there was a sincere exchange of views on issues that remain the subject of disagreement between Russia and the United States. The conference aroused considerable interest among MGIMO students and the Russian expert community.

At the beginning of April, the fourth joint MGIMO-Fletcher conference will be held in Medford, Massachusetts. It is assumed that the tradition of joint MGIMO-Fletcher events will continue. The event was coordinated by Arik Burakovsky of The Fletcher School, Elena Bochkova of MGIMO University, and Nikita Makurin of the Alexander Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund.

This piece was translated and republished from the MGIMO website.