Pearson Global Forum Convenes in Berlin Thirty Years After the City's Wall Fell

On November 9, 1989, almost exactly 30 years ago, as thousands of people gathered in the streets and thousands more watched on their television sets at home, the Berlin Wall came down. 

The significance of this day and the peace it promised permeated the programming of the second annual Pearson Global Forum in Berlin on October 18 and 19.

“Not far from here, a wall divided this city,” said Daniel Diermeier, University of Chicago Provost, discussing the forum’s setting. “Representing two fundamentally opposite views of the social, political, and economic realities of the post-World War II era, the Berlin Wall separated families and communities, and offers us enduring inspiration for building a world more at peace.” 

The goal of The Pearson Global Forum, curated this year under the theme “Beyond Walls | Deconstructing Conflict,” is to bring academic researchers and policy leaders together to address pressing issues of conflict around the world. Presented by the University of Chicago’s Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts at the Harris School of Public Policy, the forum aimed to address the cause and consequences of conflict, as well as identify strategies to intervene and mitigate conflict and consolidate peace. 

James A. Robinson, the Reverend Dr. Richard L. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies at Harris Public Policy and the Institute Director at The Pearson Institute, delivered the Forum’s welcoming remarks before Marcus Meckel, co-founder of the Social Democratic Party in the German Democratic Republic — established as East Germany during the Cold War — and the GDR’s first Foreign Minister, delivered his keynote speech, “Looking Back on 1989.”  

Robinson, whose third book The Narrow Corridor, written in collaboration with MIT Professor of Economics Daron Acemoglu and released in September, researches comparative economies and the factors that are the root causes of conflict.

Despite the Berlin Wall falling nearly thirty years ago, the idea of walls, such as the current U.S. presidential administration’s threatened divide between the southern border and Mexico, or the 30-kilometer zone between Turkey and Syria, remains tantamount in contemporary conversations of global conflict and resolution. 

“I started out trying to understand why there were poor countries and why there were rich countries, and trying to conceptualize and measure in what ways poor countries and rich countries were different,” Robinson explained. “But, I’m much more interested now in why human societies, as opposed to economies, are so different.”

By bringing together experts from different areas of the world – and varying areas of research – Robinson said he hoped to determine the logical failures that allow peace to flounder in incalculable ways. 

Following Meckel’s keynote, attendees dug in further to Germany’s past three decades as a case study in democratic transition with a “Dealing with Identity: Transitions in Germany” panel discussion featuring Thomas Bagger, Director-General for Foreign Affairs in the Office of the President of the Federal Republic of Germany; Thorsten Benner, Co-Founder and Director of the Global Public Policy Institute and faculty member at the Hertie School of Governance; Philip Faigle, Special Projects Editor of Zeit Online; and Naika Foroutan, Director of the Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research. 

Next, Oeindrila Dube, the Philip K. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies at Harris, and a faculty chair of The Pearson Institute, delivered a widely lauded flash talk on a very understudied area of research – “Women or War?”

In her presentation, Dube used the legacy of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, to introduce her research on how female rule in Europe has historically affected war under hereditary succession, ultimately wrinkling the widely held assumption in policy circles that “female leaders will set more conciliatory war policies and will engage in war to a lesser degree,” when compared to their male counterparts. 

“Women are still half the population, but have far less representation as world leaders,” Dube said. “Perhaps part of the reason is that people continue to harbor the overly simplistic view that women leaders are going to be overly conciliatory, that they won't be appropriately aggressive, and that this will have adverse consequences for their state. But for those who are willing to look at the evidence, history tells us otherwise.”

Day two of the conference began with a flash talk by Robinson in which he elaborated on the themes covered in his and Acemoglu’s latest book, The Narrow Corridor, a deeply researched exploration of how far the modern world has yet to come in order to achieve true liberty, as exemplified in the symbolism of the fall of the Berlin Wall. 

Robinson invited guests to consider how relationships between state and society differ in various places around the world, and how the balance of these distinct powers influences the daily lives of people living in those societies, focusing on the difference between places such as China and Russia, Western Europe and North America, and Lebanon and Yemen. 

“If you start thinking about this balance between state and society, it seems like you can explain quite a lot of variation in the world in terms of how different societies work, and how prosperous they are, and how much liberty they generate,” Robinson said. “These divergences are very historic, and in the middle between the dominance of the state over society or the dominance of society over the state, there's what we call a narrow corridor where this balance can emerge, and that’s the part of this space where you get prosperity and you get liberty.”

Robinson’s presentation set the tone for the rest of the day’s programming, which included a series of panels and flash talks that focused on conflict-ridden areas such as Iraq and Palestine, as well as the current situation of the Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic and religious minority in China.   

Other highlights from day two included 2007 Nobel Laureate Roger Myerson delivering a flash talk exploring state-building lessons from a historical perspective. The David L. Pearson Distinguished Service Professor of Global Conflict Studies at the University of Chicago and a faculty chair of The Pearson Institute, Myerson offered thought-provoking insights for researchers and policymakers alike as they grapple with current and emerging global hot spots.  

The conference concluded with a presentation from Chris Blattman, the Ramalee E. Pearson Professor of Global Conflict Studies at Harris and the fourth faculty chair of The Pearson Institute, about “Why We Fight.” After two days of addressing ways to eradicate conflict in favor of peace, circling back to the root origins of violence was a sobering reminder for attendees of the challenges that awaited them outside the conference walls.

The 2020 Pearson Global Forum will be held October 9 and 10 in Chicago.