 Well, good afternoon everybody, it's great to see you of course again. This is the highlight of the Institutes for Global Leadership, the highlight of our year, the International Epic Symposium, which this year is focusing on problems without passports. I'm just so delighted that we have the Honourable Mago Bostrom here with us who will be giving the keynote address and will also receive a major award for global citizenship and she's joining us through the magic of modern technology all the way from Sweden, so it's great to have her with us and then now I would of course introduce the President of Tufts University, Tony Monaco, who is an accomplished leader, scientist and teacher, we all know him here, Tufts, a deep commitment to academic excellence and also a global perspective which is central to what we do at IGL and also central to what the university does and during this past two years we've all been really impressed by the leadership that he's shown, the great competence and the great compassion with which he's led Tufts and the community, so I now turn it over to President Monaco to welcome and to in. Well thank you Abby and good afternoon everyone. It's a pleasure to welcome you to the 37th annual International Epic Symposium. Welcome also to all of you who are joining remotely, including our featured speaker. While the last two Epic Symposium were entirely virtual, this is the first hybrid symposium hosted since the start of the pandemic. Tufts Institute for Global Leadership offers unique opportunities for Tufts students to make a difference in the world. IGL combines intellectual rigor with experiential learning to prepare new generations of students who are critical thinkers and they can provide the effective and ethical leadership needed to address the world's most difficult challenges. The annual Epic Conference is just one of many IGL activities and initiatives. The conference builds off the Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship, otherwise known as Epic, the Hallmark course of IGL's program. It's a year-long multidisciplinary course based on a global theme. The theme of this year's symposium, Problems Without Passports, is especially timely and of fundamental importance. In a world that is becoming increasingly globalized and amid complex problems ranging from the pandemic to systemic racism to warfare, it is clear that global cooperation is needed to solve these international issues. It's an honor to have the Honorable Margot Volstrom, former Foreign Minister of Sweden as our keynote speaker. Minister Volstrom's distinguished career as a public servant exemplifies what it means to be an active citizen and a global leader. There is truly no more fitting candidate to receive the Dr. Jean Maillard Global Citizenship Award. I look forward to hearing her keynote address shortly. Before we kick off the program, I would like to thank the Bendensen family for sponsoring the symposium and for their generous support for IGL. I'd also like to thank Dr. Abbey Williams and his team for organizing this event and bringing together such wonderful panelists and discussion leaders. Most importantly, I want to thank the Epic students themselves for all the hard work designing this symposium that went through the entire year. It's really a tremendous accomplishment and I'm confident that it will be a very memorable event. It's certainly one that I look forward to every spring. It's now my pleasure to turn over to Solomi Dioprima, who will formally introduce our keynote speaker. Solomi is a sophomore and current Epic student from North Carolina, planning to major in international relations with a focus on globalization. She is involved with women in international relations and is especially interested in the implementation of sustainable development goals across nations and the global south. Thank you. Hello everyone. So my name is Solomi Dioprima and I'm a member of this year's Epic course focusing on problems without passports and I am the IGL liaison for women in international relations here at Tufts. The Dr. Jean Maillard Global Citizenship Award was established in 1993 to honor the life and legacy of Jean Maillard, the 10th president and first chancellor of Tufts University. A world-renowned nutritionist publishing more than 750 scientific papers and 10 books, Jean Maillard advised three U.S. presidents, President Nixon, President Ford and President Carter, the U.S. Congress, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children's Fund, and the U.S. Secretary of State. He helped establish and expand the food stamp school lunch and other national and international nutrition programs and organized the 1969 White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health. In 1966, Dr. Maillard was the first scientist to speak out against use of herbicides in the Vietnam War. In 1969, he led a mission to war-torn Biafra to assess health and nutrition conditions. In 1970, he organized an international symposium on famine which produced the first comprehensive document on how nutrition and relief operations should be handled in a time of disaster, and was the first to suggest that using starvation as a political tool was a violation of human rights and should be outlawed. For service in World War II, he was awarded 14 decorations, including three Qua de Guerre, the Resistance Medal, and the Cross of the Night of the Legion of Honor. Among his 23 honorary degrees and numerous awards, he was the recipient of the Presidential and Hunger Award, the President's Environment and Conservation Challenge Award, topics that we will be addressing in this weekend's symposium. As the 10th President of Tufts University, Dr. Maillard created the nation's first Graduate School of Nutrition, establishing New England's only veterinary school and the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts, and co-founded the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences and the Center of Environmental Management. As chair of the New England Board of Higher Education, he created scholarships that enabled non-white South Africans to go to mixed race universities, and in their own country. Upon his death, the Boston Globe wrote, Mayor moved universities as social institutions in new directions and towards the assumption of larger responsibilities. He saw them as instruments for improving society and the world environment. President Jimmy Carter said, Dr. Maillard's life and productive career has been dedicated to the service of mankind. In the spirit, the Mayer Award seeks to challenge and inspire students and the larger community by bringing Tufts distinguished scholars and practitioners of moral, courage, personal integrity, and passion for scholarship, which has resonated and is dictum that scholarship, research, and teaching must be dedicated to solving the most pressing problems facing the world. I'm delighted to present the Honorable Margot Walsham with the Dr. Jean Maillard Global Citizenship Award this evening. Her fervent advocacy for feminist foreign policy and commitment to understanding the effects of the climate crisis, especially on building and maintaining peace, are deeply encouraging and inspiring. The Honorable Margot Walsham was elected to the Swedish Parliament in 1979, where she served as the Minister for Youth, sorry, Youth, Women, and Consumer Affairs from 1988 to 1991, and the Minister of Culture from 1994 to 1996, and the Minister of Social Affairs from 1996 to 1998. In 1999, she served as the European Commissioner for the Environment and then as the first President of the European Commission from 2004 to 2010. In 2010, the former United Nations Secondary General, Ban Ki-moon, appointed her as the first special representative on the sexual violence in conflict, a position she held until 2012. The former Secretary General noted that during her time as a representative, she brought exceptional leadership to this issue, channeling the voices of survivors and victims into the Security Council and demanding greater accountability and justice at national and international levels, a testament to her steadfast commitment to these expansive global issues. She continued her advocacy during her appointment as a Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden from 2014 to 2019. While working as a Minister for Foreign Affairs, she did not waver in her core feminist beliefs and did not stand down in face of difficult political situations. She continued her advocacy during her, sorry, more recently, she has been continuing her passions for human rights and her commitment to issues of climate crisis as a Chair of the International Panel of Environment Peace Initiative at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. In her words, the destiny of others is also our destiny. Like never before, we need to focus on children on the next generation to establish long-term thinking and politics and to do that we need to work together. This afternoon, we honor the honorable Margot Walsham with the Dr. Jean Maire Global Citizenship Award in recognition of a lifetime of distinguished service to her country and the global community and for her courageous commitment to solving problems without passwords. Thank you so much. It's your turn, Margot. Can you see me? Is it my turn? That's right. Thank you. When at a university, I actually turn to the students first and say, dear students, dear President of the University, dear professors, dear friends. And I'm, of course, deeply honored and happy and I'm very pleased to be awarded and also I wish so much that I could be with you in person and I hope that will be possible one day. I thank you so much. I was moved by your kind words and the fact that you are willing to give me time and you're willing to listen to me for a while. So you know that I've been given the topic of talking about a world between hope and despair or I chose it myself and I hope that there will be some hope left and not only despair. Actually, as a foreign minister, I used to tell the tale of the two wolves and maybe you know it very well from before. This is about the grandfather and his grandchild talking about life and the grandfather says, you know, life is like within every person there is a fight between two wolves and the one wolf is evil, jealous, arrogant, greedy, violent. And the other wolf is the one who is calm, generous, that is honest and loving. And after a while, of course, the grandchild asks, but grandfather, which wolf wins? And the old man says, the one you feed. So what wolf are we feeding at the moment? I will have to start with the despair that the world feels at the moment. And we have not more than two hours by plane from where I am in Sweden. A war is raging again in Europe. A war that has already taken thousands of lives, that have sent millions of people fleeing mostly women with children and has put cities in ruins. And it's like Tacitus said, you know, that they where they made a desert, they called it peace. It looks like a desert in some places already. To us, this has changed everything. And I think it has created so much of sorrow because we can follow in real time the desperate situation and the suffering of people in Ukraine. And we feel it because they also come to our countries in Europe in the millions and they need, they need help and shelter. They need everything at the moment. It has also created an anger against Putin and Russia that they can start a war like this lying in our faces about what they are doing. And we can also see that we can also clearly follow that discourse that they are trying to present to the world. And it has also awoken a fear in people. Will war come to our part of Europe, our part of the world? Will this lead to a new cold war that we lost for a very, very long time? How do we protect ourselves? So like never before do we now have preppers here as well. You know, they store water and money and whatever they think is will be important to sustain life in a war situation. And we are discussing NATO membership like our neighbor Finland that shares a very long border with Russia and no Russian violence and Russian war. So this has turned everything upside down. Also in a situation where we felt we were on our way out of the pandemic, we were starting to breathe again and think that maybe we can repair things in our societies. Maybe we can have some yet some resources to actually do all the reforms that we identified as necessary during the pandemic. But it is also of course in the end, I think that this war is an example of what denotes modern wars and maybe you have already studied this, but what experts say is that modern wars are first of all that they are fought through media. And that is absolutely true about this war that goes on in Ukraine. We see that both sides use social media to present themselves as winners of this war, being victorious or losing out. So this is clearly something that denotes also this war. Secondly, modern wars, they also take more civilian lives than soldiers' lives. And they say that more people die from war than in battle. And that is also we can count sort of the civilian victims in this war. And that comes from the fact that modern wars often the lines between politics and military strategy has been blurred and also the lines between warriors or soldiers and civilians. And this has put women and children on the front lines of wars. And this is not the first time we see that. We have seen it or we can see it in wars everywhere in the world. There are much fewer wars today about gaining or winning territory, taking territory. It's actually more about democracy. And you can say that what we see in Ukraine, both of these things play out. It's about territory for Russia. It's really fighting for democracy and to be able to decide their own future and their own destiny for the Ukrainians. Another thing that is typical for modern wars is, of course, the use of modern high-tech weapons. And drones have been used in a way that that is more common nowadays, but also the threat of using nuclear weapons. And I think another thing that is typical for modern wars has to do with how to define victory. That it is much more difficult to say that this is being victorious. This is what victory means. And we have really won this war. There are no winners in wars. Most of the time, there are no winners. We are all losers. And the things that we lose right now is, of course, that this is also a threat and an attack on what we've called the European security order and also how it will change geopolitics and will affect all of us for probably a long time. And we also see that the whole power balance or the deterrence, the principle of deterrence, is really not working as it was intended. So this is what happens. At the same time, as we have so many other challenges and security risks, we know that there is an ongoing, and since some time back, a challenge to multilateralism. There is a new era of strategic confrontation and competition. The rules-based order, and of course, the Ukraine and the war that Russia is fighting against Ukraine is an example of that, that the rules-based systems are ignored and violated. That humanitarian law is also under threat in Yemen, Syria, and we have many other examples also lately. And that the organizations and the bodies that are the symbols and the bodies of multilateralism like the United Nations, its authorities, is undermined and challenged and as a sign of the irony of destinies, of course, that Russia was chairing the UN Security Council exactly the same month as they started a war in Europe again, a war against Ukraine. So of course, the credibility of the United Nations will be put in question. So the challenges to the whole idea of seeing this as common challenges, common threats to our existence and our possibilities to survive on this planet, this is clear to everybody. But that includes then the climate crisis. And today it's not only climate change, it is a climate crisis. And we know already, we have seen it now, we've felt it on our skins lately as have you. What happens when we have these extreme weather conditions? And the IPCC has mentioned this in consecutive reports that you will see more of extreme weather like violent storms, like flooding, like forest fires, and all of the things that also shape our daily lives and cost a lot of sometimes lives, but also the loss of forests or material things. So the climate crisis, we would need to focus on that. We have to invest in also creating new energy, sustainable energy systems and getting less dependent on fossil fuels. And we know that that comes at the cost, but also brings a lot of advantages. And we have also learned about the interplay between peace and climate change. When there is no water or food, of course it can create and has already in many war and conflict situations in the world. It first creates social unrest, and then this grows to conflicts between, for example, herders and farmers, and in the end it can lead to wars. And that is also where we've seen only the beginning of such things. We see big migration flows and what do we do with people that have to leave their countries because of climate change, when with coastal erosion, with flooding, simply some parts of the world will be inhabitable. What we've also seen lately, and I don't want to drag you down into a depression, but let me just list a few things and I will get to the hope side as well. But we've also seen inequality on the rise. And this is also when we live in a situation where actually eight people own, eight individuals own as much as 50% of the population on this planet. You start to think, what about equality? What can we do with such imbalance also? And the fact that many people see that they think that democracy has not brought more of welfare or life chances or made the world better. And that also creates then a mistrust in political systems and they turn from the trusting institutions or trusting media and we have the polarization that we have seen, not only in your country but in so many places around the world. The pandemics also have to do with the loss of biodiversity, which is part of the climate crisis because climate crisis also exacerbates these problems of loss of biodiversity. And not far away from here, we keep two beehives and very often we have to tell people that without bees, you know, we wouldn't survive very long on this planet either. So those small creatures are so important. And overall, a shrinking democratic space. For a long time, we were thinking that democracy would thrive. More and more countries were introducing elections and general elections and they were building institutions that our democracies rest on. But now we have seen for more than 10 years, we have seen a backlash for democracy and more people today live in what we can call autocracies or countries that are experiencing a backslide. And this is of course very, very problematic because we need and you need, especially you students, need to, I think, write your own stories about why democracy is so important. Where do you turn if you don't know that somebody will listen to your complaints that there are no free press and media that the laws are applicable to, everybody has to buy to the laws. What is it in a democratic society that we value the most and how do we keep democracy alive? And as if this was not enough, we've also seen in this war situation in Ukraine that President Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons. And this is where Abidou Williams and myself actually have met in a setting where we discussed weapons control and also nuclear weapons. And what has happened lately is that, first of all, we could see that the rhetoric about nuclear weapons changed and it was no longer used as a deterrence only and something that would help to keep sort of a power balance and deter from starting wars. But today it's more of presenting it as something that can be used in the battlefield. So of course, tactical nuclear weapons that are now modernized as well. So also the nuclear weapons states that have signed up to, for example, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, they have not lived up to their obligations. They have gone, they have done the opposite. And they have invested in modernized nuclear weapons. So this is very, very serious as well. And of course, we know that there are other countries who would like to to start using nuclear weapons or rather start producing nuclear weapons North Korea, Iran and others. And it seems to be raised also against more of acquiring more of nuclear weapons. And of course, the more we see of this, the higher the risk is for mistakes or a bad judgment that can lead to a catastrophe. So that's the despair side or the things that can make you think, how will we survive? How can we avoid the next pandemic to begin with? Because you know that this was, the COVID was another example of what is called a solo state. So it means that it is transmitted from animal to humans. And most of the the the flu and the different diseases that we've seen or the pandemics that we have experienced previously are of that kind that they are transmitted by mosquitoes or the rats or the bats or whatever, to human beings. And that in turn, we have to start to look at why is that? Yeah, because we have deforestation, we have desertification, we have changed the habitats for these creatures and these animals so that they come too close to people where they should not be, where they should not be eaten or or sort of met with too closely. So this is also something that that we have to address if we want to stay healthy and avoid to have another very deadly pandemic. As I keep saying to my grandchildren, you know, the world is both, I don't know if I use the word horrible, but it's terrible, but it is also beautiful. It's a beautiful place. So where is the hope? The hope lies within us. And I think, like no other generation before us. And we are different generations, but let's say that we are, we work as one, like no other generation, do we have the knowledge, we have the training, we have the technology, we have the resources, we have, we have so many tools at our disposal, and we can communicate, we can do mass communication, and we can use it for the good. We have so many examples of where people also locally start to work against these problems, they deal with these problems, and they want to be reckoned with, they want to be heard, they want to play a part. And I think that this is, it is still possible. It is still possible also with climate change to do something about it. We have amazing examples of systems that are sustainable, and that can, can switch our despair into hope. And it's like with the Pandora's box, when, when it was opened, everything flew out and, and, and left, and, but the thing remaining in, in her box was hope. And I, I think that maybe also to say something about an aspect of all of this that has engaged me for a very long time, for many, many years now. It's also the role of women, because I find it problematic that women are still discriminated against in so many situations. And I even dare to criticize those who actually sit down and, and call it a peace negotiation between Ukraine and Russia, because there are no women around the table. No women in Ukraine, women make up a majority of the population. Women fight and die and suffer. They take care of children and the elderly, they had to flee, they experienced also conflict related sexual violence, rapes, and the risk of being trafficked. And they love their country as much as men do. But why are they not around the table? Of course, women's voices have to be heard in all of these situations, otherwise we cannot make peace. More women means more peace, because as we've seen in so many negotiations around the world, when women get to sit at the table, more options are there, are presented. And in Colombia, I remember that women insisted on being represented. And they introduced new topics. They said, well, you cannot create peace if you don't do land reforms. And what do you do with those soldiers that belong to FARC? What should we do with them? Unless you solve those problems, we will not get peace. And I think that it's not that women are better than men, but they bring other perspectives, other experiences and their knowledge as well. How can we not use that potential of women? So to me, it was necessary to introduce what I call the feminist foreign policy, looking after the rights and the representation of the resources for women, because it belongs to foreign policy. Because I know, and the United Nations has proven that when women are part of peace negotiations, those peace deals and peace agreements lost longer. They are also peacekeepers. They are also the ones who make sure that a peace can last much longer. And I think that women in peace negotiations, it should be the default position, not an argument. And that's why we also have to look at that. And in the midst of the Ukrainian war, the Ukrainian woman fed a young Russian prisoner of war and let him use her telephone. And she said, call your mother. So I think that women are agents of change also on the front lines. They find another way. They use their experience and their lives as examples of what you, what you can do. And it's like in the poem about the snail and the tanks, you know, that the snail actually finds a way around the burning city because it chooses the things that live. And it will, it will last longer. It will survive that the snail and I think eventually between people. Thank you for listening to me. Okay. Thank you so much for that wonderful talk and for raising so many important issues. We have an audience here in person at Tufts and we have two microphones set up. So I'm going to ask the students. I'm sure they have lots of questions to pose them to you. And can you hear us? Can you hear me? Yeah. A little low. Is it better now? Okay. It's okay. Great. I hear you. All right. And I forgot to say one thing because really to the hope, I must say also that the resilience and the fight and the spirit of the Ukrainian people at the moment, we can see it reported every day. That's, that is also under solidarity and the compassion that has been shown by people in cold and receiving 2 million, more than 2 million people fleeing from.