Imagine if just one organization could fight violent crime, empower people in third world countries to take part in their government, and use network mappers to show a political climate. These are just a few goals that Google Ideas has in mind.
Jared Cohen, founder and director of Google Ideas, will present the 2013 Waitt Lecture on Tuesday, October 29 at 7:30 p.m. in the newly renovated Eppley Auditorium.
Cohen, age 31, has degrees from Stanford University and Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar, where he studied international relations. After graduation Cohen was a member of the policy planning staff at the U.S. State Department. There, he advised Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton.
His ideas helped to shape what the State Department called “21st Century Statecraft,” adding social networking and other technology to the traditional tools of diplomacy.
Cohen’s first book, One Hundred Days of Silence: America and the Rwanda Genocide, was published in 2006. In 2007, his second book was published, Children of Jihad: A Young American’s Travels among the Youth of the Middle East. The material for this book came from his travels as a graduate student. He visited Internet cafes in Iran, Palestinian refugee camps and parties in Lebanon and Syria.
Cohen co-authored his most recent book, The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business with Google executive Eric Schmidt. The New Digital Age is a New York Times bestseller. Cohen’s current work is using technology to solve global problems. For example, Google Ideas is designing a way to use a network to disrupt the flow of human trafficking.
In April this year, Cohen was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine.
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