A Case for Global Leadership

The world is at an inflection point. Throughout both the developing and developed world, people are unsure about their future and have lost faith in their leaders and their institutions. We are seeing this in the rise of populism and xenophobia – from the rise of ISIS to Brexit and the rhetoric of America’s presidential election. While the tendency in this environment is to look towards nationalism, the world is too globalized and interconnected for countries to solve domestic and international issues alone. Moreover, neither governments nor the private sector or civil society will be able to overcome these...

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Jazz: A Great American Export

Jazz is one of those rare phenomena that resonate across cultures. Meridian couldn’t help but notice the recent American Security Project article by Chad Tragakis about the United States government’s mass export of this American music genre during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Jazz diplomacy, as it came to be known, introduced and shared a unique piece of American culture to the world by sending jazz legends, such as Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Dave Brubeck, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Benny Carter, and Sarah Vaughan, to countries in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Since then, jazz music...

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