When the World Closed Its Doors with Edward Alden and Laurie Trautman
January 28th, 2025 5:30PM -7:00PM
More people traveled internationally in 2019 than any year in history, but everything stopped in 2020. Join the World Affairs Council on January 28 when we sit down with authors Edward Alden and Laurie Trautman to discuss their new book, "When the World Closed Its Doors: The Covid-19 Tragedy and the Future of Borders."
Alden and Trautman's new book tells the human stories of the Covid border restrictions imposed by governments to prevent the spread of the disease and the economic, demographic, social, and political impacts from the global shocks to the system that we still feel today. In the new systematic re-bordering of the world, citizens need more protections, and governments more guardrails to prevent unchecked restrictions that have little regard for the collateral damage and disruption they can cause.
About Our Speakers
Edward Alden is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), specializing in U.S. economic competitiveness, trade, and immigration policy. He is also the Ross Distinguished Visiting Professor in the College of Economics and Business at Western Washington University. He is the author of the book Failure to Adjust: How Americans Got Left Behind in the Global Economy, which focuses on the federal government’s failure to respond effectively to competitive challenges on issues such as trade, currency, worker retraining, education, and infrastructure.
Alden recently served as the project director of a CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force, co-chaired by former Michigan Governor John Engler and former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, which produced the report The Work Ahead: Machines, Skills, and U.S. Leadership in the Twenty-First Century. In 2011, he was the project codirector of the Independent Task Force that produced U.S. Trade and Investment Policy. In 2009, he was the project director of the Independent Task Force that produced U.S. Immigration Policy.
Alden was previously the Washington bureau chief for the Financial Times, and prior to that was the newspaper’s Canada bureau chief, based in Toronto. He worked as a reporter at the Vancouver Sun and was the managing editor of the newsletter Inside U.S. Trade, widely recognized as a leading source of reporting on U.S. trade policies. Alden has won several national and international awards for his reporting. He has made numerous TV and radio appearances as an analyst on political and economic issues, including on the BBC, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, NPR, and PBS NewsHour. His work has been published in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Fortune, the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Toronto Globe and Mail, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post.
Alden has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of British Columbia and a master’s degree in international relations from the University of California, Berkeley. He pursued doctoral studies before returning to a journalism career. Alden is the winner of numerous academic awards, including a Mellon fellowship in the humanities and a MacArthur Foundation graduate fellowship.
Dr. Laurie Trautman engages in a range of research activities focused on the U.S. – Canada border, particularly in the Washington – British Columbia region. Topics include trade, transportation, security, and human mobility. In addition to working with faculty and students, she collaborates with the private sector and government agencies to advance policy solutions that balance cross-border flows with the need for efficiency and security. Laurie participates in working groups that are actively engaged in the U.S. – Canada relationship, including the International Mobility and Trade Corridor Program and the Canada – U.S. Transportation Border Working Group. She co-chairs the Border Issues working group of the Pacific Northwest Economic Region and was recently appointed to the steering committee for the Cascadia Innovation Corridor. Laurie is currently a Global Fellow with the Woodrow Wilson Center and a Fellow with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
She holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Oregon, a MSc. from Montana State University, and a BA from Western Washington University in Environmental Economics.