Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California

Join us on January 21, 2026, in San Francisco for a fact-based exploration of immigration and the future of the United States. Moderated by the Population Reference Bureau's Jennifer Sciubba, this conversation will cut through opinion and politics to reveal the real data shaping America’s demographics, economy, and competitiveness. Hear from leading experts Dr. Giovanni Peri, Daniel Costa, and Dr. Russell Hancock on what’s working—and what needs fixing—in U.S. immigration policy. Gain clear insights into how these forces will shape our businesses and communities for years to come.

This core learning event offers an intentionally apolitical and fact-based perspective on a politically, emotionally and culturally charged topic. Credible, fact-based information on immigration can be hard to discern from opinion and rhetoric. Amplifying the stakes for the United States, at a time of intense rivalry for leadership of large global industries of the future, the full scope and impact of federal policy actions is unknowable. Some are immediate, obvious and reported in mass media. Others will take years to be known, understood and reported. All businesses, communities and individuals will be affected.


Notes
Program support provided by YPO Gold NorCal.

22 hours ago | [YT] | 7

Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California

We have entered the second quarter of this century, and the general public’s concern in regard to past, present and future relationships and alliances looms large on the horizon.

Established practices, agreements, and alliances seem to be under review. Are the accepted patterns of diplomatic, political and economic institutions wobbling and leaving the future uncertain?

Our panel will have an open conversation among the consuls general of the United Kingdom and Ireland; the deputy consul general of Italy; and the honorary consul general of the Czech Republic about what we can expect. Will the established relationships of the past 25 years among the European nations and the United States dramatically change?

The new year is a great time to review what we have all experienced and thought, with an eye on the present and the future. This should be a frank and open conversation.

5 days ago | [YT] | 5

Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California

Cutting billions in research grants. Detaining student activists. Threatening to cancel accreditation. President Trump’s attacks on colleges and universities have left them reeling. But rather than speak out, all but a few higher education leaders have remained silent, perhaps hoping to avoid being targeted. Wesleyan University President Michael Roth thinks that’s a mistake. “This is the greatest pressure put on intellectual life since the McCarthy era,” Mr. Roth told The New York Times in March. “And I think it’ll be seen in the future, as that time was seen, as a time when people either stood up for their values or ran in fear of the federal government.”

Roth says Trump’s “wrongheaded, lawless, authoritarian, fascistic” attacks on higher ed are not really about preventing anti-semitism or protecting national security, but about intimidation. The goal, he argues, is to force schools to conform with the administration’s ideology.

He joins us to talk about why he decided to speak out, and how education leaders—and the public—should fight back.

3 months ago | [YT] | 13

Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California

In August, after Texas acceded to President Donald Trump’s demand that it adopt a redistricting plan favoring Republicans, California Governor Gavin Newsom said he would fight back. He signed legislation creating Prop. 50, which asks voters to suspend California’s independent redistricting maps and allow the legislature to draw new districts. "Today, we gave every Californian the opportunity to stop Trump by saying yes to our people, to our state, and to American democracy," Newsom said at the time.

Supporters say the plan is a temporary but critical defense against partisan mapmaking in other states. They argue that California must step in to protect democracy nationwide and pledge that the state will restore its independent redistricting process after 2030.

Critics, who include former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, contend the proposal undermines the state’s voter-approved redistricting reforms, restoring the same partisan gerrymandering that California has banned.

“We know American democracy is on fire, but accelerating gerrymandering only adds fuel!,” a No-on-50 ballot argument states. “[Prop. 50] claims to protect democracy, yet diminishes our communities’ voices and is ineffective against any overreach of presidential power.”

With voting already underway, join us to learn more about Prop. 50 and what’s at stake for California and control of Congress.

3 months ago | [YT] | 7

Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California

What’s common about common knowledge, and how does it become common? Common knowledge—the awareness of how others think and even how others think others think—is needed for social coordination, things as basic as driving on the same side of the road or using paper currency. And it has a hidden logic that makes it all work.

Cognitive psychologist and author Steven Pinker returns to Commonwealth Club World Affairs in Silicon Valley to explore some of the paradoxes of human behavior. It’s the subject of his latest book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.

Pinker addresses issues as seemingly disparate as why people hoard toilet paper when an emergency breaks, why crypto ads clog up Super Bowl advertising, why Russian officials arrested a protester carrying a blank sign, or even why everyone seems to agree that life would be unbearable if everyone was completely honest at all times. Tying it all together, he says, is our ability to know what others think and what others think about what others think . . . on and on, ad infinitum.

3 months ago | [YT] | 7

Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California

For about a millennium and a half, between 250 BC and A.D. 1200, India was a confident exporter of its own diverse civilizations, creating an empire of ideas, to a world that was a willing and eager recipient of a startlingly comprehensive mass transfer of Indian soft power. From religion such as Buddhism to mathematics that introduced the idea of zero, infinity, algebra, trigonometry to astronomy that proposed a spherical earth rotating on its own axis and trade, that Pliny the Elder complained drained the wealth of Rome into Indian pockets, Indian ideas infected the world.

In The Golden Road, William Dalrymple, draws on a lifetime of scholarship to give a name to the spread of Indian ideas that transformed the world. From the largest Hindu temple in the world at Angkor Wat to the Buddhism of China, from the trade that helped fund the Roman Empire, to the creation of the numerals we use today, Dalrymple shares the soaring history of how India transformed the culture and technology of the ancient world, and in doing so, the world today as we know it.

3 months ago | [YT] | 14

Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California

There are no pediatric specialists in 60 percent of the rural counties in the United States. Diseases such as Cortical Dysplasia cause epileptic seizures, multiple times a day. The good news is that only 25,000 children are affected a year, but the bad news is that no one specialist sees enough cases to diagnose from an MRI scan. Building more medical schools and incentivizing pediatric cardiologists to live in Montana are not the solution to this problem. Instead, imagine privacy-preserving real-time AI applications deployed to the point of care in rural California or Rwanda.

This program will focus on the Pediatric Moonshot, whose mission is to reduce health-care inequity, lower costs and improve health outcomes for children rurally, locally and globally—by creating privacy-preserving real-time AI applications based on access to data in all 1 million health-care machines in all 500 children’s hospitals in the world. We’ll talk about the progress to date making the mission a reality and the challenges and opportunities going forward.

Learn more about the Pediatric Moonshot: pediatricmoonshot.org/

3 months ago | [YT] | 6

Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California

When President Trump deployed the military to Los Angeles in June, former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called it an “abuse of presidential power.” Napolitano, who is also the former governor of Arizona, told MSNBC that to federalize the national guard over California Governor Gavin Newsom’s objections was “simply outrageous.”

During Napolitano’s time at DHS, she beefed up border security and increased deportations while also spearheading the creation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative. Now director of the new Institute for Security and Governance at UC Berkeley, Napolitano joins Commonwealth Club World Affairs to talk about the current administration’s border crackdown, criticism of ICE tactics, and what it all means for immigration policy, civil liberties and the economy.

We’ll also hear from Napolitano, the former president of the University of California, about Trump’s efforts to reshape higher education.

3 months ago | [YT] | 16

Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California

Join us for Dan Wang’s talk about the issues raised in his new book Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future, which has been called a riveting, firsthand investigation of China’s seismic progress, its human costs, and what it means for America.

For close to a decade, technology analyst Wang―“a gifted observer of contemporary China” (Ross Douthat)―has been living through the country’s astonishing, messy progress. China’s towering bridges, gleaming railways, and sprawling factories have improved economic outcomes in record time. But rapid change has also sent ripples of pain throughout the society. This reality―political repression and astonishing growth―is not a paradox, but rather a feature of China’s engineering mindset.

Wang blends political, economic, and philosophical analysis with reportage to reveal a provocative new framework for understanding China―one that can help us see America more clearly, too. While China is an engineering state, relentlessly pursuing megaprojects, the United States has stalled. America has transformed into a lawyerly society, reflexively blocking everything, good and bad.

Mixing analysis with storytelling, Wang offers a gripping portrait of a nation in flux. He traverses metropolises like Shanghai, Chongqing and Shenzhen, where the engineering state has created not only dazzling infrastructure but also a sense of optimism. The book also exposes the downsides of social engineering, including the surveillance of ethnic minorities, political suppression, and the traumas of the one-child policy and zero-COVID.

In an era of animosity and mistrust, Wang unmasks the shocking similarities between the United States and China. He reveals how each country points toward a better path for the other: Chinese citizens would be better off if their government could learn to value individual liberties, while Americans would be better off if their government could learn to embrace engineering―and to produce better outcomes for the many, not just the few.

3 months ago | [YT] | 4

Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California

Join us to hear from a MacArthur genius awardee, former rocket engineer, and passionate leader in the social enterprise movement—Jim Fruchterman—about using technology for positive social change.

To a lot of people in big business, the only worthy ideas are those that make a lot of money, preferably billions. But Jim Fruchterman believes there is a different path for technology. What if tech returned to its roots and made people more effective and powerful? What if the benefits of technology came to the 90 percent of humanity traditionally neglected by for-profit companies in favor of immense profits gained by focusing on the richest 10 percent? Fruchterman explores these questions in his book Technology for Good and delivers a comprehensive how-to for leaders who want to create, expand, join, support and improve organizations that see building technology as a key element of delivering on their social good mission.

Fruchterman argues that tech is required for social change at scale. He offers guidance on how to structure, fund, staff, manage, scale and sustain nonprofits that leverage technology for social good. His vision is a call to action with a genuinely global focus, creating a path toward a future in which human beings come before profits.

September 3, 2025

Speakers

Jim Fruchterman
Social Entrepreneur; MacArthur Fellow; Recipient, Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship; Founder, Benetech; Founder, Tech Matters

In Conversation with Camille Crittenden
Ph.D., Executive Director, CITRIS and the Banatao Institute, UC Berkeley

Introduction by Gerald Anthony Harris
President, Quantum Planning Group; Chair, Technology & Society Member-led Forum, Commonwealth Club World Affairs of California

Photo courtesy the speaker.

4 months ago | [YT] | 7