Foreign Policy - #209 November-December 2014

PHOTOGRAPH BY MARCEL CHRIST ILLUSTRATIONS BY KAYAN KWOK ICONS BY ELIAS STEIN 50 THE AGITATORS 57 THE DECISION MAKERS 61 THE CHALLENGERS 68 THE NATURALS 73 THE INNOVATORS 78 THE ADVOCATES 82 THE CHRONICLERS 89 THE HEALERS 93 THE ARTISTS 101 THE MOGULS AS WE KNOW IT FOR BETTER AND FOR WORSE. WHILE SOME AND BUILDING SOMETHING ENTIRELY NEW.

The Agitators FROM THE MIDDLE EAST TO EUROPE TO AFRICA, 2014 WAS A YEAR OF unprecedented geopolitical fracturing. The Islamic State began relentlessly and violently redrawing borders in Syria and Iraq, while Russia aggressively staked new claims in eastern Ukraine and Boko Haram murdered and plundered its way through northern Nigeria. These Global Thinkers—terrorist leaders, ideologues, wily financiers—are the brains behind these splintering operations. In the course of just a few months, they have upended the world as we know it, leaving the future of whole regions and the lives of tens of millions looking dangerously uncertain. 50 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

PUTIN: IVAN SEKRETAREV/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; AL BAGHDADI: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS ABU BAKR VLADIMIR PUTIN Moscow and its satellite states AL BAGHDADI would guard against the FOR MANIFESTING decadence and degeneracy found FOR BRUTALLY REDEFINING RUSSIA’S DESTINY. in an ever-present Carthage 21ST CENTURY TERRORISM. (today, the West). President | Russia Terrorist leader | Syria The way Russian President Since Russia’s annexation of Vladimir Putin tells it, the Soviet Crimea, Dugin’s ideas have found In under a decade, Abu Bakr Union’s collapse marked not only new life. Called the “brains” al-Baghdadi is said to have gone from the dissolution of a political behind that takeover, Dugin has being an Islamic preacher to a system, but the estrangement of a since claimed that southern and prisoner at a U.S. military base to the civilization. “The Russian people,” eastern Ukraine—or Novorossiya man at the helm of a terrorist he said in March, defending (New Russia)—“pleads” for organization that is redrawing the Russia’s annexation of Crimea Moscow’s intervention. He is in Middle East’s borders. from Ukraine, “became one of the close contact with rebel biggest, if not the biggest, split-up commander Igor Strelkov and has As U.S. airstrikes decimated al nation in the world.” reportedly even given instruc- Qaeda in Iraq’s leadership during the tions to separatists. “Ukraine as it Iraq War, Baghdadi began a meteoric To Putin, Russia is not defined was during the 23 years of its rise through the organization and by its current borders, but by the history has ceased to exist,” Dugin shifted its efforts into war-ravaged shared culture, language, and wrote in March, in an open letter Syria. Today, Baghdadi, called the history of the Russian people. to Americans. “It is irreversible.” “world’s most dangerous man,” has And it is his state’s manifest thoroughly rebranded his group: As destiny—territorial sovereignty of A former advisor to the Russian the Islamic State, it has conquered other countries be damned—to parliament who appears swaths of Syria and Iraq and shocked unite them. This ideology has frequently on state television, the world with graphic images of informed the strongman’s Dugin has a strong foothold in the beheadings and mass executions. domestic policy as well: Putin has Russian establishment. He is a led a crackdown on political potent reminder that there is more Baghdadi has revolutionized the rivals, NGOs, and minorities in the behind Russia’s bravado than way the group makes money; instead name of defending so-called realpolitik. As two Russia hands of relying on foreign patrons, the Russian values from the West’s wrote this spring on Foreign Islamic State reportedly reaps liberal excess and other forces. Affairs’ website, Dugin’s dogma is millions of dollars per day from sales “proving to be a strong contender of crude oil, racketeering, and In 2014, the international for the role of Russia’s chief kidnapping plots. This wealth has community decried Putin’s ideology.” granted him vast autonomy, and in machinations, both at home and June, he announced a new caliphate, abroad, as belligerent and even ABUBAKAR SHEKAU or Islamic empire, and declared irrational. His tactics, however, himself its ruler. The following month, may be perfectly coherent: Amid FOR BRINGING AN in a sermon delivered at Mosul’s NATO expansion and growing ISLAMIC STATE TO AFRICA. Grand Mosque, Baghdadi laid out his economic ties between former ruthless vision: “He the most high Soviet states and the West, Putin Leader, Boko Haram | Nigeria says, ‘And fight them until there is no sees Russia as a civilization under sedition and until the religion, all of it, threat. And he believes that he is Abubakar Shekau captured the is for Allah.’” the man to save it. world’s attention this May in a video in which he gleefully took ALEXANDER DUGIN responsibility for kidnapping more than 200 schoolgirls in FOR MASTERMINDING RUSSIA’S Chibok, Nigeria. “I will sell them EXPANSIONIST IDEOLOGY. in the market,” he said. “Allah says I should sell; he commands Political philosopher | Russia me to sell.” If Russian expansionism has an Over the past year, Shekau’s ideologue, it is Alexander Dugin. military savvy has proved The nationalist philosopher and devastating to Africa’s most Duma confidant first made his populous country and largest name in the 1990s with grandiose economy. He has transformed the visions of Russian destiny: Like jihadist group Boko Haram into the ancient Rome, Dugin claimed, African equivalent of the Islamic State, bent on enforcing its medieval version of sharia law through brute force. Attacking town after town, killing and Continued on page 56 FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 51

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THE BIRTH OF A NEW CENTURY What the world lost in 2014. BY GEORGE PACKER ILLUSTRATION BY EMMANUEL POLANCO W HAT THE BRITISH HISTORIAN the Great War itself, which unprecedented scale; the claimed some 20 million lives, upheavals and wars beyond the Eric Hobsbawm called “the long including victims of the new borders of Europe that followed 19th century” ended 100 years century’s first genocide, in the end of colonialism; and the ago, in 1914, in Sarajevo, with the Turkey; the October Revolution in division of the postwar world into two pistol shots that sparked St. Petersburg, which gave birth to two nuclear-armed camps, which World War I. Another historian, an ideological empire that would fought each other through proxies Fritz Stern, described that war as kill tens of millions of people and in post-colonial lands. “the first calamity of the 20th imprison hundreds of millions century … the calamity from more; the rise of Nazism out of It’s hard to say when the 20th which all other calamities Germany’s defeat; World War II, century ended. For some sprang.” These disasters included with another 60 million deaths, historians, it was a short century including genocide on an that ended in 1989, or 1991, with the peaceful fall of communism FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 53

It has been a year of shocks. They originated the Islamic State’s “caliph,” was among the year’s shocks. It has in unhappy places well outside the charmed once a lieutenant of the original brought home the fragility of leader of al Qaeda in Mesopota- entire countries, where economic circle of safety, comfort, and freedom, but mia, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi). life has come to a standstill and their impact was deeply felt in the West. What’s new and terrifying about social stability is threatened. It the Islamic State is its success in has illuminated the vast gulf and the Soviet Union (at the time, who believed that they were imposing a semipermanent between the world’s lucky and its the political scientist Francis living on a continent that had reality on the ground: the unlucky, who nonetheless can be Fukuyama called it the end of learned well the lessons their astonishingly rapid appearance of joined by contagion. history itself). The years that country once inflicted on it, a a self-anointed caliphate followed were characterized by continent of peace, unity, and occupying a land mass more than This year of shocks has rapid globalization in communi- inviolable borders. Putin is an twice the size of Jordan with produced an unmistakable sense cations, technology, capital, and autocrat of an old, familiar type: millions of people, as well as oil of disintegration. What’s gone is human migration. The world’s a strutting nationalist surrounded fields, dams, and a large, not peace and stability—those markets, institutions, and wars by rich cronies and ideological well-equipped army, under its are always ephemeral—but any were presided over by the one adventurers, snowing his people control. sense of a framework, an order, a superpower, the United States. with ethnic-based propaganda system in which they could be This was the period of the new and inflaming their sense of The Islamic State is the restored. The United Nations, world order. In some ways, it was historical victimhood, while malignant spawn of two major with its vanishing secretary- a continuation of the post-World daring the world to stand up to events in the Middle East, one general, Ban Ki-moon, is barely War II decades, in which him. (No wonder they love him from the outside, one from the an afterthought. The Security American power was preeminent in Belgrade.) To see such a figure inside: the American invasion of Council is as blocked and broken if not undisputed. But it was also stoking wars as the head of a Iraq in 2003 and the popular as the U.S. Congress, with Russia a transitional phase—and from resurgent power, in 2014, rebellions of the Arab Spring in and China playing the spoiler the vantage point of the present, suddenly cast a strange light 2011. Both of these events began role of the Republican caucus. it’s pretty clear that the upon the map of Europe. In July, with a promise of replacing dicta- NATO seems increasingly like a transition is over. hundreds of bodies—most of torship with democracy, but both relic of Harry Truman’s era, them Dutch—fell into a looters’ have produced chaos and tragedy without the vision or will to play When did the 21st century field after a civilian airliner was on a terrible scale. (With regard a role in keeping order along its begin? There is a strong case to shot out of the sky by Russian- to the Arab Spring, Tunisia is the own edges. The Baltic states, be made, following Hobsbawm’s armed separatists. Only then did one fragile exception.) Much of full-fledged members of the lead, that it happened this year, a the shock of Ukraine fully the responsibility falls on the alliance, unlike Ukraine, seem century after Sarajevo. By the penetrate Western complacency. United States, which has less than fully convinced that metric of corpses, the catastro- meddled in the region for their European allies will come to phes of 2014 have hardly been The Islamic State was a second decades, supporting corrupt oil their defense under Article 5 in more severe than those of any shock—a very ugly one—with its regimes, arming tyrants, and case Russian subversion spreads given year in the past 100; in takeover of at least one third of then launching an ill-advised war to Estonia—and there are early some cases, they’ve been much Iraq, its consolidation of land and and botching the consequences warning signs that this might less so. Nor have the year’s resources in Syria, its obliteration beyond repair. But it’s a mistake occur. It’s possible to imagine horrors been new, in the strictest of borders drawn by European to allow American solipsism— Putin testing the integrity of sense: We’ve seen sectarian imperialists during and after the notion that the United States NATO, hoping to find that it slaughter, Russian revanchism, World War I, and its drive to is the source of all the world’s exists on paper only. and the ravages of a deadly exterminate or expel ancient troubles, or the solution to epidemic before. What’s more, minority populations from them—to reinforce Middle The collapse of global there has been no Sarajevo in territory under its control. Much Eastern victimism. Shiite-Sunni structures has opened the way 2014, no triggering event of about the Islamic State isn’t new, conflict is an indigenous for bad behavior on the part of transformation, no thunderbolt beginning with its barbarism. phenomenon; so are jihadi elected and unelected regimes out of a blue sky. Videotaped beheadings of terrorism and the dream of a around the world. President civilians by jihadists date back to restored caliphate; so is a social Recep Tayyip Erdogan has Nonetheless, it has been a year the murder of Daniel Pearl, in system that marginalizes moved Turkey into the ranks of of shocks. They originated in Pakistan in 2002, and Nick Berg, women, stigmatizes minorities, regional powers that are rising unhappy places well outside the in Iraq in 2004. Yet it somehow and binds religion to force in with the eclipse of Western charmed circle of safety, comfort, took the Islamic State’s series of everyday life. To think otherwise influence. His rule is increasingly and freedom, but their impact foretold and dramatized ritual is to deny people in the region authoritarian, illiberal, and was deeply felt in the West, decapitations (which seem their own agency. “It’s the Iraqis paranoid, using anti-American where the structures of power doomed to continue) on a bleak who destroyed their country,” a rhetoric to silence domestic and principle that used to stretch of desert to bring home to man from Baghdad once told me, critics and distract from contain such disruptions no Westerners the reality of the “with the help of the Americans, allegations of corruption, while longer seem to exist. For violence that Syrians and Iraqis under the American eye.” justifying support for some of Westerners, that collapse is the had already experienced Syria’s most brutal rebel groups. greatest shock of all. firsthand. The group’s ideology, Ebola, meanwhile, has When the Syrian Kurdish city of slogans, and ambitions are also claimed thousands of lives in Kobani, on the Syria-Turkey Russian President Vladimir familiar from its former sponsor, West Africa this year, with many border, seemed poised to fall to Putin’s annexation of Crimea and al Qaeda (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, more inevitably to come. The the Islamic State and the specter subversion of Ukraine shocked virus isn’t new—Ebola in human Europe—above all the Germans, beings is nearly 40 years old—and neither is the reality of a quickly spreading, highly lethal plague. Yet Ebola also counts 54 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

of massacres loomed large, the by a popular movement against a most governments in Europe, is Bush’s presidency. No one could U.N.’s special envoy for Syria, corrupt leader, as was the case in mired in domestic unpopularity make a serious case that Bush’s Staffan de Mistura, appealed to Ukraine with Putin’s client, and international confusion, brand of nationalism, with its the world for help, and especially Viktor Yanukovych. Putin is while Putin, Erdogan, China’s Xi waste of American money, to Turkey, which had sealed its signaling that he will tear down Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi, prestige, and lives, did anything border against resupply of the the security architecture that he and other anti-Western to check the rise of illiberal besieged Kurds. “You remember claims America started trashing nationalists have an increasingly regimes, sectarian violence, and Srebrenica?” de Mistura asked at 15 years ago. It’s a cynical and free hand. For an image of extremism any more than did a news conference, referencing disingenuous play that he knows American limits in 2014, think of Obama’s attempts to manage the the genocide of more than 8,000 will make the world safer for the “#BringBackOurGirls” decline that followed. The end of Muslim men and boys in Bosnia thugs, but it has enough truth to campaign, joined by Michelle a century, including the in 1995. “We never forgot, and keep Europe off balance. Obama at the White House and a American century, is always a probably we never forgave host of dignitaries and celebri- long time coming. ourselves for that.” The West has agreed on ties, after the kidnapping of escalating rounds of sanctions more than 200 Nigerian girls by The postwar international But Turkey didn’t want to against Russia, from ones the terrorist group Boko Haram, order was underpinned by remember Srebrenica. Even as it targeted at individuals to whose name translates to American democracy in a period pursued a bid for a nonperma- sanctions on financial and other “Western education is of functioning institutions, nent seat on the Security Council, institutions. Unity among the 28 forbidden.” That was in April, shared prosperity, and public Turkey ignored the U.N. envoy’s members of the European Union, and the girls are still missing, optimism. The global disorder of plea—it preferred to see the as well as between Europe and while hashtag activism has this new century is both Islamic State crush a Syrian the United States, has held better moved on to Gaza and autism. accompanied and enabled by a Kurdish group, the People’s than many people predicted, but sharp deterioration within the Protection Units, that it considers it depends on a dynamic that has Obama’s foreign policy in his United States itself. The U.S. an ally of its own separatist thus far favored Putin: There’s no second term has been hesitant, economy, in recession or Kurdish party. Turkey’s actions possibility of NATO intervention, self-contradictory, at times even recovery, is more and more built have made this NATO member a while Russia intervenes more feckless—and American hawks on a profoundly unfair de facto supporter of the Islamic and more openly with heavy blame the year’s violence distribution of rewards; the State, which has declared its murderous intent toward citizens Obama’s foreign policy in his second term has been hesitant, of every other member of the self-contradictory, at times even feckless—and American hawks NATO alliance. Erdogan is blame the year’s violence squarely on him for tempting the world’s following Putin’s lead—what Putins and Baghdadis with displays of weakness. Putin is to Greater Russia, Erdogan hopes to be to the weapons, armored vehicles, and squarely on him for tempting the political system, strangled by Muslim Brotherhood. It’s a unmarked troops. world’s Putins and Baghdadis organized money and partisan strange, and likely self- with displays of weakness. But as extremism, has no answers to destructive, turn for a non-Arab, The European Union is Michael Ignatieff recently wrote, the country’s deepest problems; historically secular country that another debilitated institu- “That would assume that a wiser large numbers of Americans was created after World War I out tion—a collection of mostly US administration could have have lost faith in their children’s of the ruins of the caliphate that stagnant economies joined held together the tectonic plates future. The United States is no the Islamic State claims to be together by an ailing currency of a world order that are being longer in a condition to impose restoring. But for now, the and political dysfunction. pushed apart by the volcanic its will by asserting or demon- initiative is with Turkey, as it is Elections in May to the upward pressure of violence and strating its values. Those days, with Russia and China. European Parliament in Brussels hatred.” The Islamic State might always problematic, are now favored parties on the left and have exploited the American gone. But the liberal ideas that In grabbing pieces of right that want to see the exodus from Iraq after 2011, but brought freedom, security, and Russian-speaking Europe, Putin European Union weakened to its strength mainly comes from hope to millions of people has counted on this same erosion the point of irrelevance. bad governance and chaos in around the world in the last of international order. He doesn’t Iraq and Syria, as well as the century remain essential in this want to strengthen the United Above all, the year’s disrup- unkillable power of jihadism as a one. America can promote them Nations—his dream is of a tions have revealed the waning Muslim ideology for all best if it restores its own Eurasian alliance led by Russia. of America’s ability to control grievances. Putin’s well-known democracy to health. Throwing the West’s own events—not just its willingness contempt for Obama might have arguments back in its face, he and ability to project force, but played a role in the annexation George Packer is a staff writer justifies the annexation of the attractive power of liberal of Crimea, but his first irreden- for the New Yorker and the author Crimea by blaming the United democracy as a counterweight tist war—in Georgia in 2008— of The Unwinding: An Inner States and NATO for setting the to authoritarianism and was launched during George W. History of the New America. precedent in Kosovo in 1999, an extremism. President Barack air war fought without the Obama, along with the heads of blessing of the Security Council, though it was precipitated by an imminent Serbian genocide against Kosovar Albanians, not FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 55

displacing thousands of people, key liaison and negotiator with 412 366 240 296 152 JIHADI JOHN Boko Haram has extended its both Moscow and Kiev. After the control over Nigeria’s northeast; it downing of Malaysia Airlines Today, according to FOR BEING THE POSTER now claims a territory about the Flight 17, it was Borodai who the International BOY OF EXPAT JIHADISM. size of Ireland. State security publicly denied rebel involvement forces, which are corrupt, in the crash and dictated when the Centre for the Study Islamic State militant | Syria mismanaged, and abusive in their black boxes and bodies were of Radicalisation, own right, have been no match for released. He stepped down after Western Europeans The videotaped beheading of Shekau’s fighters. just three months, saying “a account for some 18 American journalist James Foley genuine Donetsk native” should be sparked international outrage over As the Islamist group’s power in charge. Yet he left a critical percent of the both the brutality of the act and the grows, Shekau’s ambitions also mark: As the “grizzled face of the foreign-fighter identity of the masked executioner: appear to be expanding. He has separatist movement,” according population in Syria, The militant appeared to be British. praised Islamic State leader Abu to the Washington Post, Borodai with the most Dubbed “Jihadi John” by Fleet Street, Bakr al-Baghdadi, and in yet helped a self-declared republic rise recruits coming from he is among the thousands of another exultant video, he declared firmly to its feet. France, Britain, foreign fighters who have traveled to that Allah “commands us to rule Germany, Belgium, the Middle East to fight alongside the rest of the world, not only HAJJAJ AL AJMI, and the Netherlands. the Islamic State. Nigeria, and now we have started.” ABD AL RAHMAN The London-based KHALAF AL ANIZI group estimates that Such jihadi migration is nothing ALEXANDER between 400 and new. From the mujahideen to BORODAI FOR SHAKING THE 1,900 Western Chechen rebels, Islamist groups TERRORIST MONEY TREE. fighters are on the have long looked to foreign nationals FOR RAISING A SELF DECLARED front lines. Above, a to swell their ranks. Yet, relying on REPUBLIC TO ITS FEET. Jihadi financiers | Kuwait; Syria chart shows the propaganda, the Islamic State has highest estimated attracted foreign fighters on a Former prime minister, Donetsk While the United States has number of fighters massive scale. As many as 15,000 People’s Republic | Ukraine dithered about arming the Syrian from each of the foreigners, including some 1,900 opposition, its opponents have Westerners, have joined militant When eastern Ukraine’s Donbass wasted no time at all. Throughout countries. groups in Syria, according to some region declared independence, 2014, and building upon previous estimates. the self-styled government in efforts, Hajjaj al-Ajmi and Abd Donetsk needed a leader. al-Rahman Khalaf al-Anizi Western officials say they have Unsurprisingly, and to the chagrin drummed up cash for the Islamic identified Jihadi John, presumed to of Western powers, it found one in State and the al Qaeda-affiliated be the killer of three other hostages— Moscow. “A lot of people from al-Nusra Front; the men have one American and two Britons— Russia are coming to help,” advanced jihadi fundraising whose beheadings have been Alexander Borodai, a 42-year-old methods, adding handsomely to videotaped. But even if the hooded activist and political consultant, the militants’ revenues from oil militant can be tracked down, there told the New York Times after he sales and extortion rackets. will be plenty of foreign recruits to was appointed prime minister of take his place. the Donetsk People’s Republic. “I Anizi has also facilitated the am one of them.” travel of jihadi fighters and, BORODAI: BRENDAN HOFFMAN/GETTY IMAGES; JIHADI JOHN: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS according to the U.S. Treasury That may be underselling his Department, has worked with al position: Borodai has been Qaeda in Iran. Ajmi, a young cleric described as “the Karl Rove of from a prominent Kuwaiti family, Russian imperialism,” hailing has used social media to elicit from a group of ultranationalists funds from hard-line Islamists whose zeitgeist of a Greater across the Persian Gulf, urging his Russia has permeated the Twitter followers to help end Kremlin. Critics insist that he has government atrocities; his strong ties to Russian intelligence following had swelled to over services—a claim he brushes off 470,000 before Twitter suspended but does not deny. his account in August 2014 (weeks later, he rejoined). “Did you know Over the summer, Borodai was a that bringing down Damascus would not cost more than $10 million?” he asked at a 2012 event in Qatar. “The priority is the support for the jihadists and arming them.” 56 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

The Decision- Makers MASTERMINDING A NATIONAL ELECTION IN THE WORLD’S LARGEST democracy. Steering the West’s response to Russia’s forays into Ukraine. Presenting a plan for reconciliation and accountability in an African country torn along religious lines. Plotting major reforms in one of Europe’s most sluggish economies. These are just a few of the diverse, and unenviable, job descriptions of the men and women in this category. Working to give governance a good name, these decision-makers have taken risks, challenged norms, and demanded change. FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 57

NARENDRA MODI As a child, ANGELA MERKEL human organization. But aside Narendra Modi from building a formidable FOR ENTHRALLING THE WORLD’S MOST worked as a tea FOR PARRYING PUTIN. campaign machine in India’s POPULOUS DEMOCRACY. peddler at a train most populous state, Uttar Chancellor | Germany Pradesh, where he directed the Prime minister | India station. victorious campaign of the Amid the disasters of 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Narendra Modi faced a United States visa ban year was notable for the fact Amit Shah exhibited an almost MODI: ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES; MERKEL: ADAM BERRY/GETTY IMAGES for nine years, and the European Union that open warfare among major otherworldly understanding of ostracized him for 10. The West cold- powers did not return to how to make candidate Narendra shouldered the Hindu nationalist for the same Europe. Although Russia’s Modi appeal to Indians. His deft reason many Indians distrusted him: his shadowy war in Ukraine nearly image management balanced the tolerance of sectarian violence in 2002 that provoked all-out confrontation human with the superhuman. left at least 1,000 people—mostly Muslims— with the West, catastrophe (Modi’s famous line—“it takes a dead in Gujarat state, where Modi was chief never came, and much of the 56-inch chest”—referenced the minister. credit for that goes to German now-prime minister’s imposing Chancellor Angela Merkel. physique as a way to showcase his But by India’s 2014 elections, after years of leadership ability.) corrupt and inefficient Congress party rule, Russian President Vladimir Modi had convinced many that his record as a Putin is a wily leader, and it has Like Modi, Shah is controver- charismatic, business-friendly leader made fallen upon Merkel to manage sial. In July 2010 he was him just the person to revive India’s flagging the former KGB agent. Through- incarcerated on various charges, growth. His speeches drew hundreds of out the crisis in Ukraine, no including murder, for his alleged thousands, and he reached millions via 3-D world leader has talked more involvement in extrajudicial holographic projections. with Putin than Merkel. Her killings. (In the past few months, Russian is so good that she can Shah has been granted exemp- Despite concerns that his economic vision correct her official interpreters; tions from appearing in court, could widen inequality and that his vigorous Putin’s German is equally good, though the proceedings in the nationalism could worsen relations with a remnant of his days as a spy in case are technically ongoing.) But Pakistan, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party East Germany. Berlin’s with Modi’s support, Shah rose to claimed the country’s biggest electoral economic ties with Russia the powerful post of BJP president landslide in three decades. “India has won! ... might make Germany more in early July. There he will likely Good times ahead,” Modi tweeted to millions interdependent with Moscow, remain, serving as the party’s Karl of followers in May. It’s too soon to say but they also give Merkel Rove and Modi’s enforcer. whether he was right. leverage that Washington lacks. HASSAN ROUHANI 58 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014 Germany, then, could be the heavyweight capable of FOR KEEPING THE DOOR OPEN. containing the Russian bear. But Merkel has been nimble in President | Iran using her power, embracing sectoral sanctions while Hassan Rouhani made this list preventing Putin from feeling last year for opening a door that cornered. would lead to nuclear talks with the United States; he appears AMIT SHAH again this year because that door remains open. The Iranian FOR ENGINEERING MODI’S president continues to defend LANDSLIDE. the talks vociferously in Iran, beating back a concerted effort President, Bharatiya from hard-liners to undermine Janata Party | India the tentative rapprochement with the West. All successful campaign managers are masters of mass Rouhani has remained relentlessly upbeat about the discussions, even as his boss, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has stuck to the anti-American tone that has characterized Iranian rhetoric for decades. Although the president said that Tehran will “certainly” reach an agreement with the P5+1—the United States, Russia, France, Germany, China, and Britain—Khamenei has blamed

the West for creating the Islamic State militant group and has set impossible conditions for the talks, writing that as long as the Americans continue their enmity toward Iran, “interac- tions with them … bears no practicality.” Still, Rouhani seems to be doing his best to convince the supreme leader, as well as an Iranian popula- Hindu holy men and women line up to vote at a polling station in India. tion weaned on three decades of anti-Americanism, that it’s time for a new beginning. has said she will not run.) the Economist: “These markets The Central African Republic is will not open up by themselves.” CATHERINE still in tatters; a U.N. peacekeeping Although he was appointed force arrived in September. But finance secretary in 2012 and SAMBA PANZA Samba-Panza continues to work, spent his first year out of the as she said during a recent visit to limelight, Videgaray isn’t FOR PICKING UP THE Washington, “to give back hope to entirely new to politics. The MIT PIECES OF HER COUNTRY. each and every person.” graduate has worked with President Enrique Peña Nieto Interim president | Central LUIS VIDEGARAY since the latter was a state African Republic congressman; when Peña Nieto was elected a state governor in When Catherine Samba-Panza FOR RE ENERGIZING MEXICO. 2005, he made Videgaray his was selected to lead the Central finance chief. African Republic in January, Finance secretary | Mexico violence between Christian and Muslim militias had left Luis Videgaray showed that his AYDAN ÖZOGUZ thousands dead and hundreds of reputation as the brains of thousands displaced. Under her Mexico’s government is no FOR REIMAGINING GERMAN predecessor, a former rebel leader, overstatement when a compre- CITIZENSHIP. state institutions had basically hensive energy reform bill he stopped functioning. Yet designed was signed into law in Integration minister | Germany Samba-Panza, only the third August. For the first time in 76 female president in African years, direct foreign investment Europe is no melting pot. For history, welcomed her challenging will be allowed in the country’s decades, the continent has job. She announced a four-point energy sector—a move that is struggled to integrate immi- plan in June to integrate youth— estimated to bring in an grants from Muslim-majority who have fed the country’s additional $20 billion annually. countries, sometimes demoniz- rapacious militias—into economic Expected to expand the ing them as a demographic and political processes, and she availability of low-cost energy to threat or relegating them to launched a dialogue to reduce Mexicans, Videgaray’s reforms ghettos that breed radicalism. tensions between Christian and focus on the sustainability of Aydan Özoguz, Germany’s new KEVIN FRAYER/GETTY IMAGES Muslim communities. Demanding existing economic institutions, integration minister, hopes to government accountability, she including small Mexican firms, change all that. introduced three-month trial and input quality such as Born to Turkish parents who periods for ministers, and she is broadband and credit. Markets came to Hamburg as guest laying the groundwork for need a little governmental workers, Özoguz has risen democratic elections in 2015. (She nudging to find success, he told meteorically in German politics. FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 59

In December 2013, she became foreign minister, Luis Almagro, Q+A: the first Muslim woman of set out to show that a country like LUIS VIDEGARAY Turkish origin to serve as a state Uruguay—with its tiny popula- minister, charged with imple- tion of some 3 million and gross SECRETARY OF FINANCE menting a controversial new law national income per capita of AND PUBLIC CREDIT, MEXICO that gives children of immigrants around $14,000—could do its part in Germany the right to hold in addressing one of the world’s Interview by Julie Schwietert Collazo more than one passport. worst crises. In October, Mujica welcomed 42 Syrian refugees to It’s important to remember that in But her ambitions go beyond Montevideo. His and Almagro’s Mexico there is no single party that any one piece of legislation: She message? That there are no ever has a majority in the House or wants Germans to reimagine excuses: Wealthier countries the Senate. For this reason, all reforms citizenship itself and embrace a should also step up and provide require political accord. So what the sense of belonging for all, safe havens to the more than president did was to open a space for “whatever their name or 3 million Syrian refugees. very frank dialogue, one in which we all background,” she told DW-TV. listened to one another. And it was “Being German doesn’t just This group is the first in from that space that the initial reform mean coming from a long line Uruguay’s pilot program offering plan, “Pacto por México” (“Pact for of German ancestors.” a path to Uruguayan citizenship; Mexico”), was born. another 78 refugees are expected early next year. “We wanted to All of the reforms are important, earn the right to tell the rest but the one that I think has the of the world that there are potential to make the greatest other solutions,” Mujica told impact on the Mexican economy is USA Today. the package of energy reforms. This set of reforms requires a fairly radical LUIS ALMAGRO, MATTEO RENZI shift in approach with respect to our MUJICA: PABLO PORCIUNCULA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; ALMAGRO: VANDERLEI ALMEIDA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES JOSÉ MUJICA natural resources—namely, permitting FOR BUCKING BUNGA BUNGA private investment, both domestic and FOR PROVING THERE’S ALWAYS POLITICS. foreign, which opens up competition. ROOM FOR REFUGEES. The idea is that this will attract capital Prime minister | Italy and technology to this sector. The size Foreign minister; president | of the energy sector in Mexico is just so Uruguay Matteo Renzi stormed into vast; it has an outsize impact on the Palazzo Chigi in February vowing rest of the Mexican economy. José Mujica is something of a to “rottamare,” or scrap the old radical, both at home and abroad. order in Italy. At 39, he was the We are in the implementation phase The leftist guerrilla turned post-Berlusconi “Demolition of the reforms, but there are some statesman opted for a small farm Man,” ready to replace his specific successes we can point over Uruguay’s presidential country’s sclerotic politics with to in the work that has been done palace, donates about 90 percent business-friendly efficiency (with- so far. In finance reform, for example, of his income to charity, and out the bunga-bunga). Renzi’s we were committed to making credit legalized marijuana. Pursuing an goal was to get Italy’s house in more accessible and more affordable, equally provocative approach to order and then use the country’s and today we can already see progress. international affairs, he has railed enhanced credibility to take on Before, small and medium-sized against the power elite’s the European Union’s austerity businesses did not have access to obsession with economic growth policies. credit. We have changed that. The and has blasted showy United accessibility of credit has been Nations summits. The effervescent Florentine is particularly helpful to small farmers finding that Italy’s vested and producers. This year, the president and his interests—its civil service and labor unions among them—are I am the first secretary of finance not so quick to yield to his charm. and public credit in 100 years to But although his promised have also had the experience reforms have stalled in Parlia- of having been a representative ment and have been opposed or senator. That background has been even by members of his own vital to the reform process; it has Democratic Party, he is weaken- served me well, allowing me to have a ing the cumbersome Senate. If he close conversation with legislators. can hang onto his office—Italian politics can be notoriously treacherous—he may be the best hope to lift Italy out of its worst economic slump since the 1930s. 60 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

The Challengers MASS PROTESTS ROCKED EVERY CORNER OF THE GLOBE IN 2014. In Kiev and Bangkok, Hong Kong and Caracas, passionate individuals led movements that defied powerful government institutions in the hope of defining new trajectories for entire countries and populations. Similarly, passionate individuals tested the status quo—and some sacred cows—by pushing for Scottish independence from the United Kingdom, exposing the cracks (and hot air) among Silicon Valley’s elite, and scaring big banks with a tough, expansive vision of 21st-century financial regulations. Although their goals and tactics may not have been universally lauded, these Global Thinkers were indefatigable. FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 61

THOMAS PIKETTY inequality not seen since before In February, then-Interior Minister Vitaliy World War I. The book in which the Committee to Zakharchenko. With her face FOR CRUNCHING THE NUMBERS Piketty sets forth these conclu- Protect Journalists battered nearly beyond ON THE NEW GILDED AGE. sions—Capital in the Twenty- estimated that more recognition, Chornovol fearlessly First Century—is a living symbol than 170 journalists accused President Viktor Economist | France of the anxiety this inequality has had been attacked, Yanukovych—another target of created in the post-industrial, and one murdered, her investigations—of ordering The insight of Thomas Piketty, financialized economy. It spent the assault and asserted that the the French economist who has, weeks at the top of best-sellers while covering attack would not dissuade her yes, been described as a “rock lists this year, and the book protests in Ukraine. from going after crooked star,” is a simple mathematical anchored heated dinner-party officials. expression: r > g. The rate of conversations across two return on capital, r, will typically continents for months. After Yanukovych fled Ukraine be higher than the rate of in February 2014, Chornovol economic growth, g. Capital, then, TETYANA joined the country’s new funnels wealth toward those who CHORNOVOL anti-corruption task force but already have it. later resigned, citing frustration FOR RISKING EVERYTHING with the lack of “political will … Piketty mined tax data to TO DOCUMENT UKRAINE’S to carry out a hard-edged, provide the best-known historical CORRUPTION. large-scale war” against graft. In record of wealth concentrations September, she became an and showed that the United States Journalist | Ukraine advisor to the new interior and Europe have entered a new minister. Gilded Age, with levels of Danger was no deterrent for Maidan darling Tetyana Hardship still fails to daunt Chornovol. A Ukrainian her: When Chornovol’s husband, journalist famous for reporting a fighter with the far-right on government corruption, she pro-Kiev Azov Battalion, was was beaten by unidentified men killed in eastern Ukraine in in December 2013 after August, she wrote in an online publishing a blog post about a newspaper, “FREEDOM or mansion she claimed belonged to death—we made that choice on Maidan.” BENNY TAI, JOSHUA WONG PIKETTY: LEON NEAL/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; TAI: LAM YIK FEI/GETTY IMAGES; WONG: ALEX OGLE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES ORIOL JUNQUERAS, FOR MAKING BEIJING SWEAT. ALEX SALMOND Co-founder, Occupy Central With Love and Peace; co-founder, Scholarism | China FOR BREATHING NEW LIFE INTO OLD KINGDOMS. Hong Kong, once a British imperial prize and now China’s financial center, is experiencing its most acute political tension in decades. And Beijing largely blames Separatist leaders | Spain; two men: Benny Tai, a professor at the University of Hong Kong, and Joshua Wong, a United Kingdom college freshman. European separatists are a beleaguered bunch these days. Since late September, thousands—and at times tens of thousands—of students, Europe’s recent history has seen workers, and activists have taken to the streets, protesting the Chinese government’s states inexorably smothered by resistance to democracy in Hong Kong. Tai’s organization, Occupy Central With Love the prosperous, if stifling embrace and Peace, has provided the intellectual framework for the protests; Wong is the of the European Union. Add to youthful, charismatic leader of Hong Kong’s that a globalized financial system, most important student movement, and calls for self-rule and Scholarism. Wong and his allies of all ages devolution feel ever more aim to preserve and advance an identity anachronistic. But in Catalonia that is separate from China’s. and Scotland, nationalist independence movements As of press time, the protests are still showed a surprising resurgence in ongoing, but will likely soon dissolve or be 2014 and caused a rethink of the dissolved. Tai and Wong, however, show ever-intensifying centralization of that one can stand up to Beijing—even if power in Europe. only for a month or two. Scotland ended up voting to stay in the United Kingdom, but the country’s independence movement, led by then Scottish National Party chief Alex Salmond, secured hard-fought concessions from Westminster and Prime Minister David 62 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

Cameron. Although independence didn’t come to the Scots, they likely will now have more say over their own affairs. In Catalonia, Oriol Junqueras, leader of the Republican Left of Catalonia, has helped push the region’s president, Artur Mas, into a headlong confrontation with Madrid over independence or at least greater political and economic Demonstrators demanding democratic reforms take to the streets in Hong Kong on Oct. 28, 2014. The protests, autonomy. Madrid also known as the “Umbrella Revolution,” began in late September. has steadfastly refused to acknowledge Catalonia’s them on the front lines. Among aspirations— for racism, despite a heavily those resisting the militants’ which, at press time, had been anti-immigration platform, and advance were thousands of reduced to a symbolic vote that keeps her rhetorical guns trained female combatants, including the Spanish Constitutional Court on Brussels. Le Pen has become those from the Peshmerga, the suspended on Nov. 4—but the something of a standard-bearer armed forces from Iraqi separatist fires are still burning in for Europe’s far-right, Euroskep- Kurdistan, and Syria’s People’s Spain’s economic engine. tical forces—a model for how Protection Units (YPG). they, too, can become serious The Western media have political contenders. obsessed over these women, but MARINE LE PEN their significance goes well beyond their gender on the battlefield. For these fighters, the Islamic State is FOR GIVING FRANCE’S only one front in a war. FAR RIGHT ITS MOMENT. Although Kurdish areas in the Middle East are often perceived to Politician | France be progressive in their gender On May 26, French voters awoke politics, that’s not quite the case to what Prime Minister Manuel for some communities, particu- Valls called “an earthquake.” larly in Iraq, where female UMBRELLAS: PAULA BRONSTEIN/GETTY IMAGES; FIGHTER: AHMAD AL RUBAYE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES Marine Le Pen had used image representation in government is management and opportunistic limited, divorced women are timing to lead her extreme-right stigmatized, and rural families National Front party to a historic still resort to honor killings. For victory in the European many women, Kurdish military Parliament elections, taking THE FEMALE institutions offer refuge and are a 35% almost 25 percent of the French FIGHTERS OF way to resist this patriarchy. Not vote—more than either of KURDISTAN only are the soldiers required to Of the Kurdish France’s two major parties, be literate, but they are also combatants fighting whose popularity is dwindling. FOR DEFENDING MORE THAN schooled in politics and human In September, the National Front THEIR HOMELAND. rights as part of their military in Syria, the YPG went on to win its first-ever training. estimates that 35 French Senate seats. Combatants | Iraq, Syria “They’ve taken up arms and percent—some Le Pen shrewdly distanced gone to battle to protect 15,000—are women. herself from her anti-Semitic Kurdistan,” Col. Nahida Ahmed father, the former National Front Rashid, a Peshmerga commander, leader, and rebranded her party As Islamic State fighters swept told PBS, “but also to say that as a refuge from political through large areas of Syria and there’s no difference between dysfunction. She voices disdain Iraq this year, Kurdish forces met men and women.” FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 63

ANXIETY IN THE AGE OF INEQUALITY Why Thomas Piketty’s blockbuster book Capital struck a nerve in America and beyond. BY GILLIAN TETT ILLUSTRATION BY EMMANUEL POLANCO UNTIL RECENTLY, IT WAS A SAFE different countries over the past dubbed him a “rock star” few centuries and points out that economist. assumption that it would be inequality has been rising almost impossibly hard to sell a book by everywhere, including in the Piketty’s success is a startling an obscure left-wing French United States. Piketty’s academic sign of how the zeitgeist can intellectual to Americans, publisher initially expected to sell sometimes shift—or, more especially a 700-page tome. No only a modest number of copies. accurately, how the framework for longer. This spring Thomas But Capital shot into best-sellers public debate can be reshaped Piketty, a 43-year-old Paris-based lists. Sales of the book were so suddenly to make ideas that once economist and expert on wealth high that it even beat out two seemed almost irrelevant go and inequality, published Capital literary adaptations of Frozen, the mainstream. A decade ago, during in the Twenty-First Century in hit Disney film. When Piketty the heady days of the credit boom, English. The book compares how appeared at literary events to inequality was infrequently wealth patterns have evolved in discuss his work, he attracted discussed with passion outside such crowds that American media the ranks of the political left. But in 2014, it became ubiquitous. 64 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

When the World Economic have enjoyed capital gains. This enjoying prosperity. Namely, rich Western economies do start to Forum held its annual general divergence was partially people spend a far smaller grow again, the anxiety about meeting in Davos, Switzerland, in concealed during the credit boom proportion of their income than political risk, cohesion, and credit January, it revealed that a yearly because middle-class Americans poorer families do. To put it may seep away. After all, people survey of its members had ranked borrowed heavily to maintain crudely, it is harder to reflate an care less about how a pie is being inequality as the biggest challenge consumption and offset their economy on the backs of luxury divided if that pie is expanding stalking the global economy in stagnant wages. To a certain goods than on those of middle- fast. But don’t bet on that 2014. It topped climate change and extent, this was also true in places class cars. happening anytime soon. banking crises, among other such as the United Kingdom. issues, even though this was the More importantly, the growing To understand why, take a look first time inequality had ever When the bubble burst, gap between the haves and at work by someone whom, unlike appeared in the survey. Around however, the divergence was have-nots creates new political Piketty, most pundits do not the same time, an opinion poll by revealed with cruel clarity. Since risks that cannot be ignored. A know: W. Brian Arthur. An the Pew Research Center showed that time, the climate of ultra-loose recent feature of the political economist affiliated with the Palo that two-thirds of Americans think the gap between rich and poor is As the wealth divide widens, it becomes less clear to the poor widening, and a report released in that they have a stake in preserving the status quo. September showed that almost half consider this to be a “very big” monetary policy has further landscape in the Western world Alto Research Center and the problem for their country. The twisted the knife: The Bank of has been a rise in anti- Santa Fe Institute, Arthur concern is markedly higher than it England, for example, calculates establishment parties, be it the analyzes the impact of digitiza- was before the 2008 credit crisis. that the richest 5 percent of Britons Tea Party in the United States, the tion on the economy. He have captured 40 percent of the National Front in France, or even estimates that if all the economic Policymakers are echoing and benefits of quantitative easing the independence movement in activity now performed by digital reinforcing this focus on since 2009. The pattern in the Scotland. These parties and their networks around the world, inequality. In October, at a United States is almost certainly popularity are born from, among without any human intervention, conference in Boston, U.S. Federal similar, if not more extreme, other things, economic distress, were added up, it would soon be Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said, though the Federal Reserve has not emergent forms of local identity, equivalent to the economic “Inequality in the United States hitherto had the courage to publish and people’s enhanced ability to output of the entire U.S. economy. greatly concern[s] me,” before comparable research. organize themselves via social This activity is replacing a vast devoting part of her presentation media. But inequality plays a role swath of middle-class jobs, to the topic, which was previously But raw numbers alone do not too: As the wealth divide widens, leaving most gains of growth in considered largely taboo for fully explain the new zeitgeist. it becomes less clear to the poor the hands of a skilled, highly paid central bank governors. President The shifting debate on inequality that they have a stake in elite—and it is only trending Barack Obama has also cited the also reflects a stealthy change in preserving the status quo, and upward, with no end in sight. issue repeatedly in his political how the craft of economics is mainstream politicians, in turn, speeches. More surprisingly, key perceived. Back during the credit struggle to create sensible, Or, to put it another way, to voices in the Republican Party boom, economics was presumed long-term trade-off strategies for understand why Piketty’s book have echoed the theme (though to be a quantitative field: the economy. struck such a chord in 2014, think they are apt to blame inequality Anything that really mattered in about how Capital has been sold. on the poor’s failure to work hard policy terms, it was thought, could In short, what matters today in Once upon a time, it would have enough, rather than on govern- be plugged into a spreadsheet or economics is not simply data, but been retailed predominately by ment policies or certain structural algorithm. The most important questions of social cohesion and salesclerks staffing bookstores; patterns that Piketty identifies). digits pertained to productivity or trust—or “credit,” in the today it is as likely to be sold growth; a big GDP number was old-fashioned Latin sense. online, with just a few low-paid Worldwide, according to the considered the holy grail. Traditionally these “soft” issues warehouse staff and postal Factiva database of global press were considered the preserve of workers handling copies. No sources, the word “inequality” These days, however, it is clear social scientists, not economists. wonder anxiety is the new mood cropped up 28,000 times in the that these digits aren’t the only But it is rapidly becoming clear of the age. second quarter of 2014; back in things that matter. The quality of that they are important to 2006, during the height of the growth and the distribution of its economic growth. It is little The genie of inequality cannot credit boom, the word only benefits are important too. A wonder that many of Wall Street’s be stuffed easily back into the appeared 3,000-odd times. world that is growing, in largest banks are hiring analysts bottle. Piketty’s book is a reminder economic terms, but doing so in a skilled at discussing cultural and that what’s needed, above all else, Why has interest in inequality profoundly unequal manner political trends or that ratings is an honest debate about another exploded? In part, the trend behaves differently from other, agencies such as Standard & issue that has hitherto been reflects tangible economic facts: previous models. Think about Poor’s are placing a new emphasis unmentionable, especially in Inequality of incomes and wealth spending: When most of the gains on “social” factors, such as America: a bit more wealth has grown in recent decades. Back from wealth are concentrated in perceived inequality, when they redistribution. in 1980, according to economist the hands of the rich, those analyze economic and fiscal risks. Emmanuel Saez, the top 1 percent individuals’ propensity to spend Gillian Tett is a columnist and of Americans garnered “just” 10 is different from the pattern that Perhaps this shift in the debate the U.S. managing editor for the percent of all income; these days, arises when the middle class is will turn out to be temporary. If Financial Times. he finds, the ratio is around 22 percent because salaries have become less equal and the wealthy FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 65

Banking Committee; and THULI MADONSELA Federal Reserve Vice Chair Stanley Fischer has praised her FOR BITING THE HAND proposed reforms, which could THAT APPOINTED HER. drastically reduce government loans when the next financial Public protector | South Africa crisis rolls around. When he appointed her public ANAT ADMATI BENJAMIN LAWSKY In 1994, protector in 2009, South African Thuli Madonsela President Jacob Zuma couldn’t have FOR WATCHING THE WATCHERS FOR BEING WILD known that he would wind up at the OF GLOBAL BANKING. WALL STREET’S TIN STAR. declined a business end of Thuli Madonsela’s scholarship offer formidable will and tactical wiles. Economist | Palo Alto, Calif. Regulator | New York City Six years after the start of the Despite the damage done by the from Harvard Since then, Madonsela has deftly financial crisis, not that much 2008 financial crisis and the University so that she wielded the tools of her office, from has changed for the world’s big evidence implicating bank could help draft her public shaming to a quiet word in banks. Burned by subprime executives in the economy’s country’s landmark the ear, while building her reputa- investments and then bailed out unraveling, no Wall Street CEOs tion as a fearless advocate. In by taxpayers, banks still face ever saw jail time. But now a constitution. March, she issued a fat report aimed laughably low capital require- once-obscure New York state at Zuma himself, venturing “where ments (the necessary holdings regulator is finally going after big most others fear to tread,” as the mandated by regulators). This, banks with zeal. South African news site the Daily according to Anat Admati, a Maverick put it. The report found professor at Stanford University’s Benjamin Lawsky, head of that Zuma had unduly benefited Graduate School of Business, New York state’s Department of from state-funded improvements remains the key component of Financial Services, went up worth $23 million to his estate. the systemic risk built into the against Credit Suisse for helping global financial system. rich Americans dodge their taxes, Madonsela’s anti-corruption and in May the banking giant crusade makes her a darling of the Banks almost exclusively took the rare step of pleading West (in October, she won Transpar- finance their operations through guilty to criminal wrongdoing. ency International’s Integrity debt backed by governments; Lawsky also has attacked Award). But at home her efforts but rather than relying on loans, Standard Chartered for have brought insults and scorn from Admati argues, banks should laundering money for Iran, and those who fear her most: the behave more like other in August he slapped the bank powerful. companies, relying on a mix of with a $300 million equity and debt to finance their fine for failing to crack down on ADMATI: COURTESY PHOTO; MADONSELA: BEN GABBE/GETTY IMAGES FOR TIME work. Washington might agree: such transactions. He’s now The ideas she and her co-author working to regulate virtual- laid out in their recent book— currency companies operating in The Bankers’ New Clothes: New York. What’s Wrong With Banking and What to Do About It—reached As a state official, Lawsky has President Barack Obama; she been accused of elbowing in on testified before the Senate federal regulators’ turf, but where they have often shown a remarkable lack of initiative, Lawsky hasn’t been afraid to play hardball with big banks, threatening to strip them of their New York banking licenses. LEOPOLDO LÓPEZ FOR UPENDING THE TACTICS OF VENEZUELA’S LOYAL OPPOSITION. Leader, Popular Will | Venezuela Leopoldo López, the leader of Venezuela’s opposition Popular 66 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

Swisher launched Re/code, a technology news and conference start-up. Known for her fearlessness and wit, Swisher writes to inform and empower technology consumers. She also has emerged as an outspoken advocate for women in the industry. “You know Apple is run by men when they call it an iPhone 6 Plus and it’s only 5.5 inches,” she said on a panel in early October. Venezuelan security forces clash with anti-government protesters in Caracas. VENEZUELA: JUAN BARRETO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; ABASSI: FETHI BELAID/AFP/GETTY IMAGES Will party, is the chief thorn in SUTHEP junta briefly detained him HOUCINE ABASSI Caracas’s side. The figurehead THAUGSUBAN following the coup; he now lives of anti-government protests as a monk in southern Thailand, FOR GETTING TO “YES” that erupted in early 2014, FOR ORCHESTRATING far from Bangkok politics. IN TUNISIA. López called his supporters to THAILAND’S LATEST COUP. Nevertheless, his backroom the streets with the hashtag dealings, his charisma, and his Union leader | Tunisia #LaSalida, meaning “the way Former chief, People’s speechifying helped eradicate Houcine Abassi tirelessly and out.” Demanding new policies Democratic Reform what he called the “political cunningly unified moderates and to combat high crime rates, Committee | Thailand machine of Thaksin.” Islamists, settling entrenched record inflation, and food short- grudges and using the threat of ages, thousands amassed. The A former Thai deputy prime KARA SWISHER protests to secure the passage of scene turned violent when dem- minister for security affairs, the road map to Tunisia’s new onstrators clashed with police, Suthep Thaugsuban has been FOR PULLING BACK THE CURTAIN political order. Without Abassi, leaving four people dead (the embroiled in a range of ON SILICON VALLEY. the country’s new constitution, death toll would later rise to scandals, including his role in a signed into law on Jan. 27, may more than 40). The govern- violent crackdown on protesters Journalist | San Francisco not have been. ment, in turn, accused López in 2010 that left some 90 people If there is a scribe of Silicon of terrorism and arrested him dead. Yet his recent feat of Valley, it’s Kara Swisher. A Abassi was a political on Feb. 18. In jail ever since, he political mobilization may longtime technology journalist, unknown before becoming the now faces up to 13 years in overshadow even that taint. In Swisher covered AOL back when secretary-general of one of prison on charges of seeking to late 2013, he prompted it was run behind a Virginia car Tunisia’s most powerful trade topple President Nicolás thousands into Bangkok’s dealership; today she is feared by unions, the Union Générale Maduro. streets to demand the resigna- tech titans the world over for her Tunisienne du Travail (Tunisian tion of then-Prime Minister uncanny ability to expose their General Labor Union). Then, in While many of Maduro’s Yingluck Shinawatra, the sister dirty laundry. She helped bring 2013, he directed hundreds of critics favor dialogue with the of exiled former Prime Minister down Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich hours of arbitration to distill a current government as Thaksin Shinawatra. Suthep’s for his opposition to same-sex consensus. The road map led to Venezuela’s path forward, supporters destabilized the marriage, and she made the dismissal of the entire López’s more confrontational capital for months and ultimate- Facebook founder Mark cabinet, the appointment of a approach has resonated. ly helped oust Yingluck’s Zuckerberg squirm during a new prime minister, and the According to a recent poll, his government. public interrogation about his creation of an independent approval rating has risen above company’s privacy practices. election commission. That 49 percent. That makes Although the Thai military Tunisia is the only post-Arab him—even behind bars—the remains in power, things didn’t This year, after breaking with Spring country in relatively most popular figure in end well for Suthep: The ruling Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, stable condition can be credited Venezuela’s long-splintered largely to Abassi’s gifts as a opposition. unifier. FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 67

The Naturals LOCATING PROMISE AMID CONTRADICTION IS THE KEY TO environmental progress for these Global Thinkers, who are showing that it is possible for a large, bustling city to be free of cars, for a small tribe to shield its homeland from powerful energy interests, and for trees—just trees—to protect a country from catastrophe. There is much left to learn, and even more to respect, about the natural world. These individuals serve as constant reminders of what it takes not just to live on Earth, but to thrive. 68 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

AKIRA MIYAWAKI KATHARINE HAYHOE, PARTHA DASGUPTA, FOR PLANTING TREES TO DEFEND VEERABHADRAN AGAINST TSUNAMIS. RAMANATHAN MIYAWAKI: COURTESY OF KANSAI FOUNDATION; BUENDÍA: COURTESY OF GOLDMAN ENVIRONMENTAL PRIZE Botanist | Japan RUTH BUENDÍA FOR KEEPING THE FAITH IN THE Speaking about FIGHT AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE. herself as a Christian The 2011 tsunami in Japan FOR SAVING A HOMELAND BY overwhelmed concrete barriers LETTING A RIVER RUN. Atmospheric scientist; economist; and a scientist, along the country’s coastline and atmospheric scientist | Katharine Hayhoe destroyed some 120,000 buildings. Activist | Peru Lubbock, Texas; United Yet nearby coastal Shinto shrines, Kingdom; San Diego told PBS, is “like nestled in forests, remained largely The Asháninka people have coming out of untouched. To botanist Akira lived in South America’s Ene In fighting the ill effects of the closet.” Miyawaki, this showed that trees River valley for centuries, climate change, scientists and could be the keys to averting future surviving Spanish conquest and religious leaders might seem like catastrophe. civil war. But that nearly awkward partners. But for changed in 2010, when the researchers Partha Dasgupta and Miyawaki has been restoring governments of Peru and Brazil Veerabhadran Ramanathan, as forests for decades and has been agreed to build hydroelectric well as self-proclaimed “climate involved with planting some 40 dams that would have produced change evangelist” Katharine million trees in 15 countries. Now, jobs and energy in the region— Hayhoe, science and religion in his home country, he is using and also would have flooded the don’t have to be at odds over tsunami debris to construct beds in indigenous group’s homeland. global warming. In fact, they may which to plant oak and other tree have common cause. species native to Japan—together Enter Ruth Buendía. As the trees will act as a tidal-wave president of the organization Hayhoe, of Texas Tech shield. Under the banner of the Central Asháninka del Río Ene, University, has been aligning Great Forest Wall Project, at least Buendía has united her people religion and conservation for one forest has already been in a campaign against the dams. years. With her evangelical pastor completed in a city near Fukushima; She has filed lawsuits insisting husband, in 2009 she published A and over 10 years, some 90 million that both national and Climate for Change: Global seedlings will be planted. Miyawaki international law require Warming Facts for Faith-Based also hopes to export the shield authorities to consult the Decisions. Today, she continues to model to other countries with Asháninka before starting argue that protecting natural vulnerable coastlines. projects that affect the group— resources is in line with conserva- and she has kept the dams at bay tive Christian values and has “Forests are life itself,” Miyawaki for four years. For her exceptional emerged as the most prominent told the Tokyo-based environmental activism, Buendía received the religious climate communicator group Japan for Sustainability in prestigious Goldman Environ- in the United States. Dasgupta, of 2011. “The life for surviving mental Prize this year. Cambridge University, and tomorrow begins with creating true Ramanathan, of the University of ‘forests of life.’” Buendía isn’t a lawyer; she California, San Diego, made only finished high school at age ripples in September when 25. “Anger,” she said after being Science published the duo’s call awarded the prize, “motivated for religious leaders to evangelize me to defend my people.” for the planet. Earlier this year, the scientists had met with Pope Francis at a Vatican sustainability conference. “The transformational step,” wrote Dasgupta and Ramanathan, “may very well be a massive mobilisation by the Vatican and other religions for collective action to safeguard the well-being of both humanity and the environment.” FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 69

EXTREME HEIGHTS Just how fast is the world approaching the demise of humanity? BY BILL MCKIBBEN ILLUSTRATION BY EMMANUEL POLANCO AT TIMES 2014 SEEMED LIKE AN sadly, have become accustomed diseases, the ghastly Ebola felt even uglier when the Islamic epidemic emerged, claiming exercise in extremity, a test to see State began beheading prisoners thousands of lives and turning just how far already terrible with knives and posting videos of whole countries into de facto trends could be pushed. The the murders online. Meanwhile, no-go zones. violent world to which people, as poor people around the globe continued to die of preventable Then there was the heat. Although less high-profile than 70 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

the Islamic State or Ebola, this has certainly stoked political with more than 300,000 people will. If that political will were year’s temperatures were debates, particularly in streaming down Sixth Avenue— mustered, change could spread measurably extreme—and their California, about who controls the biggest demonstration about rapidly. On the other hand, the importance was unquestionably water resources and how, any issue that the United States transition to a world without profound: Unless something imagine if such an intense dry had seen in some years. Joining fossil fuels could drag on too remarkable and unexpected spell had occurred in a far less the grassroots was U.N. long, to the point where carbon happens this December, 2014 stable place. Scholars have made Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, dioxide overwhelms the planet’s will rank as the hottest year it clear that one contributing who told a news conference, “We climatic system. In October, since humankind started factor to the onset of war in Syria stand … on the right side of this Mark Carney, governor of the officially recording tempera- was a record drought that drove key issue for our common future.” Bank of England, pointed out tures in the late 19th century. The year boasted the warmest Unless something remarkable and unexpected happens this May, June, August, and December, 2014 will rank as the hottest year since humankind September ever recorded. started officially recording temperatures in the late 19th century. That global warming is millions of people off farms and That same day, in a late-night that if catastrophic climate happening isn’t news, of course. into cities, an event that one announcement at the Cathedral change is to be avoided, the “vast Humanity’s relatively short spree expert has called “the worst Church of St. John the Divine, majority” of the planet’s fossil of burning oil, natural gas, and long-term drought and most the Rockefeller Brothers Fund fuel reserves must be considered coal has already changed the pH severe set of crop failures since announced that it was beginning “unburnable” starting now. That of every ocean, melted most of agricultural civilizations began the process of divesting from would conflict, however, with the Arctic’s summer sea ice, and in the Fertile Crescent many fossil fuels. Great universities, the business plans of major set the Earth’s greatest glaciers millennia ago.” Sooner or later, in including Stanford, have already players in the world’s richest oozing. Put another way, humans other words, climate changes taken this step, and so have some industry, from Gazprom to have taken the biggest physical history. huge religious bodies. For Exxon Mobil to Shell to Coal features on the planet and instance, the World Council of India to Shanxi Coking. In broken them. The record heat of What can be done in the face Churches, which represents other words, shutting off the tap 2014, however, coupled with of the seeming inevitability of more than 500 million Chris- cold turkey is not going to other recent developments, environmental calamity? In tians, announced in midsummer happen. indicates that this devastation short, plenty. Great ideas are that it would start divesting its isn’t just getting worse—it may represented on this list of Global coal, oil, and gas holdings. But Even finding a moderate be unstoppable. Thinkers, from making Helsinki when a fund set up by the pace at which it’s possible to (and eventually other major Rockefeller family, which at least ameliorate the worst In May, two studies released cities) free of personal cars, to accumulated the greatest consequences of what humanity just a few days apart reached the mitigating the impact of original oil fortune the world has has done to the environment same conclusion: Global tsunamis and storms by planting ever known, decides that its can feel like an impossible fight. warming has reached the point more coastal trees, to organizing traditional investments are both But as this year demonstrates, where the great West Antarctic local populations against immoral and unwise, a tide has those demanding a better, Ice Sheet is now “destabilized” powerful interests to block dam started to turn. cleaner world, including this and its eventual melt “irrevers- construction, mining, and other category’s Global Thinkers, have ible.” The looming consequence environmental dangers. There Perhaps one day historians a big ally on their side: Mother will be a 4-foot rise in global are also wonderful communica- will decide that Sept. 21, 2014, Nature. Powerfully and ocean levels. “This is really tors, whose work brings new was the day that marked the inexorably, whether growing happening,” Thomas Wagner, a publics into conversations about beginning of the end of the fossil hotter, sloughing off ice, or NASA researcher who worked on global warming: Katharine fuel era. withholding water, she keeps one of the studies, told the New Hayhoe, for instance, has shown showing the folly of humanity’s York Times. “There’s nothing to great skill in reaching evangelical The question is how fast that ways. Above all, perhaps stop it now.” Emphasizing just Americans, a group traditionally end will come, and in the answer 2014 will go down in the books how big a deal this finding is, a resistant to hearing the climate probably rests the fate of as the year when the costs of writer for the Washington Post change message. humanity. Theoretically, the end short-term thinking truly began noted, “Years from now, when could come fast enough to to sink into people’s brains and scientists look for a precise What’s more, 2014 marked a matter. In another 2014 record, inspire action. It would be a moment when the Earth’s turning point in the scale and there were days this summer valuable shift—extremely so. climate began to inexorably impact of the grassroots fight when Germany generated change, they may mark this against climate change. On Sept. three-quarters of its power from Bill McKibben is a writer and week.” 21, demonstrations in 2,800 cities the wind and sun, demonstrating environmentalist. He is a scholar around the planet culminated in that what the world lacks in in residence at Middlebury There were plenty of other a massive march in Manhattan, addressing climate change is less College in Vermont. examples of extreme climate which I had a hand in organizing, technical prowess than political events in 2014. The American West, for instance, is in the midst of a drought so severe researchers estimated in midsummer that the region had lost 63 trillion gallons of groundwater to evaporation. While the drought FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 71

IOANE TEITIOTA faster than the speed of light. So Andrew Lange, ALETA BAUN goes the decades-old theory of John Kovac’s FOR ADDING “CLIMATE REFUGEE” cosmic inflation, for which John mentor at the FOR MOVING A CAMPAIGN OFF THE ROCKS TO THE LEXICON. Kovac and his collaborators— California Institute AND INTO THE HALLS OF POWER. using a telescope perched on the of Technology, Climate change refugee | South Pole—provided hard inspired the young Environmental activist, New Zealand evidence for the first time this Kovac with one lawmaker | Indonesia year. They documented traces of question: “How far Located about 1,200 miles south that moment in swirls of polarized can we see?” For more than a decade, Aleta Baun battled of Hawaii, the island nation of light in the background radiation marble mining in West Timor. A member of Kiribati faces a grim future: that suffuses the cosmos. the Molo, an indigenous people who Composed of 32 atolls and one traditionally venerate their natural habitat, island—which average only about If Kovac’s findings hold up— she organized demonstrations against the 2 meters above sea level—it is and early indications look good— marble industry’s environmental impact. In among the countries most they will be remembered as one of one protest, more than 100 women— vulnerable to devastation from the greatest achievements in the including Baun, who has faced harassment climate change. Given the impact history of physics. Inflation and even death threats—spent a year of rising sea levels and increased explains one of the enduring weaving cloth while sitting on rocks at a danger from storm surges, some paradoxes of modern physics: why mining site. Her campaign was ultimately have predicted that the country the universe expanded so rapidly successful: By 2010, marble-mining will become uninhabitable in as and with such a uniform companies had withdrawn from four sites in little as 30 years. But native temperature. That the answer lay West Timor. Ioane Teitiota argues that it is in swirls of microwave radiation is unlivable now. itself a form of poetry. Now Baun, who won a 2013 Goldman Environmental Prize, is moving her fight off Teitiota introduced the term SONJA HEIKKILÄ the rocks. This April, the woman known as “climate refugee” last year, when “Mama Aleta” won a seat in the parliament he requested asylum in New FOR BUNDLING TRANSIT of her home province, which has a wealth Zealand, arguing that not only ON DEMAND. of natural resources in addition to marble, had high tides destroyed the including gold, oil, and gas. She hopes to fisherman’s livelihood, but Transportation engineer | influence policy—and take on other unsanitary water and rising Finland companies if necessary. “I’m quite sure it tensions among locals had made will bring me much more challenges and the island too dangerous for his What if a city’s entire transporta- threats,” she said of her election, speaking family. In seeking refuge, Teitiota tion network—subways and buses, to the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “If insistently focused the world’s Uber and Lyft, bike sharing and anyone kills me, I would accept it.” attention on the victims of rising even ferries—could be accessed tides and their need for legal from a single app with a single COURTESY OF GOLDMAN PRIZE remedies. payment system? People would have less need for cars, which Teitiota failed to convince New could mean fewer emissions and a Zealand to grant him refugee cleaner city, not to mention status in 2013 and his appeal was territory reclaimed from parking shot down in May of this year, but decks and street spaces. his quest isn’t over. His lawyer, Michael Kidd, says they are Finnish engineer Sonja Heikkilä considering taking his case before dreamed up this very transporta- the U.N. Human Rights tion infrastructure for the 21st Committee in Geneva. If century. Called “mobility on successful, he will be the first demand,” the 24-year-old’s idea is climate refugee in the world. to bundle various modes of travel and allow customers to compare JOHN KOVAC options with the touch of a screen. In her vision, as she told Business FOR PROVING THAT IT ALL Insider, a city’s transportation STARTED WITH A BANG. market would also be structured to avoid monopolies, with “several Astronomer | Cambridge, Mass. private companies running the mobility operator business.” At the moment of the Big Bang, the universe suddenly expanded Helsinki is already moving with a massive burst of energy, forward with Heikkilä’s plan, designing pilot programs for 2015 and aiming to have mobility on demand fully in place by 2025. 72 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

The Innovators IN TODAY’S WORLD, INNOVATIONS EMERGE AT A RATE THAT IS nothing short of fast and furious. And while some inventions may be cool, sleek, and handy, others have the capacity to transform entire fields and individual lives. The scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs in this category are developing rapid, comprehensive blood tests that could change the face of preventive health. They are providing digital educational tools to children in Africa. They are showing how humankind can explore the universe on a budget. They aren’t just making new things; they are defining the contours of humanity’s future. FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 73

JENNIFER LEWIS The trail to the MYLSWAMY often resort to simple render- discovery of CRISPR/ ANNADURAI ings—a virus might become a FOR SHOWING HOW INK COULD circle, a membrane a line. Janet RESHAPE THE FUTURE. Cas9 was an FOR PUTTING INDIA INTO Iwasa, lead inventor of the unexpected one: ORBIT ON THE CHEAP. Molecular Flipbook, hopes to Materials scientist | It began with a change that by helping Cambridge, Mass. search for a more Aerospace engineer | India researchers render molecular effective way to processes in 3-D. Nowadays, it’s fairly easy to 3-D produce yogurt. In September, India’s space print a model of the U.S. Capitol agency brought an orbiter to Mars Iwasa’s Flipbook, which relies or a smartphone case. But what if Janet Iwasa for less than the cost of a on open-source technology, 3-D ink did more than help enhanced her skills high-end Hollywood blockbuster. streamlines the animation humans build basic things? Under the direction of Mylswamy process so that new users can in complex 3-D Annadurai, the $74 million Mars create and share a project within Materials scientist Jennifer animation at a Orbiter Mission (MOM) set a string hours, accelerating the research Lewis is developing a broad range Hollywood training of records: It was the cheapest process and encouraging of functional “inks” that contain program for workers interplanetary voyage ever, the scrutiny of hypotheses more ingredients ranging from human in the film and video first successful Asian mission to detailed than 2-D models could cells to metal compounds. These game industries. She Mars, and the only national Mars ever allow. With a research team inks could bring 3-D printing to was the oldest project to reach the red planet on at the University of Utah, Iwasa the cutting edge of various fields, student and the only its first try. is now animating the life cycle from renewable energy to woman in the course. of HIV—specifically, how the biomedical engineering. With her Annadurai’s work at the Indian virus interacts with human team at Harvard University’s Space Research Organisation immune cells. Much about HIV’s School of Engineering and offers a new model for space life cycle remains unknown, and Applied Sciences, Lewis has print- exploration. Lightening payloads, detailed representations could ed materials that mimic the limiting experimental goals, and guide scientists to new research lightweight strength of balsa condensing production schedules, questions. wood for potential use in wind as MOM did, could help other turbines and batteries that could space agencies slim the fat budgets In this and other ways, Iwasa’s streamline the assembly of small that plague so many missions. work might literally add a new electronics. In February, her team NASA’s most recent Mars orbiter, dimension to the study of reported that it had printed for example, cost around microbiology. cellular tissue constructs with $671 million. For about a tenth of embedded blood vessels—a step that, Annadurai’s team showed EMMANUELLE toward the manufacture of that cosmic achievements don’t CHARPENTIER, artificial organs. have to break the bank. JENNIFER DOUDNA Lewis’s work shows that 3-D FOR PIONEERING A printing won’t just change how GENETIC SCALPEL. people make things. It will also change what, exactly, people Biologists | Germany; can make. Berkeley, Calif. JANET IWASA In 2012, Emmanuelle Charpentier LEWIS: COURTESY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY; IWASA: COURTESY OF TEDTALKS/RYAN LASH and Jennifer Doudna were FOR ADDING A NEW DIMENSION among the co-authors of a TO MICROBIOLOGY. seminal paper on a gene-editing technique that could produce Molecular animator | new treatments for diseases Salt Lake City ranging from HIV to Huntington’s. Known as CRISPR/Cas9, the How can you visualize some- approach allows scientists to thing too small to see? Biologists snip genetic code letter by letter with a programmable enzyme. It’s the most versatile and precise gene-editing method discovered yet, and it promises revolutionary, if controversial, treatments for medical problems long thought intractable. Scientists could potentially disrupt, or knock out, genetic 74 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

conditions like Down syndrome from embryos in vitro, for example, or they could edit the DNA of blood cells of adults affected by sickle cell anemia. Today, on opposite sides of the Atlantic, Charpentier and Doudna are separately racing to develop CRISPR/Cas9 into commercial therapies. Backed by millions of Scientists and engineers work on a Mars orbiter vehicle at the Indian Space Research Organisation’s satellite dollars in venture center in Bangalore. capital, Doudna’s Massachusetts- based firm, Editas Medicine, and Charpentier’s CRISPR Therapeutics, in Historically, this problem has Switzerland, are staffed with been resolved by trashing the FLORENT BOUDOIRE, some of the biggest names in systems that deliver the genetics. Former colleagues are warheads—bombers, subma- ARTUR BRAUN, now in competition. No matter rines, and ballistic missiles. But EDWIN CONSTABLE, who pulls ahead, medicine once nuclear talks pivot from JAKOB HEIER, stands to gain. strategic to tactical and RITA TOTH non-deployed weapons and BOAZ BARAK, focus on actual warheads rather FOR CAPTURING THE ALEXANDER GLASER, than delivery systems, POWER IN MOTH EYES. ROBERT GOLDSTON verification becomes even trickier. Materials scientists | Switzerland So Boaz Barak, Alexander Glaser, and Robert Goldston designed a “zero-knowledge” FOR VERIFYING THAT verification system to compare This year, five researchers in WHICH CAN’T BE SEEN. a warhead under inspection Switzerland unlocked a major with a known true warhead advance in solar technology by Senior researcher, Microsoft; without ever revealing turning to two unlikely sources: physicists | Cambridge, Mass.; top-secret information about rust and moth eyes. Princeton, N.J. the device’s composition. How? By beaming high- When exposed to sunlight, rust-based photoelectrodes can In 2010, Russia and the United energy neutrons into the split water into its elemental States inked the New Strategic warhead being investigated. If components, producing clean, Arms Reduction Treaty, the number of neutrons that storable hydrogen. The method agreeing to limit their number passes through it is the same as could revolutionize hydrogen- of deployed strategic nuclear that for an actual known fuel production and help skirt the warheads and reducing their warhead, it’s real. If not, it’s storage problems typically inventories to 1,550 each by a sham. associated with solar power, but MANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES 2018. A great move toward a The trio’s work, published in there’s a catch: It only works when peaceful world, but a tricky one Nature this year, could “change rust is layered paper-thin, which for future weapons inspectors, the course of nuclear disarma- allows sunlight to bounce away. who aren’t allowed access to ment worldwide,” Bruce Blair, So how do you trap light in a specific information about the co-founder of Global Zero, nearly flat surface? Florent warheads that are to be which aims for the elimination Boudoire, Artur Braun, Edwin destroyed—that information is of all nuclear weapons, said in a Constable, Jakob Heier, and Rita classified. statement. Toth found the answer in moths. FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 75

The insects’ tiny eyes gather promise for commercial use. By THIERRY N’DOUFOU, moonlight while limiting the mid-1990s, however, after CHRISTINA WATSON reflections that would help companies had invested predators spot them. By millions of dollars, interest FOR TAILORING TECHNOLOGY TO attaching tungsten oxide fizzled. Big developers failed to AFRICAN CLASSROOMS. spheres—in effect, artificial design a cheap headset that moth eyes—to photoelectrodes, immersed the wearer in a CEO, Siregex; CEO, Via Afrika the Swiss team was able to trap convincing 3-D world. Then a Publishers | Ivory Coast; light under a nano-thin layer of home-schooled teenager in Long South Africa rust. The advance opens up a Beach, California—who passed new method for hydrogen-fuel his time by tinkering with any As education grows ever more production and could let the VR headset he could get his entwined with technology, Thierry next generation of solar hands on—stepped in. In 2010, N’Doufou and Christina Watson are technologies take wing. Palmer Luckey created his first bringing e-learning tools to African virtual reality headset, with a classrooms and libraries: N’Doufou PALMER LUCKEY 90-degree visual field, nearly by introducing Africa’s first twice that of previous devices. educational tablet, and Watson by FOR BEING THE VANGUARD OF The headset that his team has making electronic learning materials THE NEW VIRTUAL WORLD. developed in the four years since more widely available. could sell for between $200 and Founder, Oculus VR | $400, as compared with the This year, N’Doufou’s team is Greater Los Angeles $1,000 to $50,000 models deploying the Qelasy tablet, which he A generation ago, virtual reality currently used largely for calls a “digital backpack,” to pilot (VR) seemed to hold great military and industrial programs in Ivory Coast and Morocco. applications. Qelasy can hold a student’s entire curriculum and provide a kid-friendly, A 2012 Kickstarter campaign interactive experience. Watson heads raised $2.4 million for Luckey’s Via Afrika Publishers, a Cape company, Oculus VR, and this Town-based company that is March, Facebook made a deal to working to expand schools’ access to acquire it for $2 billion. e-learning materials. In April, her Although Oculus isn’t yet a group teamed up with two NGOs, consumer product, ultimately it Breadline Africa and the Nelson may have the potential to place Mandela Centre of Memory, to launch viewers in limitless, gripping their first digital centers—libraries scenarios, re-creating the sights built from upcycled materials and and sounds of performing heart equipped with both books and surgery, walking the streets of tablets—in rural South Africa. The Paris, or engaging in combat. tablet and centers could reboot African education systems, which retain colonial vestiges: “We OCULUS: ROBERT NICKELSBERG/GETTY IMAGES; LUCKEY: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS; N’DOUFOU, WATSON: COURTESY PHOTOS continue to go to school here as we went to school 100 years ago,” N’Doufou told the BBC. “The same heavy backpack, the same black- board with the same chalk.” The Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset, could be available on the commercial market within months. 76 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

ASTRID RIECKEN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES ELIZABETH HOLMES introduce brain-like chips on a MIKE JANKE, broad commercial scale, as PHIL ZIMMERMANN FOR BEING THE VAMPIRE THAT early as next year. MODERN MEDICINE NEEDS. FOR PUTTING PRIVACY IN By mimicking the brain’s THE PALM OF OUR HAND. Founder and CEO, Theranos | simultaneous processing Palo Alto, Calif. patterns, Qualcomm’s so-called CEO, Silent Circle; president, “neuromorphic” chips, Silent Circle | National Harbor, Elizabeth Holmes wants currently under development, Md., Switzerland blood—but not a lot of it. The could bring adaptive learning to 30-year-old CEO of Theranos has devices such as smartphones Mike Janke and Phil Zimmer- spent the past 11 years developing and navigation systems. A mann are on a mission to make cheap, straightforward blood phone could learn to go silent personal electronic communica- tests for everything from when you go to bed, or to tions truly private. They teamed cholesterol to viral infections. recognize acquaintances in up—along with the group’s Chief The Theranos process uses as your photos—without program- Technology Officer Jon Callas— little as one-thousandth of the ming specialized for those in 2011 to found their company, amount of blood normally tasks. The result could be Silent Circle, which encrypts required for such testing, drawn devices that are not only smart, voice calls, text messages, and from a finger prick and sent off but clever. attachments through mobile immediately for analysis. and desktop data services and Results arrive in as few as 24 ARYE KOHAVI calling plans. In October 2012, hours. the company released a group of FOR PULLING POTABLE mobile encryption apps that Holmes is dead set on WATER FROM THIN AIR. allow users, among other things, changing the way preventive to send text messages that medicine works by providing a Founder and president, quickly evaporate. Within a few quick but comprehensive Water-Gen | Israel months, Silent Circle launched picture of a patient’s health. In another app that can transfer the fall of 2013, Theranos In Israel, where the Negev encrypted files securely between penned a deal with Walgreens to Desert covers more than half smart devices. Janke and collect blood at the chain’s the country’s land area, water is Zimmermann’s new calling plan, pharmacies, with the goal of more than just a resource—it’s a which launched this summer, eventually expanding to all of its national security priority. broadens the confidentiality roughly 8,200 locations. This That’s why Arye Kohavi that the co-founders consider a was a first step toward Holmes’s developed devices to turn basic right. goal of making personal health desert air into potable water. information available within five Silent Circle’s technology was miles of every American at a Kohavi’s team isn’t the first used this year by Ukrainian fraction of what hospitals to develop such technology, but protesters evading their govern- charge. its devices, Kohavi says, are ment’s surveillance systems. The more efficient than earlier company is also providing privacy Testing, she told Fortune this models. The machine cools protections for Blackphone, the year, could create an “early- incoming air to extract liquid world’s first smartphone detection system” for a range of water, and after the water is optimized for privacy, developed diseases, and she sees it as a culled, it passes through a in collaboration with the Spanish “basic human right.” filtration system, yielding start-up Geeksphone. In October, potable liquid. The cooling the company announced plans STEVEN mechanism—usually an energy to release their first privacy- MOLLENKOPF drain in other machines—is focused tablet. partially self-sustaining by FOR MAKING SMARTPHONES recycling the already cooled air. CLEVER. Water-Gen has sold devices CEO, Qualcomm | San Diego to seven militaries around the world, including the U.S. armed Traditional smartphone chips forces. But the company’s are computing powerhouses, machines, one of which but they have a hard time recog- produces as many as 120 gallons nizing patterns—and learning— of water daily, could also have like the human mind does. applications for civilian Qualcomm, a semiconductor purposes: Some 780 million company headed by Steven people lack clean drinking Mollenkopf, could be the first to water, and 3.4 million die from water-borne illnesses annually. Water-Gen could help bring those numbers down. FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 77

The Advocates THESE GLOBAL THINKERS HERALD CAUSES OFTEN WRONGLY considered inconsequential or verboten. They support forgotten victims of sexual violence, protect civilians targeted in internecine violence, count casualties in the fog of war, and demand legal protections for the world’s most vulnerable migrants. Often, these men and women—scholars, activists, and religious leaders among them—do this work at their own peril and pay the price, landing in court or prison in some of the world’s most repressive countries. For all of them, however, the risk is worth the possible rewards. 78 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

RAMI ABDUL ZAINAB BANGURA RAHMAN, HAGAI EL AD FOR SHINING A LIGHT ON THE FORGOTTEN VICTIMS FOR DOCUMENTING ATROCITIES OF WARTIME RAPE. AGAINST ALL ODDS. U.N. special representative on sexual Director, Syrian Observatory for violence in conflict | New York City Human Rights; director, B’Tselem | Britain; Israel Men who experience sexual violence in conflict often suffer in silence due HOPKO: COURTESY PHOTO; BANGURA: TONY KARUMBA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES HANNA HOPKO As Syria’s civil war dragged into 90% to the false idea in many cultures its fourth year, with the death that rape happens only to women. FOR CARRYING UKRAINE’S count topping 191,000, Israel UNICEF estimates Advocacy and support systems— REVOLUTION BEYOND and Hamas traded blows for that 90 percent of where they exist at all—are typically THE MAIDAN. 50 days over the summer, women from the ages designed for women, and victimized leaving more than 2,100 people of 15 to 49 in Sierra men who speak up may even risk Activist | Ukraine dead, the vast majority of prosecution in countries where them civilians. In the face of Leone have homosexuality is a crime. As the Hanna Hopko was on Kiev’s such figures, Rami Abdul undergone U.N. special representative on sexual Maidan “from the first day,” Rahman and Hagai El-Ad circumcision. As a violence in conflict, Zainab Bangura according to the New York have remained defiantly teenager, Zainab is working to bring attention to this Times. A member of the Civic committed to documenting Bangura almost long-overlooked problem. In a March Sector of the Euromaidan, a the atrocities of war. bled to death during Security Council report, she pro-democracy group, she was a the procedure. highlighted sexual violence against leader among the thousands of El-Ad took the helm of men and boys in countries such as protesters who spent the long Israel’s premier human rights Colombia, Afghanistan, and the winter months demanding organization, B’Tselem, just six Democratic Republic of the Congo. change in Kiev. Since February, weeks before war broke out. The issue has always been there, Ukraine’s democratic revolution Although the assault on Gaza she told HuffPost Live in April, but has entered the arguably was wildly popular in Israel, he “we never saw it, because we didn’t tougher stage of ensuring insisted on accountability for look for it.” meaningful government reform, harm done to civilians. Abdul and Hopko is again on the front Rahman (whose real name is This year, Bangura also decried lines. She is leading a high- Osama Suleiman) has been at it the Islamic State’s selling of women profile lobbying effort to get for longer: Through his Syrian into sexual slavery, threatening parliament to pass a package of Observatory for Human Rights, perpetrators who harm women and anti-corruption laws and legal Abdul Rahman, who is in exile, men alike: “There will be no hiding reforms designed by more than has monitored every death and place and no safe haven. Sooner or 100 experts from a range of military development in Syria later, we will get you.” sectors. Already, the govern- since the war began, becoming ment has embraced some of the a crucial information source for policies; laws on media freedom international human rights and public procurement, for groups, journalists, and the instance, passed in April. In U.S. Defense Department, October, Hopko was elected to among others. And his Ukraine’s parliament. commitment knows no allegiances: When the United Activists claim that legislators States bombed Syria, Abdul have failed to show up for votes Rahman’s group counted those and that they focus too much on casualties too. personal interests. For Hopko, roadblocks are just motivations With hatreds apparently to keep fighting. “The system is deepening in much of the attacking us,” Hopko told the Middle East, Abdul Rahman New York Times this spring, “so and El-Ad share an ever- we fight back.” more-urgent, yet increasingly thankless mission. FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 79

BERNARD KINVI, detaining dozens of dissenters for Set to start a ILHAM TOHTI PATRICK minor or trumped-up offenses. yearlong residency at NAINANGUE LGBT rights activist Klimova, the Indiana University, FOR BEING THE CONSCIENCE OF THE creator of Children 404, a web UIGHUR PEOPLE. FOR DOING GOD’S WORK support group for gay teens, was Bloomington, in AMID HELLISH CONFLICT. charged with promoting gay 2013, Ilham Tohti Economist, activist | China propaganda to minors. Klimova’s had planned to take Catholic priests | case was ultimately dismissed, his daughter with Over the past two years, clashes Central African Republic but Vitishko, whose advocacy him for a short time. between citizens and police have dealt more specifically with the Plans changed when reportedly killed hundreds in China’s In January, a Christian militia Olympics, is still serving time. In Tohti was detained Xinjiang region, a part of the country started slaughtering Muslim February, five days into the that has witnessed sporadic civilians and torching their games, a court upheld an earlier at the airport by interethnic violence for decades. The homes in Bossemptele, a small decision to imprison the security officials and Chinese government maintains that town in the interior of the Central environmental activist for three barred from leaving Xinjiang’s Uighur population, a African Republic. The attacks years. Rights groups contend that China. His daughter Muslim minority, is to blame: The were reprisals for crimes his detention is politically perpetrators are terrorists and committed over several months motivated: He had previously went alone and secessionists seeking to undermine by Muslim rebels, whose documented the dire environ- ultimately became a the state. But economics professor leadership had seized control of mental impact of the games. Yulia student at the univer- Ilham Tohti, who founded the news Bangui, the capital, in March Gorbunova of Human Rights sity. She has not seen website Uighur Online in 2006, tells 2013. As Christian fighters hunted Watch said in a February him since, but until a very different story—one in which Muslims, Father Bernard Kinvi statement that it was clear author- his arrest in January, police brutality, rising unemploy- and Father Patrick Nainangue ities “were trying to silence and they spoke via Skype ment, and repressive policies are searched for survivors to protect, exact retribution against certain worsening life in Xinjiang. “Every while also retrieving and burying persistent critics of the prepara- every day. time something happens, the the dead. In all, more than 1,000 tions for the Olympics.” government responds with one people found shelter in their word: pressure,” he told the church’s compound. Klimova and Vitishko’s Associated Press in 2013. treatment at the hands of the Although the African Union, Russian authorities was a For speaking so candidly, Tohti France, and, most recently, the U.N. reminder that, beneath their was arrested in January on the have committed peacekeepers to symbolism of international peace spurious charge of separatism; this quell attacks, more than 5,000 and unity, the 2014 Olympics had fall, he was sentenced to life in people have been killed in the a dark underbelly. prison. The silencing of such a Central African Republic since moderate voice marks a troubling December 2013. Kinvi and setback in the debate over Uighur Nainangue helped most of rights. As prominent Chinese Bossemptele’s Muslims flee to human rights lawyer Teng Biao neighboring countries, and they wrote in the Guardian after the continue to shelter those few who verdict, “Tohti is the conscience of remain. the Uighur people.” LENA KLIMOVA, IRIS YASSMÍN YEVGENY VITISHKO BARRIOS AGUILAR FOR TRAINING THE OLYMPIC FOR RELENTLESSLY SPOTLIGHT ON RUSSIAN DISSENT. PURSUING JUSTICE. Activists | Russia Judge | Guatemala With the world’s eyes on Sochi, No national tribunal had ever Russia, Lena Klimova and brought genocide charges against Yevgeny Vitishko helped expose its own former head of state until the oppressive forces behind the Judge Iris Yassmín Barrios Aguilar pageantry of the 2014 Winter tried Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, the Olympics. former Guatemalan dictator, for Just prior to the games, the Kremlin undertook a severe crackdown on activists in Sochi and around the country, 80 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

BARRIOS: JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; TOHTI: FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; AMPARO, CRUZ, MEDINA: JUAN ARREDONDO/COURTESY OF UNHCR presiding over the mass killing of provided a new way of fighting GLORIA AMPARO, MARITZA ASPRILLA CRUZ, the Maya Ixil minority. The Ixil the situation.” MERY MEDINA were among Ríos Montt’s key targets during his time in power It might be paying off. This FOR SPREADING THEIR WINGS TO PROTECT AND EMPOWER WOMEN. amid Guatemala’s 36-year civil March, Mauritania’s government war; the country’s army carried out adopted a U.N. plan to end slavery Activists | Colombia a brutal scorched-earth campaign once and for all, having last year against leftist rebels, burning set up an agency to address the As armed gangs vie for power in the latest manifestation of Colombia’s villages, carrying out massacres, crisis. Yet Abeid remains only decades-long civil conflict, they continue to torture, rape, and kill women to and raping women and girls. cautiously optimistic. “Some- show their strength. Since 2010, a group of brave volunteers known as the times I feel doubt,” he told the “Butterflies” has been working to repair the damage. In May 2013, Barrios sentenced New Yorker. “But it reassures me Ríos Montt to 80 years in prison, when I see people resist.” With more than 100 women, the network spans the Afro-Colombian vindicating his victims’ long community of Buenaventura, a coastal city with the highest rate of violence search for justice. Shortly after the WENDY YOUNG in the country. The volunteers, many of whom once suffered abuse, shelter ruling, allies of the old regime victims in their homes, educate them about their rights, find them medical struck back against Barrios and FOR GIVING YOUNG MIGRANTS and psychological care, and help them report crimes to authorities. Despite her colleagues. That same month, THEIR DAY IN COURT. receiving threats from gangs, the group has managed to help more than the Constitutional Court 1,000 women and families. invalidated the sentence and President, Kids in Need of scheduled a new trial for early Defense | Washington, D.C. In September, Gloria Amparo, Maritza Asprilla Cruz, and Mery Medina 2015. In April of this year, accepted an annual prize from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Guatemala’s bar association Attention to unaccompanied Refugees on behalf of the Butterflies. “These women are doing extraordi- suspended Barrios from practicing minors crossing into the United nary work in the most challenging of contexts,” High Commissioner Antonio law for a year in a move that States surged this year. But out Guterres said. “Their bravery goes beyond words.” Barrios and her supporters of the spotlight, Wendy Young consider politically motivated. But and her organization, Kids in XIAO MEILI according to the All-China Barrios is standing her ground. “I Need of Defense (KIND), have Women’s Federation, but many of am a lawyer,” she told the digital been working with these FOR BRINGING GENDER BASED these incidents remain unreport- publication El Faro in August. “I children since 2008. VIOLENCE OUT OF THE CLOSET. ed. It is a problem that law believe in justice. So it’s easy. enforcement often refuses to There isn’t much confusion.” The group pairs pro bono Feminist | China address. lawyers with migrant minors BIRAM DAH ABEID from Latin America who would Talking about gender-based “Everyone assumes that some otherwise lack the means to violence may be taboo in Chinese things can’t be changed,” Xiao FOR CHAMPIONING ABOLITION IN defend themselves in court. society, but it’s one taboo that Xiao told a Chinese publication, “like A SLAVERY STRONGHOLD. With legal representation, the Meili has walked all over—literally. that women are born into migrants are several times more From September 2013 to March suffering.” Fighting that Abolitionist | Mauritania likely to be permitted to stay in 2014, the activist trekked from assumption, she works with local the country. KIND’s efforts Beijing to Guangzhou, or more feminist groups and helps to More than three decades after became all the more significant than 1,300 miles, to galvanize organize demonstrations; on Mauritania became the last this summer, when, by July people’s support and petition local Valentine’s Day in 2012, she and country to abolish slavery, the 2014, more than 57,000 governments, educational two others donned blood- practice remains endemic there. unaccompanied minors had institutions, and police bureaus to spattered wedding dresses to With some 150,000 people already poured into the United reform gender-based violence protest domestic violence. Over enslaved in a population of some States, partly due to gang- and policies and disclose related the following year, university 3.8 million, the Muslim- drug-related violence. That’s statistics. Nearly a fourth of students protested in major cities, majority country has the world’s double the previous year’s total. married women in China are garnering widespread attention highest incidence of slavery. victims of domestic violence, and making “bloody wedding KIND has trained a network of dress” a well-known Internet Some of the country’s more than 5,000 lawyers—many meme in China. abolitionists favor dialogue with of them accustomed to working the government, but not Biram with corporate clients and Dah Abeid. Mauritania’s most unfamiliar with immigration prominent anti-slavery activist law—to navigate the complexities has staged hunger strikes, burned of the children’s cases. “Just as I Islamic texts that he contends would hope that one of our kids legitimize the practice, and even would be treated well if they fought a policeman who failed to found themselves on the other arrest a slaveholder. As a fellow side of a border,” Young told abolitionist recently told the New Media Matters in June, “I think Yorker, Abeid and his Initiative most Americans can find it in for the Resurgence of the their heart, and do find it in their Abolitionist Movement “have heart, to exercise compassion and care for these young children.” FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 81

The Chroniclers A GOOD STORY ALMOST ALWAYS INVOLVES AN INTRIGUING PLOT AND skillfully drawn characters, but the way a tale is delivered can make it truly exceptional. These Global Thinkers are masters of storytelling forms, whether they are live-tweeting the events of war, empowering marginalized populations to report news through something as simple as a phone call, explaining the nature of the universe in the 1,000 most common words in the English language, or weaving humor into televised coverage of the world’s most pressing issues. They are modern-day raconteurs, telling people what they need to know—and often using groundbreaking platforms to do it. 82 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

JEMAL COUNTESS/GETTY IMAGES Q+A: SHUBHRANSHU literature’s power comes from HAJOOJ KUKA CHOUDHARY recesses deeper and more personal than the gloss of fame. FILMMAKER, SUDAN FOR GIVING RURAL INDIANS A MEGAPHONE. Ferrante’s latest novel, Those Interview by Jake Scobey-Thal Who Leave and Those Who Stay, is Founder, CGNet Swara | India the third in a series tracing a bond The creation of South Sudan was between two women who, like the the result of a failure to create a In the early 2000s, while covering author, grew up in Naples, Italy. It’s Sudanese identity that encompasses a decades-long Maoist insurgency a raw study of the distance brought everybody. If you just go to Khartoum, in Chhattisgarh state, BBC by diverging circumstances of the capital of Sudan, and then go to producer Shubhranshu Choud- education and family. “Is there a Juba, the capital of South Sudan, you hary realized that local residents way of safeguarding the right of an will get the idea that these people lacked the technology and literacy author to choose to establish, once aren’t connected. But if you take the skills to share news and informa- and for all, through his writing route, starting from Khartoum and tion with each other, and with the alone, what of himself should going slowly south to Juba, you realize outside world. “It wasn’t become public?” Ferrante asked in that these communities, ethnically communism they wanted but to 1995. If there is, perhaps this is it. and culturally, change gradually. have a voice, to be heard and taken There is actually a very strong seriously,” he told National HAJOOJ KUKA collective identity between Sudan Geographic. and South Sudan. FOR DOCUMENTING SUDAN’S So he left his job and, in 2010, IDENTITY CRISIS. Most of the time, life is normal. launched the mobile news service And then the Antonovs—the CGNet Swara in a country with 23 Filmmaker | Sudan Russian-made airplanes that the official languages—and where less government employs to bomb the than 7 percent of people have For the displaced in the Blue Nile Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile access to computers, but 70 and Nuba Mountain regions of region—come and shell the area. percent have cell phones. Covering Sudan—victims of a conflict But that only happens from time to time. everything from local corruption between the government and When you are living there, you can to national elections, Swara’s various rebel groups—life almost forget that the country is at war. stories have been picked up by vacillates between feeling calm You get into your daily life, but then, major international media. In fact, and feeling hellish. This is the suddenly, it’s disrupted. I wanted the one account of police violence led reality that filmmaker Hajooj Kuka audience to feel that in the film: to feel to a U.N. report and prompted the captures in his award-winning comfortable and then, out of nowhere, Indian Supreme Court to demand 2014 film Beats of the Antonov. be disrupted. That’s how life is there. an investigation. Departing from traditional documentary reporting about The only way forward is for the In March, Choudhary beat out conflict, Kuka tells the story of Khartoum regime to give up power. leaker Edward Snowden for the Sudan’s internally displaced That leaves four ways for change. Google Digital Activism Award. people through a series of First, the government can peacefully “Journalism,” he said when nonlinear vignettes in camps, hand over power to a transitional receiving the award, “needs to interspersing footage of govern- government that calls for a national become everybody’s business.” ment shelling with scenes of dialogue. Second, a mass protest music-making and dance. topples the government. Third, an ELENA FERRANTE internal within-ruling-party or an army While the movie is meant to coup takes place. Fourth, a rebel group FOR WRITING HONEST, shine a light on the underreported manages to overpower the govern- ANONYMOUS FICTION. violence, it is fundamentally about ment and take power. The last three what it means to be Sudanese. The options are better left to the Sudanese Novelist | Unknown government, dominated by people to accomplish. The first option Sudanese Arabs, pushes a can be achieved if enough pressure is There are no known photographs monolithic brand of national placed on the already weak Sudanese of Italian novelist Elena Ferrante. culture in a country with dozens of government. This is a peaceful road to She or he—the name is a distinct ethnicities. Sudan, Kuka achieving democracy in Sudan and pseudonym—has never appeared seems to be saying, is not just at should be the official stand of Western in public, at least not as such. But war—it is facing an identity crisis. governments. when Ferrante says, as the author did via email in an August interview with Vogue, that “in fiction it’s possible to sweep away all the veils,” it’s convincing. Ferrante’s intimate portraits of friendship and family show that FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 83

Among the words not MICHAEL LEWIS CRISTINA DE MIDDEL BINYAVANGA LEWIS: COURTESY PHOTO; WAINAINA: AFP PHOTO/SIMON MAINA included in Roberto WAINAINA Trotta’s book about FOR WRITING WALL STREET FOR CREATING MAGIC TO INTO A CORNER. CAPTURE TRUTH. FOR REVEALING A SECRET TO the universe are ADVANCE LGBT RIGHTS IN AFRICA. physics, astronomy, Writer | Berkeley, Calif. Photographer | United Kingdom cosmology, science, Author | Kenya Within a month of Michael Once a photojournalist, Cristina scientist, planet, Lewis’s best-selling Flash Boys: De Middel is now winning This past January, acclaimed energy, hydrogen, A Wall Street Revolt appearing in plaudits for her work in another Kenyan author Binyavanga particle, galaxy, bookstores this spring, six storytelling medium: photo- Wainaina came out in an online governmental bodies an- graphic fiction. By fusing essay titled “I Am a Homosexual, gravity, orbit, nounced investigations into the documentary photography with Mum.” In what he calls a “lost cosmos, Earth, moon, book’s subject: high-frequency her own casting, props, and chapter” of his 2011 memoir, One trading in financial markets. scenic design, De Middel Day I Will Write About This Place, Mars, mystery, Such success was yet another captures the essence of complex Wainaina describes missing the history—and, yes, reminder of Lewis’s rare ability narratives. For her 2012 chance to share his sexuality with to pinpoint and illuminate the award-winning series, The his mother before she died. The universe. complex practices that define Afronauts, based on the true essay was a controversial current finance. story of Zambia’s short-lived sensation—a “gay bombshell,” space program, De Middel according to Nairobi’s Daily High-frequency traders buy transmuted vivid, patterned Nation—as Wainaina joined a very and sell huge volumes of shares fabric into spacesuits and oil small group of prominent, openly in split-second transactions. drums into spaceships. “I gay African figures. Lewis’s most recent book argues wanted that B-movie effect, that the practice—which in 2012 where normal things can be The timing of the publication accounted for more than half the turned into magical things,” she was no accident. It was intended as volume of shares traded in told the Guardian. pushback against violations of American stocks—enriches lesbian, gay, bisexual, and firms that contribute little to the This year, De Middel transgender (LGBT) rights across broader economy and, in the completed This Is What Hatred sub-Saharan Africa. Uganda’s process, leaves other investors Did, a retelling of the 1954 novel Parliament had recently passed its behind. The open market, Lewis My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, by infamous Anti-Homosexuality Act, writes, “had become, in spirit, Amos Tutuola, in which a and Nigeria had just criminalized something like a private viewing Nigerian boy flees violence and same-sex relationships. “I want to of a stolen work of art.” Flash spends 30 years in the bush be part of a generation of people … Boys is a clear-eyed look through among Yoruba spirits. De Middel who change [Africa] to be the keyhole. chose Makoko, a Lagos slum, as accountable to itself,” Wainaina her visual metaphor for that told GlobalPost. Such change will mythical landscape. “I’m finally take time, but as Ugandan lesbian understanding the stories I’m activist Val Kalende wrote in April, documenting,” she told Time. Wainaina’s “story could be the “My ideas are much more beginning of what is still a long truthful than when I was a walk to the acceptance of LGBT photojournalist.” people on the continent.” ROBERTO TROTTA FOR JUNKING ASTRONOMY’S JARGON. Theoretical cosmologist | United Kingdom The origins and destiny of the universe are hard to explain. In The Edge of the Sky: All You Need to Know About the All-There-Is, published in 84 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

September, cosmologist highest honor in mathematics. JENNIFER As a child, Roberto Trotta takes on the task Although highly abstract, her EBERHARDT Maryam with only the 1,000 most Mirzakhani common English words. work could influence the FOR QUANTIFYING dreamed of one direction of other areas in pure RACIAL PREJUDICE. day becoming a As Trotta follows a fictional mathematics and theoretical fiction writer. female scientist (“student- physics. Mirzakhani’s office is Social psychologist | COURTESY OF MACARTHUR FOUNDATION woman”) through a night of scattered with sketches of the Palo Alto, Calif. astronomical exploration at an shapes she studies. “Of course, observatory telescope (a the most rewarding part is the Jennifer Eberhardt’s research “Big-Seer”), the greatest ‘aha’ moment,” she told the may not seem so pioneering at problems in cosmology—dark Guardian. “But most of the time, first. Its premise, that many matter and energy, the Big Bang, doing mathematics for me is like Americans prejudicially the curvature of space—are being on a long hike with no associate African-Americans presented in accessible and trail and no end in sight.” with crime, was part of the sometimes poetic language: country’s sociopolitical “[L]ike Mr. Hubble found long JOHN OLIVER conversation long before the ago,” Trotta writes, explaining shooting of Michael Brown in the expansion of the universe FOR INVENTING Ferguson, Missouri, this summer. and the movement of galaxies, INVESTIGATIVE COMEDY. By bringing experimental “the Star-Crowds are running evidence to bear on the issue, away from each other, as the Television host | New York City however, Eberhardt’s work space between them gets bigger breaks new ground by showing and bigger. The All-There-Is is Since April, Last Week Tonight just how deeply entrenched growing with time.” With John Oliver has been racial biases are. rebranding the journalistic The universe is mysterious satire that Jon Stewart and Over the past few years, enough as it is. Explorers, Trotta Stephen Colbert have long Eberhardt, a psychology believes, shouldn’t have to get dominated. John Oliver uses his professor at Stanford University, lost in jargon. comedic gifts and his team’s has found that juries are more rigorous reporting to put likely to find defendants guilty MARYAM interview subjects in a pitiless simply if they look “stereotypi- MIRZAKHANI hot seat. His 30-minute, Sunday cally black”—based on skin color night slot premiered with the and hair texture—and to give FOR EXPLORING comedian asking former them harsher sentences. She also MATHEMATICAL SPACE. National Security Agency has shown that test subjects are Director Keith Alexander why more likely to associate images Mathematician | Palo Alto, Calif. Americans should trust the related to crime, such as guns, agency when Oliver himself with black faces than with white By the time she completed her would abuse its power if given ones, even if those subjects see doctorate at age 27, Maryam the chance. the faces for mere milliseconds. Mirzakhani’s contributions to With this in-depth understanding pure mathematics had earned The investigative nature of of racial bias, Eberhardt, awarded her the praise of scholars around the program is indisputable. By a MacArthur “genius” grant in the world. Among other staffing up with pros to dig September, has begun advising subjects, Mirzakhani studies through tax records and track police departments about abstract surfaces, shapes that down experts, Oliver’s segments how best to avoid harmful, exist outside three-dimensional blur the line between satire and subconscious perceptions. space. Try measuring multi- reporting. His targets have taken holed doughnuts on which note. After he disparaged straight lines can loop back on Thailand’s strict restrictions on themselves (but sometimes critiques of its royal family, the don’t) or tracking the movement country’s military government of a theoretical billiard ball identified Oliver as a threat who through spaces with limitless is “undermining the royal configurations of edges. The institution,” according to a Iranian-born Stanford University document obtained by Vice professor has done both and this News. Still, Oliver insists his year was awarded the Fields show isn’t journalism: “It’s Medal, viewed by many as the comedy—it’s comedy first, and it’s comedy second.” FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 85

MAXIMIZING MINIMALISM ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN POBOJEWSKI / THIRST Call it an exercise in creative restraint: In his 2014 book, The Edge of the Sky: All You Need to Know About the All-There-Is, theoretical cosmologist and Global Thinker Roberto Trotta describes the origins and future of the universe using only the 1,000 most common words in the English language. This grand, brilliant project naturally sparks the question: Which words did Trotta himself use most often? The spiral graphic to the right represents the answer. All the words in the book were analyzed, excluding the most common conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, and articles (for example, “or,” “out,” “she,” and “the”) and formal names. Then, 500 of the words were plotted out such that their relative heights—lowest on the outside of the spiral, highest in the center—correspond to their frequency on Trotta’s pages. As the graphic shows, among the most used words was a bit of serendipitous, if poignant, found poetry: the words “all” “there” “was.” Coincidentally, if phrased together, this is what the universe, in Trotta’s terms, would be called if it ceased to exist. 86 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 87

PADMINI PRAKASH SIÂN EVANS, statistic as motivation for an DOROTHY HOWARD, “edit-a-thon” in which, over the FOR BRINGING THIRD RICHARD KNIPEL, course of one Saturday in GENDER TO PRIME TIME. JACQUELINE MABEY, February, around 600 people MICHAEL attempted to correct some of the News anchor | India MANDIBERG, site’s male bias. “Attendees are LAUREL PTAK encouraged to edit any entry of When Padmini Prakash read the interest related to art, feminism, news for Lotus News’s 7 p.m. FOR CORRECTING THE gender studies, and LGBTQ broadcast on Aug. 15, she became WIKIPEDIA GENDER GAP. issues,” the organizers wrote on India’s first transgender TV the Facebook page for the event. anchor. The anniversary of Artists, curators, Wikipedia The effort spanned some 30 India’s independence, the day editors | New York City cities—from New York to was fitting for a step away from a Amsterdam to Adelaide—and its history of discrimination. Wikipedia is increasingly the participants created about 100 first resort for those seeking new articles and modified at In precolonial India, some information in a hurry. But as of least 90. hijras—a term that describes 2013, only 13 percent of transgender and intersex Wikipedia’s contributors were Since the inaugural gathering, people as well as eunuchs— female, according to the site’s many more editing meet-ups held prominent positions in co-founder, Jimmy Wales. have followed. And in October, society. But British colonial ArtAndFeminism held the first law criminalized them A group that calls itself of a series of workshops, called and pushed them to the margins, “ArtAndFeminism” cites that “Train the Trainers,” to prepare where they have largely aspiring activist-editors for remained. Prakash’s family future projects. “The tools of disowned her when she was 13, change are in your hands,” the and she attempted suicide before organizers wrote on their own becoming an activist for the Wikipedia page. transgender community. FARAH BAKER PRAKASH: VIA YOUTUBE; BAKER: VIA TWITTER Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights inched FOR CATALOGING OPERATION forward in April, when India’s PROTECTIVE EDGE IN 140 CHARACTERS. Supreme Court recognized the right to identify as a third Live-tweeter | Gaza Strip gender, neither male nor female. Many of India’s estimated 2 Over the course of this year’s 50-day war between Hamas and million transgender people Israel, Farah Baker—better known as @Farah_Gazan—extended identify as such, though others her global reach from 800 Twitter followers to more than choose to be male or female. In a 200,000. “I don’t want [people] to think that I just want to be country where gay sex remains famous,” the 16-year-old told Sky News. “I see that this is the illegal, Prakash’s Tamil-language only way I can help Gaza.” broadcasts, which viewers highly praise, are an important advance Baker’s tweets landed at a rapid-fire pace, like the Israeli for the LGBT cause. bombs that pounded her neighborhood. On July 28, she wrote: “They are bombing heavily in my area. This is the worst night in this war. I just want you to know that I might martyr at any moment #Gaza.” Her words, combined with powerful photos, helped place her followers on the scene during the war, which left more than 2,100 Palestinians dead, the majority of them civilians. “I’m the modern Anne Frank,” her Twitter bio read this summer. 88 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

The Healers THE EBOLA EPIDEMIC, WHICH HAD CAUSED NEARLY 5,000 DEATHS BY early November, has cruelly underscored the fragility of human life—and the tenuousness of global, national, and local health systems. Whether dealing with Ebola or other crises, these doctors, nurses, researchers, and inventors are working to protect both lives and systems from breaking. From advocating for effective, affordable hepatitis C treatment, to spearheading the campaign that eradicated polio from India, to developing a new method of detecting malaria, to challenging the way clinicians and cultures describe schizophrenia, they are helping provide the world with tools that can inject much-needed strength and hope into global health. FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 89

JOSEPHINE city of Kenema was all but a death KATHRYN HUNT FINDA SELLU sentence. By late August, 15 nurses had died, reportedly FOR UNEARTHING CANCER’S FOR DEFYING DEATH IN comprising around half the ANCIENT SECRETS. THE HOT ZONE. health workers killed in Sierra Leone at the time. But Sellu, Paleopathologist | United Kingdom Nurse | Sierra Leone called “Mummy” by her staff, Health workers in West Africa refused to abandon her post Being diagnosed with cancer at age have been hit hard by Ebola. despite pleas from her family and 22 might stop a lot of people from Lacking sufficient protective gear the biting social stigma heaped digging in the desert for ancient and other resources in the face of on many health workers who have bones. Not Kathryn Hunt: Just two an unprecedented crisis, some remained on Ebola’s front lines. months after her chemotherapy 240 had become infected and ended, the budding archeologist more than 120 had died by Aug. “There is a need for me to be spent part of her senior year of 25, according to the World Health around,” she told the New York university on a dig in Egypt. She Organization. Those numbers Times. “I am a senior. All the then went on to get a degree in have only risen since, and many junior nurses look up to me.” paleopathology—the study of health workers have fearfully fled ancient diseases—at Durham their jobs. KEVIN WHALEY, University, and in 2012, she LARRY ZEITLIN co-founded the Paleo-oncology But many have stood their Research Organization. So far she ground. For deputy nurse matron FOR INVENTING A POSSIBLE CURE has documented 230 cases of Josephine Finda Sellu, working in FOR A RAGING EPIDEMIC. ancient cancer. the Ebola wing of a government hospital in the Sierra Leonean Scientists | San Diego In April, she and her colleagues brought together 10 researchers to 90 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014 As Ebola began tearing through work on an interactive, open-source West Africa early this year, no database, and Hunt was rewarded drug existed to stop it. Then, in for her work with a TED fellowship. August, an experimental serum She says she hopes this expanding of antibodies that had never field of archeological inquiry will even been tested on humans was add to contemporary understandings given to two American of cancer, proving that it isn’t only missionaries infected with the caused by modern pesticides or disease—and they survived. pollution. A 2010 paper claimed Almost overnight, ZMapp, made that only a handful of cancer cases by Kevin Whaley and Larry had been found in Egyptian Zeitlin’s San Diego-based Mapp mummies, but Hunt says the paper Biopharmaceutical, became a lacked data. And data are exactly household name. what she’s looking for. The U.S. Department of SELLU: COURTESY PHOTO; HUNT: COURTESY PHOTO Health and Human Services quickly allotted $24.9 million to Mapp to fast-track development and testing over 18 months. The sudden interest in the small company, Zeitlin told the New York Times, has been “absolutely overwhelming.” The drug’s safety and effectiveness are not yet fully understood, and there are serious ethical questions about who should get the drug and how to do human trials. But in late August, lab tests showed that ZMapp cured monkeys infected with Ebola, suggesting the serum might be a real game-changer. “Once you have a drug it could have a huge impact,” Whaley told the San Diego Union-Tribune, “for individuals or for large populations.”

TANYA LUHRMANN ZMapp was originally produced in hydroponic tobacco plants, which were then ground up to produce the serum. This year, the Gates Foundation gave Mapp Biopharmaceutical a $150,000 FOR LINKING CULTURE AND grant to explore whether the drug could be made in Chinese hamster cells—a proven process for SCHIZOPHRENIA. other drugs that could yield larger quantities of the treatment. LUHRMANN: COURTESY PHOTO; KAPUR: COURTESY UN; LEAVES: SEAN GALLUP/GETTY IMAGES Anthropologist | Stanford, Calif. has been reproducing functional DEEPAK KAPUR March 27, 2014. He checked his human cartilage. The crucial watch to know “exactly when According to modern medicine, tissue doesn’t regenerate on its FOR CRUSHING FEAR TO history was made,” he told the the voices that people with own, and replacements made DEFEAT POLIO IN INDIA. Wall Street Journal. schizophrenia hear are symptoms from animal cells aren’t strong of a disease that can be tackled enough. Then came Gordana Chairman, India National India was a perfect home for with medication and other Vunjak-Novakovic and her team PolioPlus Committee | India the poliovirus: It has a huge therapies. But Stanford University of researchers at Columbia population, poor sanitation, anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann University’s Laboratory for Stem Deepak Kapur knows precisely impure drinking water, and takes a different approach: She Cells and Tissue Engineering. when the World Health malnutrition. As recently as 2009, wants to know what voices are After years of working to create Organization officially declared the country was home to around saying—and why. replacement cartilage, they India polio-free: 2:31 p.m. on half of the world’s cases of polio. announced in April that they (Worldwide, the disease has In June, Luhrmann co- successfully used a 3-D printer infected more than 250 people in authored a study in the British to produce the tissue. How? By 2014 to date, mostly in Pakistan.) Journal of Psychiatry that was using “ink” made from human Complicating matters, the based on interviews with people stem cells. campaign to vaccinate millions of with schizophrenia in the United children faced resistance among States, India, and Ghana. She Don’t expect to find this India’s Muslims. found that while American new cartilage in your knees patients perceived their voices as or elbows anytime soon. Clinical Kapur’s Rotary Foundation- violent, intrusive signs of disease, use is still a ways off. “We are not run committee was instrumental people in India and Ghana tended ready to go into patients,” in convincing Muslim leaders of to have more positive, personal Vunjak-Novakovic has said. But the virtues of vaccination, and he relationships with them: They human application is the goal. sees their about-face as a key even heard the voices of family “We live longer and we would ingredient in polio’s eradication, members or God. like to live better,” she said in a alongside the use of a vaccine that talk at Columbia University’s targets two strains of the disease The study suggests that culture engineering school. “And if this at once. affects how people experience is going to happen, then we psychosis, a finding that could really need spare parts to The success carries lessons for lead to a new tailoring of maintain our bodies.” other countries where polio treatment. In the United States, for remains as endemic as suspicions instance, patients could be about vaccination. encouraged to interact with their voices, instead of fearing them. As Luhrmann told the Huffington Post, this would be a “radical way of thinking” about voices—one that could reap enormous clinical benefits. GORDANA VUNJAK NOVAKOVIC FOR CRACKING THE CARTILAGE CONUNDRUM. Biomedical engineer | New York City For over two decades, a major challenge for medical engineers FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 91

Each year, between JOHN ROTHER, WENG KUNG PENG, SANGEETA BHATIA 350,000 and 500,000 MICHAEL SOFIA BRIAN GRIMBERG, JOHN LEWANDOWSKI FOR CREATING A KINDER people around the FOR DELIVERING A ALTERNATIVE TO THE world die from liver LIFESAVING DRUG AND FOR USING MAGNETS COLONOSCOPY. diseases related to TAKING ON BIG PHARMA. TO BEAT MALARIA. Engineer and physician | hepatitis C. President and CEO, National Scientist; biologist; Ph.D. student Cambridge, Mass. Coalition on Health Care; | Singapore; Cleveland; Boston co-founder, OnCore In the vast majority of cases, COURTESY MIT/BY BRYCE VICKMARK Biopharma | Washington, Although Ebola has dominated colon cancer doesn’t have to be D.C.; Doylestown, Penn. headlines this year, it is still fatal. If detected early enough, the malaria—avoidable malaria— five-year survival rate is 90 How can you make an organ that remains one of Africa’s percent. But only 40 percent of accept and retain a drug that biggest killers. An estimated 207 those afflicted are diagnosed normally won’t enter it? That’s million people worldwide were early, in part because screening one of the chief problems infected with the disease in requires expensive and invasive biotechnologist Michael Sofia 2012, according to the World tests such as colonoscopies. But faced while working on a way to Health Organization. Of those, with Sangeeta Bhatia’s invention, defeat hepatitis C, the liver 627,000 died—and 90 percent of that could all change. disease that affects between the deaths occurred in Africa. 130 million and 150 million This year, Bhatia and her team chronic sufferers worldwide. Public health advocates have at the Massachusetts Institute of long sought ways to diagnose Technology have been working on The Baltimore native the disease that don’t involve a technique for a simple, cheap developed a crafty solution: labor-intensive lab testing and diagnostic that could make colon drape the drug in what the New are cheap, easy, portable—and, cancer screenings nearly as easy Yorker called an “invisibility most importantly, reliable. The as a pregnancy test. Patients cloak” to disguise its entry into answer? It could be magnets. would be injected with special the liver. Enzymes in the organ nanoparticles. In a positive test, would then break down the Researchers have long known enzymes produced by tumors cloak, allowing the drug to fight that the malaria parasite feeds would break down these particles, the disease without harming the on iron-rich hemoglobin. So for which would then be detected in rest of the body’s cells. the past few years, the race has a simple urine sample. Now, Marketed by the pharmaceutical been on to design a magnetic Bhatia and her team are working company Gilead as Sovaldi, the device that, to put it simply, can on a method to deliver the drug, taken in combination with detect the “iron-laden poop that nanoparticles with a spoonful of other therapies, can cure more malaria parasites leave behind,” yogurt, which could make testing than 80 percent of patients as one reporter wrote in even simpler. undergoing as little as 12 weeks Cleveland’s Plain Dealer. Each of treatment. with their own prototype device The technique is still in the in hand, Weng Kung Peng and early testing phases, but But a full round of treatment John Lewandowski, who refined preliminary experiments in can cost $84,000. So in July, his technology from an original which nanoparticles are injected John Rother, a longtime concept developed by Brian into mice seem to have shown advocate of affordable pharma- Grimberg, are now eyeing the promise. If successful, the ceuticals, sent an open letter to finish line. procedure could be particularly Gilead, urging the company, important in the developing which made $3.48 billion in Requiring only a drop of world, where the test could be Sovaldi sales in the second blood, both devices, which are performed in rural settings, quarter of 2014, to lower prices. technologically different, can without specialized equipment. “This is a necessary drug for generate diagnoses within a people who are sick, yet we’re matter of minutes. Not only can allowing the price to impose an both detect the disease before incredible barrier to access,” symptoms show, but their Rother said on a panel in July. results could be far more Although Gilead has yet to drop reliable than today’s testing the cost, in September the methods. The technologies are company did license the drug to currently under development, seven Indian firms that will sell but could save thousands from cheaper generic versions in one of the world’s biggest some 90 developing countries. killers. 92 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

The Artists “ART IS A LIE THAT MAKES US REALIZE TRUTH,” PABLO PICASSO ONCE said. It is an idea epitomized by these Global Thinkers—painters, sculptors, architects, and filmmakers. From searing images of children doing everyday things against the backdrop of the Syrian war, to a massive sphinx made of sugar that forces an intellectual confrontation with racism in America, to a satirical installation that questions the ethics and efficacy of Western aid to Africa, the works created by these artists demand that viewers reconsider what they know to be true. FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 93

KARA WALKER MAYMANAH FARHAT, deepened the concept of MOHANNAD ORABI intervention in natural habitats FOR SCULPTING A SWEET and imagined a subaqueous MONUMENT TO AMERICA’S FOR PAINTING THE testament to humanity’s BITTER HISTORY. SYRIAN TRAGEDY. connection to the oceans. It was such a marvel that National Artist | New York City Curator; artist | Geographic named it a man-made New York City; United Arab wonder of the world. Since her career took off in the Emirates early 1990s, Kara Walker has been Using marine-grade cement, using art to discuss America’s “Syria’s Apex Generation,” an art sand, and microsilica—a mix of troubling history of racial and exhibit that appeared in Beirut, materials that can assimilate local sexual violence. But her exhibit Dubai, and London this year, species and eventually create on display this summer, A features painters whose work artificial coral reefs—Taylor has Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar exposes their country’s agony in since expanded his vision to the Baby, brought her treatment of a way no newspaper headline Mexican coast, where many of his these issues to monumental ever could. The exhibit is installations are on display at the proportions. In a massive, derelict curated by Maymanah Farhat of Museo Subacuático de Arte, an sugar-processing factory in the Ayyam Gallery, and its finest underwater museum that includes Brooklyn stood a 75.5-foot-long, pieces are the haunting more than 500 sculptures. This 35.5-foot-tall sculpture of a nude, paintings of Mohannad Orabi, year, though, his ambition became sphinx-like woman resembling a who brings to life the war’s boundless: Ocean Atlas, his caricature of a house slave, coated devastating effects on children. 18-foot-tall, 60-ton sculpture off in white sugar. His characters often have the the Bahamas, depicts a local girl rounded faces of infants: holding the ocean on her A Subtlety garnered critical Streaked over with paint, their shoulders. Modeled on the Greek acclaim, furthering a long run of huge, dark eyes seem at once Titan Atlas, the sculpture—made subversive achievements for curious, innocent, and afraid. In with pH-neutral materials—will which Walker is justly celebrated. one painting, a child potty- ultimately transform into a More important still, it forced a trains as a battle scene unfolds fish- and coral-friendly artificial public conversation about behind him. reef. “Instead of leaving my mark America’s legacy of white suprem- on the environment with my acy, sexual exploitation, and The exhibit reminds the world work,” he writes in his 2014 book, capitalism. of what is at stake in Syria: both The Underwater Museum, “the human lives and a rich, unique environment is leaving its mark on culture. “I can’t stop the war my work.” myself,” Orabi told Abu Dhabi’s National newspaper in August. ALEXANDER “But maybe if I can help people PONOMAREV, outside Syria think about it, then NADIM SAMMAN maybe one day it will stop.” FOR DESIGNING A BLUEPRINT JASON DECAIRES OF ANTARCTIC CULTURE. TAYLOR Artist; curator | Russia; Britain FOR BECOMING THE JACQUES and Germany COUSTEAU OF THE ART WORLD. At this year’s Venice Biennale of Artist | Spain Architecture, artist Alexander Ponomarev and curator Nadim When sculptor Jason DeCaires Samman debuted an Antarctica Taylor created the world’s first that was not the one of public submerged sculpture park off the imagination—that vast, unforgiv- coast of Grenada in 2006, he ing place inhabited by legions of penguins and a few thousand JP YIM/GETTY IMAGES 94 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

Kara Walker’s A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby featured a sculpture of a sphinx-like woman coated in sugar. ANDREW BURTON/GETTY IMAGES; PONOMAREV: COURTESY PHOTO; SAMMAN: COURTESY PHOTO scientists in utilitarian metal RITHY PANH documentary … equaled only by buildings. Rather, the duo’s vision its soulfulness,” the New York of Antarctica was futuristic, FOR ANIMATING THE PAINFUL Times heralded. “[Panh] reclaims beautiful, and hospitable. GAPS IN CAMBODIAN HISTORY. the very human individuality that the Khmer Rouge sought to Their project, “Antarctopia,” the Filmmaker | Cambodia, France obliterate.” continent’s first pavilion at the biennale, featured projects from a Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer SAM HOPKINS, range of architects showing the Rouge was responsible for the KILUANJI KIA HENDA artistic possibilities the southern- deaths of some 2 million people most continent might embrace. and nearly annihilated Cambodia’s FOR DECONSTRUCTING Sergiu-Radu Pop, a student of rich cultural traditions. Rithy WESTERN AID TO AFRICA. Pritzker Prize winner Zaha Hadid, Panh, then a teenager, lost his for instance, designed a sleek parents, siblings, and other Artist; photographer | Kenya; facility that would rise seamlessly relatives. For Panh, now a film Angola, Portugal from the continent’s topography director, this period has been the and include space for both focus of more than a dozen Each year, some $30 billion in research and tourism. Another movies. Yet he struggled with aid flows into Africa from design showed a research station how, on screen, he should developed countries. But the in the shape of a snowflake, resurrect his family, given how culture that surrounds this aid is covered with solar panels. few images of the brutal era and often considered paternalistic, its victims exist. His innovative excluding Africans from the aid Antarctopia is an ongoing solution was to represent them, organizations themselves. Such project. In 2015, scientists and and himself, with carved clay was the message implied by Sam artists will gather on vessels figurines set in tableaux intercut Hopkins and Kiluanji Kia Henda around Antarctica to explore the with available archival footage at the 2014 Dak’Art biennale in untapped, outer reaches and and audio recordings. Senegal. define a new culture “beyond institutional missions and The resulting documentary, In “O.R.G.A.S.M. (As god national claims,” as Antarctopia’s The Missing Picture, took home wants and the devil likes it),” Kia website puts it. several film-festival awards in Henda features a satirical 2013 and an Academy Award NGO—the “Organization of nomination upon its public African States for Mellowness”— release this year. It is a tender, that reverses the norm by tragic narrative, showing tiny, sending aid from Africa to the hapless figures at the mercy of a West. Some of his photos capture cruel regime. “[A] brilliant FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 95

mock meetings led by European universe’s origins. SHAMSIA HASSANI politicians, who are actual Henrot’s work insists that just leaders photoshopped with FOR ENVISIONING A African hairstyles. His work is a as the past is limitless, so are the NEW URBAN PALETTE. comment on the “financial legitimate ways of interpreting machine called charity,” as the and conveying it. Graffiti artist | Afghanistan artist puts it. SILVER X Supply Shamsia Hassani with spray Hopkins exhibited “Logos of paint, and the lasting effects of Non Profit Organisations FOR REMIXING SOUTH Afghanistan’s war will be covered working in Kenya (some of which SUDAN’S ANGUISH. with street art. Her dramatic murals are imaginary),” a screen-print enliven wreckage and abandoned collection of genuine aid Singer | South Sudan buildings in Kabul. In Afghanistan, organizations’ logos intermixed War had torn apart the life of where women have historically with the artist’s fictional logos, 26-year-old South Sudanese been oppressed, those murals run leaving one to discern which are singer Silver X. In early summer, counter to stereotypes about the which and to contemplate the civil war was sowing the seeds of culture. In one, a woman draped in Western branding of charity. The famine while cholera swept the a bright blue burqa stands before a UNESCO logo, for example, uses land, and the conflict between cityscape; in another, a woman Greek columns. “This is the U.N. Nuer and Dinka fighters raged. holds a guitar, her flowered hair organization for world culture, so The artist responded with “Let’s flowing in the wind. Hassani why should a classical European Stand Together,” an auto-tuned sometimes takes photographs of symbol stand for world culture?” peace anthem that he wrote and inaccessible sites in the city and Hopkins told a Kenyan recorded with 11 other singers paints the prints. These projects are journalist. from across the ethnic spectrum part of a collection called “Dream of of the world’s newest country. It Graffiti,” and she has used the CAMILLE HENROT implored peace negotiators, “We technique to transform a variety of need to stand together ’cause areas around Kabul, including FOR CHALLENGING HOW that’s the only way we can win.” Darulaman Palace. HISTORY IS TOLD. Displaced by fighting in 2000, An Afghan born in Iran, Hassani Artist | New York City Silver X returned four years ago is a professor at Kabul University, from a refugee camp in Uganda to where she teaches art. This year, The discipline of history takes on be part of South Sudan’s budding her graffiti got her shortlisted for an impossible task: to condense music scene. In June, he turned the Artraker Award, which honors the past, with its boundless his sights on the looming famine, artists in war-torn places. “I want complexity, into an archive. helping to launch the campaign to make Afghanistan famous Camille Henrot’s work has Music Against Hunger. “If leaders because of its art, not its war,” she captivated the art world by could see the youth of this told Art Radar. moving beyond that paradox and country crying for peace, I into new forms of storytelling. thought things might start to SILVER X: VIDEO SCREENSHOT; HASSANI: SHAH MARAI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES change,” he told a reporter in As shown in her first compre- August. hensive American retrospective, at Manhattan’s New Museum this ANILA RUBIKU summer, the French artist creates novel epistemologies from an FOR DEFACING DICTATORS. array of media, including film, sculpture, and illustration. Henrot Artist | Albania, Canada, Italy embraces science and scholarship, but brushes aside their hierar- Born in 1970, Anila Rubiku grew chies: In one series, she paid up in a communist Albania that homage to the books in her she once called “the most absurd personal library with an country in the world.” Today, installation of Japanese ikebana national alienation is a pervasive floral arrangements, transforming written information and its presumption of immutability into pieces of ephemera. “Grosse Fatigue,” her best-known video work, earned Henrot recognition as the most promising young artist at 2013’s Venice Biennale. It swirls archival images and spoken-word creation myths—from Genesis to Navajo oral tradition—into a frenzied, digitized account of the 96 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014

theme in her art. A recent work, The Gwangju Biennale, one of commissions and his widely “Effacing Memory,” features Asia’s most prestigious art praised humanitarian projects. sketches of 12 dictators and exhibitions, often celebrates a Like other Pritzker laureates, Ban members of their inner circles spirit of freedom. But Hong’s has designed spaces for fashion with their faces erased—stripping latest comment may have been houses and art collections, but the men of their power. An too direct. This year, the with cheap, recyclable materials, accompanying video documents biennale removed his painting he has also designed temporary her almost violent erasures of their under pressure from public shelters, schools, and churches visages. She saved Enver Hoxha, officials “because of its explicit for natural-disaster survivors in the communist who ruled over her political intention,” according to places such as Haiti and the homeland for 41 years, for last. a vice mayor of Gwangju. Philippines. In 2014 alone, Rubiku’s work SHIGERU BAN Ban thinks that architecture has appeared in museums and should both look and do good. galleries in Belgium, Albania, FOR BEING ARCHITECTURE’S “His is a restless inventiveness,” Montenegro, and France. The FIRST RESPONDER. the New Republic’s architecture artist crosses borders with equal critic wrote in March. “Empow- frequency, ever attuned to the Architect | Japan ered by the Pritzker, with its psychology of displacement. Her almost Nobel-Prize-like aura, Ban 2011 installation “Other countries. When Shigeru Ban won a is positioned to have a profound Other Citizenships” featured a commission to design the Centre influence on the profession and in collection of hats embellished Pompidou-Metz, an art museum the world.” with written passages intended to in northeastern France, he built reflect the thoughts of immi- himself a stylish studio at the grants acclimating to new museum’s Paris branch—out of cultures. “Exile,” one reads. “It’s paper tubes. That’s because Ban, not easy coming from nowhere who won the 2014 Pritzker when no foreign external Architecture Prize, thinks that in condition compels us to.” his line of work, frugality shouldn’t preclude elegance or HONG SUNG DAM function. FOR POKING AT POWER Ban’s commitment to simple WITH A BRUSH. materials—most famously, paper and cardboard—is the link Artist | South Korea between his high-culture BAN: JOEL SAGET/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; ASPEN: KATHRYN SCOTT OSLER/THE DENVER POST VIA GETTY IMAGES In one painting by acclaimed The Aspen Art Museum opened its new building, designed by Shigeru Ban, in August 2014. artist Hong Sung-dam, the democratically elected president of South Korea, Park Geun-hye, has just given birth to a baby resembling her late father, Park Chung-hee, the autocrat who led the country for nearly two decades prior to his 1979 assassination. In another, Park dances to Psy’s “Gangnam Style” below a noose, symboliz- ing the many people hanged under her father’s regime. Provocative, yes, but Hong became even more confronta- tional shortly after the Sewol ferry sinking, which killed almost 300 people. Critics say a poorly equipped coast guard and a disorganized government response heightened the disaster. How did Hong see the president afterward? As a scarecrow controlled by her father, as he revealed in a collaborative work produced with other artists. FOREIGN POLICY: LEADING GLOBAL THINKERS 97

ART, SUBMERGED Jason deCaires Taylor’s creative process is driven by his ecological mission: to alleviate pressure on the globe’s remaining coral reefs. The results of that effort are ethereal, underwater worlds in which time feels arrested and objects may appear magnified. Symbiotically, nature itself—the sea life that lives on and around the art—will gradually transform and embrace Taylor’s work. To that end, the sculptor works with pH-neutral materials that actively promote coral growth, and he leaves rough patches on his sculptures’ surfaces to make them hospitable to larvae. He forms his figures on dry land before placing them in the water. In the case of “The Silent Evolution,” 400 statues were hoisted into the Caribbean Sea, where the artist expects them to remain, fostering marine regeneration for centuries to come. 98 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014