Institute of Contemporary Arts

The Humanitarian Impulse: 1968 + its Consequences

U.S. Air Force Airman & refugee child in Kabul. Photo: USAF Tech. Sgt. Cecilio M. Ricardo Jr.

The impulse to humanitarian intervention which motivates much of global politics today can be traced directly to the passion and imagination of a generation whose formative political moment came in the radical ferment of 1968. That rebellious generation has now grown up and marched its way through the institutions, and its humanitarian concerns have become a central organising principle of geo-political affairs. Forty years later, and after the debacle of Iraq, has the humanitarian impulse forged in 1968 exhausted or discredited itself?

Speakers: Samantha Power, Anna Lindh professor of practice of global leadership and public policy practice at Harvard University, Pulitzer prize winner, senior foreign policy adviser to Senator Barack Obama and author of Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World; Mark Malloch Brown, former UN Deputy Secretary-General; David Hare, playwright and author of Stuff Happens and The Vertical Hour. Chair: Peter Barron, editor of Newsnight.

£10 / £9 Concessions / £8 ICA Members.