Frédéric Munier

Frédéric Munier

Professeur de Géopolitique, SKEMA Business School
  • Articles: 112

Interview of Zahra Hankir, editor of Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World

First Interview of the ThinkForward Conferences cycle organized by Professors Rodolphe Desbordes and Frédéric Munnier.
Stéphanie Chasserio Interviews Zahra Hankir. She is the award-winning, best-selling editor of Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World.

Zahra writes about the intersection of politics, culture, and society in the Middle East. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Vice, BBC News, Al Jazeera English, Businessweek, Roads & Kingdoms, and Literary Hub, among other publications.

Slavery and cognitive dissonance

In the field of social psychology, cognitive dissonance is the tension experienced by an individual when their thought system, feelings or behaviour are conflicting. In its own way, slavery placed our societies in a state of cognitive dissonance: the proclamation of human rights coexisted with the reduction of people to the status of objects deprived of rights. To this day, this reality is often overlooked.

International organised crime, a lucrative form of entrepreneurship

Illegal drug trade, arms and human trafficking, counterfeiting... “Grey globalisation” players have spawned transnational organised crime (TOC) that is difficult to stamp out. Indeed, it is complex on account of its production bases, networks, funding and demand. An analysis of drug trafficking through the lens of consilience provides a better understanding of this issue and its challenges.

Gender inequalities or the weight of a slow pace of change

Our modern world continues to be plagued by persistent gender inequalities that contrast sharply with the prevailing egalitarian discourse. These inequalities are rooted so deeply in our history that our societies have, in a manner of speaking, “naturalised” them. Of late, some research – notably by Alberto Alesina, a highly respected economist, recently deceased – has endeavoured to shed light on the origins of these inequalities.

Thucydides Trap or endogenous oscillation? Through what interpretive should China-United States relations be viewed?

Godwin’s law asserts that “as an online discussion continues, the probability of a reference or comparison to Hitler or Nazis approaches 1.” More generally speaking, the longer a debate goes on the higher the likelihood of using extreme analogies. It would seem that the current rivalry between China and the United States is no exception to this rule.