Stanford professor and author Francis Fukuyama delivered the convocation, “The Global Challenge of 2024,” at Carleton's Skinner Chapel on Friday, January 26. Fukuyama’s talk addressed the major setbacks the world has seen to liberal democracy, including the outbreak of two large wars, and asked the question: What are possible global outcomes that will emerge in the year 2024?

Fukuyama is best known for his scholarship and his work advancing political theory. His book, The End of History and the Last Man (1992), argued that Western democracy and free-market capitalism could indicate the end of sociocultural evolution. The book has been met with much debate over the years and has been translated for over twenty different foreign editions. Fukuyama has also written a variety of other books on development and and international politics, including Trust (1995), The Great Disruption (1999), Our Posthuman Future (2002), State Building (2004), Nation Building (2005), America at the Crossroads (2006), Falling Behind (2008), The Origins of Political Order (2011), Political Order and Political Decay (2014), Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment (2018), and most recently, Liberalism and its Discontents (2022).

Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and a faculty member of FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also the director of Stanford’s Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy and a professor (by courtesy) of political science. He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and at the Center for Global Development. He also serves as a member of the Board of Governors of the Pardee RAND Graduate School and the Volcker Alliance, a member of the Board of Trustees of the RAND Corporation, and a member of the American Political Science Association and Council on Foreign Relations. Fukuyama was also previously a member of the political science department of the RAND Corporation, and the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State. From 1996–2000, he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. From 2002–2010, he was Vernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University.

Fukuyama received his BA from Cornell University and his PhD from Harvard. He is married to Laura Holmgren and is the father of three children.

Learn more about Carleton Convos at go.carleton.edu/convocations.