Thomas Friedman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and columnist for the New York Times, addressed a standing-room-only crowd Tuesday evening as the first speaker of the Foreign Affairs Symposium.
Speaking on the topic "The Rising East: India and China in the 21st Century," Friedman discussed the effects of globalization on economies and cultures in the United States and overseas.
President William Brody, who is quoted extensively in Friedman's latest book, The World is Flat, gave a brief introduction. After telling an anecdote about Friedman playing golf in India, Brody said, "He can use a golf club to hit the mark. After all, he regularly hits the mark using just his typewriter."
Friedman's speech focused on the themes of his most recent book, which examines economic globalization.
"Over the course of 60 hours of interviews [in India] I got sicker and sicker and sicker, and it wasn't Indian food," Friedman said. "I had the sinking feeling that while I was sleeping, while I was covering 9/11, something really big had happened with the globalization story, and I had missed it."
What Friedman had missed was what he calls a "flattening of the global economic playing field," which he says began in 2000.
Modern globalization, in contradiction to earlier trends, was built not on nation-states or companies but was "built around individuals. It requires individuals to think of themselves as competing -- and collaborating -- with each other around the world," Friedman said.
Friedman also identified ten recent developments that he called "the ten flatteners." Included in this list were the destruction of the Berlin Wall, the creation of interoperable software, Netscape's initial public offering and the outsourcing of American jobs to other countries.
However, he warned that the
same interconnectedness that is making the advances of economic globalization possible, is also facilitating terrorism.
"All that al-Qaeda is an open-source global supply chain. ... It operates a lot like Wal-Mart," Friedman said.
Friedman also emphasized the importance of environmental technologies in a globalized world, saying that the development of energy efficiency and "green" energy solutions is necessary for American success, and therefore patriotic. "Green is the new red, white, and blue," Friedman said.
The success of the Bush administration will ultimately be judged by the quality of its response to the need for alternative forms of energy, Friedman said, comparing the importance of the issue to President Nixon's historic visit to China in 1972.
"If [Bush] doesn't [promote alternative forms of energy], he's going to be an utterly failed president. He will have turned his back on the metastrategic issue of his day," Friedman said.
He also advocated the imposition of a nationwide tax on gasoline, calling it "the single most important strategic imperative of our day."
In response to a question from the audience, Friedman said that educational institutions like Johns Hopkins have an important role to play in a globalized, rapidly changing world. He emphasized the importance of adaptability and the University's role in fostering it.
"It's like training for the Olympics and not knowing what sport you'll be competing in. ... You've got to be able to learn how to learn. It's not what you know, it's how you learn," Friedman said.
Indians and Chinese will be soon be performing the jobs Americans do today, Friedman said, but urged his audience not to worry because America's role will be to discover something new.
"God save us from the day we don't have the leaders, the institutions and the imperative to invent the future. ... As long as we're inventing the future, we're going to be OK," Friedman said.
A reception and book-signing was held in the Clipper Room of Shriver Hall after the speech.
Senior Lolita Nidadavolu came to see Friedman because she had discussed his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree in a high school class.
Of the speech, she said, "I thought it was really pretty interesting. It was interesting to see the justifications for all these policies [that were mentioned] in the last election."
"While it wasn't what I expected, it was very interesting," said freshman Vikram Sundaram.
Senior Adam Beinfeld said of the speech, simply, "It was awesome." Asked if he disagreed with any of the points made by Friedman, he replied, "Nothing he said appalled me to the point that I thought about it a lot. I generally agreed with what he said."
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