Max Boot is a historian, best-selling author, and foreign-policy analyst who has been called one of the "world's leading authorities on armed conflict" by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a national-security columnist for the Washington Post. Boot has served as an adviser to U.S. commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was a senior foreign policy adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign in 2007-08, a defense policy adviser to Mitt Romney's campaign in 2011-12, and the head of the Counter-Terrorism Working Group for Marco Rubio's campaign in 2015-16. Boot will be speaking about his latest book, The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam, published in January 2018. Read more and register at  go.osu.edu/bootm

Ann Towns is associate professor in political science at University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research deals with questions about norms, international hierarchies and resistance in international politics, generally with a focus on gender. She is currently conducting a large research project on gender norms and practices in diplomacy, an inter-state institution that has long been dominated by men but where more women have entered within the past decade. As part of this project, she will carry out field work among diplomats in Washington, D.C., during 2017-18 and in Stockholm 2018-19. Towns is the author of Women and States: Norms and Hierarchies in International Society (Cambridge, 2010) and co-editor of Gendering Diplomacy and International Negotiation, with Karin Aggestam (Palgrave, 2017). Read more and register at go.osu.edu/townsa

Joshua Busby is associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at University of Texas-Austin. He has published widely on transnational advocacy movements, climate change, global health, and other topics. Busby is the author of Moral Movements and Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 2010), and AIDS Drugs for All: Social Movements and Market Transformations, with Ethan Kapstein (Cambridge, 2013). He was a leading researcher on the Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS) project, a $7.5 million grant from the Department of Defense under its Minerva Initiative. He is the principal investigator under the Complex Emergencies and Political Stability in Asia (CEPSA) project, a $2 million project also funded by the Minerva Initiative. At this event, Busby will discuss the field of environmental security and what might be done to address the real security consequences associated with climate change. Read more and register at  go.osu.edu/busbyj

David M. Lampton is Hyman Professor and director of China Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Having started his academic career at The Ohio State University Lampton is chairman of the The Asia Foundation, former president of the National Committee on United States-China Relations, and former dean of faculty at SAIS. He is the author of Same Bed, Different Dreams: Managing U.S.-China Relations, 1989-2000 (2001); The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds (2008); and The Making of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy (editor, 2001). Hampton will discuss  what lies ahead in the U.S.-China relationship a gainst a backdrop that includes nuclear threats between North Korea and the United States, an uncertain future in multilateral trade agreements around the globe, and critical midterm elections in the United States.  Read more and register