Thank you for supporting the Great Decisions Program! We are excited to announce the 2025 program.
The Great Decisions Program has conducted weekly discussion groups about US foreign policy and trade issues. The nationwide program is based on material obtained from the Foreign Policy Association.
Each session consists of a short video providing information about the topic and a one-hour interactive discussion segment.
Meetings are held from 9:30 am to 11:00 am at the Central Library. Meeting room is subject to change. Please confirm the location at the library reference desk or circulation desk.
Materials for the program (entirely optional) are available at Whitney Book Corner. Please make checks payable to “Friends of SCPL.” We encourage you to register by sending an email to Peter Sheridan, psheridan3@nycap.rr.com in case of schedule change, inclement weather, or room change at the library.
March 4 — American Foreign Policy at a Global Crossroads
The U.S., polarized and divided, faces a world overflowing with challenges, dangers, and uncertainties. Conflict and disorder have become the defining features of world politics.
March 11 — U.S. Changing Leadership of the World Economy
Over the past two presidential terms, the U.S. has strongly pivoted away from neoliberalism as a foreign economic policy approach.
March 18 — Navigating U.S.–China Relations in Tense Times
There is one thing that people can actually agree on across the aisle in Washington, DC: The United States is in a strategic competition with a rising China that poses a range of economic, political, and military security challenges.
March 25 — India: Between China, the West, and the Global South
As the Republic of India marks its 75th anniversary in January 2025, the world’s most populous nation and largest democracy continues to defy simple categorization.
April 1 — International Cooperation on Climate Change in an Era of Geopolitical Turmoil
Over the past 30 years, climate change has become one of the central global challenges of the modern era, one that has hugely important consequences for the livability of the planet.
April 8 — The Future of NATO and European Security
Europe is frightened and frightening for the first time really since the 1980s, when nuclear sabers were rattling as the Soviet Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) both deployed contending intermediate range missiles along the dividing line of the military alliances. With Russia’s continued barbarity in Ukraine there is no escaping that Vladimir Putin intends not to be “European.”
April 15 — AI and American National Security
Artificial intelligence (AI), especially generative AI, is often claimed as an emerging technology that will disrupt all facets of society.
April 22 — American Foreign Policy in the Middle East: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead
Analysts of American policy in 2025 have the unusual advantage of being able to assess the new president’s likely policies against the backdrop of what he did in his first term, four years earlier. The prognosis is not positive.
Friends of SCPL 