Associate Editor
Laila Ujayli is passionate about the intersection of narrative and policy, concentrating on using stories to reorient US foreign policy towards human needs. She currently studies public policy as a graduate student at the Blavatnik School of Government, where she is a Rhodes Scholar. As a former Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellow at Win Without War, she worked on reimagining US security spending to invest in the tools necessary to confront today and tomorrow's major challenges. She is especially interested in the use of film to engage the public on global issues and holds a Master of Studies in Film Aesthetics from the University of Oxford.
The meaning of images of uniformed servicemembers in American popular culture is deeply fraught and unsettled. The gamut runs from the jingoistic to the nostalgic to the critically ironic to…
On Socotra, the trees bleed. Known as “Dragon’s Blood Trees,” Socotra’s outlandish Dracaena Cinnabari have seen the island painted by outsiders in fetish and fantasy since time…
The internet has been a great boon for open-source research and intelligence. Open-source intelligence researchers have been able to make incredible discoveries — tracking down obscure…
A few days after Russia invaded Ukraine, five of us — people of color — sat on a Zoom call. We represented different peace and security organizations from across the US. We were supposed…
In recent days, experts have begun laying out the potential hardships the Russian invasion of Ukraine might inflict here in the United States, thousands and thousands of miles from the…
Watching rockets flying over the city of Kyiv on a cold March night is surreal. Only four months ago I walked the streets of that city, the autumn leaves coloring the urban blocks of the…
Like much of the world right now, I have been following the news from Ukraine daily. And like so many, I am heartbroken to see the devastation there. As I scroll through headlines, however,…
President Joe Biden’s first State of the Union address focused heavily on foreign policy and Ukraine. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine just a week earlier, Biden spoke about the…
Watching events unfold in Ukraine has taken us through a whirlwind of emotions. It is heartbreaking to see the brutal invasion of Ukraine and the flood of people fleeing Russian military…