Home

Uprooted

Displacement, Migration and Searching for Home

Announcing the E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues 2023-2024

Silhouette of migrants walking at sunset
Ticket Information Watch Lectures

The number of people displaced by conflicts, disasters and economic crises has risen to a new high of over 89 million, including over 30 million refugees and asylum seekers. “Uprooted” shares stories of displaced people in search of hope and home.

FREE and open to the public.

The E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues is a cooperative project of the Cooper Foundation, Lied Center for Performing Arts, and University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It was established in 1988 with the purpose of bringing a diversity of viewpoints on international and public policy issues to the university and people of Nebraska to promote understanding and encourage debate.

We're pleased to welcome the following speakers as part of our 2023-2024 schedule:

E N Thompson Logo

Upcoming

Lynsey Addario portrait

Lynsey Addario

Of Love & War: Stories of Tragedy & Resilience

With College of Journalism and Mass Communications (Buffett-Mangelsen-Sartore Chair of Photojournalism), Forsythe Family Program on Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, and Global Affairs


Lynsey Addario is an American photojournalist who regularly photographs for The New York Times, National Geographic, and TIME magazine. Focusing on humanitarian and human rights issues, Addario's recent bodies of work include an ongoing reportage on Syrian refugees, ISIS' push into Iraq, the civil war in South Sudan, and African and Middle Eastern migrants arriving on Sicily's shores. In 2009, Addario received a MacArthur Fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Her memoir, It's What I Do, chronicles her personal and professional life as a photojournalist coming of age in the post-9/11 world.

Leilani Farha portrait

Leilani Farha

Back Home: Returning Human Rights to Housing

With NeighborWorks Lincoln and NIFA


Leilani Farha is the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing and Global Director of The Shift. Farha has helped develop global human rights standards on the right to housing, including through her topical reports on homelessness, the financialization of housing, informal settlements, rights-based housing strategies, and the first UN Guidelines for the implementation of the right to housing. She is the central character in the documentary PUSH regarding the financialization of housing. Farha launched The Shift in 2017 to advance the movement through advocacy, research and campaigning.

Previously This Season

Cooper Conversations logo

Forum Youth Panel

Displacement and Reimagining the American Dream

With the Chancellor’s Diversity Commissions


At Wick Alumni Center

This interactive event will feature local students and young professionals sharing their lived experiences as immigrants and refugees. Each panelist will tell their story, presenting a multi-dimensional picture beyond what’s portrayed in the news. Panelists will then respond to questions on a range of relevant topics, moderated by Karla Hernandez Torrijos, the inaugural Student Storyteller in Residence with the Center for Great Plains Studies. Karla is an undergraduate student, poet and workshop facilitator whose writing “interrogates our understanding of home, displacement, and the liminal space in between.”

6:30 pm: Doors open and food served

7:00-8:00 pm: Panel (in person, live streamed, and recorded)

The RSVP has closed, but walk-ins are still welcome. The event may be standing room only.

Parag Khanna portrait

Parag Khanna

A World on the Move: The Forces Uprooting Us

With College of Business and ALLO Communications


Note: Video Requires UNL Login to Watch

Parag Khanna is a leading global strategy advisor, world traveler, and bestselling author. He is the Founder & CEO of Climate Alpha, an AI-powered analytics platform that forecasts asset values to future-proof global real estate, and Founder & Managing Partner of FutureMap, a data and scenario-based strategic advisory firm. Khanna is the bestselling author of MOVE: Where People are Going for a Better Future, which was preceded by The Future is Asian: Commerce, Conflict & Culture in the 21st Century and five additional books. Khanna was named one of Esquire’s “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century.”