Former U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) administrator and United Nations ambassador Samantha Power challenged students to make the case for foreign aid and U.S. engagement abroad during the Bartels World Affairs Lecture on April 16.
The event, held this year in Rockefeller Hall's Schwartz Auditorium, is hosted annually by the Einaudi Center for International Studies, part of Global Cornell.
Invoking Alexis de Tocqueville, Power called for renewed attention to "self-interest rightly understood," linking global assistance to domestic concerns like public health, economic stability and national security.
"Modest investments abroad could advance America's interests at home - by preventing pandemics from reaching our shores, by expanding markets for U.S. goods, by promoting democracy and freedom - all for less than 1% of the federal budget each year," she said.
The lecture marked the culmination of a yearlong Einaudi Center inquiry into the future of international aid. Introducing Power, Vice Provost for International Affairs Wendy Wolford said that USAID, the Fulbright program and Cornell's area studies programs all emerged from a postwar vision of international engagement - a consensus that is now under strain.
"In the context of what many call the poly-crisis, we have the opportunity and obligation to build something new, and hopefully something better," Wolford said later, emphasizing the importance of regional expertise and sustained engagement, including language learning and working collaboratively with local communities.
Power, who served as USAID administrator from 2021 until the end of the Biden administration, described the agency as a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for more than six decades. On the first day of President Donald Trump's second term, USAID foreign assistance was halted; by July 1, more than 80% of USAID programs had been terminated.
Cuts to USAID programs could result in 14 million preventable deaths by 2030, including 4.5 million children under five, Power said, citing projections published in the Lancet. At Cornell, she said, roughly $85 million in USAID funding, including support for agricultural research, was lost.
Cornell's Innovation Lab for Crop Improvement "was part of a nationwide effort to connect America's best agronomists and environmental scientists with farmers and communities in the developing world," Power said. Ending the program "undercut not only global efforts to combat malnutrition, but undermined U.S. scientific leadership as well."
But not all political support for foreign aid has collapsed. A $50 billion foreign aid bill passed by Congress in February, she said, shows that bipartisan backing remains - and provides a foundation for rebuilding.
"We don't have the luxury of cursing the darkness," she said. "We have to build what comes next."
Following the lecture, Wolford moderated a Q&A with students, including Einaudi's Undergraduate Global Scholars.
Ariela Asllani '26, a public policy major at the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy and a global scholar, asked what most people misunderstand about the relationship between humanitarian aid and long-term political stability.
This is hard to measure, she said, because there is no data documenting people who decided not to migrate because their lives improved.
In areas where USAID concentrated vocational skills training and economic growth investments, Power said, the intention to migrate dropped substantially even though people were still arriving at the U.S. border. "The challenge with prevention is you're doing all of this good. Things can be worse. But all you see is, 'Well, then what good does it do?'"
Global Scholar Noah Freedman '26, a government major in the College of Arts and Sciences, asked if China might fill the void left by the United States' withdrawal from global leadership.
"What China has done is step in and dramatically increase its funding to UN agencies," Power said. "When you leave, and you pull your resources out, you can't be shocked when another country - looking out for its own self-interest - steps in and tries to exert greater influence."
Earlier in the day, Power met with the Global Scholars over lunch, where they discussed students' capstone projects on international aid. At the lecture, Power told the audience she was impressed by the scholars' "impatience, not only for answers, but also for evidence of impact."
"You have to generate that impact and make that impact legible - to connect what happens in a village in Malawi or Bangladesh to why it matters somewhere here in the United States," she said.
Rebuilding foreign aid, she said, will require not only restoring programs but rethinking how they are structured - including stronger partnerships with Congress, greater investment in local organizations and clearer evidence of impact.
"The fact that you cannot do everything does not mean that what you do will not matter," she said. "You may not be able to rebuild what has been lost - but you can be the ones who build what comes next."
The Einaudi Center's annual Bartels World Affairs Lecture and related events are made possible by the generosity of Henry E. Bartels '48 and Nancy Horton Bartels '48.
Becca Bowes is a freelance writer for Global Cornell.
