The Berlin International Economics Congress
An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Roles of Global Politics & Civil Society in International Economics
Dr. Susan George
President of the Board of TNI and Honorary President of ATTAC-France
Susan George is a well-known political scientist and writer on global social justice, Third World poverty, underdevelopment and debt. Susan George is a frequent interviewee in print, radio and television and regularly contributes articles to Le Monde diplomatique, Open Democracy, El Pais, New Internationalist and The Nation.
She is a fellow and president of the board of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam, where she is one of TNI's most renowned fellows for her long-term and ground-breaking analysis of global issues. Author of fourteen widely translated books, she describes her work in a cogent way that has come to define TNI: "The job of the responsible social scientist is first to uncover these forces [of wealth, power and control], to write about them clearly, without jargon... and finally to take an advocacy position in favour of the disadvantaged, the underdogs, the victims of injustice."
She is a fierce critic of the present policies of the IMF, World Bank (IBRD) and what she calls their 'maldevelopment model'. She similarly criticizes the structural reform policies of the Washington Consensus on Third World development. She is of U.S. birth but now resides in France, has dual citizenship and is honorary president of ATTAC France (Association for Taxation of (financial) Transactions to Aid Citizens).
Susan George has also been awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and the Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia of Madrid as well as the first “Outstanding Public Scholar Award" of the International Political Economy section of the International Studies Association.
Susan George was a prominent and eloquent champion of the international civil-society campaign against the OECD's proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) in the 1990s, and the ill-fated "Millennium Round" objectives of the WTO at Seattle in 1999. From 1990 to 1995 she served on the board of Greenpeace International as well as that of Greenpeace France. She has acted as a consultant to various United Nations specialised agencies and is a frequent public speaker, particularly for ATTAC groups, trade unions, and environment/development non-governmental organisations in many countries
