Northern and central Italy are not on the southern Mediterranean. But somehow thousands of refugees from Africa, Asia and the Middle East are everywhere here -- as is true of much of the European Union.

Russell Berman, the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a member of the Working Group on Islamism and the International Order, discusses United States and European relations.

Professor Larry Diamond, an internationally renowned scholar in democracy studies, said the Hong Kong government’s proposal for the 2017 election cannot qualify as a political reform as it screens the candidates for chief executive to ensure that the winner is acceptable to Beijing.

When we recently set out for meetings in London, Berlin and Brussels on improving transatlantic links on atrocity prevention, foremost in our minds was concern about the dramatic return over the past 18 months of first-tier international security challenges. The rise of ISIS against the backdrop of civil war and humanitarian catastrophe in Syria, the new adventurism of the Russia of Vladimir Putin, and the daunting challenge of the Iranian nuclear program combine to take up a lot of space in the in-boxes of senior policymakers in North America and Europe.