‘Kleptocracy, Inc.: The Corrupt Networks That Maintain Modern Dictatorships’ with Anne Applebaum
Join UNC Global Affairs, the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life, the UNC Curriculum in Peace, War and Defense, UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, and UNC School of Information and Library Science for a Diplomatic Discussion with Anne Applebaum about how disinformation and corruption are leading to democratic-backsliding around the world.
Applebaum is a renowned historian, best-selling author of several books, including Twilight of Democracy and Autocracy, Inc., and contributing writer for The Atlantic.
CLE credit is available, and pizza will be served after the event.
The Diplomatic Discussion speaker series is part of Carolina’s Diplomacy Initiative, which introduces students to shared global challenges and provides them opportunities to practice skills necessary to address those challenges. In 2025, UNC Global Affairs launched the Carolina Diplomacy Fellows for students interested in deepening their engagement with the Diplomacy Initiative.
Read more about Anne Applebaum
Anne Applebaum is a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, journalist and commentator on geopolitics who examines the forces shaping today’s global political and economic landscape. Drawing on decades of reporting and expertise in European history, she explores the rise of authoritarianism, the manipulation of media and technology, and the impact of misinformation on democratic institutions. Her work connects historical experience with contemporary crises — from Russian disinformation and the war in Ukraine to populism, corruption and the challenges facing the European Union.
Applebaum is the author of several influential books on totalitarianism and democracy. Her Pulitzer Prize–winning “Gulag: A History” chronicles the Soviet concentration camp system, while “Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine” — winner of the Duff Cooper Prize and the Lionel Gelber Prize — examines the man-made famine that devastated Ukraine. Other major works include “Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944–1946,” “Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism” and “Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World,” a New York Times bestseller recognized as one of the year’s best books by multiple international publications.
In recognition of her contributions to journalism and letters, Applebaum has received numerous international honors, including the 2024 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the ICFJ Excellence in International Reporting Award and Spain’s Francisco Cerecedo journalism award. She is a Senior Fellow of International Affairs and Agora Fellow in Residence at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and has held leadership roles at leading policy institutions in Europe and the United States.
Applebaum has written extensively for major publications worldwide. A longtime columnist for The Washington Post, she is now a staff writer at The Atlantic and has contributed to Foreign Affairs, The New York Review of Books and other leading journals. She attended Yale University and was a Marshall Scholar at the London School of Economics and St. Antony’s College, Oxford.