American Imperialism and the End of Sovereignty
Fintan O’Toole in conversation with Alma Guillermoprieto and Michael Ignatieff
Fintan O’Toole hosts New York Review contributors Alma Guillermoprieto and Michael Ignatieff for a wide-ranging conversation on the Trump administration’s imperial ambitions in Venezuela, Greenland, and beyond.
This conversation originally aired on February 5, 2026.
Alma Guillermoprieto is a Mexican journalist. She found her way into journalism covering the Nicaraguan insurrection against Anastasio Somoza in1979. Since then she has written about Latin America for The Guardian, Newsweek, The New Yorker, National Geographic magazine, El País, and The New York Review of Books. She is the author of three works of reportage and a memoir. Among her awards are a MacArthur Fellowship, the Princess of Asturias award for the Humanities, and the Robert B. Silvers Prize for Journalism. Her most recent book is The Years of Blood: Stories from a Reporting Life in Latin America.
Michael Ignatieff is a university professor, writer, and former Canadian politician. Most recently the president and rector of the Central European University (CEU) in Vienna, for years he was the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard and the Edward R. Murrow Professor of Practice at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics & Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. Among his many books are The Needs of Strangers (1984), Isaiah Berlin (1998), The Rights Revolution (2000), Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (2001), The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (2004), and Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics (2013). Between 2006 and 2011 he served as an MP in the Parliament of Canada and as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.
About this series
The New York Review of Books is pleased to announce a series of virtual events on the most pressing issues emerging from the second Trump administration. In each conversation The New York Review’s Advising Editor Fintan O’Toole will talk with a group of contributors and esteemed guests about critical subjects, including immigration, political violence, the rule of law, and the state of the left.
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Fintan O’Toole is always a must read. He sees America with more clarity than almost any American journalist.
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