Systems of Secrecy: Journalism, Power and the Policy Gaps that Enable Corruption

Ford School professor of practice Ambassador Susan D. Page and Gerard Ryle will discuss what global investigative journalism reveals about the limits of public policy — particularly when laws fall short, enforcement fails, and bad actors innovate faster than the systems meant to stop them.

Gerard Ryle is executive director of the  International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. He led the worldwide teams of journalists working on the Panama Papers, Paradise Papers and Pandora Papers investigations, the biggest in journalism history. Under his leadership, ICIJ has become one of the best-known journalism brands in the world. Reporters Without Borders has described Ryle’s work with ICIJ as "the future of investigative journalism worldwide" when naming him as one of "100 information heroes" of worldwide significance.
 

Apart from her current positions at the Ford School and Law School, Ambassador Susan D. Page's senior level roles have included Assistant Secretary General/Special Adviser on Rule of Law, first U.S. Ambassador to newly independent South Sudan, U.S. Chargé d’Affaires to the African Union, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, key adviser to the peace process that resolved Africa’s longest-running civil war through international mediation, and a foreign service regional legal advisor and political officer in East, Central, and Southern Africa.

Faculty Expert

Susan D. Page

Professor of Practice in International Diplomacy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and Professor from Practice at University of Michigan Law School. Director; Weiser Diplomacy Center.

Page applies her vast foreign policy experience to the Weiser Diplomacy Center. She has served the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the United Nations, and non-governmental organizations in senior roles for decades, across East, Central, and Southern Africa, and in Haiti and Nepal. Page was the first U.S. ambassador to the Republic of South Sudan and served as Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations in Haiti.