Political Economy Analysis of the Decline of the Late American Empire
Speaker：Nina Farnia, Assistant Professor, Albany Law School
Host：Xu Zhun, Professor, Lingnan College
Time and Date：14:00, May 25, 2026 (Monday)
Venue：Wang Dao Han Conference Room (101), Lingnan Hall
Language：English
Abstract：
As U.S.-led imperialism enters the final stage of its decline, the world is undergoing profound transformation. Historically, periods of imperial collapse and transition have often brought great hope to the Global South and formerly colonized peoples. Yet declining European empires also unleashed brutal violence in their final moments of collapse. Such violence was not purposeless; rather, it represented the empire's last attempt to maximize political and economic interests while minimizing losses at the end of its dominance. The consequences of this extreme violence frequently intensified risks in already fragile regions, relationships, and markets. This lecture will focus on analyzing the contemporary political-economic landscape from the perspectives of U.S. law and foreign policy.
Profile:
Nina Farnia is a legal historian and currently serves as an Assistant Professor at Albany Law School. Her research and teaching examine modern American imperialism through the lens of world history. As a specialist in West Asian history and an Iranian scholar, she is particularly concerned with the role of law and diplomacy in advancing anti-imperialist resistance movements. Her first monograph, Imperialism and Resistance, is forthcoming from Stanford University Press in 2026. The book is based on her doctoral dissertation, The Making of U.S. Law through Imperialism (1940–2008), which received the 2023 Julian Mezey Dissertation Prize from the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities.
Dr. Farnia's scholarship has appeared widely in leading journals and public media outlets, including the Stanford Law Review, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Middle East Critique, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, the UCLA Women's Law Journal, the Boston University Law Review, the CUNY Law Review, and Geopolitical Economy Report. She currently serves as Associate Editor of Middle East Critique, Chief Convener of the international conference hosted by the Department of World Studies at University of Tehran in December 2025, and Chair of the Law and Humanities Section of the Association of American Law Schools.
Before entering academia, Dr. Farnia worked on the legal teams for two major U.S. Supreme Court cases: Dukes v. Walmart, the largest civil rights class action lawsuit in U.S. history, and Fazaga v. FBI, which challenged the Southern California government informant policy. She received her B.A. in Political Science and International Relations from University of Chicago, earned her J.D. from the UCLA School of Law, and completed her Ph.D. in History at University of California, Davis.
