Benjamin Charles Brumm serves as a Board Member of the World Federalist Movement and contributes to the Institute for World Policy through strategic governance, institutional reform, and global policy development via his work as the interim Chair of the Committee for Membership and Outreach.. His work focuses on strengthening multilateral institutions, advancing democratic accountability at the international level, and designing resilient governance frameworks capable of addressing emerging global risks. He contributes to initiatives on global economic reform, security architecture, and long-term institutional design, including research on international law, space governance, and financial system modernization. With a background in security operations, data analytics, and AI governance, Benjamin brings a systems-oriented approach to global policy challenges. His work emphasizes disciplined implementation, cross-regional coordination, and the development of durable structures that enhance compliance with international norms while promoting stability, cooperation, and responsible global leadership.
WHY ARE YOU A WORLD FEDERALIST?
In 2024, while applying to the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Benjamin encountered Albert Einstein’s 1949 essay Why Socialism?. Reading it on a bus en route to the airport marked a turning point. The essay’s central insight—that the individual is inseparable from society – challenged the prevailing Western emphasis on radical individual primacy. He came to see how alienation, fragmentation, and conflict can emerge when personal advancement is detached from collective responsibility.
At the same time, he recognized that collectivism structured around narrow identities—national, ideological, or civilizational – can perpetuate an “us versus them” dynamic. Durable peace, in his view, requires an identity that transcends nationality and encompasses humanity as a whole. Einstein’s later advocacy of world federalism, grounded not in revolutionary ideology but in gradual institutional reform, offered a practical path forward.
For Benjamin, world federalism represents a health-centered approach to governance: designing institutions that reduce structural insecurity, mitigate power politics, and elevate quality of life. He believes long-term stability depends on cooperation over competition, and on building global frameworks that safeguard both individual dignity and the common good.
WHAT IS THE FUTURE YOU ARE WORKING TOWARDS?
When asked what future he is working toward, Benjamin returns to a question he has reflected on repeatedly: What, precisely, is worth striving for? Abstract phrases such as “humanity” or “nature” are insufficient on their own. For him, the objective is concrete: to maximize the quality of life for all people by expanding opportunity as broadly as possible, while advancing an ecological civilization that lives in structural harmony with the natural world.
This requires continuous institutional improvement, disciplined reform, and the courage to take decisive action when necessary. It requires crafting a social contract that simultaneously protects individual liberties and guarantees foundational entitlements—access to healthcare, food, shelter, education, due process, freedom of thought and expression, and the opportunity to pursue one’s aspirations without arbitrary constraint. He believes freedom and security are not opposites but mutually reinforcing. The task of governance is to expand both: to provide the material foundations for human flourishing while preserving the dignity and autonomy of the individual. The future he works toward is one in which cooperation replaces zero-sum competition, institutions reduce structural insecurity, and every person is afforded the opportunity to live a life of meaning, stability, and self-determined excellence.
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