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In the fall of 2018, Rohima Begum considered her options as the small island, or "char," on which her family's house rested slowly but inescapably eroded into the mighty Brahmaputra River in northern Bangladesh. The country, once unceremoniously dubbed a "basket case" by then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, had since emerged according to many economic metrics. At the same time, it remained faced with a unique set of political, economic, international, and climactic concerns. For while most of the world saw climate change as a future threat to be mitigated, Bangladesh faced the immediate challenge of adaptation. Indeed, "climate refugees" from the country had become the single largest group of immigrants to Europe in 2017, and some observers recognized the country as a proverbial canary in the coalmine. Might Bangladesh's challenges be owned by the world?

This 9-page version of Seizing the Moment primarily differs from the original in omitting a 4-page section that describes the early, confusing stages of Myanmar's democratization process. This leadership case is set in the spring of 2016 and gives students the chance to grapple with the difficult challenges confronting Myanmar's opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, after a rapid turn of fortune took her, over a period of six years, from longtime prisoner of conscience to civilian head of state in Myanmar. The case describes the nature of Suu KyI's political role in Myanmar during her many years of house arrest and then shows how that role shifted in the years following her release. With freedom and an increase in formal power came new dilemmas, for example, whether to take an oath to a problematic Constitution, how to manage her star power vis-à-vis Myanmar President Thein Sein, and how to address intercommunal violence between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, an unpopular ethnic minority in Rakhine state. (See HKS case Fallen Idol? Aung San Suu Kyi & the Rohingya Humanitarian Crisis (2139.0) for a more detailed treatment of this last issue, which devolved into a desperate humanitarian catastrophe in August and September of 2017. Another two-part HKS case, Icon of Hope A/B (1685.0, 1686.0), focuses on Suu Kyi's early adult life and transformation from an expatriate living a quiet life in Oxford, England to an opposition leader and icon for democracy and human rights.)

Soon after Myanmar's longtime democracy crusader and opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, was released from a long house arrest and elected to the country's parliament in 2012, intercommunal violence began to escalate in the western state of Rakhine between local Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims. Over the next five years, the long-persecuted Rohingya minority faced increasingly violent waves of attack, culminating in a humanitarian catastrophe in August and September of 2017 characterized by indiscriminate killing, mass rape, and the wholesale incineration of villages. To the shock of her many admirers around the world, Suu Kyi did nothing to try to prevent or stem the military-led attacks, nor did she condemn the military after-the-fact, instead accusing international monitors and fact-finders of spreading false reports. This case explores the evolution of anti-Rohingya sentiment in Myanmar and details the escalation of intercommunal violence against the Rohingya between 2012 and 2017. It describes Suu Kyi's reaction to the growing Rohingya crisis in these years, and ends with assorted theories about why a leader long revered as an icon for democracy, symbol of peaceful protest, and crusader for human rights-having finally become her country's civilian head of state-would choose not to take a stand against the brutal campaign against the Rohingya. Two other HKS cases explore earlier periods in Aung San Suu Kyi's evolution as a leader. "Icon of Hope" A/B (HKS870, HKS871) focuses on Suu Kyi's transformation from an expatriate living a quiet life in Oxford, England to an opposition leader and icon for democracy and human rights. "Aung San Suu Kyi, Seizing the Moment: Soaring Hopes & Tough Constraints in Myanmar's Unfolding Democracy" (HKS746), focuses on Suu Kyi's swift and challenging evolution from human rights icon under house arrest to de facto prime minister in 2016.

This case explores the actions taken by a reporter that ultimately resulted in the impeachment and imprisonment of former South Korean President Park Geun hye due to corruption. The information for the ground-breaking story, however, may have been obtained using questionable means. The case seeks to highlight the process of mental rationalization, specifically forms of moral disengagement, like moral justification, that frequently occur before engaging in ethically questionable behaviour. Through the case, students will grapple with the difficult question of whether it is okay to do a little bad for something that might be considered a greater good. This kind of moral dilemma and related rationalization process will confront every student in some phase of their life. To be effective in ethical decision-making, it is important for students to be aware when such situations arise, to understand rationalization and related psychological processes, and to use this knowledge to make more thoughtful decisions.

In February and March 2009, the US economy was in the midst of a terrifying financial and economic crisis. Between the beginning of 2008 and early 2009, four of the 25 largest U.S. financial institutions had failed, and nine of these 25 institutions had taken extraordinary steps to avoid failure -either receiving one-off government support, merging with another firm, or submitting to heightened regulation to qualify for future government support. Led by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the government had to quickly devise policies to stabilize the financial system and the economy. The case explores the details of policies, and the decision making process that led to them, that Geithner and his team devised under immense time pressure to stabilize the system. The case features an extended discussion of Geithner's innovative "stress test", which would reveal the longer-term health of the country's largest banks.

On the afternoon of Monday October 13, 2008, Hank Paulson Jr., the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, walked into the large conference room across the hall from his office in the Treasury Department. Joining him were Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Timothy Geithner, Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporate Sheila Bair, and the Chief Executive Officers of nine of the largest banks in the United States. This distinguished group had been brought together by the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Financial panic was pushing the U.S. and European financial systems to the brink of failure. Paulson hoped his meeting with the bank CEOs would be a turning point. U.S. financial markets were closed for Columbus Day, and Paulson was planning to announce the latest government actions to stabilize the financial system before markets reopened on Tuesday.

Following a contentious presidential race, Donald Trump's 2016 election destabilized America's status quo. Academics, journalists, politicians and the public at large examined why Trump had won. Many Americans, inside and outside the government, asserted that a state-led Russian disinformation campaign had influenced the election's outcome. The leaders of major social media companies, including Twitter and Facebook, also conceded that state actors had gamed their platforms to influence American politics. Trump himself made conflicting statements, while Russian politicians asserted that American elites had rhetorically weaponized the issue of election interference to justify an unwillingness to work with their country internationally. It was hard to parse where reality ended and political rhetoric began. Post-election, the future of U.S.-Russia relations remained unclear, and the United States grappled with how to regulate cyberspace. Analyzing the 2016 election and its aftershocks helps students confront interrelated questions about business regulation, international relations, cultural identity, strategic communications, political will and the Internet. The case encourages students to consider the boundary between narrative and reality and examine subjectivity, objectivity, and power in the public and private sectors.

With an ever-growing world population, rising living standards, pollution, and climate change's uncertain weather patterns, it became almost a platitude that "the previous war was about oil, the next war will be about water." Of all water-related situations that might lead to war, the Nile basin tension was probably most likely to escalate. In the early 2000s, Ethiopia conceived a plan to build the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam across the Blue Nile, close to its border with Sudan, straining relations with downstream Egypt and Sudan. Could such smoldering tensions over water in a region with a history of conflict lead to war? This case is part of the "Global Economics of Water" course, a second-year elective for MBA students at the Darden School of Business. The case would also fit in any class that focuses on natural resources or international relations. It is used as an introduction to the water topic, as it touches upon some key aspects of water stress and the world's current water challenges.

Beginning in the late 1990s and lasting through much of the next decade, the Arkansas Department of Health underwent multiple changes to its organizational structure. Part A of "A State of Flux" recounts how, after a brief period in which the director of health replaced traditional hierarchical leadership with team-based management, several findings of administrative shortcomings helped prompt Governor Mike Huckabee and the state legislature to merge the department with the Arkansas Department of Human Services. Supporters of the merger argued that not only would it force the health division to adopt the highly regarded administrative practices of human services, it would also result in substantial cost savings for the state budget. However, the public health community quickly grew frustrated with the new arrangement, arguing that instead of being the marriage of two equals, the merger had resulted in the subordination of health to human services. Soon a movement to end the merger emerged, and Part B of the case explores how public health officials and their political allies rallied both publicly and behind the scenes to reverse course and reestablish a fully autonomous health department. An epilogue to the case portrays the main tasks and challenges public health leaders encountered as they worked to rebuild a reconstituted Arkansas Department of Health after this tumultuous period of organizational change. Case number 2129.0

This case compares the impact of disruptive forces on the logistics industry in Singapore and Hong Kong, and the two government responses in terms of strategic repositioning. This case is important for executives recommending the siting of additional investment dollars particularly between the two cities.

Three months into her job as secretary of health for Washington State in 1999-a position which had been vacant for nearly a year following the previous secretary's resignation-Mary Selecky read a newspaper story that the state's largest and most influential health jurisdiction, Public Health Seattle King County, reported three unconnected people in the county had been infected with salmonella, a common foodborne bacteria that makes people sick and can lead to severe illness and even death in some instances if untreated. While Department of Health epidemiologists had already serotyped the bacteria, which they traced to fruit smoothies from a Seattle chain, this was the first time that Selecky had heard anything about the outbreak. Clearly, she mused, no one in the state working on the matter thought the state secretary of health needed to know about it. Selecky, who had previously run a poorly resourced, rural county health district in Washington State, did not yet understand how state-level public health laboratories and other resources interacted with Public Health Seattle King County, health labs in other states, or federal agencies and resources. She was not even sure of her role vis à vis the State Department of Health's own epidemiology team when it came to routine foodborne outbreaks. However, Selecky did know that foodborne pathogens could sicken and kill, and had no respect for man-made borders. What if anything should Selecky do? What does she need to know? What is her role in what staff consider routine communicable disease investigations. How should she go about discovering it? How does one decide what is and what is not routine?

The 8.9 magnitude earthquake that struck Japan on March 11, 2011, unleashed a 30-foot tsunami along Japan's Pacific Coast that damaged nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear complex. The crippled reactors leaked radiation into the sea and atmosphere, contaminating the local environment and sending a radioactive plume across the Pacific Ocean toward North America some 5,000 miles away. Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire soon asked State Secretary of Health Mary Selecky for the State Department of Health's action plan for the crisis, directing the seasoned health officer to "handle it!" Although the health risks posed to west coast communities by the incoming radiation was low, the public's anxiety about possible health consequences was high. Round-the-clock news coverage of the Fukushima nuclear disaster and its fallout inadvertently stoked what Selecky described as "an epidemic of fear" as residents sought to protect themselves from potential radiation contamination in water, shellfish, and dairy products. Nearly three weeks into the crisis, Selecky received an unexpected phone call from Governor Gregoire, whom New York Times reporters had just contacted for comment on radiation found in a Washington State milk sample. "What milk sample?" Selecky replied, hearing the news for the first time. What should Selecky do? How should she and her staff respond to the March 11 disaster? How should she proceed following revelations of radiation in a Washington State milk sample? How should she and her department handle the public's concerns about contaminated debris washing up on Washington's shores and other disaster-related issues in months and years to come?