Middle East Colloquium

About the Event
This talk examines the relationship between the concepts of “transcription” and “transition” in the development of Jean Sénac’s poetics, paying close attention to his engagements with Algerian būqāla poetry,a genre of oral texts recited by women in Algerian Arabic. As a Francophone pied-noir intellectual committed to Algerian independence, Sénac understood French as a “transitional language” to be employed only while a new Arabophone literary class could emerge. Driven by his exploration of būqāla poetry, Sénac thus abstracted transcription, an ethnographic practice with considerable colonial roots in Algeria, into a translational paradigm that allowed him to maintain his authority as a Francophone Algerian poet––an authority whose ultimate purpose was to negate itself. An analysis of key poems written and translated between the early 50s and late 60s allows us to observe how transcription became a conceptual paradigm through which Sénac reconfigured his relationship to the “voice of the people,” and his status as an anticolonial and Third-Worldist poet.

About the Speaker
Maru Pabón is an assistant professor of comparative literature at Brown University. She received her Ph.D. in comparative literature at Yale University with a certificate of concentration in Middle East Studies. Her current book project examines efforts to construct the “voice of the people” across Palestinian, Cuban, and Algerian Third-Worldist poetry. Along with Laure Guirguis, she is the co-editor of the volume “Art and Politics Between the Arab World and Latin America,” forthcoming with Brill in Spring 2025. Her writing and research has appeared in Middle Eastern Literatures, Kohl: A Journal for Body and Gender Research, Bidoun, Momus, and Bidayat.

The event location will be shared with registered attendees.

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About the Event

After more than a year of conflict between Israel and Hizbullah, yielding over 4,000 deaths and more than a million people displaced on both sides of the border, a fragile ceasefire took hold in late 2024. Since then, Lebanon has witnessed a number of dramatic transformations to its political scene. Israel’s elimination of Hizbullah’s leadership and much of its military arsenal has emboldened the group’s Lebanese adversaries and local civil society, even as it has threatened to inflame sectarian divisions within the country. A new government led by Nawaf Salam, a Sorbonne and Harvard-educated jurist and former judge at the International Criminal Court, has sought to shore up state sovereignty and security. Meanwhile, the ceasefire continues to be punctuated by rocket attacks, airstrikes, and drone overflights. What does the future hold? In the wake of October 7th, how will Lebanon navigate its relations with the United States, Syria, the GCC countries, and Iran? How will it rebuild its infrastructure in a time of dwindling foreign aid? And what are the prospects for long-term political reform and economic recovery?

Featuring Firas Maksad, managing director, Eurasia Group. Elias Muhanna, director of the Center for Middle East Studies, and Serena Fadel ’25 will moderate. 

About the Speaker

Firas Maksad is the managing director for the Middle East and North Africa practice at Eurasia Group. He oversees the team covering the region’s geopolitics and macroeconomics and US foreign policy toward that part of the world. Firas is a recognized expert on the politics of Lebanon and Syria, the geopolitics of the Arab Gulf states, and the broader dynamics of the Middle East.

Prior to joining Eurasia Group, Firas was a senior director and senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a leading Washington-based think tank. He also managed his own boutique political consulting firm and has been an adjunct professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School for International Affairs. Earlier in his career, Firas worked for Eurasia Group as an analyst in the Middle East and North Africa practice.

Firas’s writings have appeared in leading publications such as the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, and the Los Angeles Times. He frequently offers expert commentary on US politics and the Middle East for global news networks, including CNN, the BBC, CNBC, Bloomberg, and others.

Firas holds a master of science in foreign service degree and an honors certificate in international business from Georgetown University. He completed his undergraduate degree in political studies at the American University of Beirut.

Organized by the Center for Middle East Studies and the Arab Society.

Made possible by the Peter Green Lectureship Fund on the Modern Middle East

About the Event

“Invitation to Ixcotel” is a series of ethnographic narratives, with essays, stories, and poems, along with conversations featuring inmates in a Mexican prison in Oaxaca, one of the poorest states with a large concentration of indigenous communities in the southwest part of the country. Over a period of more than 13 years, the main participants in the book became collaborating ethnographers who worked with sociolinguist Angeles Clemente.

About the Author

Angeles Clemente obtained a Ph.D. in Education in languages from the University of London and worked as a professor for 30 years at UABJO, the State University of Oaxaca in Mexico. A sociolinguist, she has researched the connection between language, culture, agency, and identity in Latin American contexts, both in Mexico and Brazil.

Panelists

Richard Snyder, Professor of Political Science, Brown University

Daniel A. Rodriguez, Associate Professor of History, Brown University

Please note that this talk will be presented in English.

For questions orto request special services, accommodations, or assistance, please contactclacs@brown.eduor (401)-863-2645.

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John H. McWhorter is an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. He earned his B.A. from Rutgers, his M.A. from New York University, and his Ph.D. in linguistics from Stanford. 

Professor McWhorter is an author of more than twenty books including The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language, Losing the Race: Self Sabotage in Black America and Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English. In 2016 he published Words on the Move: Why English Won’t - and Can’t - Sit Still (Like, Literally), while in 2021 he published Nine Nasty Words and Woke Racism. He also writes a weekly column for The New York Times and hosts the language podcast Lexicon Valley. 

Glenn C. Loury, Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences at Brown University, is an academic economist who has made scholarly contributions to the fields of welfare economics, income distribution, game theory, industrial organization, and natural resource economics. He is also a prominent social critic and public intellectual, having published over 200 articles in journals of public affairs in the U.S. and abroad on the issues of racial inequality and social policy. A Fellow of the Econometric Society, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a past Vice President of the American Economics Association, Prof. Loury has been a visiting scholar at Oxford, Tel Aviv University, the University of Stockholm, the Delhi School of Economics, the Institute for the Human Sciences in Vienna, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and was for many years a contributing editor at The New Republic magazine.

Join the Department of History and greater Brown community to celebrate the launch of Michael Vorenberg’s latest book, Lincoln’s Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf, 2025). 

About the book: Lincoln’s Peace challenges the narrative of a Civil War that ended neatly with an iconic surrender in April 1865. The book examines the many endings and non-endings of the war, from failed peace meetings to emancipation celebrations, arguing that the choice of an end date determines how the war is defined and remembered.

About the author: Michael Vorenberg is an Associate Professor of History who specializes in nineteenth-century U.S. history, with a particular focus on the topics of the Civil War, emancipation, law, and the U.S. Constitution.

Read a recent Q&A with Michael Vorenberg

This event has been postponed. 

Join Watson Senior Fellow Malika Saada Saar ’92, former Global Head of Human Rights at YouTube, for a fireside chat on Building AI for Humanity with Howie Wachtel, senior director and head of Microsoft’s UN and International Organizations policy team.

Howie Wachtel is a senior director and head of Microsoft’s UN and International Organizations policy team. Prior to this role, he was a senior director and head of global sanctions policy and strategy at PayPal. Howie spent over a decade in several roles in the U.S. government, including at the National Security Council, the U.S. Department of State, and the U.S. Mission to the UN. 

Howie began his career as a litigation associate at Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett LLP. He has taught courses on the UN, sanctions, international law, and counterterrorism at the University of Virginia, Duke, and NYU. He is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center and serves on the board of directors of the Global Center on Cooperative Security. He has also worked as a consultant/legal adviser for a UN team responsible for facilitating the export of food and fertilizer out of Russia and Ukraine.

Howie received a B.S. from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, a General Course diploma from LSE, and a J.D. and LL.M. in international and comparative law from Duke.

Malika Saada Saar is a highly accomplished human rights lawyer with extensive experience in civil and human rights law, tech policy development, multi-stakeholder engagement, and the responsible governance and use of AI. As Google’s Global Head of Human Rights at YouTube, she led a team responsible for integrating human rights principles across Trust & Safety, Government Affairs and Public Policy, Legal, and Product teams.

We will answer this question in relation to Nazi aspirations, relocation, the ubiquity of Holocaust places, mass removal of Jewish bodies, hiding, and lasting scars and silences in the landscape.

• Presenter: Anne Kelly Knowles
• Authors: Anne Kelly Knowles, University of Maine [organizer], Tim Cole, University of Bristol [organizer] and Paul B. Jaskot, Duke University [organizer] - Placing the Holocaust

This event is part of the April 25-26 conference:

The Spatial Turn in Holocaust and Genocide Studies: Space, Place and Mapping

Anne Kelly Knowles is a Historical Geographer and is the McBride Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Maine, where she leads the Digital & Spatial History Lab. She is the recipient of many grants and awards, including six grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her range of interests is reflected in monographs on Welsh immigration and the U.S. iron industry and edited volumes on historical GIS and the geographies of the Holocaust. Anne’s Holocaust research focuses on building, analyzing, and sharing spatio-temporal datasets of SS camps, Eastern European ghettos, and places in testimony. She is currently developing an atlas of the Holocaust.

Paul B. Jaskot is Professor of Art History & German Studies at Duke University. He is also the Director of the Digital Art History & Visual Culture Research Lab. Jaskot’s work focuses on the political history of culture during the Nazi period.

Tim Cole’s research ranges widely across social, landscape and environmental histories with a focus on the Holocaust and how it is remembered. He works in the digital humanities and co-produced research with communities and creatives.

Are you interested in pursuing a professional opportunity in Washington, D.C.? Not sure whether you want to work in government, at a think tank, or in the non-profit sector?

The professional landscape in D.C. changes regularly and recent executive orders have resulted in hiring freezes as well as changes to internship policies at the federal level. We are here to help you understand what’s next.

Presented by the Brown Dems and Brown in Washington program, this student and alumni panel will give you an opportunity to talk with people who have already learned how to navigate the shapeshifting professional landscape.

The Department of Portuguese & Brazilian Studies and the Brazil Initiative at the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs are hosting a Symposium on Contemporary Brazilian Literature and Culture from April 25-26. The Symposium will begin at 10:30 am and will be held on the 6th floor of the Sciences Library (Center for Language Studies). 

Climate change demands bold interventions, and entrepreneurs are finding innovative ways to drive change. This panel discussion will showcase diverse approaches to climate-focused entrepreneurship and investment, featuring pioneers across energy, food, and finance from right here in Rhode Island.

The four panelists represent different sectors, stages, and sources of funding. Hear from Kipp Bradford ’95 ScM’96, an engineer and startup leader in energy efficiency; Kim Anderson of EverHope Capital and Plant City, a trailblazer in sustainable food ventures; Nick Napp founder of Xmark Labs, pioneering next generation energy efficiency sensors; and Frohman Anderson, serial investor and board member of Quaise — a leader in geothermal energy.

Hosted by Mark Tracy, IBES’ Professor of the Practice of Sustainable Finance and Investing, this engaging discussion will explore what drives these entrepreneurs, how they’re helping to tackle today’s climate challenges, and the many ways to navigate careers in climate innovation. A Q&A will follow.

Available via livestream and in person. In-person attendees are encouraged to register for the sake of headcount. Lunch provided!

The Department of Portuguese & Brazilian Studies and the Brazil Initiative at the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs are hosting a Symposium on Contemporary Brazilian Literature and Culture from April 25-26. The Symposium will begin at 10:30 am and will be held on the 6th floor of the Sciences Library (Center for Language Studies). 

Sponsored by Watson’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee, this event provides an opportunity for Watson students across disciplines to connect and foster a stronger sense of belonging, with a focus on the experiences of the undocumented, first-generation, and low-income (U-Fli) community. Faculty and staff will also be invited in an effort to strengthen dialogue and understanding around issues facing U-Fli students at Watson.

For over 20 years, behavioral scientist Dr. Ja-Nae Duane has dedicated herself to one mission: to make life better for one billion people. A first-generation college graduate raised in a low-income household raising her siblings, Ja-Naé’s early experiences shaped her relentless drive to reimagine systems and unlock human potential.

An award-winning innovator and global systems expert, she works at the intersection of emerging technology—VR/AR, AI, and blockchain—and strategic foresight to help corporations, governments, and universities build future-ready systems. Ja-Nae guides organizations to create exponential innovation by helping them get out of their own way and shift toward long-term, scalable impact.

She has collaborated with companies such as PWC, Saudi Aramco, Yum Brands, Samsonite, Natixis, AIG, and Deloitte. A top-rated speaker within the Singularity University community and the bestselling author of The Startup Equation, Ja-Nae helps both startups and multinationals uncover new business models and pathways for global scale.

Her work has been featured by The Associated Press, NPR, The Boston Globe, and BusinessWeek. Ja-Nae holds degrees from Brown University, I.E. Business School, Northeastern University, Carnegie University, Bentley University, and Boston University. She serves on the Loomis Council at the Stimson Center, is a collaborator with the National Institutes of Health, and holds academic appointments at Brown University and MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research. Her next book, SuperShifts, is due out in April 2025.

Tightening US export restrictions of semiconductor technology toward China has become a key realm of tension between the two countries. What made this “chip war” highly disruptive was the considerable US-China interdependence in semiconductors prior to the conflict, made possible by relaxing US export control in the 1990s and 2000s. This talk discusses how US-China relations in semiconductors evolved. Going beyond structural and state-centered accounts, it highlights the role of business interests and contingencies in the turn from interdependence to conflict.

Yan Xu is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in International and Public Affairs at the Watson Institute. He studies comparative and international political economy, with focuses on technology, state-business relations, and China. His book project examines the rise of a vibrant tech startup sector in China — now the world’s second largest — and its impact on the country’s advance in high-tech. He has also conducted research on the relations between the state and top business tycoons in China, and U.S. dominance of the global semiconductor industry. He completed his Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Chicago.

Join us for a conversation with Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch who will discuss his book Righting Wrongs with Ieva Jusionyte.

Audience Q & A will follow the talk.

Lunch provided.

Presenting the fourth William R. Rhodes ’57 Ethics of Capitalism annual lecture:

How did business ethics come to be understood as something different from plain-old ethics? This lecture locates that departure in the middle decades of the nineteenth-century United States, specifically to the frictions that emerged from inter-regional commerce between Northern manufacturers and Southern slaveholders. The politics of slavery and abolition functioned in surprising ways to construct the business sector as a space where different rules applied. The outcome was a new notion of the market as a space functioning most efficiently when pesky concerns of morality did not intrude.

Q & A to follow moderated by Mark Blyth, Director of the Rhodes Center for International Economics & Finance.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Seth Rockman is a historian of the United States focusing on the period between the American Revolution and the Civil War. His research unfolds at the intersection of slavery studies, labor history, material culture studies, and the history of capitalism. Rockman’s latest book, Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery (2024), is an eye-opening rethinking of nineteenth-century American history that reveals the interdependence of the Northern industrial economy and Southern slave labor.

The Missing Link in Spurring Climate Action? A Spotlight on National Climate Institutions

How do countries organize themselves internally to address climate change? To what extent can internal governance arrangements help create a more favorable national politics for climate action? While a lot of thinking has gone into mechanisms for global collaboration on climate change, national climate governance has received far less attention. Drawing on national case studies, I argue that seemingly prosaic national and sub-national climate governance arrangements are an important, and understudied, link in accelerating transitions to low-carbon, climate resilient futures.

Prophecies that the dollar will lose its status as the world’s dominant currency have echoed for decades—and are increasing in volume. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts claim that Bitcoin or other blockchain-based monetary units will replace the dollar. Foreign policy hawks warn that China’s renminbi poses a lethal threat to the greenback. And sound money zealots predict that mounting US debt and inflation will surely erode the dollar’s value to the point of irrelevancy.

Contra the doomsayers, Paul Blustein shows that the dollar’s standing atop the world’s currency pyramid is impregnable, barring catastrophic policy missteps by the US government. Recounting how the United States has wielded the dollar to impose devastating sanctions against adversaries, Blustein explains that although targets such as Russia have found ways to limit the damage, Washington’s financial weaponry will retain potency long into the future. His message, however, is that America must not be complacent about the dollar; the great power that its supremacy confers comes with commensurate responsibility.

Audience Q & A to follow.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Paul Blustein has written about economic issues for more than 40 years, first as a reporter at leading news organizations and later as the author of several critically acclaimed books. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, Paul spent much of his career reporting for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He lives in Kamakura, Japan.

This half-day workshop will consist of two panels that will bring together experts from academia, medicine, law, and journalism to discuss critical issues in reproductive justice. 

12:00 - 12:30 | Welcome and Introductions

12:30 - 2:30 PM | On the Ground: The Practice of Medicine, Law, Journalism

• Emma Roth, Senior Staff Attorney, Pregnancy Justice
• Ayiti Majaraj-Best, Medical Director, Planned Parenthood of Southern New England
• Stephania Taladrid, Contributing Writer and Pulitzer Prize Finalist, The New Yorker
• Astrid Ackerman, Staff Attorney, Center for Reproductive Justice

2:30 - 3:00 PM | Break 

Join us for a short coffee/tea break in between panels. 

3:00 - 5:00 PM | Theorizing the Present: Sociological and Legal Perspectives

• Zakiya Luna, Associate Professor of Sociology, Washington University
• Jocelyn Viterna, Professor of Sociology, Harvard University
• Siri Suh, Associate Professor of Sociology, Brandeis University 
• Mary Ziegler, Professor of Law, University of California Davis

About the Event

The Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies welcomes faculty, students, and staff for a community celebration and our final Cafecito con CLACS of the semester. Enjoy music outside on the Starr Plaza. Coffee and pastries will be served by Café Modesto. All are welcome.

Rain location: Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies: 59 Charlesfield, 2nd floor

Forum: 12:30–1:30pm at 85 Waterman St, Room 130 & Livestream (link coming soon)

Reception: 1:30–2:30pm at 85 Waterman St Room 101/102

The federal landscape of climate law and policy is shifting rapidly. How are experts in public interest law, academia and government navigating these changes, and what legal and policy actions are emerging in response? Hear from a panel of leading voices in climate law and policy for an insightful discussion on the current outlook and evolving strategies. Engage with the panel, ask your questions, and continue the conversation at a post-forum reception hosted by the Institute at Brown for Environment & Society. Forum co-sponsored by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

Featured speakers:

• Michael Burger ’96, Executive Director, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia University Law School
• Peter Neronha P’19, P’22, Rhode Island Attorney General
• Wendy Schiller, Howard R. Swearer Interim Director, Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Institute for International and Public Affairs & Alison S. Ressler Professor of Political Science
• Moderated by Carrie Nordlund ’05 PhD, Lecturer in International and Public Affairs & Assistant Dean, Division of Pre-College and Undergraduate Programs