CMES will be holding its diploma ceremony followed by a reception for MES graduating seniors, and their families and friends. 

Class of 2025
Jad Hamze
Baylie A. Hartford
Anais S. Leichtling
Mica Maltzman
Bianca Rosen
Ian Stettner

2:30 p.m. or soon thereafter
Welcome Remarks
Elias Muhanna, Director, Center for Middle East Studies

Introduction to Students
Alexander Winder, Associate Director, Center for Middle East Studies

Presentation of Undergraduate Diplomas
Elias Muhanna Director, Center for Middle East Studies

Closing Remarks

3:15 p.m.
Reception
Graduates and their guests are invited to participate in the reception set up in the Kim Koo Library, 3rd floor, Watson Institute, following the awarding of the diplomas

Join the Watson Institute for a conversation that examines the vital role of the rule of law in sustaining American democracy. Wendy J. Schiller, Interim Director of the Watson Institute, will moderate a discussion with Corey Brettschneider, Professor of Political Science, and Michael Vorenberg, Associate Professor of History.

About the book:

How the U.S. policy of competition with China is detrimental to democracy, peace, and prosperity—and how a saner approach is possible

For close to a decade, the U.S. government has been preoccupied with the threat of China, fearing that the country will “eat our lunch,” in the words of Joe Biden. The United States has crafted its foreign and domestic policy to help constrain China’s military power and economic growth. Van Jackson and Michael Brenes argue that great-power competition with China is misguided and vastly underestimates the costs and risks that geopolitical rivalry poses to economic prosperity, the quality of democracy, and, ultimately, global stability.

This in-depth assessment of the trade-offs and pitfalls of protracted competition with China reveals how such a policy exacerbates inequality, leads to xenophobia, and increases the likelihood of violence around the world. In addition, it distracts from the priority of addressing such issues as climate change while at the same time undercutting democratic pluralism and sacrificing liberty in the name of prevailing against an enemy “other.” Jackson and Brenes provide an informed and urgent critique of current U.S. foreign policy and a road map toward a saner, more democratically accountable strategy of easing tension and achieving effective diplomacy.

Yogendra Yadav is an Indian activist and political thinker known for his unwavering commitment to democracy, social justice, and constitutional values. Starting his career as a teacher of Political Science at Panjab University, Chandigarh and then as a Professorial Fellow at Delhi based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), he was among the founders of Lokniti at CSDS, instrumental in the revival of National Election Studies in India, among the initiators of State of Democracy in South Asia reports and involved in rewriting of school textbooks of Political Science for the NCERT. His books include Making Sense of Indian Democracy (Permanent Black, 2020) and Crafting State-Nations (with Alfred Stepan and Juan Linz, John Hopkins University Press, 2011). He was involved in the making of education policy and was a member of the University Grants Commission.


Since 1995 he was associated with Samajwadi Janparishad, an experiment in alternative politics, that drew inspiration from the Gandhian socialist tradition. In 2012 he was among the founders of Aam Aadmi Party and went on to establish Swaraj India. He was involved in the movement against the Citizenship Amendment Act, was in the apex committee that guided the historic Farmers protest in 2020-21 and walked from Kanyakumari to Kashmir with the Bharat Jodo Yatra. He is the National Convenor of Bharat Jodo Abhiyaan, a civil society initiative to protect and promote constitutional values and democratic institutions. His journey blends intellectual depth with grassroots activism, making him a prominent voice in India’s democratic and social movements.

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.

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.

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.

WATCH LIVE

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

The event location will be shared with registered attendees.

Registration Required

Brown ID Required

No Large Bags or Banners Allowed

For registration, please scan the QR code or visit: bit.ly/4j7uwUS

This conference brings together journalists, academics, and press freedom advocates to examine the status of media freedom and democracy in Africa, and how journalists and academics can collaborate in advancing free speech and democracy. 

• Thursday, April 17, 1:15 - 6:30
• Friday, April 18, 9:00 - 5:00

In recent years, threats to freedom of the press in Africa have increased substantially with alarming implications. Throughout the continent, journalists face physical, verbal, and online attacks. Measures aimed at intimidating, silencing, and punishing those deemed as threats include imprisonment, displacement, and de facto exile. As of December 2024, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported that 67 journalists were imprisoned across Africa, which is nearly 20% of the 361 journalists jailed globally. In addition to arbitrary imprisonment, African countries are increasingly weaponizing laws against journalists, using national security, antiterror and cybercrime legislation to justify crackdowns on free speech and democratic expression. While these developments are not unique to Africa, the continent has experienced various kinds of authoritarian and antidemocratic regimes (from elected autocrats to military dictators and kleptocratic civilian presidents) that particularly are threatened by and antagonistic towards a free and vibrant press. How have journalists in Africa responded to these authoritarian regimes and their continuing crackdowns on free speech and media freedom? What lessons can we learn from African media responses to democratic backsliding in Africa and beyond? What role can the academy play in advancing free speech and media freedom? How can journalists and academics collaborate in promoting democracy and protecting free speech?

IN-PERSON, registration is required.

Please use your Brown email address and register here.

OR:

WATCH LIVE ON THURSDAY, DAY 1

WATCH LIVE ON FRIDAY, DAY 2

 

Thursday, April 17

1:15-1:45 Opening Statement/Introductions - Daniel Jordan Smith, Director of the Africa Initiative, Charles C. Tillinghast, Jr. ’32 Professor of International Studies, Brown University

1:45-3:15 Panel on State of Democracy and Press Freedom in Africa

• Chernoh Alpha M. Bah, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Africa Initiative, Brown University (Moderator)
• Sheriff Bojang Jnr., Deputy Political Editor, The Africa Report, UK
• William Onyango Oloo, Secretary General, Congress of African Journalists, Kenya
• Fatou Touray, Founder/Chief Executive Officer, Kerr Fatou TV, Gambia
• Pamela Amunazo, BBC Correspondent, Congo

3:15-3:30 Coffee Break

3:30-5:00 Panel on Investigative Journalism: Techniques & Challenges

• Anne B. Wallis, Associate Professor, University of Louisville, KY – Moderator
• Alex Brutelle, Director, Environmental Investigative Forum (EIF), France
• Zubaida Ismail, Press Freedom Advocate and Media Trainer, Ghana
• Chernoh Alpha M. Bah, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Africa Initiative, Brown University

5:15-6:30 Keynote address – From Elections to Coups: Journalism in an Era of Instability in Africa, Sadibou Marong, Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Director, Reporters Without Borders

6:30-8:00 Reception (at Watson)

 

Friday, April 18

8:30-9:00 Light breakfast (outside Joukowsky)

9:00-10:30 Roundtable on Building Collaboration: Media and the Academy

• Daniel Jordan Smith, Director of the Africa Initiative, Charles C. Tillinghast, Jr. ’32 Professor of International Studies, Brown University (Moderator)
• Anne B. Wallis, Associate Professor, University of Louisville, KY
• Nwenna Kai Gates, Assistant Professor, Community College of Philadelphia, PA
• Pamela Amunazo, BBC Correspondent, Congo
• Sheriff Bojang Jnr, Deputy Political Editor, The Africa Report, UK

10:30-10:45 Coffee Break

10:45-12:15 Roundtable on Financing Independent Media

• Kelley Lane, Editor, Assange Countdown to Freedom Series, NC (Moderator)
• Sadibou Marong, Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Director, Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
• William Onyango Oloo, Secretary General, Congress of African Journalists, Kenya
• Fatou Touray, Founder/Chief Executive Officer, Kerr Fatou TV, Gambia

12:15-1:45 Lunch & 2nd Keynote:

“The Global Assault on Press Freedom and What it Means for African Journalists,” Mohamed Abdelfattah, Communications Director, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

1:45-3:15 Panel on Media, New Technology, and Artificial Intelligence

Nwenna Kai Gates, Assistant Professor, Community College of Philadelphia (Moderator)

• Zubaida Ismail, , Press Freedom Advocate and Media Trainer, Ghana
• Kelley Lane, Editor, Assange Countdown to Freedom Series, NC
• Alex Brutelle, Director, Environmental Investigative Forum (EIF), France
• Sheriff Bojang Jnr, Deputy Political Editor, The Africa Report, UK

3:15-3:30 Coffee Break

3:30-5:00 Roundtable on Future of the Media and Democracy in Africa

• Chernoh Alpha M. Bah, Africa Initiative, Brown University (Moderator)
• Sadibou Marong, Sub-Saharan Africa Director, Reporters Without Borders, Senegal
• Fatou Touray, Founder/Chief Executive Officer, Kerr Fatou TV, Gambia
• William Onyango Oloo, Secretary General, Congress of African Journalists, Kenya
• Mohamed Abdelfattah, Communications Director, Committee to Protect Journalists

About the Event

Join us for a collaborative event highlighting the K’iche’ language, which is widely spoken in Guatemala as well as in our local communities. Hear from professors and students in the Linguistics and Education Departments at Brown, from leaders at the Coalition for a Multilingual Rhode Island, and from teachers who recently traveled to Guatemala to learn from K’iche’ speaking educators and activists. Walk away with a few new words in K’iche’ as well as a deeper connection with some of our neighbors in Rhode Island.

TM Krishna is a distinguished Karnatik musician known for his pioneering approach to Indian classical music. Since the early 90s, he has expanded the boundaries of the genre through innovative performances and thought-provoking collaborations. Trained by esteemed gurus, his concerts blend traditional rigor with personal expression, appealing to both classical aficionados and new audiences.

Beyond music, Krishna is a writer, researcher, and critic, actively engaging with social issues and championing inclusivity in the arts. His influential book A Southern Music – The Karnatik Story explores the intersection of art, politics, and culture, earning him the 2014 Tata Literature Award. Krishna’s collaborations span diverse communities, including partnerships with environmentalists, transgender musicians, and contemporary writers like Perumal Murugan.

Recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2016, Krishna continues to reshape the landscape of Karnatik music and its role in social change. His work encompasses musical productions, advocacy, and festivals like the Chennai Kalai Theru Vizha and Svanubhava, making him one of India’s most influential contemporary artists.

*Lunch provided*

The power to create money is foundational to the state. In the United States, that power has been largely delegated to private banks governed by an independent central bank. Putting monetary policy in the hands of a set of insulated, non-elected experts has fueled the popular rejection of expertise as well as a widespread dissatisfaction with democratically elected officials. In Our Money, Leah Downey makes a principled case against central bank independence (CBI) by both challenging the economic theory behind it and developing a democratic rationale for sustaining the power of the legislature to determine who can create money and on what terms. How states govern money creation has an impact on the capacity of the people and their elected officials to steer policy over time. In a healthy democracy, Downey argues, the balance of power over money creation matters.

Audience Q & A to follow.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Leah Downey is a junior research scholar at St. John’s College, Cambridge where she works on democratic theory and macroeconomic policymaking. Downey holds B.A.s in Mathematics and Economics from UNC Chapel Hill, an MSc in Economics & Philosophy from the LSE, and a PhD in Government from Harvard University. Her research considers the democratic implications of how states make policy. As such, she has written on topics including the administrative state, monetary policy, macrofinance and the green transition, and the meaning of security in politics and economics.

Ambassador Jorge Heine will join this week’s China Chat for a discussion of Sino-Latin American Relations under the new Trump administration.

Ambassador Jorge Heine is a lawyer, IR scholar and diplomat with a special interest in the international politics of the Global South. Before joining Boston University, he was Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C. (2018-2019). He has served as ambassador of Chile to China (2014-2017), to India (2003-2007) and to South Africa (1994-1999), and as a Cabinet Minister in the Chilean Government. A past Vice-President of the International Political Science Association (IPSA), he was CIGI Professor of Global Governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University, from 2007 to 2017, and a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI). He has been a Guggenheim Fellow; a Visiting Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford University; a United Nations Research Fellow at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC); a Visiting Professor of Political Science at the University of Konstanz; and the Pablo Neruda Visiting Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Paris.

About the Event

The event will begin with a screening of the award-winning “Bring Them Home” documentary, which will last around thirty minutes. Then, Andrew and Rob will participate in a moderated panel discussion on the film and the deported veteran movement. Finally, audience members will have the opportunity to ask questions.

About the Documentary

“Bring Them Home” is a powerful award-winning documentary exploring the harrowing issue of deported veterans—a group who has honorably served yet finds themselves exiled by the very nation they defended. This gripping film reveals the harsh realities of non-citizen soldiers who confront the threat of deportation due to shifting immigration laws, intertwining personal sacrifice with national identity. Through intimate portraits, “Bring Them Home” spotlights the emotional and psychological battles these veterans face post-service—mental health struggles and moral injury—while they wage a larger fight for justice and re-entry into the U.S. It’s a stark examination of policy versus human cost, of citizenship entangled with service. Helmed by Tamara Jay and Rike Boomgaarden, Executive produced by Andrei Drei “Drei” Rosca, and Elaine Carmody and produced by Rob Young Walker, with Excuse My Accent and Dream Roots Creative, the documentary is a critical look at patriotism’s fine print, questioning who gets to call America home.

About the Panelists

Andrew Steinberg is an experienced grassroots organizer and researcher passionate about combining law, policy, and community organizing to create transformative change. He graduated magna cum laude with honors from Brown University, where his studies focused on the history of deported veterans and their advocacy. He is active in the deported veteran movement and served on the board of the Deported Veterans Support House, a shelter and community resource center for exiled ex-servicemembers in Tijuana, Mexico. He is currently completing a concurrent Juris Doctor degree at Georgetown Law and a Master in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Rob Young is an award-winning filmmaker, music artist, social entrepreneur, and humanitarian. As the founder of Excuse My Accent and CEO of Rob Young Productions, he focuses on creating platforms that invoke change through music, events, and film while uplifting inner cultural non-profit initiatives.

Through his commitment to spreading awareness of social issues, Rob has been a formative speaker on DE&I and a creative visionary. His work ranges from an award-winning film about deported veterans, “Bring Them Home,” which was shown at the United States Capitol building, leading over 50 legislators to sign on to the Veteran Service Recognition Act. This marquee event was in partnership with prominent non-profits ImmDef, ACLU, and LULAC. This impactful documentary short spawned from his hit record “Excuse My Accent,” further showing his ability to utilize creativity in all facets to uplift impactful conversations. Rob is also a creative visionary working with many organizations, including the National Alliance of Mental Illness, the Washington State Department of Equity, the first ever in United States government history, and more.

*Lunch served*

The rise of an industry tasked with the collection of medical debts in the United States is a relatively recent development. Physicians and hospitals have long held themselves apart from profit maximization and have expressed a moral aversion to immiserating patients in the pursuit of unpaid debts. This is particularly true of nonprofit hospitals, which find their origins in almshouses, community associations and religious orders. In addition, while creditors have tremendous powers at their disposal in seeking to collect, including lawsuits, wage garnishment, and property liens, medical providers recoup relatively little even when they resort to such aggressive measures.

Why, then, in the last forty years, have US nonprofit hospitals increasingly turned to third-party debt collection, debt sales, and lawsuits against patient debtors? Answering this question demands an investigation of shifts in health insurance, hospital finance, and the moral economy of care. It also requires an understanding of physicians’ progressive disengagement from debt collection. What was once an unavoidably personal negotiation has become an administrative and legal process divorced from clinical obligations. This talk draws on historical research and new data to explain how unremunerative practices causing financial harm to patients became standard practice.

Audience Q & A to follow.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Luke Messac is a physician and historian at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He received his BA from Harvard University, his MD and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, and completed his residency training in emergency medicine at Rhode Island Hospital.

Dr. Messac’s early research was on the history and political economy of health care in Africa. His first book, No More to Spend (Oxford University Press, 2020) was a history of the practice of medicine under regimes of austerity in British colonial Africa. He has also published widely in medical and historical journals on a range of subjects including the development of national income accounting, the origins of trade regulations for medicinal opiates, and determinants of population-level mortality rates. His most recent work focuses on the rise of the medical debt collection industry in the United States. This is the subject of his book Your Money or Your Life (Oxford University Press, 2023). His has published in leading journals including the New England Journal of Medicine and Health Affairs and has testified before the United States Senate. He lives with his wife and two children in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

REGISTER HERE

Join the Watson Institute for a conversation with Van Jones, moderated by Wendy J. Schiller, Howard R. Swearer Interim Director of the Thomas J. Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Director of the A. Alfred Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy, and Alison S. Ressler Professor of Political Science. 

Van Jones
CNN Host, Founder of DreamMachine.org and Author of the Van Jones Substack

Van Jones is a U.S. media personality, entrepreneur and world-class changemaker. Jones has a rare track record of bringing people together to do hard things – in areas as diverse as clean energy solutions, criminal justice reform and racial inclusion in the tech sector. In 2007, Van was the primary champion of the Green Jobs Act, signed into law by George W. Bush. In 2009, he worked in the Obama White House as the Special Advisor for Green Jobs. In 2018, he helped pass the FIRST STEP Act, signed into law by Donald Trump; the New York Times calls that legislation the most substantial breakthrough in criminal justice in a generation.

In 2021, Jones was the first recipient of Jeff Bezos’ Courage & Civility Award. He has since founded Dream Machine Innovation Lab and launched RAPPORT.co, which uses A.I. to increase firms’ EQ. A Yale Law School graduate, Van is a CNN host, an Emmy Award-winning producer, a 3X New York Times best-selling author and the creator of the Van Jones Substack.

Join the Watson Institute for a “Dialogue Across Difference” discussion with Christina Greer, Associate Professor of Political Science at Fordham University. Professor Greer will be in conversation with Wendy Schiller, Interim Director of the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Director of the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy, and Alison S. Ressler Professor of Political Science. The discussion is co-hosted by Brown’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

Christina Greer is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Fordham University, Lincoln Center (Manhattan) campus. Her research and teaching focus on American politics, Black ethnic politics, campaigns and elections, and public opinion.

She is the author of “Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream”, “How to Build a Democracy from Fannie Lou Hamer and Barbara Jordan to Stacey Abrams”, and co-editor of “Black Politics in Transition: Immigration, Suburbanization, and Gentrification”.

Greer writes a weekly column for The Amsterdam News, is a frequent political commentator on several media outlets, and is the co-host of FAQ-NYC.

*lunch served*

Despite the apparent bounty of the Inflation Reduction Act, private sector investment in clean tech has been on a downward trend since 2023. Now with the new administration’s pivot to hydrocarbons, general antipathy towards renewable energy and clean tech, and denial that climate change is even a problem, what hope is there for green investment in Trump’s carbon economy?

Join Rhodes Center Director Mark Blyth in conversation with Tom Steyer, climate investor, philanthropist, and environmentalist.

Audience Q&A to follow.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Tom is the founder and co-executive chair of Galvanize Climate Solutions, a climate-focused global investment firm. Central to the firm’s thesis is the belief of an absolute, unequivocal need to win in the marketplace with clean products and services that are cheaper, faster, and better. He is also a New York Times bestselling author, having released his first book Cheaper, Faster, Better: How We’ll Win the Climate War in May 2024.

After earning his MBA from Stanford, in 1986 Steyer founded Farallon Capital Management, a San Francisco-based hedge fund that pioneered the strategy known as “absolute return investing,” and which grew to $36 billion in assets under management. In 2012, he left his firm to devote his time, money, and energy to climate issues.

Steyer played a key role in preserving California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, while also working to pass clean energy initiatives and advocate for environmental justice across the country. He also co-founded Beneficial State Bank, a triple bottom line community development bank focused on justice and sustainability, and TomKat Ranch, a regenerative ranch dedicated to raising cattle with a negative carbon footprint.

In 2013, Steyer founded NextGen America (formerly known as NextGen Climate), the largest youth voter engagement organization in American history, whose climate-focused messaging and outreach helped lead to record levels of youth turnout in recent elections.

He was a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate with a campaign centered on addressing climate change, and later that year he served as co-chair for California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Business and Jobs Recovery Task Force. In addition, he co-chaired Vice President Biden’s Climate Engagement Advisory Council to help mobilize climate voters.

He lives in San Francisco, enjoys spending time with family, and can always be counted on by friends to relay the latest climate data (whether they are interested in hearing it or not).

Join Taubman Director Wendy Schiller and political experts from Brown University for live commentary on President Trump’s first major address since taking office with his second administration. President Trump will be outlining his agenda to members of Congress and the nation. Tune in to hear an analysis of the sweeping changes promised and the priorities of the federal government.

Event Title: Smitha Radhakrishnan — Hidden Precarities: Indebtedness, Caste, and Breadwinning in Urban Uttarakhand, India

Date & Time: Friday, February 28, 2025, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM EST
Location: Joukowsky Forum, 111 Thayer St
Details: Smitha Radhakrishnan explores the intersections of debt, caste, gender, and class in urban Uttarakhand, India, analyzing how financial inclusion policies intersect with informal debt systems. The talk examines patterns of breadwinning and their implications for inequality and economic security. The event includes a Q&A session and reception.

About the Speaker: Smitha Radhakrishnan is the Marion Butler McLean Professor at Wellesley College and a leading scholar in feminist and development studies. She is the author of Making Women Pay and The Gender Order of Neoliberalism.

*Lunch provided*

Economics of Hereness examines the east-central European origins of development concepts that came to dominate the postwar world. It treats social science as a situated phenomenon shaped by the twentieth century’s violent politics. It explains why and how developmental thought became the key instrument of defining, building, and contesting new nation-states in Europe after World War I—and then globally after World War II. The book reconstructs how Polish economists––mostly Jewish––converted Poland’s intermediary position between the industrialized West and the “underdeveloped” colonial territories into an epistemic advantage. Dubbed “Polish Keynesians,” these activist scholars developed a way of transforming a small, poor, multiethnic state into a self-expanding economy and, thus, an ethnically inclusive polity. They acted against the trend of separating nationalities and ethnic groups in new states with large minority populations. Economics of Hereness recasts the genealogy of development theory from the perspective of the blood-and-guts history of Poland and east-central Europe.

Q & A to follow.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Małgorzata Mazurek is an Associate Professor in Polish Studies in the History Department at Columbia University. Her interests include the history of social sciences, international development, the social history of labor and consumption in twentieth-century Poland, and Polish-Jewish studies. She published Society in Waiting Lines: On Experiences of Shortages in Postwar Poland (Warsaw, 2010), which deals with the history of social inequalities under state socialism. Her current book project, Economics of Hereness, revises the history of developmental thinking from the perspective of interwar Poland and its problem of multi-ethnicity.

She has recently written about the idea of full employment in interwar Poland for the American Historical Review, history of social sciences for a survey handbook, The Interwar World, and “The University as the Second-Third World Space in the Cold War” for the volume Socialist Internationalism and the Gritty Politics of the Particular edited by Kristin Roth-Ey.

This event will discuss the work of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, more commonly known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. The conversation will touch on the actions of the Khmer Rouge that ultimately led to charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity; the genesis and outcomes of the joint United Nations-Cambodian court established to prosecute some of the perpetrators of those crimes; and how the Khmer Rouge Tribunal compares to other international criminal courts and fits into a broader transitional justice landscape.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Andrew Boyle is an attorney with experience in domestic and international human rights and rule of law. He is currently Senior Counsel at States United Democracy Center, where he works on accountability for democracy violators and good governance issues. Andrew previously served as Counsel in the Liberty and National Security Program of the Brennan Center for Justice, where he focused on presidential emergency powers; as a fellow in the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, where he worked on campaign finance reform; and was a judicial law clerk for a federal appellate judge.

Internationally, Andrew has worked investigating and prosecuting atrocity crimes at the Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor’s Office in The Hague, and at the UN Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials in Cambodia, and he worked in the trial chambers of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He has also served as an expert consultant for the UN.

Yasmine Chubin co-leads the Clooney Foundation for Justice’s Docket initiative, which gathers evidence to initiate prosecutions against perpetrators of mass atrocities and represents survivors in court. As the Docket’s Legal Advocacy Director, Ms. Chubin leads investigations and litigation on the Democratic Republic of Congo, Venezuela, and Darfur. In this capacity, she is also a consultant to the International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor and previously served as co-counsel to Amal Clooney and co-represented 126 victims in the International Criminal Court pre-trial proceedings against Sudanese militia leader Ali Kushayb.

Prior to her current role, Ms. Chubin spent ten years as a Prosecution Trial Lawyer and an Investigative Lawyer at international courts, including the International Criminal Court, the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the UN International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, and the UN Khmer Rouge Tribunal. She was also an UN-appointed expert in prosecutions and investigations for the Special Criminal Court in the Central African Republic. Ms. Chubin has provided consulting services as an independent international criminal law and human rights lawyer and investigator for several organizations, including the International Development Law Organization, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the International Commission of Jurists, the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre, Diakonia, the Sentry, Rwanda’s National Public Prosecution Authority, and the OSACO Group.

Please join us for this talk with Thomas Biersteker. He is the Gasteyger Professor Honoraire at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, and served as the director of the Watson Institute from 1994 until 2006.

During this presentation, Thomas Biersteker will provide a brief history of UN sanctions and the recent shift toward what he describes as “informal multilateralism” exemplified by the G7+ sanctions on Russia. He will also reflect on the challenges of sanction usage, highlighting both their overuse and under-utilization. He will explore how sanctions relief can be leveraged to facilitate negotiations or political settlements.

Thomas Biersteker is the Gasteyger Professor Honoraire at the Graduate Institute, Geneva. He previously taught at Yale University, the University of Southern California, and Brown University, where he directed the Watson Institute for International Studies from 1994 until 2006.

Author, editor, or co-editor of eleven books, his next book, co-edited with Oliver Westerwinter and Kenneth Abbott is Informal Governance in World Politics (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2022). He is also co-editor of Targeted Sanctions: The Impacts and Effectiveness of UN Action (Cambridge, 2016), Countering the Financing of Global Terrorism (Routledge, 2008), International Law and International Relations: Bridging Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2006), The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance (Cambridge, 2002), and State Sovereignty as Social Construct (Cambridge 1996).

His research focuses primarily on international relations, global governance, and international sanctions. In addition to providing annual sanctions training for incoming members of the UN Security Council, he is the principal developer of SanctionsApp, an interactive tool for the design and analysis of UN targeted sanctions.

About the Event:
The arts of literature and architecture are symbiotic. In dedicatory inscriptions, travelogues, and ekphrastic praise poems, literature serves to describe, explicate, and celebrate architectural structures and their significance. But equally often architecture is at the service of literature, playing a crucial role in the construction of fictional worlds and providing the scene in which characters act and the narrative unfolds. Building projects frame the career of Alexander the Great as told by the Persian poet Nezāmi Ganjavi (d. 1209) in his Eskandarnāmeh. After Alexander first demonstrates his military prowess in battling the Ethiopians, his first order of business is to build the city of Alexandria; just before his death he erects a wall to prevent the demonic forces of Gog and Magog from invading the civilized world. Although Alexander is famous as a builder of cities, he destroys as often as he builds and is most often associated with the militaristic architecture of tents and fortresses. His encounters with palaces, religious sites, and domestic dwellings, however, shape his character significantly, leading to an ascetic critique of architecture as a whole, a critique symbolized by the natural shelter of the cave. Conversation with Paul Losensky (Indiana University) is hosted by Margaret Graves. 

About the Speaker:
Paul Losensky is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies and the Department of Comparative Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he taught Persian language and literature, translation theory and practice, and comparative studies of Western and Middle Eastern literatures. His research focuses on Persian poetry of the early modern period, biographical writing, and comparative studies in literature and architecture. His publications include Welcoming Fighāni: Imitation and Poetic Individuality in theSafavid-Mughal Ghazal (1998), Farid ad-Din ‘Attār’s Memorial of God’s Friends: Lives and Sayings of Sufis (2009), and In the Bazaar of Love: Selected Poems of AmirKhusrau (2013, with Sunil Sharma). He has authored numerous articles on Persian literature for journals such as Iranian Studies and is a contributor to Encyclopedia ofIslam and Encyclopaedia Iranica. Professor Losensky is currently working on a book the work of the master-poet of the seventeenth century, Sā’eb Tabrizi, and a new edition and translation of Nal o Daman by the poet-laureate of the Mughal court, Abu’l-Feyz Feyzi. He has served as chair of the Department of Comparative Literature and is a former fellow at the National Humanities Institute and the Bodleian Library.

Host
Margaret Graves, Adrienne Minassian Associate Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture in honor of Marilyn Jenkins-Madina

Cosponsors
Islam & the Humanities Initiative
Department of the History of Art and Architecture
Department of Comparative Literature
Department of History
Center for the Study of the Early Modern World

 

Event Title: Pradeep Chhibber — Shallow Democracy: Political Parties and the Crisis of Representation in India

Date & Time: Friday, February 7, 2025, 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM EST
Location: Joukowsky Forum, 111 Thayer St
Details: Join Pradeep Chhibber for a discussion on political parties and representation in India, followed by a Q&A session and reception.
Commentators: Adam Auerbach (John Hopkins University), Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner (University of Virginia), Donghyun Danny Choi (Brown University), Nair Gautam (Harvard University).

Pradeep Chhibber, a scholar of South Asian politics, is the Indo-American Community Chair in India Studies at UC Berkeley and author of numerous influential works on political parties and democracy.

In the last five years, nuclear tensions between the U.S. and China have accelerated dramatically driven by a series of factors, including the severe deterioration of cross-Strait relations. This presentation will summarize thinking on both sides of the Pacific regarding the current state of this nuclear rivalry and its relationship to the Taiwan issue. Prof. Lyle Goldstein will also answer questions about his Asia trip during the winter holiday that took him to northeast China, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, and also South Korea.

*Lunch provided*

Since the late 1970s, income inequality has been on the rise in many post-industrial democracies. Can public opinion help offset rising inequality through greater support for an egalitarian policy response? To answer this question, Cavaille proposes a new framework for understanding how people form opinions about redistributive social policies. First, people support policies that increase their own expected income. Second, they support policies that move the status quo closer to what is prescribed by shared norms of fairness. In most circumstances, saying the “fair thing” is easier than reasoning according to one’s pocketbook. But there are important exceptions: when policies have large and certain pocketbook consequences, people take the self-interested position instead of the ‘fair’ one. Fair Enough? builds on this simple framework to explain puzzling attitudinal trends in post-industrial democracies including a decline in support for redistribution in Great Britain, the erosion of social solidarity in France, and a declining correlation between income and support for redistribution in the United States.

Audience Q & A to follow.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Charlotte Cavaillé is an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and a Faculty Associate in the Institute for Social Research Center for Political Studies. In her research, Cavaillé examines the dynamics of popular attitudes towards redistributive social policies at a time of rising inequality, high fiscal stress, and high levels of immigration.

Made Possible by the Peter Green Lectureship Fund on the Modern Middle East
Cosponsors:
 Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women

About the Event:
A panel conversation on the release of “Resisting Far-Right Politics in the Middle East and Europe” (University of Edinburgh Press, 2024) with editors Tunay Altay, Nadje Al-Ali, and Katharina Galor, and panelist Elizabeth Berman.

About the Book:
“Resisting Far-Right Politics in the Middle East and Europe” provides an empirically grounded exploration of different case studies on anti-LGBTQ and anti-gender mobilizations of the far-right in Europe and the Middle East. The contributions engage with multilayered histories of gender and sexuality politics that connect the Middle East and Europe, informed by histories of colonialism, racism, and border controls. A second, underlying objective of this volume is to contribute to decolonized knowledge productions by de-centering Europe and simultaneously de-exceptionalizing the Middle East. The contributors commit to respecting the heterogeneity and complexity of these regions by focusing on grounded and life experiences. Ultimately, this volume illustrates a conceptualization of the broad spectrum of far-right politics and queer feminist critiques as manifested in a wide array of contexts, including academia, politics and everyday lives.

About the Speakers:
Nadje Al-Ali is Robert Family Professor of International Studies and professor of anthropology and Middle East studies. Her main research interests revolve around feminist activism and gendered mobilization, mainly with reference to Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey and the Kurdish political movement. Her publications include What kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq (2009, University of California Press, co-authored with Nicola Pratt); Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present (2007, Zed Books), and Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East(Cambridge University Press 2000.

Tunay Altay is a postdoctoral researcher in sociology and gender studies at Humboldt University of Berlin. His research focuses on queer migration and sexual politics in Germany, Turkey, and the broader contexts of Europe and the Middle East. He has published in top-ranked journals, including Sexualities and Ethnic and Racial Studies. He co-chairs the Gender and Sexuality Research Network at the Council for European Studies.

Elizabeth Berman is a Ph.D. student in the department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. She was a Fulbright scholar and lecturer at Humboldt, where she taught on topics ranging from queer theoretical philosophies of death and reproduction to Germany’s imperial history and the afterlives of the Shoah. In her research and teaching, she interrogates theories of trauma, repair, and disability through engagement with postcolonial, feminist, and queer theories; psychoanalysis; and philosophies of technology.

Katharina Galor is the Hirschfeld Senior Lecturer in Judaic Studies at Brown, and an affiliate member of the Center of Middle East Studies and Urban Studies. She has published widely on Jewish, Israeli, and Palestinian visual and material culture, from antiquity through present times. Among her books are Finding Jerusalem: Archaeology between Science and Ideology (University of California Press, 2017), The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, Palestinians (Duke University Press, 2000; co-authored with Sa’ed Atshan) ), and Jewish Women: Between Conformity and Agency(Routledge, 2024).

University of Edinburgh press discount code NEW30