Events

To request special services, accommodations, or assistance for any events, please contact the Watson Institute at WatsonEvents@brown.edu or (401) 863-2809.

  • Join Us for the First Politics & Policy Lunch of 2025!
    Kick off the new year with the Taubman Center at our inaugural Politics & Policy Lunch, where we’ll delve into “The Political Landscape of 2025.” As the country navigates the aftermath of the 2024 election, this session will explore the dynamics shaping governance, policy priorities, and political discourse in the year ahead.

    This interactive discussion will feature expert insight from Professor Wendy Schiller and provide a platform for participants to share perspectives on the challenges and opportunities facing our democracy. Don’t miss this chance to engage with fellow students and faculty as we chart the course for 2025.

  • Kelly Matush is an Assistant Professor at Florida State University’s Political Science Department. She receivedher PhD from the University of California, San Diego, and completed a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Dartmouth’s John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding. Her research interests lie at the intersection of public diplomacy, public opinion, and international relations. 

    The format of the seminar is a brief (5-minute) introduction by the author, some initial comments by a lead discussant (5-10 minutes), and then open comments from attendees (remainder of time). All attendees are expected to read the paper ahead of time, as the author will not present their research. This is a working session. Email WatsonEvents@brown.edu to request a copy of the paper.

  • In December 2024, the reign of the Assad regime came to an end in Syria. This discussion with Joshua Landis will address the challenges facing Syrians in the coming years, as they seek to rebuild their country after 13 years of civil war and 53 years of authoritarian rule. Topics to include: the fears of communal violence; the spectres of Al Qaeda and ISIS; Syria’s relationships with Russia, Iran, and the Arab states; and the role of the international community.

    About the panel:

    Joshua Landis is Sandra Mackey Chair and Director of the Center for Middle East Studies and the Farzaneh Family Center for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies at the University of Oklahoma in the Boren College of International Studies. He writes and manages SyriaComment.com, a daily newsletter on Syrian politics and publishes frequently in policy journals such as Foreign Affairs, Middle East Policy and Foreign Policy. His book,Syria at Independence: Nationalism, Leadership, and Failure of Republicanism”, will be published by the Arab Center for Research and Policy studies this coming year. He is a frequent analyst on TV, radio, and in print and is a regular on NPR and the BBC.


    Elias Muhanna is associate professor of comparative literature and history, and director of the Center for Middle East Studies at Brown University. He is a scholar of medieval and early modern Islamic history, and also publishes commentary on modern Middle Eastern politics and culture in the mainstream press. He has written for The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, The New York Times, The Nation, and other periodicals.

    Nina Tannenwald is senior lecturer in the Department of Political Science. Her research focuses on the role of international institutions, norms and ideas in global security issues, efforts to control weapons of mass destruction, and human rights and the laws of war. Her book, “The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Nonuse of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945” (Cambridge University Press, 2007), won the 2009 Lepgold Prize for best book in international relations.

    Cosponsor:

    The Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies

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

  • 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 featuring panelists Sa’ed Atshan and 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.

    Sa’ed Atshan is associate professor of Peace and Conflict Studies and anthropology and Chair of the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College. Atshan is the author of Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique(Stanford University Press, 2020), coauthor (with Katharina Galor) of The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, Palestinians (Duke University Press, 2020), and co-editor (with Galor) of Reel Gender: Palestinian and Israeli Cinema(Bloomsbury, 2022).

    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

  • *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.

  • Join the Taubman Center for a compelling Politics & Policy Lunch featuring guest speaker Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, an expert in global policy and democratic governance. Drawing on her extensive experience in international relations and public leadership, Clüver Ashbrook will share her insights on the pressing political challenges of our time, including the evolving role of democracy in a complex, interconnected world.

    This engaging discussion is a unique opportunity to gain perspective from a leader at the forefront of public policy innovation and to explore how global trends impact local governance and policy-making.

  • 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.

  • Film Screening: Prisoner No. 626710 is Present
    Thursday, February 6, 2025
    4:00 PM – 6:00 PM EST
    Joukowsky Forum, 111 Thayer St

    Join us for a screening of Prisoner No. 626710 is Present (Kaidi No. 626710 Haazir Hai), a compelling documentary by Lalit Vachani that examines the arrest and ongoing imprisonment of Umar Khalid under India’s Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. Through archival footage and a forensic analysis of media framing, the film sheds light on the events leading to Khalid’s incarceration and the larger implications for dissent and democracy in India.

    [60 min; India/Germany; 2024. In Hindi and English, with English subtitles.]

    Lalit Vachani, acclaimed documentary filmmaker and research scholar at the University of Göttingen, will be present to discuss his work.

    Learn More
  • The Institute at Brown University for Environment and Society (IBES) is partnering with the Center for Career Exploration, the Office of the Provost, the Watson Institute and Climate Solutions Lab to host Brown’s first-ever  Climate Careers Exploration Fair.

    The Fair will offer students a unique opportunity to connect with employers hiring students for climate-related jobs and internships and to meet with alumni to learn about climate careers.

    The Fair will include space for:

    • Employers (like a traditional career fair) ready to talk about internships and jobs.
    • Alumni and private sector experts holding informal conversations with students to share their experience and advice for navigating climate jobs and careers in industries and career fields including finance, technology, energy, and government.

    For the most up to date information on employers and alumni attending visit the event on Handshake.

    If you do not have handshake acccess, learn more here.

  • Join the Taubman Center for an insightful Politics & Policy Lunch featuring former Rhode Island federal district judge William Smith. This discussion will explore the intricate and often contentious process of appointing federal judges, including:

    • How judges are selected and the role of the Senate, including the “blue slip” tradition.
    • Why district courts matter, with a focus on judge shopping and its implications.
    • The evolving character of federal circuits—Is the First Circuit the new Ninth Circuit?

    Judge Smith will also provide perspective on the legal challenges likely to confront the incoming administration, highlighting the strategic role of state attorneys general in shaping the national legal landscape.

  • The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki reshaped international politics and the field of International Relations. But one question—“How should the atomic bomb be used?”—has been largely overlooked in scholarly debates about this historic decision. A surprise attack on two major cities was one of several options U.S. leaders considered, and by far the most lethal. This article recovers and reinterprets American deliberations on alternative debut options, including the “noncombat demonstration,” targeting military installations, giving advanced warning, and selecting cities other than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We develop theoretical insights on the political value of staging violent spectacles and the emotive power of visible destruction. We then draw on a wide range of primary and secondary sources to show that U.S. leaders selected an ostentatiously lethal means of atomic debut due to concerns about conventional military inferiority vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, the desire to instill a widespread view of the atomic bomb’s revolutionary character, and the imperative of shaping the postwar international order. An “untouched” city like Hiroshima represented a “fair background” to showcase the atomic bomb’s revolutionary potency and the power of its possessor in the postwar world. This study advances our understanding of the post-1945 international order, the nuclear revolution, and the performative dimensions of mass violence.

    Joshua Byun is an assistant professor in the political science department at Boston College. Byun specializes in international relations, with a focus on questions related to grand strategy and alliance politics. 

    The format of the seminar is a brief (5-minute) introduction by the author, some initial comments by a lead discussant (5-10 minutes), and then open comments from attendees (remainder of time). All attendees are expected to read the paper ahead of time, as the author will not present their research. This is a working session. Email WatsonEvents@brown.edu to request a copy of the paper.

  • Join Watson Senior Fellow Malika Saada Saar ’92, former Global Head of Human Rights at YouTube, for a fireside chat on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights with Vinay Rao, Head of Trust and Safety, Anthropic.

    Vinay Rao heads the AI Safeguards team at Anthropic. Vinay leads Engineering, Product Management, Policy Design, Enforcement, and Data Science teams to ensure safe deployment of Anthropic’s AI models. Prior to joining Anthropic Vinay has worked in the area of Trust, Safety, and Risk management at YouTube, Stripe, Airbnb, and Google. Vinay holds a PhD in Engineering from Stanford. 

    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.

  • In honor of Black History Month, the Watson Institute presents a night of spoken word and open mic night with local hip-hop artists Chachi Carvalho and Othannah Tomasina.

    Students and community members are invited to perform!

    Chachi Carvalho is a multi-talented artist and educator who comes from a long line of musicians and singers. He is a native born-and-raised Rhode Islander with roots that stem from the islands of Cabo Verde. Throughout his career, he’s won acclaim from Vibe magazine in its roundup of the best MCs state to state, and he was a two-time winner of the Wild Out Wednesdays competition on BET’s 106 & Park. He is locally recognized for community advocacy, education, and youth empowerment in the communities he serves. He is the co-owner of Beatbox Studio, a staple in the local music scene and hub for creative expression in Rhode Island. Chachi Carvalho has a clear passion for both music and education. He has been able to create opportunities to fuse the two worlds by facilitating lecture/performances at Roger Williams University, Trinity College, Providence College, UMASS Boston, Brown University and Harvard. His recent wave of accomplishments includes teaching a Master’s Class in musical performance at Brown University, building 2 recording studios at local high schools, and the creation and successful implementation of the annual Culture Shock Community Celebration in his hometown Pawtucket, RI. He currently serves as the Chief Equity Officer for the City of Pawtucket, he is also the official brand ambassador for the Transform Rhode Island Scholarship. Chachi Carvalho consistently finds a way to reinvent himself as an artist, an educator, and a man. He will continue to carve out his legacy and leave his mark on the world through musical inspiration and community organization.

    Othannah Tomasina is a powerful and beloved singer, songwriter, poet and mother of three amazingly talented and loving young adults. She is Brooklyn born Rhode Island bred. You can see the big city energy in the way she talks, and in her style. But her one of a kind vibe is a true reflection of the unique diversity of the Ocean State. She has been performing for over 15 years, and has been truly embracing spoken word poetry and theatrical performance over the past few years. She has graced stages alongside some of the most talented musicians in the area as the leading lady and energy source of local favorite hip hop band, Chachi Carvalho and The International Players. She is a seasoned veteran to the stage and has performed in some top tier venues including The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C, The Strand Theatre in Providence Rhode Island, and has headlined festivals such as PVD Fest, Culture Shock, plus many more. She is a force on any stage and her diverse range allows her to be the perfect accompanying act to add value to any genre of live performance. She is currently working on a poetry album and book entitled “The View”. She is looking forward to creating her first solo album in 2023. Music and Poetry is how she breathes and connects with the world. Performing on the stage is her therapy.

    Register to attend
  • About the Event

    Join Ellis Garey for a discussion of how struggles over labor and labor rights in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Greater Syria led to the emergence of “the worker” as a legible social, political, and administrative concept. Registration required.

    Who, and perhaps more importantly what, is a worker? Starting in the 1870s government officials, company managers, political organizers, and laboring people in Greater Syria (today’s Lebanon and Syria) began to ask this question. Faced with labor struggles from Beirut to Aleppo and beyond, a diverse set of historical actors realized something in common: the category of the “worker” was becoming central to how people organized and oriented themselves in a world increasingly ruled by capitalist social formations. They also recognized that the answer to this question was not immediately available. It would be worked out through social, legal and intellectual struggles over the next half century. This talk explores the history of “the worker question” in Greater Syria between 1870-1939 by examining the work stoppages, newspaper debates, and legislative initiatives which attempted to define or manage workers. Brown Postdoctoral fellow in Labor History Ellis Garey argues that over the course of the late Ottoman and early post-Ottoman period, it became impossible for a wide range of historical actors to make sense of their social reality without reference to the status of people who labored.

    About the Speaker
    Ellis Garey holds a Ph.D. in history and Middle Eastern studies from New York University. She recently joined Brown as the 2024-2026 Postdoctoral Fellow in Labor History. Her manuscript in progress, Figuring Labor: The Emergence of the Worker in Greater Syria, 1870-1939,attends to the emergence of “the worker” as both a social concept and as a historical actor in late-Ottoman and French Mandate Greater Syria. Her research has been published in The Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association and is forthcoming in the Radical History Review.

  • Join the artist Leslie Starobin for a talk on the art exhibit “Looming in the Shadows of Lodz”

    This new photography exhibition is sponsored by Art at Watson and features the photography of Leslie Starobin taken during a “roots journey” to Poland, coupled with memories from family members who survived the Holocaust.

    Artist statement:

    “Looming in the Shadows of Lodz” was inspired by a roots journey I made to Poland in 2019 with my husband and children. We traveled on the 75th anniversary of our relatives’ deportation to Auschwitz from the Lodz Ghetto, the last one to be liquidated by the Nazis. In Lodz, I photographed the Altman family residences, the cemetery where they hid from the Nazis, and the Radegast train station where they boarded cattle cars to the death camp.

    After visiting Auschwitz, we flew to Israel, where my husband’s aunt lives. At 95, Dorka

    Berger (née Altman) is the only relative alive to contribute to this multi-generational project. She poured over our photos and film footage, revealing new memories of the past.

    In July 1945, when 15-year-old Dorka penned her “Diary of Dwojra Altman,” she was haunted by the atrocities she witnessed, and she was mourning the loss of her parents. Now, she aspires to fulfill Jewish tradition — “l’haggid” — “And you should tell your children.”

    My “photo narratives” are framed by quotes I collected over three decades from Dorka and her older sister, Tola (my mother-in-law). By layering memories of the past onto visual depictions of the present, I am asking viewers to shift between text and image and between memory and place as they view these topographies of trauma across time and space.

    When speaking in Hebrew throughout our conversations, Dorka and Tola referred to Nazis as “Germans.” I chose to adhere to their language in the photo narratives as they were speaking about their past experiences.

    Made with generous support from the Combined Jewish Philanthropies Arts & Culture Community Impact Grant Fund, “Marching All Night: The Testimony of Dorka Berger née Altman” will screen on opening night. It can also be seen by scanning the QR code. Ori Segev, who is the third generation to inherit and tell this family story, filmed and edited the video.

    Exhibit open February 13 - May 30

    Stephen Robert ’62 Hall, 280 Brook Street, The Agora

  • The Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy is pleased to present the John Hazen White, Sr. Lecture featuring New York Times opinion columnist Bret Stephens. With deep insight into the intersection of domestic policy and global events, Stephens will explore how decisions made at home ripple across the international stage.

    In this thought-provoking lecture, Stephens will discuss key political dynamics shaping the United States, while connecting these trends to global affairs—from shifting alliances to rising geopolitical tensions. Drawing on his recent columns, he will examine the challenges of leadership, governance, and ethics in a rapidly evolving political landscape.

    Join us for an engaging conversation that bridges the local and the global, offering perspectives on what lies ahead for both American politics and the international community.

    Get Tickets!
  • 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

     

  • Are you looking to jumpstart your career in politics and policy? Join the Taubman Center for an informative Politics & Policy Lunch focused on how to land a summer internship in the political and policy arenas. This session will provide practical advice on:

    • Finding the right opportunities to match your interests.
    • Crafting standout applications and cover letters.
    • Networking effectively and leveraging your connections.
    • Tips for succeeding once you land the role.

    Whether you’re interested in working for a government office, a policy think tank, or a political campaign, this discussion will offer actionable steps to help you navigate the competitive internship landscape.

  • Does intelligence reporting provide novel and more useful information to leaders than what is available in mainstream news reports? We assess this question through a same-day comparative analysis of almost 5,000 President’s Daily Briefs (PDBs) and almost 370,000 full-text articles on foreign affairs in the New York Times. To assess informational advantages, we analyze relative success in anticipating coups. We find that the PDB is substantially more likely than the New York Times to discuss domestic tension and the names of relevant political actors in countries that ultimately experience an attempted political coup. Intelligence material, we show, is more likely to mention a country at statistically significant levels up to multiple months before an attempted coup; mentions in the Times are more likely only two days before the event. However, the PDB’s informational advantage is not uniform. We find that the PDB provides better early warnings of coups when the attempts are harder to openly observe, as well as when the country is embroiled in a civil war and thus less amenable to local reporting. However, the PDB’s relative advantage falls in countries where the NYT has a foreign bureau. The article contributes a novel methodological approach to measuring private information. It also offers a rare test of whether intelligence pays, i.e. the value-added of massive investments in intelligence bureaucracies made by modern states.

    Eric Min is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at UCLA. His research focuses on interstate diplomacy, information gathering and sharing during crises, and applications of machine learning and text analysis techniques to declassified documents related to conflict and foreign policy. 

    The format of the seminar is a brief (5-minute) introduction by the author, some initial comments by a lead discussant (5-10 minutes), and then open comments from attendees (remainder of time). All attendees are expected to read the paper ahead of time, as the author will not present their research. This is a working session. Email WatsonEvents@brown.edu to request a copy of the paper.

  • 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.

  • 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. 

  • *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.

  • Join the Taubman Center for a compelling Book Talk with Yoni Appelbaum, senior editor at The Atlantic, as he discusses his new book, Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity.

    In Stuck, Appelbaum explores how entrenched elites and systemic barriers have derailed social mobility and economic opportunity in America. With historical insights and sharp critique, he sheds light on the policies and practices that sustain inequality and proposes pathways to restore the promise of the American Dream.

    The conversation will be moderated by Marc Dunkelman, Watson Institute Fellow and expert on the evolution of American political institutions.

  • Middle East Colloquium series

    About the Event
     Hidden within MIT’s Distinctive Collections, many architectural elements from the earliest days of the Institute still survive as part of the Rotch Art Collection. Among the artworks that were salvaged by conservators was a set of striking windows of gypsum and stained-glass, dating to the late 18th- to 19th c. Ottoman Empire. Similar stained-glass windows once graced the reception halls of elite homes, like al-ʿAzam Palace in Damascus and Bayt al-Razzaz in Cairo. Such halls have quickly disappeared due to the ravages of time, war, and recent earthquakes. Yet even prior to these events, many Ottoman-era windows came to Europe and the United States decontextualized as architectural elements or as part of full Islamic rooms, which visitors still admire today at institutions like the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

    This exhibition illuminates the life of these historic windows, tracing their refracted histories from Egypt to MIT, their ongoing conservation, and the cutting-edge research they still prompt. Through facets of their narrative, these windows allow us to gaze into the history of architecture as a modern university discipline in the US and Europe. Their forms reflect key facets of architectural design in the Middle East and diverse approaches to the craft of window-making, which inspired collectors and designers across the nineteenth to twentieth centuries. This legacy of Islamic design continues to spark the imaginations of architects and artists in the region today (and abroad).

    Curators from the Aga Khan Documentation Center (AKDC) uncovered these narratives through historical and archival research, alongside a new collaboration with the Wunsch Conservation Lab. Together, they commissioned a project conservator and documented the process of carefully cleaning and stabilizing these windows for exhibition and long-term preservation. They teamed up with MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Vitrocentre in Switzerland to run experiments to more precisely locate the origins of the materials used in these windows and their journey. Their research led to the commission of works from contemporary artist Dima Srouji (Palestine) and artisan Mohammd al-Dib (Egypt). 

    About the Speaker
    Gwendolyn Collaço is currently the Anne S.K. Brown Curator for Military & Society at Brown University’s John Hay Library. Prior to that, she held the position of Collection Curator of the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT, an archive relating to built environments of the Islamic world. There, she built a new collection of rare books, manuscripts, and art objects, which includes commissions from contemporary artists. Previously, she served as the Assistant Curator for Art of the Middle East at LACMA, where she contributed to the new permanent collection galleries and traveling exhibitions. Gwendolyn received her PhD from the joint program for History of Art + Arch. and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, specializing in Islamic art. Her research interests span artistic exchanges between early-modern Islamic empires, Ottoman painting, print technologies of the Islamic world, and histories of collecting. Her current book project offers the first extended history of the commercial art market for manuscript paintings in Ottoman Istanbul. Her writing appears in journals, such as Ars Orientalis, Muqarnas, and several edited volumes.

  • The Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy is honored to host the Noah Krieger Memorial Lecture featuring Jake Tapper, anchor and Chief Washington Correspondent for CNN. A leading voice in American journalism, Tapper has built a reputation for sharp reporting, tough interviews, and a commitment to truth in an era of polarization and misinformation.

    In this engaging lecture, Tapper will explore the challenges and responsibilities facing journalists today, from navigating the spread of disinformation to rebuilding public trust in the media. Drawing on his extensive career covering politics, policy, and international affairs, Tapper will provide a behind-the-scenes look at the role of journalism in shaping our democracy and holding leaders accountable.

    Join us for an illuminating conversation on the power of the press, the fight for facts, and the future of truth in American public life.

  • The Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy is pleased to present the Alexander Meiklejohn Lecture featuring Tom Perez, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Chair of the Democratic National Committee, and renowned advocate for civil rights and constitutional freedoms.

    In this timely lecture, Perez will explore the enduring principles of freedom enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and their relevance in today’s political and social landscape. Drawing on his decades of experience in public service, Perez will examine the challenges to constitutional rights, the importance of civic participation, and the role of leadership in safeguarding democracy.

    At a moment when questions of justice, equality, and democratic values are at the forefront of national discourse, Perez will offer a powerful reflection on how we can honor the Constitution’s promise of freedom while building a more inclusive and equitable future.

    This event will be moderated by former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele.

  • *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.

  • The Taubman Center is honored to present the Noah Krieger ’93 Memorial Lecture featuring Justice Stephen Breyer, retired Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Justice Breyer will share insights from his distinguished career and discuss the themes of constitutional interpretation and democracy explored in Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism. 

    This event offers a rare opportunity to hear from one of the most influential legal minds of our time, reflecting on the role of the judiciary, the evolving meaning of the Constitution, and its impact on contemporary governance.

    The conversation will be moderated by Justin Driver, Brown alumnus and Robert R. Slaughter Professor of Law at Yale Law School.

  • Who will finance the green transition? Are states too scared of the bond market? Why are private equity firms seemingly everywhere? Finance is at the heart of the political economy of capitalism, but studying it can be difficult. The good news: some of the brightest minds in the field  are eager to share their expertise at the second annual political economy of finance summer school, organized by Ben Braun (LSE) and Mark Blyth (Brown).

    Topics include:

    • Dollar Hegemony
    • Debt & Debt Relief in the U.S.
    • History of Financing Regimes
    • Institutional Capital Pools
    • Debt & Finance in the Global South
    • Rise of State Capital
    • Global Finance in the New Cold War
    • Finance & Decarbonization
    • Insurance & Climate Change
    • State Capital & Green Finance in China

    Eligibility

    The summer school is open to PhD candidates, post-doctoral fellows, and early career scholars from political science, sociology, financial history, economic geography, and economics.

    Applications

    Those interested in attending should submit a one-page cover letter, a writing sample (published article, working paper, dissertation chapter, etc.), and CV as a single PDF via thie link below.

    Application deadline: March 1st, 2025.

    Apply here