Events

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

  • Land sales revenue has been a significant source of revenue for Chinese local governments since the early 2000s. Contrary to popular belief, local governments did not turn to land finance to make up for lost tax revenues after the 1994 tax sharing reform. Rather, local officials sold land cheaply in return for bribes. Throughout the 1990s, local government land sales practices were driven by state agents acting on their own personal interests rather than the institutional interests of local governments. Local governments only began to sell land at high prices when forced to do so by the central government in the early 2000s as part of an anti-corruption campaign. China’s land-centric model of government finance and economic growth, so often derided for its corruption, is itself the product of an anti-corruption campaign.

    Saul Wilson is a postdoctoral fellow at the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs. He studies the politics of urban development and land property rights during China’s rapid urbanization, focusing on the Chinese state’s efforts to establish itself as a monopolist “landlord state.” His broader research agenda explores municipal politics in China, seeking to understand how leadership and institutions have shaped local politics. 

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

    Kimberly Turner, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in International and Public Affairs

    Kimberly Turner is an Assistant Professor of International Affairs and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in International and Public Affairs at the Watson Institute. She was an International Security postdoctoral fellow at the Belfer Center at Harvard University from 2021-2023. Dr. Turner received her PhD in political science in 2021 from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Her research focuses on the causes and outcomes of mass movements. Her methodological work develops new measures of non-violent resistance efficacy, while her substantive work analyzes the linkages between skilled labor’s employment and wage grievance to the onset and outcomes of contentious politics within authoritarian settings. Dr. Turner’s work has been published in the Journal of Peace Research, American Political Science Association, Duck of Minerva, and the Global Post. 

  • 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.

    Exhibit open February 13 - May 30

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

    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.

  • 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

     

  • Join Dean Ashish K. Jha and guest Congressman Gabe Amo for lunch and a conversation about the intersections of public health, public policy and politics. All students, staff and faculty are invited. 

    Thursday, February 20, 2025
    Noon - 1:30 p.m. 
    Alumnae Hall | 194 Meeting St, Providence RI 

    *We have reached capacity for this event. Please click below to be added to our waitlist. 

    Register to Attend Here!
  • Event Title: Janaki Bakhle — Savarkar

    Date & Time: Friday, February 21, 2025, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM EST
    Location: Joukowsky Forum, 111 Thayer St
    Details: Historian Janaki Bakhle delves into the complex legacy of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, the chief ideologue of Hindutva, exploring his writings, influence, and role in shaping modern Hindu nationalism. The event includes a Q&A session and reception.
    Commentators: Rohit De (Yale University), Ashutosh Varshney (Brown University), Sudipta Kaviraj (Columbia University).

    Janaki Bakhle, a scholar of modern South Asian history, is currently working on her second book, Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva, which critically examines Savarkar’s intellectual and political contributions.

    Learn More
  • Experience an inspiring concert by the talented students of Polyphony Education, based in Nazareth, where young musicians from diverse communities come together through their shared passion for classical music. This performance highlights the power of music to foster understanding, and unity across divides, while shaping the next generation of leaders through artistic excellence.

    For more information, visit Polyphony’s website.

  • 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.

  • Competition between the United States and the People’s Republic of China has generated new interest in the Pacific Island region. While broadly welcomed by the Pacific Islands, America’s reengagement in the Pacific Islands lacks the long-term, strategic framework necessary for guiding U.S. engagement and presenting a clear vision of America’s interests throughout the region. If the U.S. does not carefully navigate these relationships, it risks ceding influence and access to China, thereby granting Beijing a potential foothold in the Indo–Pacific that can threaten U.S. national security interests. This presentation will discuss policy issues related to U.S.-Pacific Island affairs. The presentation will also discuss policy recommendations to maximize U.S. interests, build stronger, long-term partnerships with the Pacific Islands and regional allies, and counter Chinese ambitions in the Pacific.

    Andrew Harding is a research assistant in The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center. He leads the center’s work on the Pacific Islands and conducts research on U.S.-China strategic competition, Indo-Pacific security strategy, and Oceania.

    Harding is the author of “The Pacific Pivot: An American Strategy for the Pacific Islands,” The Heritage Foundation’s first publication that articulates a comprehensive, national strategy for U.S. engagement in the Pacific Islands region. He played a role in the renewal of key provisions of the Compact of Free Association (COFA) agreements with the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau. He regularly hosts and participates in briefings with current and former executive and legislative branch officials on Pacific Island affairs.

  • About the Event

    In this talk, Dr. Elizabeth Penry explores the little-studied yet rich world of what Indigenous Andeans made of Renaissance ideals. Dr. Penry challenges the assumption that the Renaissance was a singular phenomenon limited to Europe and understands it instead as a global movement of ideas. These ideas, carried globally by the Society of Jesus, the first religious order to take education as its mandate, included Mediterranean notions of rights and sovereignty grounded in ideas of civic humanism that became standard components of Jesuit pedagogy. Through Jesuit education and missionary activity in key sites like Juli and Potosí, Andeans gained Spanish language literacy and used it to navigate the colonial legal system, advocate for their rights, and challenge colonial hierarchies. Jesuits served a dual role as both enforcers of colonial order and, perhaps, inadvertent facilitators of Indigenous questioning of colonial domination, as their teaching of Renaissance civic humanism resonated with Andean concepts of reciprocity. Drawing on archival materials from Europe and the Americas, Dr. Penry highlights how Indigenous Andeans—commoners and elites alike—refashioned Jesuit teachings to assert autonomy, negotiate power, and reimagine their communities.

    About the Speaker

    Dr. S. Elizabeth Penry is a prize-winning historian of the colonial Andes and of Early Modern Spain. Her book, The People are King: The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics (OUP, 2019), won the Howard Cline Prize for Ethnohistory from the Conference on Latin American History, the Flora Tristán Prize for the best book on Peru from the Latin American Studies Association, and the Best First Book from the Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, among others. An Associate Professor of History at Fordham University (New York) and former Director of Fordham University’s Institute for Latin American and Latinx Studies, Dr. Penry’s work has been supported by the American Philosophical Society, Fulbright, a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. She currently serves on the board of the Renaissance Society of America. During 2024-2025, Dr. Penry is a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the John Carter Brown Library. Her current research focuses on Spanish language literacy of Indigenous Andeans, and what they made of Renaissance ideas, introduced in part through their contact with Jesuit founded missions, schools and confraternities in the Viceroyalty of Peru.

    About the Series

    Graduate students and faculty affiliated with the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies are invited to present their work at this roundtable luncheon series. Faculty and graduate student research presentations will alternate on a biweekly basis. All are welcome.

  • 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.

  • *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.

    Live Stream
  • 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.

    Learn More
  • Fall 2025 Application Deadline for Brown in Washington. Applications and any supporting materials must be received by this date. 

  • 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.

    GET TICKETS!
  • Students are invited for a lunchtime discussion with former U.S. Representative Elaine Luria, member of the January 6 Committee, to explore the boundaries of executive authority, the potential for government overreach against citizens, and discuss the mechanisms, both legal and institutional that exist to hold the administration in check. Moderated by Wendy Schiller, Interim Director of the Watson Institute. 

    Elaine Luria served as the Representative for Virginia’s Second Congressional District from 2019-2023. While in Congress, she served as the Vice Chair of the House Armed Services Committee and as a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security and the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. She also served as a member of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.

    In Congress, Luria championed a strong military; her work consistently resulted in
    increased defense budgets, emphasizing shipbuilding and improving key capabilities in the Pacific. Luria was instrumental in the passage of the PACT Act, greatly increasing access to care for veterans with health conditions related to toxic exposure, such as burn pits. Luria was also a consistent voice on advanced nuclear technology, passing bipartisan legislation to field advanced reactor demonstration projects. Luria was also a strong proponent of clean energy, founding the bipartisan Offshore Wind Caucus to bring together legislators from across the aisle to facilitate the deployment of offshore wind. As a member of Congress, Rep. Luria was consistently lauded as one of the most bipartisan legislators and as the “most effective” freshman member of the House.

    Before her election, Luria served two decades in the United States Navy, retiring at the rank of Commander, serving at sea on six ships as a nuclear-trained Surface Warfare Officer, with six deployments to the Middle East and Western Pacific, culminating her Navy career by commanding a combat-ready unit of 400 sailors. Luria graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with a B.S. in Physics and History and received a Master’s in Engineering Management from Old Dominion University.
    Since leaving Congress, Luria served as a visiting senior fellow at the Georgetown
    University Institute of Politics and Public Service. Luria continues her work to advance national defense and the US maritime industry and serves on the Board of Directors of BAE Systems, Inc.

    Register here
  • Join us on March 5, 2025 for a panel discussion moderated by Director of the Pandemic Center, Jennifer Nuzzo, DrPH, S.M., with welcome remarks by Dean of the School of Public Health, Ashish K. Jha, M.D., MPH.

    This discussion featuring expert panelists will reflect on the valuable lessons learned and progress made since COVID-19 was characterized as a global pandemic by the World Health Organization and ask: What have we learned, what have we done, and how should we continue preparing for the next global pandemic? 

    Panel & Reception:
    March 5, 2025 
    Stephen Robert Hall, Room 101 (True North)

    Panel Discussion - 4 - 5:15 p.m. | Reception 5:15 - 6 p.m. 

    Panelists:

    • Adam Levine, Associate Dean of Biology and Medicine, Director of the Center for Global Health Equity, Professor of Emergency Medicine
    • Theresa Raimondo, Assistant Professor of Engineering
    • Scott Rivkees, Associate Dean for Education in the School of Public Health, Professor of the Practice of Health Services, Policy and Practice
    • Larry Warner, Chief Impact and Equity Officer at United Way of Rhode Island, President of the Rhode Island Public Health Association, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice

    This is an in-person event and registration is required. Please RSVP by February 28th

  • Two long time members of the GPD community will present their ongoing research projects, followed by discussion.

    This session we will hear from Archana Ramanujam, a PhD candidate in Sociology, who will discuss her project “Refining Inequality: Negotiating Environmental Policy in the Dutch Empire” and Luiz Paulo Ferraz, a PhD candidate in History, who will discuss his project “When Freedom Took Flight: Indigenous Leaders and the International Resistance Against Brazil’s Military Dictatorship (1974-1980)”

  • 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.

  • Dispassionate Love (Vrindavani Vairagya)
    Bengali, Color, DCP, 91 minutes, India & Germany; 2017
    Trailer:

     

    Synopsis
    Recalling memories of a friend who committed suicide, three lovers slowly slide into an anguished labyrinth of desire, loss and longing. They entangle in a colliding maze of forsaken loves, failed expectations and imperfect anticipations. A disintegrating web arises in which love exists, but as dispassionate yearning. Here affection is an indifferent desire that burns the soul to death.

    https://www.avikunthak.com/feature-films/Vrindavani-Vairagya

    Learn More
  • 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.

  • *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).

  • Across the world, women’s political inclusion at the local level has expanded, but does it lead to broader systemic change? In her book, Representation from Below, Tanushree Goyal challenges conventional wisdom by exploring how women in local politics drive transformations within political parties and democratic structures. Through extensive fieldwork, gender quota analysis, and novel data from India, she introduces the concept of inclusive party-building—a process where women recruit others, reshape party structures, and gain influence over party elites. This talk will highlight key findings, including how women’s political participation benefits not just representation but also strengthens parties themselves.

    Speaker: Tanushree Goyal, Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Princeton University.

    Learn More
  • Join the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies for a community celebration to start off Spring semester. Coffee, music, and pastries will be served by Café Modesto. All are welcome.

  • 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 Institutional Equity and Diversity.

    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.

  • Join Watson Senior Fellow Malika Saada Saar ’92, former Global Head of Human Rights at YouTube, for a fireside chat on Building AI for Humanity with Erin Teague, Chief Product Officer at Character.AI.

    Erin Teague is the Chief Product Officer at Character.AI where she is responsible for the product management, design, user research, data science, marketing and community functions. Prior to her current position, she was a senior director of product management at Google. In this role, she served as the product and technical advisor to Google’s Chief Technologist across important product areas including Search, Gemini, Ads, Maps, Assistant, Payments, Shopping and Long-term Bets product areas. Prior to this role, she was the global product lead across several YouTube verticals including Sports, Film, and TV. She led YouTube’s Virtual and Augmented Reality product team, where she was responsible for immersive video and created the YouTube VR app, which is rated #1 across multiple platforms. She also founded and led YouTube’s Racial Justice, Equity, and Product Inclusion product teams. Before YouTube, Teague was the director of product for Yahoo’s Fantasy Sports and product manager at Twitter. She began her career as a software engineer at Morgan Stanley, where she designed algorithms embedded in electronic trading applications in the firm’s Algorithmic Trading Technology group.

    Teague is the recipient of the BET Her Tech Maven Award and has been recognized as one of the “100 Most Influential Women in Silicon Valley” by Silicon Valley Business Journal, “The Next Generation of Tech Stars” by Refinery29, “40 Under 40 in Silicon Valley.” She has also been named one of Glamour Magazine’s “35 Women Under 35 Who Are Changing the Tech Industry” and one of Business Insider’s “Silicon Valley 100.”

    Originally from Detroit, Michigan, Teague holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was a Morgan Stanley Fellow, and a BSE in computer engineering from the University of Michigan, where she graduated with distinction as an Intel Scholar.

    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.

  • About the Event

    CLACS-affiliated graduate students, Licelot Caraballo (Anthropology), Lauren Prince (Africana Studies), and Alexandria Miller (Africana Studies), will be discussing Afro-Caribbean Feminisms as part of their research. 

    About the Series
    Graduate students and faculty affiliated with the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies are invited to present their work at this roundtable luncheon series. Faculty and graduate student research presentations will alternate on a biweekly basis. All are welcome.