Events
Upcoming Events
Book Launch: Rethinking Religion and World Affairs, edited by Timothy Shah, Alfred Stepan, and Monica Toft
Tuesday, May 1, 12:30 - 2:30 pm
Georgetown University's Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs
Book Launch: Rethinking Religion and World Affairs, edited by Timothy Shah, Alfred Stepan, and Monica Toft
Tuesday, May 1, 12:30 - 2:30 pm
Georgetown University's Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs
On Tuesday, May 1, the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs will host the launch of Rethinking Religion and World Affairs, featuring a panel discussion with the volume’s editors, Timothy Samuel Shah, Alfred Stepan, and Monica Duffy Toft, and three of its contributors, Michael Barnett, Thomas Farr, and Katherine Marshall.
The volume, which emerged from the Social Science Research Council’s Luce Foundation-funded work on religion and international affairs, gathers a range of interdisciplinary essays that seek to question and remedy the problematic neglect of religion as a factor in international affairs.
Religion, Legal Pluralism, and Human Rights: European and Transatlantic Perspectives
Wednesday, May 30 - Thursday, May 31, 2012
Columbia Global Center, Paris
Reid Hall, 4, Rue de Chevreuse
Past Events
Spring 2012
Film screening and Director Q&A: An African Election
Date: Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Time: 8:30pm - 10:30pm
Location: SIPA 417 (Altschul Auditorium)
Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR), Institute for African Studies (IAS), SPAN, and CAE
The 2008 presidential elections in Ghana, West Africa, serve as a backdrop for this feature documentary that looks behind-the-scenes at the complex, political machinery of a third world democracy struggling to legitimize itself to its first world contemporaries. At stake in this race are the fates of two political parties that will do almost anything to win. Throughout the film, director Jarreth Merz depicts the pride and humanity of the larger-than-life politicians, party operatives and citizens who battle for the soul of their country. Merz will be in attendance and will answer audience questions following the screening.
Islam Without Extremes, and Interfaith Dialogue
Friday, April 20, 2:00 - 4:00 pm
702 Hamilton Hall
with Mustafa Akyol and Father Daniel Madigan
In discussions of religion and liberty, one will get a different perspective when looking at at moderate or conservative strains of religion. In this talk, Mustafa Akyol and Father Daniel Madigan will examine the common ground that exists between Christianity and Islam - between conservative and moderate traditions in both religions. They will discuss how, within Islam, Quranic interpretation can lead to humanist depictions of freedom and democracy or to a justification of authoritarian political force. Finally, they will address the work Madigan and others have done towards interfaith dialogue and on finding and strengthening the common ground between religions.
Mustafa Akyol is a columnist for two Turkish newspapers, Hürriyet Daily News and Star. His articles have also appeared in Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. His book, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty, an argument for "Muslim liberalism," was published by W.W. Norton in July 2011. Daniel Madigan is a Jesuit Priest and the Jeanette W. and Otto J. Ruesch Family Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Dept. of Theology at Georgetown University.
Turkish Passport: A Screening and Conversation
Monday, April 16, 2012
The Columbia Turkish Students, Columbia/Barnard Hillel, Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion, and the Turkish Cultural Center New York presented a special screening of the documentary, Turkish Passport, during Holocaust Commemoration Week.
Turkish Passport tells the story of diplomats posted to Turkish Embassies and Consulates in several European countries, who saved numerous Jews during the Second World War. Whether they pulled them out of camps or took them off trains that were taking them to concentration camps, the diplomats, in the end, ensured that the Jews, who were Turkish citizens, could return to Turkey and thus be saved. Based on the testimonies of eyewitnesses, who traveled to Istanbul to find safety, the Turkish Passport also uses written historical documents and archive footage to tell this story of rescue and bring to light the events of the time.
The film was followed by remarks from:
Hon. Levent Bilgen, Consul General of Turkey in NY
TBA, Consulate General of Israel
Mr. Zafer Akin, President of Turkish Cultural Center NY
Assemblymember Steven Cymbrowitz, NYS Assembly District # 45\
Co-sponsored by the Turkish Students Association, Columbia/Barnard Hillel and the Turkish Cultural Center of New York.
Field Report on Senegal’s Elections - Does Democracy Endure?
Monday, April 2, 12:00 - 2:00 pm
Room 207, Knox Hall
Dr. Souleymane Bachir Diagne and Etienne Smith will discuss their observations of Senegal’s recent two-round presidential election Moderated by Alfred Stepan
Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion and the Institute for African Studies.
Expanding and Shrinking Areas of Liberty: Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and Syria
2:00 -7:00 pm, Thursday, March 29, 2012
room 1501, International Affairs Building
420 W. 118th St.
Through a series of informal conversations between the speakers and discussants, this conference will explore factors that have led to greater, or more restricted, liberties in countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa, focusing on the role of religious actors, international bodies like the UN, civil society, and developments since the Arab Spring.
Speakers: Dr. Nouzha Guessous (University Honorary Professor, Feminist, Human Rights and Social Activist; A Key Creator of Morocco’s Progressive 2004 Family Code); Dr. Radwan Masmoudi (President, Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, Tunisia); Dr. Toby C. Jones (Specialist on Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University);Dr. Tarek Masoud (Egyptian Specialist on Political Transitions, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government); Dr. Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro (Chairman, United Nations Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry on Syria).
Discussants: Dr. Alfred Stepan (Wallace Sayre Professor of Government, Columbia University) and Nina zu Fürstenberg (President, Board of Govenors, Reset-Dialogues On Civilizations).
Co-Sponsored by The Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion and The Middle East Institute at Columbia University and Reset- Dialogues on Civilizations (ResetDoC), a Rome-based non-profit that promotes dialogue and intercultural understanding through international conferences and its online magazine, Resetdoc.org
Elections in Africa: Mali 2012
Tuesday March 27th, 4:00 pm-6:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1501
A roundtable discussion on Mali's 2012 elections with Susanna Wing (Haverford College), Jaimie Bleck (University of Notre Dame), and Brandon County (Columbia University). Moderated by Manthia Diawara (New York University).
Co-sponsored with the Institute for African Studies.
CDTR Film Festival Screening: David
-- Director Joel Fendelman in person for post-screening Q&A
Wednesday, March 28, 6:00 - 9:00 pm
Earl Hall Auditorium (see map)
David tells the story of Daud, an eleven year old religious Muslim boy growing up in Brooklyn. Concealing his Muslim identity, Daud inadvertently befriends a group of Jewish boys who through a haphazard sequence of events mistake him for being Jewish and accept him as one of their own. A genuine bond of friendship is formed between Daud and the Jewish boys. Can he maintain his charade, or will he end up rejected and alone?
Co-sponsored with the Office of the University Chaplain
CDTR Film Festival Screening: The Redemption of General Butt Naked
-- Post-screening Q&A featuring Producer Greg Henry and Colin Waugh, author of Charles Taylor and Liberia: Ambition & Atrocity in Africa's Lone Star State,
Wednesday, March 21
Joshua Milton Blahyi --aka General Butt Naked --was a ruthless and feared warlord during Liberia's 14-year civil war. Today, he has renounced his violent past and reinvented himself as a Christian evangelist on a journey of self-proclaimed transformation. Blahyi travels the nation of Liberia as a preacher, seeking out those he once victimized in search of an uncertain forgiveness. But in the end, are some crimes beyond the pale of forgiveness?
Co-sponsored with the Office of the University Chaplain
Secular Evolution: Coalitions, Crisis and Institutional Change in Ireland and Senegal
Thursday, March 8
A talk by David Buckley, a doctoral candidate in government at Georgetown University. Moderated by Alfred Stepan, the Wallace Sayre Professor of Government at Columbia.
How can religion make its peace with a secular democratic state? Given the recent resurgence of religious politics in the Middle East and beyond, this question is central to scholars of comparative politics. Too many countries have fallen into the secularism trap -- a false choice between the repression of religion and majoritarian theocracy. Buckley argues that institutions of “benevolent secularism” have proven decisive in avoiding the secularism trap, by balancing the basic rights guarantees of liberal democracy with active political engagement from the religious community. Benevolent secularism is a package of political institutions that is conceptually distinct from other more restrictive or passive varieties of religion-state relations. This variety of secularism promotes democratic stability by encouraging a crosscutting coalition of policy makers, clerics and civil society organizations who buttress secular state institutions over time.
PhD Thesis Series on Religion and Politics sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).
Muslims’ Support for Democracy in Post-Communist Albania:
The Role of Sources, Threats and Ideas
Thursday, February 23, 2 - 4 pm (rescheduled from January 25)
International Affairs Building, Room 1215
Speaker: Arolda Elbassani, CDTR Visiting Researcher, PHD in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute, Florence
Discussant: Karen Barkey, Co-Director of CDTR, Professor of Sociology, Columbia University
The fall of communism provided space for the rebirth of Islam in Albania. Their particular strands of belief and practice are both liberal, tolerant, pro-democratic and pro-European. Elbassani will explore the factors in Albania that induce Muslim actors to articulate and practice moderate forms of Islam, and will explain Albanian Muslims’ broad support for democracy. Although small, the Albanian Muslim case adds important comparative dimensions to the study of Islam and democracy in the world.
Mobilities and Immobilities: Reflections of Fieldwork in Palestine
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
4:30pm - 6pm
Knox Hall, Room 509
A public talk by Distinguished Scholar Glenn Bowman, Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Kent and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life.
His talk is part of an ongoing conversation that has been taking place in the Religion and Mobility Faculty Seminar, organized by Karen Barkey, Professor of Sociology and History, and Valentina Izmirlieva, Professor of Slavic Languages, and sponsored by the IRCPL.
Senegal’s Elections
Monday, February 13, 2012, 4:00 - 6:00 pm
1501 International Affairs Building
A discussion with: Bachir Souleymane Diagne, Etienne Smith, and Alfred Stepan. Moderated by Mamadou Diouf.
Followed by a film screening from 6:15 to 7:30 of "Democracy in Dakar," which looks at the involvement of the youth and rap singers in the elections in 2007.
Co-sponsored by CDTR, IRCPL and the Institute for Middle Eastern Studies.
Saudi Arabia and the Arab Spring Uprisings
February 9, 5:45 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1501
Bernard Haykel (Princeton)
Saudi Arabia's leaders have claimed that their regime is immune to the revolutionary changes associated with the Arab Spring uprisings. The Saudis have been quite actively engaged with these events and in complicated ways, domestically as well as regionally. They have encouraged some of the uprisings and attempted to clamp down on others. Haykel will explore Saudi Arabia's policies in response to the Arab Spring, which include enforcing religious sanctions against public demonstrations within the Kingdom, increasing various domestic subsidies in an effort to co-opt potential dissent, stabilizing the monarchy in Bahrain and stewarding a new government into power in Yemen.
Mobility and ‘Dualist’ Heretical Movements in Western and Central Eurasia
Monday, February 6, 5:30 - 7pm
Religion Department Building, Room 101
Yuri Stoyanov - Speaker - School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
This lecture intends to explore movements in Western and Central Eurasia like Manichaeism, Paulicianism, Bogomilism, and Ismailism (which as early as the tenth century expanded in Central and later in South Asia and often condemned by its Sunni opponents as a ‘Manichaean’ sect). Why did normative Christian and Islamic elites view them as heretical? How did they defy this label to achieve the character of religious internationals?
Co-sponsored by IRCPL, CDTR, the Unit for Culture, Religion and Communication at the Global Health Research Center of Central Asia and the Harriman Institute
Mormonism and American Politics Conference
Friday, February 3, 9am - 5pm
Saturday, February 4, 9am - 2pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1501
With two Mormon candidates for the presidency and the unprecedented media attention recently given to Mormons in the public square, this conference will take a broad view of the history of Mormon participation in American political life, from Joseph Smith’s 1844 run for the presidency to the Reed Smoot trials of the early 20th century and to the rise of Ezra Taft Benson during the Eisenhower administration, which ushered in a new era of Mormon identification with the Republican Party.
Speakers include Randall Balmer, Richard Bushman, Claudia Bushman, Joanna Brooks, Matthew Bowman, Sarah Barringer Gordon, Jan Shipps, and others.
Fall 2011
Paul Kollman: Gods at Large: Tentative Theses on Religion and Mobility
Friday, December 2nd, 2011, 12:00pm to 2:00 pm
Room 101, Religion Department
80 Claremont Ave, Cross-streets: 120th St and Broadway
Paul Kollman will draw upon his research in African Christianity as well as other trends in religious studies to offer some suggestions about how studies of religion and mobility have been already undertaken and how they might profitably move forward. Kollman is an associate professor in the Department of Theology and Fellow of the Kellogg, Kroc, and Nanovic Institutes at the University of Notre Dame, as well as Acting Director of the Center for Social Concerns at Notre Dame. In 2005 he published The Evangelization of Slaves and Catholic Origins in Eastern Africa and his current project is a book on the Catholic missionary evangelization of eastern Africa.
Co-sponsored by the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life
Muslim Identity in Southeast Asia: Thailand and Indonesia Contrasted
Brown Bag Discussion / Book Talk
12:00 PM – 1:30 PM
International Affairs Building, Room 1219
A conversation with Michael Laffan, Professor of History, Princeton University; Author of "The Makings of Indonesian Islam" and Duncan McCargo, Visiting Scholar, Weatherhead East Asian Institute; Professor of Southeast Asian Politics, University of Leeds; Author of "Mapping National Anxieties: Thailand's Southern Conflict"
Co-sponsored by The Weatherhead East Asian Institute
Workshops on Religion and Human Rights Pragmatism: Strategies for promoting rights through dialogue across religions and cultures.
Thursday, Nov. 10, 2:00-5:00 and
Friday, Nov. 11, 10:00-4:00, Lindsay Rogers
Room, 707 International Affairs Building.
Columbia’s Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion,
supported by a grant from the Luce Foundation, presents workshops on
religion and human rights pragmatism. The workshop on Thursday and Friday,
Nov. 10 and Nov. 11, will focus on strategies for promoting rights through
persuasion and dialogue across cultural and religious divides.
The panelists and audience for these open workshops will include scholars
and non-academic practitioners in the human rights field. Students are
welcome to attend.
Co-sponsored with The Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life (IRCPL)
Workshop Schedule
Thursday, Nov. 10
2:00 Religious and secular targets of human rights persuasion
Panelists:
Stephen Hopgood, SOAS University of London, “Selling human rights retail:
competing with nationalism, religion, and other forms of political
ideology.”
Thomas Kellogg, Open Society Foundations, “Human Rights Persuasion between
Secular Democrats and Secular Authoritarians: The Case of China.”
Discussants: Sally Merry, New York University
Fabienne Hara, International Crisis Group
3:30 Religious and secular proponents of rights and justice
Panelists:
Daniel Philpott, Notre Dame University, “Religious and Secular Approaches to
Transitional Justice and Democratization.”
Leslie Vinjamuri, SOAS, “Religion, Justice, and the Contestation of Norms.”
Discussants: Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch.
Azza Karam, UNFPA
Friday, Nov. 11
10:00 Local dialogues about human rights.
Panelists:
Ron Hassner, UC Berkeley, “How Religious Leaders Persuade Their Own
Followers to Change.”
Amitav Acharya, American University, “[Local Norms Entrepreneurs: the Good,
the Bad, and the Ugly].”
Anupama Rao, Barnard College, “Localizing Human Rights Discourse on Caste
and Gendered Violence in Contemporary India.”
Charli Carpenter, UMass Amherst, Amaney Jamal
12:30 Lunch break
1:00 Religion, cultural specificity, and universalism in dialogues about human rights
Sally Merry, New York University, "Vernacularization on the Ground."
Lila Abu-Lughod, Columbia, "The Missionary Work of Women's Rights as Human
Rights."
Burton Visotzky, Jewish Theological Seminary, "What Works and What Doesn't
in International Interreligious Dialogue."
Naz Modirzadeh, Harvard University, "Forcing Intracultural Debate on Human
Rights: Reflections on 'Taking Islamic Law Seriously'."
Elizabeth Hurd, Northwestern University, "Religious Freedom and the Politics
of Persuasion."
Co-sponsored by the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life.
Sacred Sites Violence: Gujarat and the Challenge of Accountability and Hindu-Muslim Relations
Wednesday, November 9, 12:00 – 4:00
Faculty House, 3rd Floor
INCLUDES: a screening of Parzania
Wednesday, November 9, 6:00 - 10:00
Faculty House, 3rd Floor
A workshop with Shabnam Hashmi (Act Now for Harmony and Democracy); Vijay Parmar (Jan Vikas Society); Christophe Jaffrelot (CERI, Sciences Po); Elazar Barkan (Columbia); Karen Barkey (Columbia); Rajeev Bhargava (Columbia)
The 2002 pogrom in Gujurat, India, which resulted in 2,000–mostly Muslim–casualties. It was exceptional not only because of its magnitude but also because of its spread to the countryside, where a large number of Muslims were attacked by their Hindu neighbours. After the pogrom, NGOs committed themselves to relief work, judicial assistance and attempts at reconciliating Hindus and Muslims. This workshop will engage NGO activists involved in reconciliation work to share their experience and assess the impact of their efforts. The workshop is part of the ongoing Sacred Sites project, organized by Karen Barkey and Elazar Barkan.
Parzania is an award-winning Indian film from 2006 based on the true story of ten-year-old Parsi boy Azhar Mody, who disappeared during the violence in Gujarat. Starring Naseerudding Shah and Sarikah, it won the 2006 Silver Lotus for Best Actress and 2006 Golden Lotus for Best Direction.
Workshop Schedule
12:00 - 12:30 - Introduction, Elazar Barkan and Karen Barkey
The Gujarat pogrom, Christophe Jaffrelot
12:30- 2:15 - Gujarat Living Memory – Civil Society Advocacy in the Last Decade
Youth Development, the Rewriting of History and Conflict Transformation, Vijay Parmar
Post-conflict Reconciliation: Engaging with History, Shabnam Hashmi
No accountability, No Justice? Gujarat ten years after, Christophe Jaffrelot
2:15 - 4:00 - Sacred sites, violence and coexistence
Is Violence Inevitable: Comparative Perspectives, Karen Barkey
Choreography of Violence, Elazar Barkan
Is Reconciliation Possible in Gujarat?, Rajeev Bhargava
Co-sponsored with The Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life (IRCPL), the South Asia Institute, The Columbia University Seminar on History, Redress, and Reconciliation, and the Columbia University Institute for the study of Human Rights.
Religion, Conflict and Accommodation In India
Friday, November 4th, 2011 to Saturday, November 5th, 2011
Friday, 9am-2pm, Room 207
Friday, 2pm-5pm, Room 208
Saturday 9am-2pm, Room 208
A workshop on the history of religion, conflict, and accommodation in India. The two-day discussion will focus on two broad themes: Buddhists' encounter of conventional Vedic religion in ancient India; and exchanges among Saivas, Vaisnavas, and Jains in ancient and medieval South India.
Convened by Sudipta Kaviraj (Columbia) and Rajeev Bhargava (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi). Speakers include Parimal Patil (Harvard);Arindam Chakrabarti (Hawaii); Dan Arnold (University of Chicago); Valerie Stoker (Wright University); Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi (San Francisco);Lawrence McCrae (Cornell); Narayana Rao (Wisconsin); Charles Hallisey(Harvard); Ajay Rao (Toronto); Somadeva Vasudeva (Columbia); Guy Leavitt (Columbia).
Co-sponsored with The Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life (IRCPL)
What are the causes and reasons behind the eruption of religious conflict? Is it primarily due to basic philosophical differences on central issues – like the nature of God, the derivation of ethical principles from an idea of a divine being, structure of society (the varna system) / Or is it rooted in sociological causes like the role of a priestly class and their dominance over society – which can be threatened by the appearance of a contending religion? Or, thirdly, is it linked to the patronage religious groups receive from royal power, so that conflict between rulers are translated into a conflict between two religions?
What are the ways in which, once conflict arises in a society, it seeks to produce exchanges and accommodation? How does it produce everyday peace after religious conflict, a sort of “wordless accommodation”(Al Stepan’s phrase)? Do they create institutions which mediate between religious groups, and institutionalize accommodation? Do they move towards articulated theories of religious tolerance? And if they do, how do they ground their arguments? Finally, at times such accommodation is achieved not explicitly through theoretical reasoning, but through art and literature. How do we read these texts, without reading our anachronistic concerns into them?
In earlier discussions some persistent and interesting methodological questions have arisen: how do we read their texts without the intrusion of our language into theirs? How do we inflect the broad general ideas of accommodation/tolerance, and conflict/violence into a set of more nuanced concepts of continuous, but distinct states of affairs?
Event Schedule
4 November 2011
9.30 – 11.30
Chair: Partha Chatterjee
Lawrence McCrea, "Desecularization in Indian Intellectual Life"
Dan Arnold, "Othrodoxy, heterodoxy and the argumentative India: Jayanta Bha''a, and the Question of a Case for Religious Pluralism in India”
11-11.30 COFFEE
11.30 -12.30
Rajeev Bhargava, "Civility and Principled Coexistence: Asoka’s Dhamma"
LUNCH 12.30 – 2.00
2.00 – 3.00
Chair : John Stratton Hawley
Charles Hallisey, "Religious pluralism, accommodation and justice in Sri Lanka’s Mahavamsa"
3.00- 3.30 COFFEE
3.30-4.30
Sudipta Kaviraj, "On the Agamadambara"
4.30 – 5.30
Discussion of some methodological questions
5 November 2011
9.30 – 11.30
Chair: Souleymane Bachir Diagne
Valerie Stoker, "Hindu Sectarian Identity in Sixteenth-Century Vijayanagara: Vy'rtha and the Vai'avas at Tirupati"
Ajay Rao, "Fear and Eschatology in the Memory of Violence: Representing the conquest and re-conquest of Madurai"
1130 -12.00 COFFEE
12.00 – 1.00
V. Narayana Rao
LUNCH 1.00 – 2.00
2.00- 3.00
Chair: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi
COFFEE 3 – 3.30
3.30 – 4.30
Arindam Chakrabarti, "Translation and Toleration: Remarks on Al Beruni’s Arabic translation of Yogasutras and Ballantyne’s Sanskrit translation and commentary on the Bible"
4.30 – 5.00
Concluding session – methodological questions and publication schedule
Co-sponsored by the South Asia Institute; Columbia University Seminar on History, Redress, and Reconciliation; The Institute for the Study of Human Rights; and The Institute of Religion, Culture, and Public Life
Are European States Secular? A talk by Rajeev Bhargava.
Tuesday, November 1, 6:30-8pm
Knox Hall, Room 208
606 West 122nd Street
A talk by Rajeev Bhargava, director of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CDSD) in India and renowned author of Secularism and Its Critics. Moderated by Nadia Urbinati, Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory and Hellenic Studies at Columbia University.
Only a decade ago this question would have invited ridicule. After all, Europe, the home of secular humanism, has the most secularized social institutions in the world. Wasn't it settled long ago that European states were secular too? Rajeev Bhargava's answer is an emphatic no. Not only have most European states continued the long standing practice of appeasing national churches, they continue to have a legal and constitutional framework that fails to safeguard the interests of religious minorities. What is worse, conceptual blindness prevents them from even noticing that they are not secular. Europe's inter-communal problems will further deteriorate if they don't refashion their political secularism.
Defining the Hmong Subject: Protestant Conversion, Millenarianism and the Human Right Question in Vietnam
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Monday, October 31
International Affairs Building, Room 918
No registration required.
This talk from Tam Ngo, Doctoral Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute, looks at the roughly third of a million Vietnamese Hmong who identify as Protestant Christian and how they understand their own identity, subjecthood, and agency.
The tale of the emergence of Hmong Protestants is unusually bizarre, encompassing messianic lore and the accidental discovery of the Fareast Broadcasting Company’s proselytizing program in Hmong language in 1980. Dr. Ngo's talk will encompass the Hmong, the Vietnamese government, and international agencies who work with them.
Discussant: Weatherhead Research scholar Jayne Werner.
Uprisings and Transitions: Today’s Politics and Economics in Middle East and North Africa
Friday, October 7
1:00 pm
Schapiro Center, Davis Auditorium
The Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University presents a conference examining the major path-breaking transitions in North Africa and the Middle East as a continuation of three panels presented Spring 2011 when the uprisings first broke out:
More information at CGT's website.
Muslim American Citizenship: A Decade Since 9/11
Friday, October 7, 10 am - 9 pm
How have recent laws, policies and social pressures affected the civic and political engagement of Muslim Americans since 9/11? Panels will examine political and electoral participation of Muslim Americans; the effects of counter-terrorism and de-radicalization policies, and new policing and urban zoning laws on Muslim American communities; and how increases in profiling, racialization and mobilization have reshaped Muslim American engagement in the public sphere.
Opening Remarks: Alfred Stephan (Columbia University) and Hishaam Aidi (Columbia University, Institute for Social Policy Understanding)
Panel One: Elections and Participation 10:00 am - 11:30 am
Speakers: Farid Senzai (Santa Clara University, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding), Suhail Khan (Institute for Global Engagement), Amaney Jamal (Princeton University), Irfan Nooruddin (Ohio State University),
Moderator: Ousmane Kane (Columbia University)
Panel Two: Countering Violent Extremism: Myths and Realities 11:45 am - 1:15 pm
Speakers: Charles Kurzman (University of North Carolina), Bilal Ansari (Williams College), Mohamed Younis (Gallup Abu Dhabi), Arun Kundnani (Open Society Institute)
Moderator: Faiza Patel (Brennan Center for Justice)
Lunch Break 1:15 pm - 2:30 pm
Jummah prayers held in the second floor auditorium at Earl Hall
Panel Three: Policing and Urban Zoning Laws 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm
Speakers: Sally Howell (University of Michigan, Dearborn), Kathleen Foley (Cornell University, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding), Arshad Ali (Teachers College)
Moderator: Emily Berman (Brennan Center for Justice)
Panel Four: Profiling, Racialization, and Mobilization 4:10pm - 5:45 pm
Speakers: Zareena Grewal (Yale University, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding), Hishaam Aidi (Columbia University), Sahar Aziz (Texas Wesleyan University of Law, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding), Zaheer Ali (Columbia University)
Moderator: Ramzi Kassem (CUNY Law)
Keynote 6:00pm - 7:00 pm
Asifa Quraishi (University of Wisconsin Law School, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding)
Reception 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Co-sponsored by SIPA, CDTR, the Middle East Institute, and the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU)
Denis Lacorne: Religion in America, Book Launch
Thursday, October 6, 2011, 6:00 – 8:00 pm
East Gallery of Buell Hall
Co-sponsored by The Alliance Program, CDTR and IRCPL
Pakistan today: domestic challenges and external pressures
Thursday, October 6, 2011, 9:30 am - 5:30 pm
1512 IAB
This all-day workshop is primarily an opportunity for the development of chapters of the forthcoming Pakistan: The Most Dangerous Decade Begins? by the panel. Because the issues in these papers are so timely we at CDTR have decided to give the public a rare glimpse into this highly-technical scholarly process.
Preliminary Schedule:
Opening remarks -- 9:30 am
Alfred Stepan (Columbia University) and Christophe Jaffrelot (Sciences Po and Princeton)
Inner tensions
Mohammed Waseem (Lahore University of Management Studies), The operational dynamics of political parties in Pakistan
Philip Oldenburg (Columbia University), Will the Judiciary Save Pakistan?
Aqil Shah (Harvard University), Democracy and the Military after Musharraf
International dimensions -- 1:30 PM
Maryam Abou Zahab, INALCO (Paris), Turmoil in the Frontier
WPS Sidhu (New York University), The Changing Balance of India-Pakistan Relations
Serge Granger (Sherbrooke University) and Farah Jan (Rutgers University), Pakistan-China Symbiotic Relations
Christophe Jaffrelot, The US-Pakistan Relations: A case of reverse clientelism?
Co-sponsored by The Alliance Program, CDTR, and IRCPL
Humeira Iqtidar: Secularising Islamists? Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamaat-ud-Dawa in Pakistan
Wednesday, October 5, 3:00 - 5:00 pm
1510 IAB
Humeira Iqtidar is a Fellow in South Asian Studies at Kings College, London. She is the editor of Fundamentalisms Across Religions: Reconceptualizing the Debates with David Lehmann (Routledge 2010) and author of Secularizing Islamists?Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamaat-ud-Dawa in Pakistan. Iqtidar will discuss her ethnographic work with Jama‘at-e-Islami and the more militant Jama‘at-ud-Da‘wa, widely blamed for the November 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, and their relationship to secularism."
Discussant Sudipta Kaviraj is a specialist in intellectual history and Indian politics. He works on two fields of intellectual history - Indian social and political thought in the 19th and 20th centuries and modern Indian literature and cultural production.
Moderator Karen Barkey is Co-Director of CDTR and a Professor of Sociology and History at Columbia University. Her main fields are Historical and Political Sociology. She studies Empires/Imperial Organization; Politics and Religion; Religious and Ethnic Toleration; The Politics of Sacred Sites. Her research focuses primarily on the Ottoman Empire, and recently on comparisons between Ottoman, Habsburg and Roman empires.
Karen Barkey, discussant
Religion and Human Rights Pragmatism: 2011 Conference One: What causes persuasion, diffusion, and change of human rights norms and practices?
Saturday, Sept. 24, 10:00 - 4:00
Columbia’s Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion, supported by a grant from the Luce Foundation, presents workshops on strategies for promoting human rights discourse across cultures, including conversation between secular rights advocates and non-western religious cultures. The first workshop on Saturday, Sept. 24, will examine how attitudes about human rights change and diffuse across cultures. The second workshop on Thursday and Friday, Nov. 10 and Nov. 11, will focus on strategies for promoting rights through persuasion and dialogue across cultural and religious divides.
The panelists and audience for these open workshops will include scholars and non-academic practitioners in the human rights field. Students are welcome to attend.
What do we know about the processes by which human rights attitudes change and diffuse across cultures? Does change happen mainly through exposure to new principled ideas, by persuasion, by rewards for good behavior and punishments for bad, or as a result of deep and broad social and economic changes that create a climate in which rights can thrive? When do efforts to promote rights improvements elicit “push-back”? What determines who wins when different value systems are locked in competition? Which social groups are typically favor rights improvements, and which groups typically oppose them? What affects whether religious groups support or oppose rights improvements? What is the role of local “early adopters”, including religious leaders, in promoting change and translating global norms into local terminology and practices?
Panelists: Amitav Acharya, American University; Charli Carpenter, University of Massachusetts-Amherst; Emilie Hafner-Burton, University of California at San Diego; Daniel Goldstein, Rutgers University; Samuel Moyn, Columbia; Tsveta Petrova, Columbia Harriman Institute; Anthony Richter, Open Society Foundations; James Ron, University of Minnesota; Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch; Kathryn Sikkink, University of Minnesota; Alfred Stepan, Columbia; Leslie Vinjamuri, SOAS.
What Egypt Might Learn about Reducing Military Prerogatives from Indonesia
Thursday, September 22nd, 2011, 4pm to 6pm
A round table discussion with Marcus Mietzner, Steven Cook, and Alfred Stepan.
Marcus Mietzner, Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University, is the author of Military Politics, Islam and the State in Indonesia: From Turbulent Transition to Democratic Consolidation, which was highly praised by The Economist. Professor Mietzner’s research on models of controlling the military during democratic transition in Indonesia can be posited as a potential guide for Egypt's transition.
Steven A Cook, is the authoritative scholar on the Egyptian military, Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington DC, and author of Ruling But Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey and a forthcoming book on the Egyptian transition. Moderated by Professor Alfred Stepan, Wallace Sayre Professor of Government, author of two books on civil-military relations and a number of texts on failed and successful democratic transitions. Professor Stepan has made two visits to Egypt since March 2011.
Sponsored by the Center for Democracy, Tolerance, and Religion and the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies.
CDTR/IRCPL Joint Open House
September 21, 2011, 4:00 pm
A reception welcoming Columbia faculty and students interested in learning about upcoming events and funding opportunities at the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL) and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR). Learn about applying for research grants, proposing faculty seminars, convening events, and meet the directors and staff of the IRCPL and CDTR.
The event is co-sponsored with the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life (IRCPL).
Indonesia's Decade of Decentralization: The Rise of Local Identities and the Survival of the Nation State
Wednesday, September 21, 12:00 – 1:30 pm
Speakers: Professor Marcus Mietzner, Australia National University
Moderated by Professor Ann Marie Murphy
Mietzner will review the state of decentralization in Indonesia ten years after its launch in 2001 and will focus on those impacts of decentralization that have made the Indonesian state stronger and center-periphery relations more stable than at any other point in the country's history.
Co-sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion
Spring 2011
Murat Somer: Muslim Politics, Moderation and Democratization: Lessons from Comparing Religious
and Secular Values in Turkey
Wednesday, April 20, 4:10 - 6:00 pm
1102 IAB
Murat Somer is a Democracy and Development Fellow at the Institute for International & Regional Studies, Princeton University.
Discussant: Karen Barkey, Director of Undergraduate Studies Sociology and Professor of Sociology and History, Columbia University
Richard Daulay: Christianity and Politics in Muslim Majority Indonesia
Wednesday, April 13 12:00 - 2:00 pm
801 IAB
*Part of CDTR's PhD Speakers Series
Richard Daulay is from Jakarta and holds a doctorate in divinity, an MA in international relations and is working on a PhD in religion in cross cultural perspective. Daulay was the leader of Indonesia's largest Protestant Christian organization, the Communion of Churches from 2000-2010 during a period of intense interfaith conflict in the country. Daulay has been active in Indonesia's religious and political affairs for many years. He has taught in Indonesia's preeminent Christian seminary for almost 30 years and has led a number of interfaith missions from Indonesia to the United States. Daulay is a member of Indonesia's interfaith cooperation group; it includes Indonesia's top representatives from Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, and Confucianism and has issued important joint statements on anti-corruption and peace.
Discussant: Alfred Stepan, Wallace Sayre Professor of Government, Columbia University
Co-sponsored by the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life
Co-sponsored by the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life
Book Launch: Religion and International Relations Theory
(Columbia University Press, part of the Religion, Culture, and Public Life Series).
Speakers: Jack Snyder, Courtney Bender, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Michael Doyle.
Wednesday, April 20, 12:00 pm
1302 IAB
Religious concerns stand at the center of international politics, yet key paradigms in international relations, namely realism, liberalism, and constructivism, barely consider religion in their analysis of political subjects. The essays in this collection rectify this. Authored by leading scholars, they introduce models that integrate religion into the study of international politics and connect religion to a rising form of populist politics in the developing world. Contributors identify religion as pervasive and distinctive, forcing a reframing of international relations theory that reinterprets traditional paradigms.
Join editor Jack Snyder (Columbia), Courtney Bender (Religion, Columbia), and Elizabeth Shakman Hurd (Luce Visiting Fellow, Princeton). Michael Doyle (Political Science, Columbia) will offer comments on the book's relevance and contributions to the field.
Co-sponsored by the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life
A Conversation with Eboo Patel, An Adviser on Faith to President Barack Obama
Tuesday, April 12, 12:00 pm
World Room, 3rd Floor, Journalism Building
A Conversation with Eboo Patel, the founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core, an international nonprofit that aims to promote interfaith cooperation. He is a member of President Barack Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships and author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim.
“Shop Talk and God Talk” is a yearlong series of conversations with professionals working on how the study of religion shapes their work and their global perspectives. Organized by Lisa Miller, senior editor of Newsweek. Co-sponsored with Columbia Journalism School and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).
Co-sponsored by the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life
From Belgrade to Cairo: The Strategy and Organization of Non-Violent Revolution
Tuesday, April 5 12:00pm–2:00pm
Room 1501 International Affairs Building
Over the past decade, organized non-violent resistance movements have been used to overthrow dictators from Serbia through to Georgia, Ukraine, and Egypt. Please join us to hear this panel of activists, writers, and academic experts discuss the advantages and problems confronting movements dedicated to non-violence in their attempts to promote democratic change.
Participants:
Srdja Popovic, Centre for Applied Non-Violent Action & Strategies (Belgrade), founder of OTPOR (Resistance)
Tina Rosenberg, Writer and author of Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World
Kurt Schock, Associate Professor of Sociology and Global Affairs, Rutgers University
Jack Snyder, Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations, Columbia University
Alfred Stepan, Wallace Sayre Professor of Government, Columbia University
Co-sponsored by the Harriman Institute, the East Central European Center, and the Center for the Study of Democracy,Toleration, and Religion at Columbia University
Tuesday, March 29, 9:00 am - 4:30 pm
Lecture Hall, Journalism Building, 3rd Floor
"Comparative Perspectives on Constitution-making, Political Transitions, and Secularism: Turkey, United States, and India"
Turkey, India, and to some extent, the United States offer excellent material for analyzing democracy, secularism and constitution-making. On Tuesday, March 29, Columbia University's Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR) and the Democratization Program (DP)of the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), based in Istanbul will host "Comparative Perspectives on Constitution-Making, Political Transitions and Secularism: Turkey, the United States and India." Conference panels will use TESEV DP's research into important current debates in Turkey on constitutionalism, constitution-making, transitional justice and reparations, and religion-state relations as starting points for a comparative discussion of how these issues have been engaged in Turkey, the United States, and India and what each case can offer to scholarship and policymaking. CDTR's ongoing, in-depth research into democracy and religion in Turkey, the United States, and India provides valuable comparative and theoretical dimensions to TESEV DP's Turkish case studies.
This conference is part of an ongoing initiative between TESEV DP and CDTR to share research and expand scholarly collaboration. Co-sponsored by the Institute of Religion, Culture, and Public Life and The Middle East Institute.
Speakers include:
Elazar Barkan (School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University)
Karen Barkey (Director of Undergraduate Studies and Professor of Sociology and History, Columbia University)
Nazan Ustundag (Bogaziçi University, Turkey)
Nilüfer Göle (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales)
Etyen Mahçupyan (TESEV Democratization Program),
Levent Köker (Law Department, Atılım University),
Kendall Thomas (Law Faculty, Columbia University),
Güneş Murat Tezcür (Political Science Department, Loyola University Chicago)
Dilek Kurban (TESEV Democratization Program)
John Torpey (Graduate Center at CUNY)
Reşat Kasaba (University of Washington)
Sudipta Kaviraj (Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University)
We Are Egypt - Filmmaker in Person
Monday, March 28, 6:30 pm - 9:30 pm
801 IAB
Filmed on the ground in Egypt over the preceding fourteen months, this story is told through the eyes of Egypt’s youth activists, labor movements and political opposition figures. It is an account of their struggle against extraordinary odds to remove an uncompromising US-backed authoritarian regime determined to stay in power.
Tuesday, March 8, 6:00 pm
1501 IAB
The Egyptian Transition in Context
This event explores the wider experience of countries that are attempting democratic transitions, including various of the "color revolutions" in Eastern Europe and the experience of other parts of the Islamic world.
Moderator: Michael Doyle (Member, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University)
Speakers: Mona El-Ghobashy (Assistant Professor Comparative Politics, Barnard College)
Timothy Frye (Marshall D. Shulman Professor of Post-Soviet Foreign Policy)
Mirjam Kuenkler (Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University)
Alfred Stepan (Wallace Sayre Professor of Government, School of International and Public
Affairs, Columbia University)
Monday, March 7, 4 - 6 PM
1512 International Affairs Building
People Power and the Possibilities of Democratic Transition in the Middle East: Lessons from the Jasmine Revolution .
Jean-Pierre Filiu, Alliance Sciences Po visiting professor at Columbia, and Eva Bellin, the Myra and Robert Kraft Professor of Arab Politics at Brandeis University, Democratization, and Comparative Politics, explore when and why popular protest snowballs and what the implications are for regime change. Their discussion will draw on recent events in Tunisia and Egypt and explores the possibilities and limits of "contagion" elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa. Moderator and discussant: Alfred Stepan, Wallace Sayre Professor of Government, Columbia University. Stepan will lead a mission to Tunisia and Egypt this month for Freedom House.
Bellin is the author of Stalled Democracy: Capital, Labor, and the Paradox of State-Sponsored Development. Filiu's most recent book is Apocalypse in Islam (University of California Press, 2011).
Co-sponsored by CDTR, The Alliance Program, The Middle East Institute, and the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life
Friday, March 4, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
Olivier Roy: Religious Fundamentalisms and Politics: A Clash About What?Hamilton Hall - 1130 Amsterdam Ave at W 116th Street - Room 602
Roy will be discussing ideas from his critically acclaimed book, Holy Ignorance, that has just been translated into English. Copies of the book will be available to purchase after the event. Roy (1949) is presently Professor at the European University Institute (Florence): he heads the Mediterraanean progamme at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. He has been a Senior Researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (since 1985), Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (since 2003), and visiting professor at Berkeley University (2008/2009). He headed the OSCE’s Mission for Tajikistan (1993-94) and was a Consultant for the UN Office of the Coordinator for Afghanistan (1988). His field works include Political Islam, Middle East, Islam in the West and comparative religions. Mr. Roy received an “Agrégation de Philosophie” and a Ph.D. in Political Sciences. He is the author of “Globalized Islam” (Columbia University Press, 2004), “Secularism confronts Islam” (Columbia University Press, 2007), and more recently of “La Sainte Ignorance” (“Holy Ignorance”, Seuil 2008, translated into Italian as “La Santa Ignoranza” Feltrinelli).
He is presently working on “Religious norms in the public sphere”, conversions, apostasy and comparative religions.
Discussant Akeel Bilgrami is the Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Heyman Center for the Humanities, and a member of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. His research is focused on Philosophy of Mind and Language, and on Political Philosophy and Moral Psychology. In the former, he has published a book in 1992 called Belief and Meaning (Blackwell) and another book published in 2006 called Self Knowledge and Resentment (Harvard University Press). In the latter, his collection of essays called Politics and The Moral Psychology of Identity is forthcoming from Harvard University Press.
Co-sponsored by CDTR and the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life
Wednesday, February 23, 12:30 - 2:00 pm.
International Affairs Building, Room 707
Pradeep Chhibber: Religious Practice and Political Representation in India
A conversation with Pradeep Chhibber, Professor of Political Science; Indo-American Endowed Chair, and Bedford Chair; Director, Institute of International Studies, University of California at Berkeley.
Co-sponsored by Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR) and the Comparative Politics Seminar in the Department of Political Science.
Wednesday, February 16
4 pm – 6 pm
Headscarf and Discrimination: Labor Market Discrimination in Contemporary Turkey
801 IAB
What are the real world impacts of Turkey’s headscarf ban? Despite the contrary expectations from the headscarf ban towards women's emancipation and liberation in the public, the headscarf ban it is actually limiting women's labor force participation in contemporary Turkey. Join Dilek Cindoglu, Visiting Senior Scholar at Columbia University's Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWaG) for a look at this issue in a lecture titled "Headscarf and Discrimination: Labor Market Discrimination in Contemporary Turkey."
Discussant Alice Kessler-Harris is the R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History and
professor in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Columbia University. Dr.
Kessler-Harris specializes in the history of American labor and the comparative and
interdisciplinary exploration of women and gender. Her most recent book, Gendering Labor
History (2007), contains her essays on women's work and social policy.
Co-sponsored by CDTR, Institute for Research on Women and Gender, the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life, European Institute, and the Middle East Institute .
Tuesday, February 15
4 pm – 6 pm
Religious Tolerance in Albania
**Inaugural 2011 CDTR PhD Speakers Series lecture
The 2011 PhD Speakers Series kicks off with Rozeta Shembilku, JSD candidate at Columbia Law School. She will be examining what both Albanian and international authors refer to as the "Albanian model of harmonious [religious] co-existence." In this talk, Shembilku will unpack the Albanian reality of religious co-existence in order to identify some of the historical and normative conditions necessary for fostering mutual understanding and a sustainable peaceful co-existence among different religious communities.
PhD candidates interested in a chance to discuss their research as part of the Speakers Series are encouraged to apply after reviewing the guidelines here.
Discussant Alfred Stepan is the Wallace Sayre Professor of Government at Columbia University, Chair of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion, Co-Chair of the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life, a Fellow of the British Academy, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Discussant Karen Barkey is Professor of Sociology and History at Columbia University. Her main fields are Historical and Political Sociology. She studies Empires/Imperial Organization; Politics and Religion; Religious and Ethnic Toleration; The Politics of Sacred Sites. Her research focuses primarily on the Ottoman Empire, and recently on comparisons between Ottoman, Habsburg and Roman empires.
Co-sponsored by CDTR, the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life, European Institute, and the Middle East Institute .
Monday, February 14
6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
918 IAB
Jews and Judaism in Contemporary China
Join Pan Guang, Walter and Seena Fair Professor of Jewish Studies,
Director of Shanghai Center for International Studies, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences; Vice Chairman, Chinese Association of Middle East Studies for a discussion of the state of Judaism in modern China.
Co-sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute
Wednesday, February 2
2:00 - 4:00 pm
The Jihadis' Path to Self-Destruction
801 International Affairs Building
Are jihadis an enduring feature of modern international affairs? The presentation is a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of jihadi ideology and argues that jihadism harbours within itself the seeds of its self-destruction.
Nelly Lahoud is an Associate Professor with the Combating Terrorism Center in the Department of Social Sciences, United States Military Academy, West Point.
Jean-Pierre Filiu is an Associate Professor, Middle East/Mediterranean Chair at CERI, Sciences Po specializing in Islam and International Relations.
Co-sponsored by CDTR, The Middle East Institute, and the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life.
Fall 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
4:00 pm
Tolerance without Liberalism: Conflict and
Coexistence in Twentieth Century Indonesia
801 International Affairs Building
Indonesia has a reputation for peaceful coexistence between religious communities, yet meets none of John Locke’s criteria for maintaining tolerance: religion is in the public sphere, the state privileges some beliefs over others, and faith in God is mandatory for all citizens under the national ideology of Pancesila. How does tolerance operate in this non-liberal democracy? Please join CDTR Visiting Fellow Jeremy Menchik as he unpacks the dynamics of tolerance in the world's largest Muslim-majority country.
Co-Sponsored by the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life.
Tuesday, 16 November, 2010
6:15 pm
Charles Taylor: Language and Expression
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities
A lecture by Charles Taylor, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at McGill University and winner of the 2007 Templeton Prize and the 2008 Kyoto Prize. He is also author of A Secular Age (2007).
Co-sponsored with the Committee on Global Thought; Heyman Center for Humanities; Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion.
This event is free and open to the public, no tickets or registration required.. Seating is on a first come, first served basis. Photo ID required for entry.
For directions, visit: http://www.heymancenter.org/visit.php
Friday, November 12, 2010
5:30 pm
Pray the Devil Back to Hell: A Screening and Conversation
569, Alfred Lerner Hall
Who would stand up to a bloodthirsty dictator? Pray the Devil Back to Hell chronicles the actions of a group of ordinary women in Liberia who had the courage to do just that - and consequently helped put an end to their devastating civil war. Sick of the unending violence that was plaguing their country, Christian and Muslim mothers, grandmothers, wives, and grandmothers came together to demand peace in Liberia. Through peaceful protests, steadfast sit-ins, and a mass call to withhold sex until peace was achieved, their grassroots activism altered the trajectory of their nation’s history.
In the Names of Gods is a film series sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion. Q&A with filmmakers to follow screening.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
2:00 pm- 4:00 pm
The International Legal Regulation of Religion
801 International Affairs Building
A discussion featuring Elizabeth Hurd, Luce Visiting Fellow at Princeton University at the Center for International and Regional Studies.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
9:00 am- 5:00 pm
Pakistan 2010: the most dangerous decade begins
1501 International Affairs Building
A conference with Christophe Jaffrelot, Alliance Visiting Professor (Sciences Po-CERI, Paris) and author Hindu Nationalism: A Reader (2008), A History of Pakistan and Its Origins (2004), and The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India (1998), Alfred Stepan (Columbia University), and more.
Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion.
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
MORNING SESSION 9:30 am – 12:30 pm
Introductory Remarks by Alfred Stepan and Christophe Jaffrelot
The Domestic Scene
“Economic Crises or Political? Not Learning from the Past”
Akbar Zaidi, Visiting Professor at SIPA and MESAAS
“The Military and Democracy after Musharraf”
Aqil Shah, Research Fellow, Society of Fellows Harvard University
“Internal Security at the Time of Counter Insurgency”
Hassan Abbas, Quaid-i-Azam Chair at the South Asia Institute, Columbia University
“Will the Judiciary Save Pakistan?”
Phillip Oldenburg, Columbia University
LUNCH 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm
AFTERNOON SESSION 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Pakistan in its Region and Beyond
“The Afghan and Pakistani Taliban as a Social Movement”
Maryam Abou-Zahab, CERI – Sciences Po
“India and Pakistan in Afghanistan: Opportunities and Constraints”
Christine Fair, Assistant Professor at the Center for Peace and Security Studies (CPASS), Georgetown
“Prospects for Normalization of Indo-Pak Relations”
W.S.P. Sidhu, Vice President of Programs at the East West Institute in New York
“US-Pakistan Relations at the Crossroads – Once Again”
Christophe Jaffrelot, CERI - Sciences Po/CNRS
Friday, November 5, 2010
7:30 pm
A Jihad for Love: A Screening and Conversation
Alfred Lerner Hall, Room 569
A lesbian couple living in Turkey. A gay imam in South Africa. An Egyptian refugee in France. A Jihad for Love’s narrators are as diverse in point of view as they are in location and lifestyle. The two things they all have in common—their faith and their sexual orientation—are the subjects of this film by director Parvez Sharma.
A Jihad for Love has won numerous awards, including Best Documentary at Torino Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (Torino, Italy), MIX Brasil (Sao Paolo, Brazil), and The Image+Nation Film Festival (Montreal, Quebec).
In the Names of Gods is a film series sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion. Q&A with filmmakers to follow screening.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
4:00 pm
The Pragmatism of Human Rights
Sciences Po, Amphitheatre Emile Boutmy 27 Rue Saint Guillaume, 75007 Paris
A lecture by Jack L. Snyder, Columbia University. Followed by a panel discussion, moderated by Christian Lequesne (Sciences Po-CERI, Director) and featuring: Bertrand Badie (Sciences Po), Ariel Colonomos (Sciences Po-CERI), Pierre Hassner (Sciences Po-CERI), Karoline Postel-Vinay (Sciences Po-CERI).
Friday, October 29, 2010
8:30 pm
Constantine's Sword and Sister Rose's Passion: A Screening and Conversation
Alfred Lerner Hall, Room 555
The son of a Catholic Air Force officer, writer James Carroll had two heroes growing up--his father and St. Constantine. Based on the book by the same name, Constantine’s Sword interweaves the history of Christian violence and war with the personal narrative of how this history affected one man’s faith.
Sister Rose’s Passion is an Academy Award-nominated short film about a Dominican nun's personal campaign against anti-Semitism in the Catholic faith.
In the Names of Gods is a film series sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion. Q&A with filmmakers to follow screening.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
12:00 pm- 2:00 pm
Israel's Asymmetric Wars
801 International Affairs Building
Please join us for a discussion featuring Samy Cohen, Director of Research at Sciences Po and Alfred Stepan, the Wallace Sayre Professor of Government and Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion at Columbia University.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
4:30 pm
Hiding and Seeking: A Screening and ConversationAlfred Lerner Hall, Room 569
Meet Menachem Daum. An Orthodox Jew, a Brooklynite, the son of Holocaust survivors, and a man with an overwhelming sense of compassion. Menachem worries about the growing bigotry against non-Jews within his religious community and his own family.
Oren Rudavsky’s Hiding and Seeking chronicles the journey to Poland Menachem takes with his sons in order to teach them the values of an open perspective and the perils of a closed heart. Carrying with them the scars of history, they search for the Catholic family that risked their lives to hide Menachem’s father-in-law from the Nazis for over two years. To their surprise, they find that they are not the only ones carrying the burden of resentment.
In the Names of Gods is a film series sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion. Q&A with filmmakers to follow screening.
Friday, October 22, 2010
8:30 pm
The Lord is Not on Trial Here Today: A Screening and Conversation
Alfred Lerner Hall, Room 569
A screening and conversation with the director of The Lord is Not on Trial Here Today, a documentary that tells the compelling story behind the U.S. Supreme Court case that set the foundation for the separation of church and state in public schools. Jay Rosenstein is the film's writer, producer, and director. He is also Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Illinois. His previous films have been seen nationally on PBS, the ABC World News, ESPN, and the Independent Film Channel.
In the Names of Gods is a film series sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
6:30 pm
CDTR Film Series Opening Night - Screening of Chaplains Under Fire followed by Q&A with filmmaker
Alfred Lerner Hall, Roone Arledge Cinema
Should the government be allowed to fund the presence of religious clergy on our battlefields? Filmmakers Lee Lawrence and Terry Nickelson explore this complex question concerning US military chaplains in their emotional and thought-provoking documentary, Chaplains Under Fire.
In the Names of Gods is a film series sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion. Q&A with filmmakers to follow screening.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
12:00 pm- 2:00 pm
The Politics of the (un)civil Marriage in Israel
801 International Affairs Building
There is an ongoing tension between religious and secular groups within Israeli society, and the secular side is losing. The latest front in this war is marriage. Join Professor Hanna Lerner, of Israel's Tel Aviv University, as she discusses the current state of (un)civil marriage in Israel.
Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion.
Monday, October 11, 12:30 pm- 2:00 pm
European Security Policy: The Blurring of Internal and External Boundaries
801 International Affairs Building
Join Didier Bigo, professor of International Relations at Paris’ Sciences Po, and discussant Richard Betts, the Arnold A. Saltzman Professor of War and Peace Studies, and Director of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, and the Director of the International Security Policy Concentration at the School of International and Public Affairs for a discussion on the merging of internal and external aspects of security.
Co-sponsored by the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies and The European Institute.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
The Green Movement in Iran: Losing Politically but Reasserting Itself Socially
1219 International Affairs Building
The Iranian presidential election in June and the challenge to the
outcome saw the largest mobilization of citizens since the
Revolution of 1979. Join Fariba Adelkhah, of Paris' Sciences Po, for
a discussion of the future of this protest movement.
Friday-Saturday, October 1-2, 2010
9:00 am - 6:00 pm
Religious Conflict and Accommodation in India
707 International Affairs Building
A workshop led by Sudipta Kaviraj, Professor of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures, and Rajeev Bhargava, Director of the Center for Studies in Developing Societies (Delhi). Discussion will focus on the role of religion in India throughout its history, particularly the dynamics of conflict and accommodation between Buddhists and conventional Vedic religion and among Saivas, Vaisnavas and Jains in ancient and medieval society.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
11:00 am - 1:00 pm
Are European States Secular?
1219 International Affairs Building
A lecture by Rajeev Bhargava, Director of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CDSD) in India and renowned author of Secularism and Its Critics. Sudipta Kaviraj (Columbia University) will chair the lecture.
Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion, the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life, and the European Institute.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Comparative Politics Seminar Series: Why There is (Almost) no Christian Democracy in Post-Communist Europe
707 International Affairs Building
The first meeting of the 2010-2011 Comparative Politics Seminar Series will be held Wednesday, September 15th. The CP Seminar and the Harriman Institute are proud to welcome Anna Grzymala-Busse from the University of Michigan, who will be presenting on the topic of “Why There is (Almost) no Christian Democracy in Post-Communist Europe.”
Spring 2010
Thursday, May 6, 2010 2:00 - 6:30 pm and Friday May 7, 9:00 - 6:15 pm
Bogaziçi University, Istanbul
Choreography of Sacred Space: State, Religion and Conflict Resolution
An international conference in partnership with Bogaziçi University, Istanbul and Columbia University’s The Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR), Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL), and The Institute for the Study of Human Rights (ISHR)
View Program | Bios of invitees
Wednesday, May 5, 201012:00 – 2:00 pm
PhD Thesis Series on Religion and Politics
801 IAB
Tabinda Khan (Current PhD in Political Science, Columbia University)
“Resolving interpretive differences in Islamic lawmaking: Debates between the 'ulama and modernist Muslims in Pakistan”
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
4:00 – 5:30 pm
“Out of (Civilian) Control: The Pakistan Military and Politics in South Asian Perspective”, part of CDTR's PhD Thesis Series on Religion and Politics
802 International Affairs Building
Aqil Shah (Current PhD in Political Science, Columbia University) inducted 2010 into the Harvard Society of Fellows
Discussants: Alfred Stepan, and Jack Snyder
Aqil will discuss the origins and sources of sustained military intervention and weak civilian control in Pakistan in a regional perspective.
Reception following talk
Monday, April 26
4-5:30pm
Annual Mary Keating Das Lecture
Knox Hall, Room 208
606 West 122nd Street
No Longer Pakistani, Not Yet Indian: Migration and the Meaning of Citizenship
The Annual Mary Keating Das Lecture given by Niraja Gopal Jayal, Visiting Professor at Princeton University and Professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is author of Democracy and the State: Welfare, Secularism and Development in Contemporary India (1999) and director of the Ford Foundation project Dialogue on Democracy and Pluralism in South Asia.
Co-sponsored with the South Asia Institute and IRCPL
Friday, April 23, 2010
4:00 – 6:00 pm
“Religion, Ethnicity and Politics in West Africa: Senegal and Nigeria”
801 International Affairs Building
A discussion with Ousmane Kane, Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs, SIPA
Thursday, April 22, 2010
9:30 – 4:00 pm
Turkey: Citizenship and Institutions in Flux
Kellogg Center, International Affairs Building, 15th floor
Speakers: Can Paker (Chair, TESEV), Etyen Mahçupyan (Turkish/Armenian Journalist, former Editor in Chief of Agos), Dilek Kurban (Program Officer, TESEV), Henri Barkey, (Lehigh University, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) Zehra Arat (SUNY Purchase), Jeremy Walton (New York University).
Panels will address how questions related to identity, nation-state and citizenship are being reshaped from below and how the Turkish state responds to minority, ethnic and religious challenges to citizenship in Turkey. They will also examine the role and limits of state institutions and civil society in responding to social pressure for change.
Co-sponsored by the Institute of Turkish Studies, the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR), the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life (IRCPL), and the Middle East Institute (MEI)
Saturday, April 17, 2010
9:00 am – 5:00 pm
An Interactive Forum on New Media and Social Change in Iran: New Generation, New Perspectives, New Media
Low Memorial Library
A prestigious group of over a dozen Iranian scholars, media entrepreneurs, and democratic activists will discuss the role of new forms of media in the pursuit of social change within Iran. The forum will feature a series of talks in Low Library in the morning and interactive break-out sessions on various topics in the afternoon.
For more information, see www.newgenerationforum.org
Thursday, April 15, 2010
4:00 – 6:00 pm
The Religious Diversity Gap: A Global Comparison of Minorities in Christian and Muslim Countries
801 International Affairs Building
Sener Akturk
Post-Doctoral Fellow,Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies,Harvard University
Friday, April 2, 2010
**SPECIAL MUSICAL EVENT**
Amjaad Ali Khan: Master of Sarod with Amaan and Ayaan Ali Khan
Lecture in Lerner Hall (6-7PM) Concert in Miller Theatre (8-10PM)
Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, one of the greatest Indian musicians alive and Grammy nominee will lecture and perform at Columbia. Khan's music exemplifies Indian's multi-ethnic and multi-religious tradition of toleration, incorporating musical themes from many different origins. He will lecture both on music and on how music can promote
peace and tolerance. He will be accompanied by his two sons, Amaan Ali Khan and Ayaan Ali Khan who are also very accomplished musicians with a worldwide reputation. They play a soulful stringed instrument called the sarod.
FOR CONCERT TICKETS:
www.millertheatre.com
FOR LECTURE TICKETS
http://cuarts.com/calendar/view/type/4/event_id/5288
Friday, April 2, 2010
8:30 am - 7:30 pm
The Challenges of Integration: Muslim Immigrants and Their Children in the United States and France
1501 International Affairs Building
A series of discussions on Muslims and the state, national and transnational public spheres, gender, race, ethnicity, and citizenship.
Participants include: Souleymane Bachir Diagne (Columbia), Malika Zeghal (University of Chicago), Rosemary Hicks (Columbia), Mohamed Nimeir (American University), Solenne Jouaneau (Universite Paris sDiderot), Ahmet Kuru (San Diego State University), Louise Cainkar (Marquette University), Valerie Amiraux (Univeristy of Montreal), Simona Tersigni (University of Strasbourg), Ousmane Kane (Columbia), Aminah Mohammed Arif (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales), Hisham Aidi (Columbia), Robert Lieberman (Columbia), Mucahit Bilici (John Jay College, CUNY), Mahamet Timera (University of Paris), Samim Akgonul (Professor Marc Boch Strasbourg University).
Thursday, April 1, 2010
6:00 - 8:00 pm
CDTR Series on Religion, Ethnicity and Politics
801 IAB
Ahmet Kuru (San Diego State University)
"Secularism and State Policies toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey."
Co-sponsored by ISERP
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
12:00-2:00 pm
PhD Thesis Series on Religion and Politics
801 IAB
Haroon Moghul (Current PhD in MEALAC, Columbia University)
“Parliaments of Caliphs: Reconstructing Islamic Law in Allama Iqbal’s League of Muslim Nations”
Thursday, March 25, 2010
4:00 - 5:30 pm
802 International Affairs Building
"Salvation Through Christ or Marx: Religion in Revolutionary Cuba 1959-2009"
A discussion with Professor Margaret Crahan, Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion and Senior Research Scholar at the Institute for Latin American Studies at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
12:00 – 2:00 pm
270B International Affairs Building
PhD Thesis Series on Religion and Politics
“Religions of Doubt: Critique of Religion and Modernity in the Frankfurt School and In Iran – Adorno, Benjamin, Shariati and al-e Ahmad”
Ajay Chaudhary (Current PhD in MEALAC, Columbia University)
Discussant: Sudipta Kaviraj
LUNCH WILL BE SERVED
Directions to 270B: 270B is located in the School of the International Affairs Building *Extension*.
when entering the main building from the street, you will be on the fourth level. The entrance to the extension is at the end of a hallway in the northeast corner of this floor, just past the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) admissions office. From there, take the elevator or stairs down to the second level. Conference Room 270B IAB is on the second level just through the main entrance to ISERP's research suite.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
4:00 - 6:00 pm
801 International Affairs Building
"Islam in Indonesia: Changing Relations between the State and Organized Religion"
A discussion with Michael Buehler, a Postdoctoral Fellow in Modern Southeast Asian Studies 2008-2010 at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, and Alfred Stepan, the Wallace Sayre Professor of Government, Columbia University.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
12:00 - 2:00 pm
PhD Thesis Series on Religion and Politics
270B IAB
“Islamist Politics and Religious Education in Contemporary Turkey”
A discussion with Iren Ozgur, 2009 PhD in Oriental Studies at Oxford University. Current Adjunct Faculty member at NYUs Kevorkian Center. Moderated by Karen Barkey, Professor of Sociology.
270B is located in the School of the International Affairs Building Extension. When entering the main building from the street, you will be on the fourth level. The entrance to the extension is at the end of a hallway in the northeast corner of this floor, just past the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) admissions office. From there, take the elevator or stairs down to the second level. Conference Room 270B IAB is on the second level just through the main entrance to ISERP's research suite.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
12:00 – 1:15 pm
“Moderate Secularism, Religion as Identity and Respect for Religion”
1512 IAB
Tariq Modood, Professor of Sociology at the University of Bristol and director of the Research Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship at the University of Bristol.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010, 12:00 – 2:00 pm
PhD Thesis Series on Religion and Politics
801 IAB
Emily Bech (current PhD Political Science, Columbia University)
'Who Belongs? Religion, National Identity and Immigrant Integration in Denmark and Sweden'
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
4:00 – 6:00 pm
CDTR Religion, Ethnicity, and Politics Series
801 IAB
Fatma Gocek (University of Michigan)
"Deciphering Denial: State, Modernity, and the 1915 Armenian Ethnic Cleansing."
Co-sponsored by CDTR and ISERP
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
3:00-5:00 PM
1512 International Affairs Building
Martin van Bruinessen (Utrecht University)
“Shari’a and the State, a comparative perspective”.
Professor van Bruinessen will speak on the development of the madrasa and the intellectual history of fiqh in Indonesia.
Co-sponsored by the Middle East Institute, the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, and CDTR
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
8:15 - 10:00 pm
Human Rights in Iran: Discussion and Film Screening
Columbia University, International Affairs Building, Room 413
Please join a screening and discussion of selected clips from "Heaven's Taxi" and "Iran Zendan", two feature films among the first to address the political situation and the treatment of prisoners in the Islamic Republic of Iran since the presidential election in June 2009. Panelists include Daryush Shokof: Writer, Director, Producer, Hasan Demicri: Producer, Stunt Coordinator, Taies Farzan: Actress and Co-Producer, Vadim Glowna: Actor and Producer, Bahman Maghsoudlou: Producer, Founder and President of International Film and Video Center, Mahnaz Talebitari: Production Manager and Co-Producer, and Daryoush Zandi, Editor.
Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Human Rights (CSHR). Co-sponsored by the Human Rights Working Group at SIPA, the Human Rights Concentration at SIPA and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR).
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
6:30-8:00 pm
Local Conflicts as a Global Challenge
1501 IAB
A conversation with George Rupp, President of the International Rescue Committee. Moderated by Mark C. Taylor, Chair of the Department of Religion.
Co-sponsored by CDTR and IRCPL
Friday, February 12, 2010
12:00 - 1:30 pm
Human Rights in the Arab World and Beyond
Columbia University, Fayerweather Hall, Room 311, near Amsterdam Ave. & 117th st. gate
Please join us for an in-depth discussion of a new report by the Cairo Institute of Human Rights (CIHRS) and its implications for U.S. policy, with remarks from:
Bahey Eldin Hassan, General Director, Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies
Jeremie Smith, Director, Geneva Office of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies
Radwan Ziadeh, Founding Director, Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies
In 2009, the condition of human rights in the Arab world deteriorated significantly on several fronts, prompting CIHRS to refer to the region as a "bastion of impunity" witnessing a "mirage of reform." In its second annual report on the subject, CIHRS highlights several developments over the past year that have threatened personal freedoms and regional progress toward improved human rights standards in 12 Arab countries. These trends include the persistence of "widespread impunity and flagrant lack of accountability" in addition to a variety of repressive legal measures regimes have taken to undermine basic liberties, such as emergency and anti-terrorism laws. The report also brings to the fore concerns about religious freedom, highlighting the deteriorating status of religious minorities, as well as the tendency of regimes to align themselves with radical Islamists in an effort to simultaneously "mend their tattered political legitimacy" and sideline moderate Islamists. The authors also point to increased suppression of political dissent and consistent attacks on freedom of expression and non-violent protest.
Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Human Rights (CSHR). Co sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR).
Thursday, February 11, 2010
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
The Non-Proliferation Issue Within the Iranian Context
1501 IAB
A discussion with Ambassador Gérard Araud, French Ambassador to the United Nations, moderated by Richard Bulliet (Columbia University).
Ambassador Gerard Araud is the Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations in New York. He will engage in a discussion with Professor Bulliet and the Columbia community on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. On the day of the anniversary of the Iranian revolution, this discussion will be very timely as a new resolution on the Iranian crisis is under discussion at the United Nations, while France is presiding to the Security Council.
Ambassador Araud is a former Ambassador of France to Israel (2003-2006) and a former Director of Strategic Affairs, Security and Disarmament for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2000-2003). Richard W. Bulliet is a Professor of History at Columbia University who specializes in Middle Eastern history and the social and institutional history of Islamic countries. He has written extensively on Iran.
Co-sponsored by the Columbia-Paris Alliance Program; the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR); the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL); the Middle East Institute (MEI); the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and the UN Studies Program.