Media
Spring 2012 CDTR Podcasts
Islam and Christianity in Interfaith Dialogue
Friday, April 20
with Mustafa Akyol and Father Daniel Madigan
In discussions of religion and liberty, the event focuses on moderate or conservative strains of Islam and how one’s view can affect how Quranic interpretation can lead to humanist depictions of freedom and democracy or to a justification of authoritarian political force. What is the common ground that exists between Christianity and Islam in both conservative and moderate traditions in both religions? The work that Madigan and others have allowed for the movement towards interfaith dialogue and on finding and strengthening the common ground between religions.
Senegal's Presidential Election: How Wade Lost and Democracy Won
Monday, April 2
Etienne Smith (Fellow, Committee on Global Thought) and Souleymane Bachir Diagne (Columbia University) will discuss why and how Senegal averted a major democratic crisis during its February/March two-round presidential elections. Moderated by Alfred Stepan (Columbia University).
Expanding and Shrinking Areas of Liberty: Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and Syria
Thursday March 29
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.
Dr. Alfred Stepan (Wallace Sayre Professor of Government, Columbia University) Listen here
Dr. Nouzha Guessous (Human Rights and Social Activist; A Key Creator of Morocco's Progressive 2004 Family Code) with Nina zu Fürstenberg (President, Board of Governors, Reset-Dialogues on Civilization) Listen here
Dr. Radwan Masmoudi (President, Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, Tunisia)
Dr. Tarek Masoud (Egyptian Specialist on Political Transitions, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Harvard's Jon F. Kennedy School of Government)
Dr. Toby C. Jones (Specialist on Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, Associate Professor of History, Rutgers) Listen here
Dr. Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro (Chairman, United Nations Human Rights Council's Commission of Inquiry on Syria) Listen here
Saudi Arabia and the Arab Spring Uprisings
February 9, 2012
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.
Fall 2011 CDTR Podcasts
Thursday, Nov. 10 and Friday, Nov. 11: Workshops on Religion and Human Rights Pragmatism: Strategies for promoting rights through dialogue across religions and cultures
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 workshops on Thursday and Friday, Nov. 10 and Nov. 11, focused on strategies for promoting rights through persuasion and dialogue across cultural and religious divides.
Co-sponsored with The Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life (IRCPL)
Religious and secular targets of human rights persuasion
Introduction -- Jack Sndyer, Columbia University-- Listen here
Panelists: Stephen Hopgood, SOAS University of London, “Selling human rights retail: competing with nationalism, religion, and other forms of political ideology.” -- Listen here
Thomas Kellogg, Open Society Foundations, “Human Rights Persuasion between Secular Democrats and Secular Authoritarians: The Case of China.” -- Listen here
Discussants: Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch -- Listen here
Fabienne Hara, International Crisis Group -- Listen here
Session One Q&A -- Listen here
Panel 2 Religious
and
Secular
Proponents
of
Rights
and
Justice
Panelists: Daniel Philpott, Notre Dame University, “Religious and Secular Approaches to Transitional Justice and Democratization.” -- Listen here
Leslie Vinjamuri, SOAS, “Religion, Justice, and the Contestation of Norms.” -- Listen here
Discussants: Azza Karam, UNFPA -- Listen here
Sally Merry, New York University-- Listen here
Session Two Q&A -- Listen here
Friday, Nov. 11
Day Two Introduction -- Jack Snyder, Columbia University -- Listen here
Local dialogues about human rights
Panelists: Ron Hassner, UC Berkeley, “How Religious Leaders Persuade Their Own Followers to Change.” -- Listen here
Dorothy Q. Thomas,
“Strategic
Challenges
to
Bringing
Human
Rights
Home
in
the
U.S.” -- Listen here
Anupama Rao, Barnard College, “Localizing Human Rights Discourse on Caste and Gendered
Violence in Contemporary India.” -- Listen here
Discussants: Amaney Jamal, Princeton -- Listen here
Courtney Bender, Columbia University -- Listen here
Session One Q&A -- Listen here
Religion, cultural specificity, and universalism in dialogues about human rights
Panelists: Sally Merry, New York University, "Vernacularization on the Ground." -- Listen here
Lila Abu-Lughod, Columbia, "The Missionary Work of Women's Rights as Human Rights." -- Listen here
Burton Visotzky, Jewish Theological Seminary, "What Works and What Doesn't in International Interreligious Dialogue." -- Listen here
Session Two Q&A -- Listen here
Strategies of Persuasion Across Religious Boundaries
Naz Modirzadeh, Harvard University, "Forcing Intracultural Debate on Human Rights: Reflections on ‘Taking Islamic Law Seriously’." -- Listen here
Elizabeth Hurd, Northwestern University, "Religious Freedom and the Politics of Persuasion." -- Listen here
Session Three Q&A -- Listen here
Wednesday, November 9, 2011: Sacred Sites Violence: Gujarat and the Challenge of Accountability
and Hindu-Muslim Relations
A workshop with Shabnam Hashmi (Act Now for Harmony and Democracy); Christophe Jaffrelot (CERI, Sciences Po); Elazar Barkan (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.
Workshop Schedule:
Gujarat Living Memory – Civil Society Advocacy in the Last Decade
Introduction, Elazar Barkan -- Listen here
The Gujarat pogrom, Christophe Jaffrelot -- Listen here
Post-conflict Reconciliation: Engaging with History, Shabnam Hashmi -- Listen here
Discussion -- Listen here
2:15 - 4:00 - Sacred sites, violence and coexistence
Choreography of Violence, Elazar Barkan -- Listen here
Is Reconciliation Possible in Gujarat?, Rajeev Bhargava -- Listen here
Discussion - Listen here
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.
Friday, October 7, 2011: Muslim American Citizenship: A Decade Since 9/11
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
Speakers:
Farid Senzai (Santa Clara University, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding) -- Listen here
Suhail Khan (Institute for Global Engagement)-- Listen here
Amaney Jamal (Princeton University) & Irfan Nooruddin (Ohio State University)-- Listen here
Moderator: Ousmane Kane (Columbia University)
Panel One discussion -- Listen here
Panel Two: Countering Violent Extremism: Myths and Realities
Introduction: Faiza Patel (Brennan Center for Justice)-- Listen here
Speakers:
Charles Kurzman (University of North Carolina)-- Listen here
Bilal Ansari (Williams College)-- Listen here
Mohamed Younis (Gallup Abu Dhabi)-- Listen here
Arun Kundnani (Open Society Institute)-- Listen here
Moderator: Faiza Patel (Brennan Center for Justice)
Panel Two Discussion -- Listen here
Panel Three: Policing and Urban Zoning Laws
Introduction: Emily Berman (Brennan Center for Justice)-- Listen here
Speakers:
Sally Howell (University of Michigan, Dearborn)-- Listen here
Kathleen Foley (Cornell University, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding)-- Listen here
Arshad Ali (Teachers College)-- Listen here
Moderator: Emily Berman (Brennan Center for Justice)
Panel Three Discussion -- Listen here
Panel Four: Profiling, Racialization, and Mobilization
Speakers:
Zareena Grewal (Yale University, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding)
Hishaam Aidi (Columbia University)
Zaheer Ali (Columbia University) -- Listen here
Sahar Aziz (Texas Wesleyan University of Law, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding) -- Listen here
Moderator: Ramzi Kassem (CUNY Law)
Keynote & discussion
Asifa Quraishi (University of Wisconsin Law School, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding) -- Listen here
September 24, 2011: Religion and Human Rights Pragmatism: 2011 Conference One: Promoting Rights Across Norms
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.
Panel One:
Understanding norms change and diffusion
Chair and introduction: Jack Snyder (Columbia University) -- Listen here.
Panelists: Kathryn Sikkink (University of Minnesota) -- Listen here.
Emilie Hafner‐Burton (University of California at San Diego) -- Listen here.
Amitav Acharya (American University) -- Listen here.
Charli Carpenter (University of Massachusetts‐Amherst) -- Listen here.
Discussants: Kenneth Roth (Human Rights Watch) -- Listen here.
Samuel Moyn (Columbia University) -- Listen here.
Audience Q & A -- Listen here.
Panel Two:
Norms change initiatives by regional, local, and religious actors
Panelists: James Ron (University of Minnesota) -- Listen here
Alfred Stepan (Columbia University) -- Listen here
Tsveta Petrova (Columbia University Harriman Institute) -- Listen here
Daniel Goldstein (Rutgers University) -- Listen here
Discussant: Leslie Vinjamuri (School of Oriental and African Studies) -- Listen here
Audience Q & A -- Listen here
September 22, 2011 - What Egypt Might Learn about Reducing Military Prerogatives from Indonesia
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.
September 21, 2011: Indonesia's Decade of Decentralization: The Rise of Local Identities and the Survival of the Nation State
Speakers: Professor Marcus Mietzner (Australia National University), Prof. Alfred Stepan (Columbia)
Moderated by Professor Ann Marie Murphy
In this roundtable discussion, Mietzner reviewed the state of decentralization in Indonesia ten years after its launch in 2001 and focued 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. Also
Co-sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion
Listen here.
Spring 2011 CDTR Podcasts
April 20, 2011: Murat Somer: Muslim Politics, Moderation and Democratization: Lessons from Comparing Religious
and Secular Values in Turkey
Murat Somer is a Democracy and Development Fellow at the Institute for International & Regional Studies, Princeton University.
Listen here.
May 1, 20211: Religious Law, Local Practice, and Global Debates about Muslim Women’s Rights: The Politics of Consent
Click here to explore media from this April 2011 conference held the Columbia University Center for Middle East Research (CUMERC) in Amman Jordan. Co-sponsored by CDTR project Who's Afraid of Sharia, helmed be Lila Abu-Lughod.
March 29, 2011: Comparative Perspectives on Constitution-making, Political Transitions, and Secularism: Turkey, United States, and India.
CDTR and the Democratization Program (DP) of the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), based in Istanbul hosted this conference, featuring scholars from around the world.
Panel One: Constitutionalism and Constitution-Making and Judicial Reform in Turkey, India, and the United States.
Moderator: Karen Barkey (Columbia University) -- Listen here
Speakers: Levent Köker (Law Department, Atılım University) - Listen here
Güneş Murat Tezcür (Political Science Department, Loyola University Chicago) - Listen here
Kendall Thomas (Law Faculty, Columbia University) - Listen here
Uday Mehta (Graduate Center CUNY) - Listen here
Discussion - Listen here
Panel Two Facing the Past: Transition, Truth-Seeking, and Justice in Turkey and the United States
Moderator: Güneş Murat Tezcür
Speakers: Dilek Kurban (TESEV DP) - Listen here
Nazan üstündağ (Boğazici University) - Listen here
Elazar Barkan (Columbia University) - Listen here
John Torpey (Graduate Center at CUNY)
Panel Three - Religion-State and Society Relations: Turkey and India
Moderator: Etyen Mahçupyan (TESEV Democratization Program) - Listen here
Speakers: Nilüfer GOLE (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) - Listen here
Reşat Kasaba (University of Washington) - Listen here
Sudipta Kaviraj (Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University) - Listen here
Discussion - Listen here
March 8, 2011: The Egyptian Transition in Context
CDTR Chair Alfred Stepan joins Mona El-Ghobashy (Barnard College), Timothy Frye (Columbia), and Mirjam Kuenkler (Princeton University) for a discussion that 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.
Listen here.
March 4, 2011: Religious Fundamentalisms and Politics: A Clash About What?
Olivier Roy discusses ideas from his critically acclaimed book, Holy Ignorance, that has just been translated into English. Roy (1949) is presently Professor at the European University Institute (Florence): he heads the Mediterranean progamme at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. 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.
Listen here.
February 16, 2011: Headscarf and Discrimination: Labor Market Discrimination in Contemporary Turkey
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. 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.
Listen here.
February 2, 2011: The Jihadis' Path to Self-Destruction
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.Lecturer Nelly Lahoud is an Associate Professor with the Combating Terrorism Center in the Department of Social Sciences, United States Military Academy, West Point. Discussant Jean-Pierre Filiu is an Associate Professor, Middle East/Mediterranean Chair at CERI, Sciences Po specializing in Islam and International Relations.
Listen here.
Fall 2010 CDTR Podcasts
November 10, 2010: Pakistan 2010: The Most Dangerous Decade Begins
A conference featuring 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.
Listen at SIPA's website.
October 27, 2010: Israel's Asymmetric Wars
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.
Listen here.
October 1, 2010: Religious Conflict and Accommodation in India
A discussion 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.
Listen here.
October 7, 2010: The Future of the Green Movement in Iran
The Iranian presidential election in June and the challenge to the outcome saw the largest mobilization of citizens since the Revolution of 1979. Hear Fariba Adelkhah, of Paris' Sciences Po, discuss of the future of this protest movement.
Listen here.
Previous events
May, 2009: Choreography of Sacred Space: State, Religion and Conflict Resolution
Click here to explore the May 2009 conference, Choreography of Sacred Space: State, Religion and Conflict Resolution, conducted 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).