Month: April 2016

Thursday, April 14
4:30-6 pm
SCC 314

Join the Brandeis International Journal for a moderated discussion on current trends in global democratization and democratic governance. Individual presentations and interactive panel discussion will analyze how grassroots, institutional, and international pressures shape the evolution of regimes. Refreshments will be provided.

Panelists include:

Dr. Yuhua Wang – assistant professor in the Department of Government at Harvard University

Dr. William Hurst – associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University and a fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University

Dr. Chandler Rosenberger – assistant professor of International and Global Studies and Sociology at Brandeis University

 

 

In 2003, as the United States invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein, Kenan Makiya supported the campaign.  After all, Makiya had written The Republic of Fear, the definitive history of Hussein’s rise to power and the brutal police state he ran. More than a decade later, Makiya is out with a new novel and new thoughts on the war and its aftermath. Today Brandeis will have the privilege of hearing his reflections and those of an all-star panel gathered to discuss the book.

Discussants include:

Hayder Al-Mohammad, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Dexter Filkins, Staff Writer for the New Yorker and author of The Forever War

Emma Sky, Director of Yale World Fellows and author of The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq.

That’s:

Wednesday, April 14
4-6 pm
Rapaporte Treasure Hall

Middle Eastern food will be served.

 

If it’s Wednesday, it must be another IGS cosponsored event!  Tomorrow we’re turning our attention to China, with two talks on the emergence of modern life there. 

First, at 2 pm tomorrow, April 13, Beijing University sociologist Professor Lu Huilin will discuss “The New Generation of Peasant Migrant  Workers.”  We’ve read stories of suicides in Apple’s I-Phone factories, but what are labor conditions like in China’s booming factory towns?  Does unrest there pose a threat to China’s internal stability?

Then at 3:30 pm, we’ll consider: what are the roots of failed governance and unrest?  What happened to China’s traditional Confucian order?  Professor Sun Feiyu, also a sociologist at Beijing University, will speak on “The Tragedy of Mao’s Revolution: The Destruction of the Traditional Elite and its Implications for Good Governance in China.”

Both talks will take place in the International Lounge in Usdan.  Hope to see you there for one, or both!

The European Union was founded after World War II to bring Europe’s nations and people towards new cooperation, peace, and prosperity. Seventy years later the EU is grappling with overlapping multiple crises – in the Eurozone, with refugee, and the possibility that key members like the UK will leave, among others.

What has happened to the European dream? Can it be replaced by a new vision? What if it cannot?

On Tuesday George Ross, one of the great experts on the European Union, will provide some context to the current developments in the EU. He will speak:

Tuesday, April 12, 5-7pm
Levine-Ross, Hassenfeld Conference Center
RSVP here. 

Professor Ross is presently ad personam Chaire Jean Monnet at the University of Montreal-McGill Center for Excellence on the European Union, Canada (an appointment granted by the European Union to honor distinguished international contributions to the understanding of European integration). He served as chair of the European Union Studies Association (2003-2005), acting director of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University, executive director of the European Union Center at Harvard University, chair of the Council for European Studies (1990-1997), and as Director of the Center for German and European Studies at Brandeis (1998-2008). Click on the link for a more detailed bio.