Undergraduate Global Scholars are student leaders in the campus community. This competitive fellowship program is open to students from all colleges and majors with a passion for big global questions and speaking across differences. The Global Scholars program provides a toolkit of resources for weighing challenging questions and builds your practical skills in public debates. For the 2024-2025 school year, Scholars will bring their skills as writers, scholars, activists and artists, poets, hands-on practitioners, and more to study and promote democracy building. By the end of the program, you'll be an active global citizen and champion for social impact.

Applications are due Friday, September 20.

Can’t attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu.

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The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

Speaker: Laura T. Murphy, Policy Advisor, Department of Homeland Security and Professor of Human Rights, Sheffield Hallam University

Laura Murphy will discuss the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, the landmark forced labor legislation that prohibits goods made in the Uyghur Region of China from import into the United States, including the effects of the law after two years of implementation. She will discuss the methods researchers use to uncover forced labor in China and the critical importance of that work to government efforts to prevent forced labor-made goods from entering the US. She will also discuss the government’s collaborations with industry and civil society to effect meaningful change for workers and protect the rights of people globally.

Bio: Laura T. Murphy, Ph.D. is Policy Advisor to Under Secretary Robert Silvers in the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Policy. Her role in the Office of Policy is to advise on forced labor, in particular on the implementation and enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. She is Professor of Human Rights and Contemporary Slavery at Sheffield Hallam University in the U.K. Her recent academic work focused on researching forced labor in the Uyghur Region of China and identifying risk of forced-labor-made goods in international supply chains. She has worked internationally on forms of forced labor and human trafficking, including in West Africa, India, the United States, and Canada. She is author of numerous academic books and articles on the issue of forced labor globally.

Introduced by faculty host, Magnus Fiskesjö (Anthropology).

Cosponsored by the Department of Asian Studies, Contemporary Muslim Societies Program, Critical Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Studies Program, the Department of Global Labor and Work (ILR), and the Global Labor Institute, Government, as well as the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.

This year's Annual Hu Shih Distinguished Lecture is titled: From Research Assistants to Professors: Scholars from China as Experts on China, 1920-1960 Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Professor Emeritus, History, University of Washington

This talk will look at the growth of China studies as an academic field in the US with attention to its changing demography. China Studies was tiny in the 1920s, with few colleges offering anything, and returned missionaries or their children the main teachers. Graduate students were often sent to Europe, where Sinological training was more advanced. World War II brought more American men into the field, but the Cold War had even greater impact as the US government decided not to send Chinese foreign students back to China and funded numerous research projects that allowed many to retrain as China experts. That gave them time to find academic jobs as US higher education gradually expanded. The growing presence of faculty members who had grown up in China, while never part of a strategic plan, is one reason that the US leaped ahead of Europe in Sinological studies by the 1960s.

Patricia Ebrey short bio:

Patricia Buckley Ebrey is professor emeritus of history at the University of Washington. Her scholarship has focused on the imperial period, especially the Song dynasty. Among her best-known books are The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period (1993), The Cambridge Illustrated History of China (1996), and Emperor Huizong (2014). Her most recent book is a co-authored set of translations, Chinese Autobiographical Writing (2023).

Introduced by TJ Hinrichs (History) and Suyoung Son (Asian Studies).

The Social Movement to Legalize Same-sex Marriage in Taiwan: Mobilizing the Court, the Legislature, and the People

Speaker: Hsiao-wei Kuan, College of Law, National Taipei University, Taiwan

Taiwan will mark the 5th anniversary of legalizing same-sex marriage in May 2024. The achievement of marriage equality in Taiwan unfolded through a complex political process involving judicial, legislative, and popular initiatives. In May 2017, Taiwan's Constitutional Court deemed the Civil Code's denial of equal marriage rights for same-sex couples unconstitutional. This landmark decision gave the legislature a two-year window to revise existing laws or create new ones to permit same-sex marriage. However, this progress faced setbacks when voters approved two anti-same-sex marriage initiatives at the end of 2018. In response, the legislature passed a new law that granted substantive marriage rights to same-sex couples without using the term "marriage" explicitly. This talk will explore how the movement for same-sex marriage leveraged the Constitutional Court, Parliament, and popular support to advance its cause amidst opposition.

Introduced by Yun-chien Chang, Jack G. Clarke Professor in East Asian Law, Cornell

A light lunch will be served. RSVP by August 30, 2024. The lecture venue is subject to change. Those who RSVP will automatically be notified.

Short Bio of the speaker:

Dr. Hsiaowei Kuan is a law professor at the College of Law, National Taipei University in Taiwan. She holds an LL.M. and an S.J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Law. With a scholarly focus on the intricate intersections of gender and law, legal mobilization, and the vital domains of women's rights and LGBTI+ rights, her written contributions have significantly enriched these fields of study.

Co-sponsored by the Clarke Program in East Asian Law and Culture.