"When They Come For Your Identity: The Ongoing Destruction of Living and Historical Heritage in the Uyghur Region, China"

Since 2017, a cultural genocide is unfolding in Western China. This illustrated lecture reveals the staggering scope: The living, historical, and archaeological heritage of the Uyghurs, the Kazakhs and other indigenous peoples is being systematically demolished. Pilgrimage sites and houses of worship are razed, historical cemeteries obliterated (one dating to 960AD), indigenous architecture destroyed -- even home interior decoration is forcibly torn down. Native cultural and religious practices are forbidden; hundreds of native artists, poets, musicians, and academics have been disappeared into concentration camps, alongside hundreds of thousands of other innocent people. This presentation focuses on the material destruction, and places it in the context of the unfolding genocide.

I also discuss how the campaign relates to the legal constraints of the 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention (from which cultural genocide was dropped, due to objections from the former colonial powers), and to China's current commitments to cultural heritage protection as a human right, as defined in the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in 2018 -- the closest we have to a legal writ against cultural genocide. I also look briefly at how the new Chinese state program of accelerated, forced cultural assimilation is being expanded to Tibetans and other non-Chinese peoples ruled by China.

About the speaker:

Magnus Fiskesjö is an associate professor of anthropology and core faculty member of the Cornell Institute of Archaeology & Material Studies (CIAMS). Professor Fiskesjö's research concerns ethnic relations and political anthropology in China and Southeast Asia. He is affiliated with the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies as a steering committee and/or core faculty member of the Judith Reppy Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, the East Asia Program and the Southeast Asia Program.

A Webinar Sponsored by The Levinson China & Asia-Pacific Studies Program

Virtual event. Seven students in the Korean Language Program will compete in a Korean singing contest for prizes! The audience will vote. Pre-recorded performances by Cornell's dance groups, LOKO and E.Motion will be played as well. Open to the public.

An online panel discussion considering relations between modern mapping, as a configuration of spatial difference, and modern figurations of race and ethnicity in Japanese Studies.

Hosted by Brett de Bary, Professor Emerita, Asian Studies and Comparative Literature

Participants:

Discussant – John Namjum Kim, Associate Professor, German/Japanese/Comparative Literature, UC RiversideDiscussant – Parisa Vaziri, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature & Near Eastern Studies, CornellAndrew Harding, Ph.D. candidate in the field of Asian Literature, Religion & Culture,
“Make Zainichi Korean Again: The Allure of the Sovereign Figure in Post-Colonial Japan and Korea”Andrea Mendoza, Assistant Professor of Japanese and Comparative Literature, UC San Diego,
“Toward a Critical Phenomenology of the Transpacific”Dexter Thomas, culture correspondent for Vice News,
“Black Liberation in Japanese Manga: Another Look at Golgo 13”Paul McQuade, Ph.D. candidate in the field of Asian Literature, Religion & Culture,
“Translating Race: Mapping Language and Ethnicity”This panel discussion will consider relations between modern mapping, as a configuration of spatial difference, and modern figurations of race and ethnicity in Japanese Studies, as well as the spatially bounded “Japan” taken to be its object. How do we understand how figures of race and ethnicity, as fundamentally aesthetic constructions without much reference to socio-demographic existences, nevertheless can mobilize such powerful political effects? How is our ability to critically read these figures shaped by geopolitical mappings institutionalized in postwar Area Studies? How do we historicize the multiple distinctions between “interiority” and “exteriority” these mappings enable? Panelists will propose and discuss possible approaches to these questions.

Protests against racism and police violence crescendoed in the United States and around the world in 2020. In the United States and internationally, how can we balance social justice, accountability, and personal freedom with demands for order and security?

This Lund Critical Debate brings together the United Nations’ police commissioner and a noted expert on political conflict resolution to discuss strategies—both inside and outside the policing framework—for public safety and law enforcement. The conversation will address current questions around security and policing, including political violence, racial injustice and Black Lives Matter, and global responses to unlawful use of force.

The panel welcomes questions in advance and during the event. Registration is required.

Panelists
Luís Carrilho, United Nations Police Adviser. He has served since November 2017 as police commissioner and director of the UN’s Police Division. He previously served as the police commissioner in multidimensional United Nations peacekeeping operations in Timor Leste, Haiti, and the Central African Republic.

Christian Davenport, Professor, Department of Political Science and Public Policy, University of Michigan. His research focuses on racism, social movements, and political conflict, including human rights violations, genocide, torture, political surveillance, and civil war. His most recent book is The Peace Continuum: What It Is and How To Study It (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Moderator
Sabrina Karim, Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies; Hardis Family Assistant Professor for Teaching Excellence, Department of Government, A&S. Her research focuses on conflict and peace processes, international involvement in post-conflict security, and state building in the aftermath of civil war.

About the Debate
This year’s Lund Critical Debate is hosted by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Einaudi Center. Established in 2008, the Einaudi Center's Lund Critical Debate Series is made possible by the generosity of Judith Lund Biggs ’57.

Celebrate International Education Week #IEW2020 with Global Cornell!

Join DJ Daniel Bass of WRFI's Monsoon Radio for world music of 2020—from coronavirus and mass incarceration, to migration, love, dancing, and beyond. Jonathan Miller of Homelands Productions cohosts.

For semi-finals: It's a semi-study break. See you there.

Registration is required.

Daniel Bass (South Asia Program) has been a radio DJ for nearly 30 years. As an undergraduate at Carleton College, he was music director of KRLX, the student-run radio station, and hosted a weekly show. In graduate school at the University of Michigan, he cohosted a weekly show of South Asian music on WCBN, the college/community radio station in Ann Arbor. In 2013, he started Monsoon Radio on WPKN in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He brought the show to Ithaca's WRFI in 2017. Monsoon Radio features music of South Asia, its influences and diasporas, branching out to music of the Indian Ocean and the Muslim world and fusions from all over the globe. Until the pandemic forced the show into hiatus, Monsoon Radio aired every other Tuesday night on WRFI, 88.1 FM, and wrfi.org.

Jonathan Miller's work as a journalist, writer, and editor has taken him to more than 20 countries in Asia, the Americas, Africa, Europe, and the Pacific. His radio and television reports have been broadcast on NPR, Marketplace, BBC, PBS NewsHour, and other outlets. As executive director of the journalism collective Homelands Productions, he has designed and produced multi-platform projects on cultural change, globalization and work, and the future of food. He serves as board chair of Ithaca City of Asylum. From 2016 to 2018 he was associate director of communication at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

Register here: https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_hjkj48IdQ7yEVetaG1QFlA