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Einaudi Center for International Studies

Cultivating a Southasian Public: Film Screening and Discussion with Beena Sarwar and Ronojoy Sen

September 12, 2025

4:00 pm

A. D. White House

Please join us for a screening of the Pulitzer Center-supported film Democracy in Debt: Sri Lanka Beyond the Headlines (2024, 25 min) and discussion about fostering and engaging cross-border, Southasian publics with producer Beena Sarwar, SAPAN, and journalist Ronojoy Sen, National University of Singapore, [moderated by Hadia Akthar Khan, Jamhoor].
Watch the trailer here.

Workshop Participants

Hana Shams Ahmed, Anthropology, York University, Toronto, CanadaMohsin Alam Bhat, Law, Queen Mary University London, London, UKMona Bhan, Anthropology, Syracuse University, Syracuse, USANatasha Raheja, Anthropology, Cornell University, Ithaca, USARadhika Mongia, Sociology, York University, Toronto, CanadaSadia Mahmood, Religious Studies, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan Salah Punathil, Sociology, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, IndiaSalman Hussain, Anthropology, York University, Toronto, CanadaSana Batool, Journalism, Falmouth University, Falmouth, UKSidharthan Maunaguru, Tamil Studies, University of Toronto, Toronto, CanadaTashi Ghale, Anthropology, Washington University Saint Louis, Saint Louis, USA
The global decline in democracy has increasingly been shaped by ethnic and religious majoritarianism, which serves as a core mechanism for authoritarian politics. Across South Asia, governments are working to further entrench permanent majorities and minorities through exclusionary legal, political, and economic structures. At the same time, electoral shifts, protest movements, and new forms of collective action highlight the contested nature of these projects and the possibilities for resistance. This workshop aims to examine majoritarianism in South Asia through historical, legal, and anthropological perspectives and to explore strategies to counter these developments. In bringing together scholars working across the areas that comprise Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, we hope to foster cross-disciplinary and cross-border analyses that move beyond nation-specific accounts.

This session is part of the Cornell-QMUL Global Hubs workshop: Majority-Minority Politics and Democracy in South Asia
Sponsors: Cornell-QMUL Global Hubs, Center on Global Democracy - Cornell Brooks Public Policy, Cornell South Asia Program
Co-sponsors:

Additional Information

Program

Einaudi Center for International Studies

South Asia Program

Saving Democracy: How Movements Turn Protest into Policy

September 25, 2025

12:00 pm

Uris Hall, G08

Drawing from extensive experience and research on the policy impacts of peace movements, the presentation will identify lessons for contemporary protest movements to preserve democracy. History shows that movements are able to shape policy if they employ wise strategies, attract widespread public support, articulate compelling narratives and are persistent in applying pressure for change. Effective change requires linking non-institutional protest with institutional politics.

Cortright will recount organizing experiences in the Vietnam peace movement, Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, and Iraq antiwar movement. He will summarize key social science and case study research findings on social movement effectiveness. He will share principles on the development of strategies, tactics and methods.

The presentation will assess the historic significance of the massive Hands Off, No Kings and Good Trouble mobilizations of recent months and the challenges of channeling activist energy into constructive outlets for policy change.

Cortright will examine the domestic policy agenda of contemporary protests and the importance of addressing military spending and nuclear weapons issues. He will discuss option for linking concerns for social justice with opposition to the nuclear arms race and excessive military spending.

About the speaker

David Cortright is a Visiting Scholar at Cornell University’s Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and Professor Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. He is the author or editor of 23 books and has written widely on peace policy, nonviolent social change, soldier dissent, nuclear disarmament, and the use of multilateral sanctions and incentives as tools of international peacemaking.

In 2002 Cortright was a co-founder of Win Without War, which opposed the US invasion of Iraq and remains an active voice today in promoting progressive foreign policy issues. He continues to serve on the group’s board of directors.

As director of policy studies for Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Cortright initiated policy advocacy campaigns to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons; refine the utilization of economic sanctions as instruments of diplomacy; reduce the adverse humanitarian impacts of sanctions; develop effective nonmilitary means of countering violent extremism; and support the UN Women, Peace and Security agenda in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Cortright helped to create and for four years directed the Kroc Institute’s Peace Accords Matrix Barometer project monitoring implementation of the Columbia Peace Agreement.

Additional Information

Program

Einaudi Center for International Studies

Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

GETSEA Receives $1 Million Luce Grant

The roof of a temple, with Buddhist motifs visible in the background.
July 22, 2025

Led by Southeast Asia Program

The Graduate Education and Training in Southeast Asian Studies (GETSEA) consortium has been awarded a $1 million grant. 

Launched in 2020, GETSEA(link is external) is a national consortium dedicated to advancing Southeast Asian studies through resource sharing, coordinated programming, and developing innovative ways to support graduate students across U.S. institutions. The four-year Henry Luce Foundation grant(link is external) supports the creation of an adaptive infrastructure to sustain the field amid mounting federal challenges. 

Current partner institutions include the University of California–Berkeley; University of California–Los Angeles; University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa; University of Michigan; Northern Illinois University; University of Washington; and University of Wisconsin–Madison. GETSEA partners hope to expand the consortium to include other institutions actively engaged in graduate education in Southeast Asian studies.

Grant principal investigator Abigail Cohn, professor of linguistics in the College of Arts and Sciences and a founding member of GETSEA, said, “I am gratified by this very tangible recognition of the work and collaborative framework that GETSEA has accomplished, and I look forward to furthering these innovative collaborations over the life of the grant and beyond, especially as we navigate a new era beyond Title VI.”

Since its inception, GETSEA has launched a suite of virtual initiatives, including graduate mini-courses, professional development workshops, a simulcast documentary screening series, and collaborative programming designed to support early-career scholars and sustain language and regional expertise. With the new funding, the consortium will deepen these efforts, expand access to shared resources and courses, and build new pathways for interdisciplinary research and training.

SEAP is part of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Cornell’s hub for global area and thematic studies. Area studies programs in the United States are under increasing pressure as universities face budget constraints, federal funding cuts, and critiques from both ends of the political spectrum. At the same time, the need for deep regional expertise has never been greater. 

“The Luce grant not only recognizes Cornell’s leadership in Southeast Asian studies, but also supports a project that should serve as a model for programs focused on other regional areas,” said Einaudi Center director Ellen Lust. “It fosters collaboration across the country and shows the power of working together in the face of increased constraints.”

As universities confront questions about the value of global research, GETSEA’s new phase represents an opportunity to create a model for sustaining capacity in the most rarely taught languages and provide meaningful networking opportunities for early-career scholars as teaching modalities shift.

Founded in 1950, SEAP is one of the oldest and most distinguished centers for Southeast Asian studies in the United States. As GETSEA’s administrator, SEAP will take a leading role in charting the future of area studies. 

For 160 years, Cornell has carried out groundbreaking international work that turns bold ideas into solutions and improves lives abroad and in the United States. Learn more from Global Cornell(link is external) about why international research matters—for national security, competitiveness, public health, and education.

The Henry Luce Foundation seeks to deepen knowledge and understanding in pursuit of a more democratic and just world. Established in 1936 by Henry R. Luce, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Time, Inc., the Luce Foundation advances its mission by nurturing knowledge communities and institutions, fostering dialogue across divides, enriching public discourse, amplifying diverse voices, and investing in leadership development.

Additional Information

Peace, Security, and U.S. Presence in the World

September 4, 2025

12:00 pm

Clark Hall, 700

U.S. foreign policies are changing dramatically, with profound implications for peace and security throughout the world. The administration of Donald J. Trump has broken with many decades of precedent by expressing sharp criticism of NATO and historical allies, while expressing admiration for historic adversaries such as Russia. U.S. support for Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion has wavered, with Trump even suggesting that Ukraine rather than Russia is to blame for the conflict. U.S. humanitarian aid to many of the world’s most needy people has ended or been sharply reduced. Changes in migration policy are also placing many groups at heightened risk of political violence. The administration has bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, acting in violation of international law and suggesting a preference for military action over diplomacy. And changes in trade policy, particularly with China, have the potential to reshape military capabilities and alliances around the world.

These changes raise several questions. Is the re-arming of Europe a necessary bulwark against an expansionist Russia, or a new arms race that encourages nuclear proliferation and increases the risk of war? Will the cancellation of humanitarian aid encourage other nations to increase their capacity, or simply leave the world’s most vulnerable people without hope? What other nations might step in to fill the vacuum left by the loss of such aid, and will these nations be more or less exploitative than the United States? How will changing U.S. policies affect regional security alliances, for example between Russia and China? This panel will provide perspectives on how recent changes to foreign policy are likely to affect issues of peace and security in several regions around the world.

Panelists

Jok Madut Jok, Professor of Anthropology, Syracuse University

Jok’s areas of specialization include security, governance, democracy and development in South Sudan and Sudan. He has also written extensively about gender, sexuality and reproductive health, humanitarian aid, ethnography of political violence, gender-based violence, and war and slavery and the politics of identity in South Sudan and Sudan. He is the author of Breaking Sudan: The Search for Peace (Oneworld Publications, 2017), Sudan: Race, Religion and Violence (One World Publication, 2007), War and Slavery in Sudan (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), and Militarization, Gender and Reproductive Health in South Sudan (Edwin Mellen Press, 1998). He also co-edited The Sudan Handbook (with J. Willis, J. Ryle and S. Baldo, James Currey, 2011). Before joining Maxwell he was visiting professor of anthropology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Linacre College. He also served in the government of South Sudan as undersecretary in the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, 2010-13. He is the founding director of the Sudd Institute, a public policy research center.

Kaija E. Schilde, Associate Professor of International Studies, Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University

Professor Schilde’s research focuses on the political economy of security, with a particular emphasis on defense industry politics and the political development of the European Union. In July 2021 she was named Acting Director of BU’s Center for the Study of Europe and in January 2022 she received the Jean Monnet Chair in European Security and Defense. Her book, The Political Economy of European Security (Cambridge University Press, 2017) investigates the state-society relations between the EU and interest groups, with a particular focus on security and defense institutions, industries, and markets. Her research interests span multiple dimensions of the historical institutionalism of security organizations, including the causes and consequences of military spending; the relationship between spending, innovation, and capabilities; defense reform and force transformation; the politics of defense protectionism; and the international diffusion of internal and border security practices.

Zheng Wang, Professor at the School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University

Professor Wang’s research interests lie in three closely connected areas: (1) identity-based conflicts, nationalism, and the politics of historical memory; (2) peace and conflict management in East Asia, with a special focus on China’s rise and its impact on regional peace and security; (3) foreign-domestic linkages in Chinese politics and foreign relations. He is the author of Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations (Columbia University Press, 2012), which received the International Studies Association’s Yale H. Ferguson Award in 2013. He is also author of Memory Politics, Identity and Conflict: Historical Memory as a Variable (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) and editor of COVID-19 and U.S.-China Relations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). He is currently under contract with the Oxford University Press to write a book about the rise of nationalism and populism and the crises in the US-China relations. He is Director of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS) at Seton Hall University.

Diego Chaves-González, Senior Manager for Latin America and Caribbean Initiative, Migration Policy Institute

Chaves-González’s research focuses on forced displacement, legal pathways, integration, migration and development, and regional cooperation in migration management. He previously worked for the World Bank and the United Nations. While at the World Bank, he helped expand the scope of the Global Concessional Financing Facility (GCFF). He also co-authored the 2019, 2020, and 2021 GCFF annual reports, and helped coordinate the Secretary of the Multilateral Development Bank platform. While working for the United Nations, Mr. Chaves-González initiated a platform in Colombia to coordinate the work of UN agencies, NGOs, and their partners in response to migrant and refugee situations. He also helped develop a strategy to involve victims of conflict and internally displaced persons in the peace deal negotiations that ended Colombia’s civil war. Chaves-González also played an essential role as a presidential advisor in the registration and regularization of 500,000 migrants in Colombia and helped provide advice on how to structure similar initiatives in Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Peru. Since the start of the Venezuelan crisis, he has assisted Latin American governments in developing policies to integrate arriving migrants and refugees into receiving communities, accommodating both newcomer and local needs.

Additional Information

Program

Einaudi Center for International Studies

Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

East Asia Program

Southeast Asia Program

Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Institute for African Development

Institute for European Studies

South Asia Program

Migrations Program

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