Strategic empathy is one of many capabilities the US Army War College seeks to enhance in its students, who are rising senior leaders in their respective armed forces and agencies. Government actors become more effective when they apply strategic empathy and thereby more fully understand the nuanced perspectives of their allies, partners, competitors, and adversaries.

Colonel Dena Goble will share her insights regarding the importance of strategic empathy as a US Army Reserve military police and civil affairs officer recently responsible for leading 800 soldiers during US resettlement operations for Afghan refugees. Brigadier General Bhat from the Indian Army will give the audience an opportunity to improve their own strategic empathy for India as he candidly explains the historical challenges, current dilemmas, and emerging opportunities for India as it navigates the great power competition between the United States and China.

Panelists

Brigadier General Atul Bhat is a senior officer in the Indian Army with 30 years of service. His various assignments, including command of an infantry company during counterinsurgency operations in Kashmir, command of an armored regiment and an armored brigade, and as deputy commander of an armored brigade at extreme high altitude in the Himalayas.

Colonel Dena Goble has over 35 years of Army Reserve service with expertise in military policing, detainee operations in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq, and civil affairs operations enhancing the integration of women into the Jordanian military, supporting intergovernmental coordination for the Syrian refugee crisis, and resettling Afghan evacuees in the United States.

Presented by the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

Nationalism Unsettled presents a critical exploration of national imaginaries that disturb, defy or deviate from mainstream nation-state narratives, demanding renewed consideration of the nature of nationalism. In tackling this subject, we bring to the table speakers with cross-disciplinary expertise, spanning history, sociology, geography and the arts, and consider case studies spanning the Caribbean of the late 18th century, China under Mao, and contemporary Venezuela and Russia. At a time when nationalism globally is being re-energized through shifting and newly affecting forms, we invite you to join us in taking a deep dive into this vital subject, harnessing the power of a comparative perspective.

Discussant: Begüm Adalet, Department of Government

Format: 10 minute talk by each panelist on their individual research topic, followed by a 20 minute talk by the discussant, and up to 60 minutes for responses to the discussant and Q&A.

Presentations:

Ernesto Bassi, Department of History: Economic proto-nationalism or creole patriotism? Eighteenth-century visions of prosperity and the broken promises of empire

Mara Yue Du, Department of History: What Was Loving China: Revolutionizing Patriotism under Mao

Irina R. Troconis, Department of Romance Studies: Nation, Unsettled: Translucency, Memory, and Materiality in the Venezuelan Diaspora

Leila Wilmers, Department of Sociology: The myth of national resilience and non-statist imaginaries of the Russian nation

Register for viewing on Zoom.

This event is hosted by the Institute for European Studies as part of the Einaudi Center's democratic threats and resilience research priority. It is co-sponsored by Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the East Asia Program.

Migration has defined human activity for millennia, illustrated by the fact that it constitutes the basis of many foundational texts: the Sanskrit Ramayana, the Old Testament, Homer’s Odyssey, the Aeniad, Icelandic sagas. In Poetics of Relation (1990), Martinican philosopher and poet Édouard Glissant distinguishes between "root identity," and "relation identity." While root identity is founded on plantedness in the past, claims to legitimacy, and entitlement to the possession of land, relation identity places emphasis on contact and circulation between cultures: "network of relation." In her presentation, Finburgh Delijani will demonstrate the centrality to contemporary theatre of the theme of migration. Exiles, immigrants, and refugees featuring across the plays examined by Finburgh Delijani show how belonging, legitimacy, and identity are uprooted via the often violent severance of migration. Concurrently, they illustrate how the trauma that characters suffer – which cannot be underestimated – is counterbalanced by the relational, transnational, cosmopolitan citizens they are able to become. With particular emphasis on women characters, Finburgh Delijani demonstrates how Glissant's notion of relation enables an appreciation of how theatre is promoting an understanding of the twentieth- and twenty-first-century worlds of mass migration, as post-national, transnational and fluid.

Hosted by the Einaudi Center as part of its inequalities, identities, and justice and migrations global research priorities, this event is co-sponsored by Migrations: A Global Grand Challenge.

Speaker

Clare Finburgh Delijani (Goldsmiths, University of London) is the recipient of a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2023-26) and Professor in the Department of Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has edited many books and articles on theatre from the UK, France, and the French-speaking world. She is currently writing Spectres of Empire: Performing Coloniality in France (contracted with Liverpool University Press) on theatre that addresses France's colonial past, and postcolonial present.Moderator

Eleanor Paynter (Einaudi Center)Respondents

Sabine Haenni (Performing & Media Arts, A&S)Natalie Melas (Comparative Literature, A&S)Imane Terhmina (Romance Studies, A&S)

Hosted by GETSEA

A community book read with Teren Sevea, author of Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya and winner of the 2022 Benda Prize.

Open to current graduate students at GETSEA institutions (which includes Cornell), click here to register.

Sevea’s book Miracles and Material Life is a remarkable scholarly achievement that breathes new life into the intractable themes of cultural hybridity and religious syncretism in Southeast Asian studies. This extraordinary book combines ethnography, oral histories, archival research, pilgrimage, and translations to depict the cosmopolitan imaginations of pawangs and bomohs in colonial Malaya—the miracle workers who operated simultaneously as powerful, resourceful, and problematic actors in the development of colonial capitalism. Miracles and Material Life is a highly original approach to the study of vernacular Islam and colonial statecraft and their zones of overlap and interaction. Its turn to colonial historiography revivifies colonial texts by analyzing the contradictory scenes and terms of their production, acknowledging the multilayered collaborations between scribes, pawangs, courts, and fastidious colonial officers. Tracing the vital economic role of pawangs in colonial Malaya, Sevea shows how indigenous knowledge and spiritual prowess were foundational to the colonial state project of territorial expansion, resource extraction, and cultural control.

World in Focus: Einaudi Center Democracy Roundtable

Join the Einaudi Center and Bakhti Nishanov of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe for this dinnertime discussion about how human rights and democracy are faring in the former Soviet republics and across Eurasia.

We encourage undergraduate and graduate students to attend Nishanov's expert briefing from the policy world, with food, conversation, and informal Q&A. Hosted by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, the event is part of Einaudi's work on democratic threats and resilience.

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Speaker

Bakhti Nishanov joined the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE)—also known as the U.S. Helsinki Commission—in 2021 as a senior policy advisor specializing in Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, and the Mediterranean. Previously Nishanov served as deputy director for Eurasia at the International Republican Institute, where he helped oversee a portfolio of democracy and governance programs. He has also held numerous consulting positions with the World Bank, USAID, and other organizations.

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About Democratic Threats and Resilience

Democratic threats and resilience is one of the Einaudi Center's global research priorities. Researchers across the Einaudi Center are monitoring evolving democratic norms and threats to democracy in the United States and around the world. This work is vital today, as our ability to address a range of global challenges—from pandemics and climate change to human rights—often hinges on the strength of representative institutions that provide voice and access to diverse societal interests and actors.