What are the prospects for halting China’s mass atrocities in the Uyghur region, which are now entering their fifth year since the start in 2017? An update and discussion. Our special guest is Tursunay Ziyawudun, a survivor of the Chinese concentration camps in the region known in Chinese as Xinjiang. Translation will be provided by Rizwangul NurMuhammad, MPA student at Cornell and also affected by the atrocities. Faculty hosts and facilitators Magnus Fiskesjö, Anthropology and Allen Carlson, Government.

Co-sponsored by the China and Asia-Pacific Studies Program (CAPS), Critical Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Studies, Comparative Muslim Societies, Anthropology, and the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS).

This is a hybrid event. Registration information is below.

Oumar Ba discusses the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its relationship with African states at this week's seminar with the Reppy Institute. RSVP to attend and learn more below.

About the speaker

Oumar Ba is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. His primary areas of research focus on law, violence, race, humanity, and world order(s) in global politics. He is the author of States of Justice: The Politics of the International Criminal Court (Cambridge, 2020). He is currently working on two major projects - Crimes, Against Humanity: Governing Global Justice, and (Re)Centering Decolonization as Ontology and Sifting through the Archives of Liberation.

About the talk

The scholarship on the relationship between African states and the International Criminal Court (ICC) tends to point to various contentions stemming from the quasi-exclusive focus of the Court on the continent and its citizens, and the disputes regarding head-of-state immunity. It is also often pointed out that African states were early and eager supporters of the international criminal justice regime. Yet, the current international legal order is starkly different from the one that African states had envisioned. By revisiting the archives of two pivotal moments in the establishment of the current international legal order – the work of the International Legal Commission (ILC) in drafting the Code of Crimes Against The Peace and Security of Mankind and negotiations that led to draft statute of the ICC, we find that Africa had proposed a different version of the international legal order. This article contends that for African states, their vision for an international legal order was linked to their history of colonial subjugation, colonial wars, wars of liberation, and conflicts after the independences. Therefore, the Draft Code and establishment of the ICC were meant to provide an avenue for redress, amidst a deep mistrust between Africa and “international law”.

This seminar is part of the spring seminar series with the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS).

Register here

In accordance with university event guidance, all campus visitors who are 12 years old or older must also present a photo ID, as well as proof of vaccination for COVID-19 or results of a recent negative COVID-19 test. If you are not currently participating in the Cornell campus vaccination/testing program, please bring proof of vaccination or the results of a recent negative test.

Cristina Florea is an Assistant Professor of History at Cornell University. She is interested in the interactions between German and Russian power (their competition for territory and influence) across this space, as well as the consequences these interactions have had for the people living in between. Her research focuses on the importance of imperial legacies in modern European history, and the centrality of imperial competition to East European politics and societies.

This conversation is part of the spring seminar series with the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS).

Register here

In accordance with university event guidance, all campus visitors who are 12 years old or older must also present a photo ID, as well as proof of vaccination for COVID-19 or results of a recent negative COVID-19 test. If you are not currently participating in the Cornell campus vaccination/testing program, please bring proof of vaccination or the results of a recent negative test.

Have you considered summer study abroad and are interested in studying law? Join Cornell Law School faculty and the Office of Global Learning to learn more about the Cornell Prelaw Program in Paris, a three-week academic program in international and comparative law. Study law in a uniquely international and culturally rich environment, combining the excellence of Cornell Law School faculty and the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. Prepare for the law school admissions process and acquire the study skills for success in law school.

REGISTER HERE.

Is pluralism possible in Europe? Are far-right parties like the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and the Front National (FN) fringe movements, or do they say something unsettling about the general state of democracy in Europe, today? The Post-World War II era in Europe was characterized by both devastation and hope for democracy, including a renewed political dedication to protecting plurality. Yet it was also characterized by the large-scale migration of guestworker and postcolonial migrants. Since these migrations, European nation-states and societies have grappled with the position of those who they first cast as foreigners, later as ethnic others, and today as Muslims in the European context. These boundaries between "us" and the other within came perhaps most pointedly into focus with the refugee crisis in 2015 that magnified long-standing conversations regarding who belongs to (and who is seen to threaten) the European imaginary, and the casting of both Muslims and refugees as uncivil in the political push for Brexit.

In this talk, Professor Elisabeth Becker will draw from her book Mosques in the Metropolis: Incivility, Caste and Contention in Europe, based on 2.5 years of ethnographic research in European mosques, in order to grapple with the failures and possibilities for European pluralism. She will specifically turn away from the so-called "Muslim Question" (echoing of the "Jewish Question" prior) and towards the Question of Europe: questioning the resiliency of democracy in this post-colonial/post-imperial age.

By bringing the voices of Muslim Europeans to bear on contemporary debates regarding ethnic, racialized, and religious minorities and migrants in Europe, Professor Becker will shed light on how ideals of freedom, equality, and progress have failed many of Europe's citizens. And yet she will also show how pluralizing the discourse on Europe's present can and does contribute to democratic resilience in this uncertain age.

This talk is co-sponsored by:
Department of Sociology
Jewish Studies Program
Comparative Muslim Society Program
Institute for Comparative Modernities
Religious Studies Program

Elisabeth Becker is an Assistant Professor/Freigeist Fellow at the Max-Weber Institute of-Sociology, Heidelberg University. Her Freigeist project “Invisible Architects: Jews, Muslims and the Making of Europe” reconceptualizes the formation of European societies by moving Jews and Muslims from the margins to the center of their stories. She is a cultural sociologist and public scholar focused on the experiences of ethnic, religious, and racial minorities and migrants in Europe. Elisabeth book, Mosques in the Metropolis: Incivility, Caste, and Contention, analyzes the enduring marginalization of Muslims in Europe through the ethnographic study of two of Europe’s largest urban mosque communities. Elisabeth also regularly writes for major publications like The Washington Post, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Tablet Magazine (she was a 2020 Tablet Magazine Journalism Fellow) and collaborates with non-profit organizations including The New America Foundation, The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, and The Landecker Foundation, where she is a democracy fellow. She is currently writing a book on Jewish Berlin (Passages: The Moving Lives of Jewish Berliners).

Have you considered summer study abroad and are interested in studying Public Policy? Nestled between the Alps and the Mediterranean in the magnificent Piedmont region of northern Italy, the city of Turin provides an inspiring background to explore the causes and consequences of population change, the debates unfolding in Europe around these issues, and the policies intended to address them. Join the Brooks School of Public Policy and the Office of Global Learning to learn more about the Cornell Summer Program in Turin!

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement will create the largest free trade area in the world measured by the number of countries participating. The pact connects 1.3 billion people across 55 countries with a combined gross domestic product (GDP) valued at US$3.4 trillion. It has the potential to lift 30 million people out of extreme poverty, but achieving its full potential will depend on putting in place significant policy reforms and trade facilitation measures.

Register here

Friday, February 18th at 12:15pm-1:15pm. Register here.

The Cornell University Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program (LACS) presents the Passim Sextet with their rich rhythms of Brazilian music and culture, with influences of samba, chôro, folk & classical music. Performed the following instruments: guitar, cello, mandolin, violin, oboe, violoncello, flute, percussion, and voice.

Passim Sextet Members: Rui Kleiner, mandolin and violin; Rodrigo Muller, oboe; Melina Cabral, voice, vibraphone and percussion; Rafael Gandolfo, violoncello; Flavio Vasconcelos, voice, guitar, and flute; Jacque Falchete, voice, percussion, and guitar

LACS sponsorship is with funding provided by a Title VI UISFL grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Co-Sponsored with the Cornell University Alice Cook House

Register: https://bit.ly/PASSIM2-18

Dr. Christine Leuenberger will discuss her book, The Politics of Maps: Cartographic Constructions of Israel/Palestine, published by the Oxford University Press. This book explores map war in Israel/Palestine - how the geographical sciences become entangled with politics, territorial claim making, and nation-state building in Israel/Palestine. The book also investigates how society and politics shape map-making and how various actors, institutions, and governments rely on the powerful visual rhetoric of maps in order to engage in geopolitics. To learn more, read this article in the Cornell Chronicle.

About the speaker

Dr. Christine Leuenberger is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Science & Technology Studies. Her research focuses on qualitative methods, sociology of medicine, classical and contemporary sociological theory, sociology of knowledge, interactional sociology, sociology of culture, transformation studies of Eastern Europe, Middle Eastern Studies, Peace Studies, and the sociology and history of the human and behavioral sciences. She is also engaged in peace and educational initiatives in conflict regions in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa.

This conversation is part of the spring seminar series with the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS).