Join us for a screening and discussion of the documentary No Other Land, which recently won the Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary.

The film follows Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta, who has been filming and fighting his community’s expulsion by Israeli forces since childhood.

After he crosses paths with Yuval, an Israeli journalist who joins his struggle, the two work together to document the gradual destruction of Masafer Yatta, the largest single act of forced transfer ever carried out in the occupied West Bank. Their complex bond is haunted by the extreme inequality between them: while Basel lives under a military occupation and Yuval moves through the world unrestricted and free.

The film, made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four young activists between 2019 and 2023, was co-created as an act of creative resistance and a search for a path towards equality and justice.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion reflecting on how what is happening in Palestine fits into global questions of dispossession, displacement, and land sovereignty.

Paul Kohlbry, Postdoctoral Associate in Department of Anthropology

Natalie Melas, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature

Sabrina Axster, Migrations Postdoctoral Fellow

Deborah A. Starr (moderator), Professor of Modern Arabic and Hebrew Literature and Film in the Department of Near Eastern Studies

The event is cosponsored by the Department of Near Eastern Studies, the Jewish Studies Program, and the Migrations Program, part of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, and the Mellon Foundation’s Just Futures Initiative.

Part of our "Doc Spots" series. Courtesy of Michael Tuckman Media. In Arabic, English, and Hebrew with English subtitles.

Hot Stuff is an AIFIS film award winning documentary and part of a trio of Indonesian films that delve into energy policies in Indonesia, corporate ties to those policies, and their detrimental effects on local environments and populations.

Director Dandhy Laksono and Producer Cypri Dale will join GETSEA live from the University of Michigan’s Center for Southeast Asia Studies as 20 universities from across North America connect via Zoom to watch Hot Stuff simultaneously, followed by a discussion about the film, energy policy in Indonesia, and the new Prabowo Subianto administration’s response to local grassroots movements in the country.

A virtual-only option will be available for viewers from around the world to join as well. You can register for a remote viewing of the film & event by clicking here.

A panel discussion moderated by Rachel Beatty Riedl, Peggy Koenig ’78 Director of the Brooks School Center on Global Democracy

Panelists:

David Bateman, Associate ProfessorSuzanne Mettler, John L. Senior Professor of American InstitutionsKenneth Roberts, Richard J. Schwartz ProfessorSidney Tarrow, Emeritus Maxwell Upson Professor of Government and Adjunct Professor, Cornell Law School

This panel discussion is hosted by Center on Global Democracy, and co-sponsored by American Democracy Collaborative, and Einaudi’s Democratic Threats and Resilience program.

The Seminar on Issues in African Development series examines a broad range of critical concerns in contemporary Africa including food production, human resource development, migration, urbanization, environmental resource management, economic growth, and policy guidance. The weekly presentations are made by invited specialists. Students write weekly memos about the talks. Graduate students (CRP 6770/GDEV 6770) facilitate one seminar question period.

Public Registration

An A.D. White Professors-at-Large keynote public lecture

Thursday, March 27, at 4:45pm, Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium, Klarman Hall, and via Zoom

Open to all. A reception will follow.

Abstract

The establishment of colonial dispensations on the Caribbean frontier by rival European imperial powers was conceived and implemented within an ideological framework that sanctioned and mandated the extensive use of servile labour. The creation and survival of economic enterprises across imperial borders in mining, agriculture, distributive trades and services, depended upon the availability of coerced unfree labour. Entrepreneurial thinking, likewise, was constrained by a set of specific economic references in which the attainment of growth and profitability, and a stable social order, were seen as contingent upon the supply and organization of unfree labour.

It was clear to all with an interest in the colonial mission that by the seventeenth century the options as far as labour use was concerned were reduced to three basic forms. These choices were the reduction of the conquered indigenous population to servitude on lands apropriated from them, the transfer or surplus labour from the imperial centre to the colonial periphery under set contractual conditions, and the trading in chattel labour from the already well established African market. Also, these forms were considered discrete in the sense that their structures were clilnically demarcated by racial differences – heightened by clearly distinct methods of recruitment.

About the speaker

Sir Hilary Beckles is the eighth vice chancellor of The University of the West Indies-UWI and a distinguished academic, international thought leader, United Nations committee official, and global public activist in the field of sustainability, social justice and minority empowerment. He is president of Universities Caribbean, chair of the Caribbean Examinations Council, chair of the CARICOM Reparations Commission, and advisor on sustainable development to former United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon. He was knighted by the government of Barbados in 2007.

In 2021, Sir Hilary received the Martin Luther King Jr. Peace and Freedom Award. In 2022, he was elected as an Andrew D. White Professor-At-Large at Cornell University. Also in 2022, Sir Hilary presented an Einaudi Distinguished Speaker Series lecture at Cornell. In 2024, he was appointed as Chairman/Chancellor of the United Nations University (Tokyo), begin in May 2025.

Sir Hilary has published over 100 peer reviewed essays in scholarly journals, eight plays, and over 13 books on subjects ranging from Atlantic and Caribbean History to gender relations in the Caribbean, sport development, and popular culture. The breadth of Beckles’s scholarship and its generalizability to many fields has captured the interests and imaginations of a vast array of audiences worldwide.

A highly sought-after speaker, Sir HIlary has lectured extensively throughout Europe and Asia. Beckles received his higher education in the United Kingdom and graduated in 1976 with a B.A. (Hons) degree in Economic and Social History from The University of Hull, and a Ph.D. from the same university in 1980.

This event is part of an A.D. White Professors-at-Large (ADW-PAL) visit and is cosponsored by the Dept. of History and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program. For more information on a week of events with Sir Hilary Beckles, please visit this site.

Join Kim Aris, son of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, for an important discussion on Myanmar's ongoing crisis. This event is an opportunity to come together, hear firsthand about Kim's mission and explore ways we can take action to support the people of Myanmar together.

Topics to be discussed:

The urgent need for access to his mother and concerns over her health.The worsening humanitarian crisis and ways to help those in need.Advocacy efforts to free all political prisoners and restore democracy.

Talk by Ali Houissa and Laurent Ferri (Curators of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection)

Our CMS seminar today will be led by the curator of the Middle Eastern Collection in Olin Library, who will be hosting us to see precious objects in the library's collection about Islam. We have many world-class books, some of them centuries old, which show the history and evolution of Islam over a long period, and across many cultures. This is a wonderful opportunity to see some of the treasures of Cornell’s collection that are rarely seen, and which span centuries of time and thousands of miles of geography in Islamic lands, from Morocco to Indonesia.