Description:

In Afghanistan, poetry operates as a common idiom, appearing frequently in everyday speech by those who have and have not received formal education. In this talk, I explore the idea of a communal self that emerges through the composition of poetry in the service of jihad as seen in Afghan resistance literatures written during the 1980s war with the Soviets. This is evidenced partially through the publication of anonymized poetry and the obfuscation of the authorial voice. I argue that when poetry is composed on behalf of jihad, it is no longer written only by and for the self, but becomes part of a broader campaign, therein gesturing to something larger.

Biography

Seema Golestaneh is Associate Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell. Her research, situated at the nexus of anthropology and religious studies, is focused on expressions of contemporary Islamic thought in the Persian-speaking world, with particularly interest in how metaphysical experiences make themselves known in the socio-material realm via aesthetics and epistemology. Her forthcoming book, Unknowing and the Everyday: Sufism and Knowledge in Iran, examines the social and material life of gnosis (ma’arifat) for disparate Sufi communities in Iran. Essentially an anthropology of the imagination, my work also relies heavily on textual ethnography and analysis, emphasizing the importance of hermeneutics within the Iranian socio-theological sphere. Prof. Golestenah is currently at work on a project tentatively entitled Utopia Lost?:Afghan Theories of Radical Poetics and Islamic Governance. Drawing largely from archival materials and oral histories, Utopia Lost investigates the dreams and aspirations of Afghan intellectuals in the late 1980s and 1990s for forms of government that did not come to pass.

Please join us for the Cornell Brooks School Center on Global Democracy's inaugural event:

Fostering Global Democracy: Freedom and Responsibility

REGISTER HERE

9:00 am – 9:30 am Coffee Reception - Willard Straight Hall

9:30 am – 11:00 am Welcome and Keynote Conversation - Willard Straight Hall

Opening remarks by Michael I. Kotlikoff, interim president, Cornell University, and Colleen L. Barry, dean, Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy.

Keynote Conversation with Ron Daniels, president of Johns Hopkins University, about his book What Universities Owe Democracy. Moderated by Rachel Beatty Riedl, Peggy Koenig ’78 director, Brooks School Center on Global Democracy.

11:30 am - 4:15 pm Panel Discussions – Statler Hotel

Welcome: Kenneth Roberts – Cornell University, Einaudi Center faculty fellow, Democratic Threats and Resilience

11:30 am – 12:45 pm Global Democracy and Fundamental Freedoms (Statler Amphitheater)

Chair: Suzanne Mettler - Cornell UniversityThomas Garrett – Cornell University, Brooks Faculty and Einaudi Center Lund Practitioner in ResidenceFelix Maradiaga - Nicaragua Freedom FoundationElene Panchulidze - European Partnership for Democracy Kate Wright – University of Edinburgh

12:45 pm - 1:30 pm Lunch (Taylor Room A&B)

1:30 pm – 2:45 pm Global Democracy and the Danger of Insecurity (Statler Amphitheater)

Chair: Gustavo Flores-Macías - Cornell UniversityRichard Youngs - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Joseph Sany – US Institute of PeaceJennifer Dresden – Protect Democracy, Violence and Democracy Impact TrackerSabrina Karim - Cornell University

2:45 pm – 3:00 pm Coffee break (Conference foyer)

3:00 pm – 4:15 pm Global Democracy and Effective Governance (Statler Amphitheater)

Chair: Jamila Michener - Cornell UniversityAmbassador Michelle Gavin - Council on Foreign RelationsLinda Stern - National Democratic InstituteJavier Sajuria – Queen Mary University of LondonVineeta Vijayaraghavan – Leadership NowDAA Lesley Warner – USAID, Democracy Rights and Governance Bureau4:15 pm – 5:30 pm Reception - Statler Hotel (Pennsylvania Room)

Climate and environmental changes profoundly influence the movement of people, birds, and other species across the globe. The news is replete with stories of human migration, often portraying it as a crisis. Yet despite changes in movement patterns over recent decades, migration has been a natural phenomenon for millennia.

Let’s take the politics out of migration and pause to understand why birds and people migrate and what similarities and differences exist between their migration patterns. Let’s also consider what individuals, communities, and policymakers can do to rethink migration and develop sustainable solutions that recognize that we live in an interdependent world. Globally, we need solutions that benefit the planet and humans alike.

On a bus en route from Dakar, Senegal, to Lagos, Nigeria, three women must band together as they navigate the risks that come with traveling alone while female, fighting back against threats of violence, sexual harassment, and government corruption at each border crossing. This inspiring drama from BurkinabŽ director, Apolline TraorŽ, pays tribute to the bravery of West African women asserting their independence in a patriarchal society.

Free admission. Sponsored by the Institute for African Development (IAD) at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and supported by IAD's Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Languages (UISFL) Grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

Film website: https://www.diffa.tv/frontieres-91-2016-burkina-faso-france/

A History of Drones and Precision Warfare

Since 2012, the global proliferation of drones has increased by 96.3 percent. Inspired by the American pioneering of ‘pin-point’ precision strike and remote-control technologies during the early 2000s and 2010s, a total of 118 nation-states have now developed a military drone program (2024). These drones are transforming the character of war around the globe, from Ukraine to Yemen and most notably with the Houthis over the Red Sea. Yet, how did drones and precision technologies rise up to become the ‘go-to’ weapons of nation-states and increasingly violent non-state actors?

In this talk, James Patton Rogers (Executive Director of the Cornell Brooks Tech Policy Institute, Cornell University), will take us back to 1917 and the origins of this quest for ‘precision’ in war within American strategic thought. Along the way, he will outline how precision developed throughout the 20th Century and highlight what the contemporary proliferation of precision weapons and drones means for the future of international security.

About the Speaker
James Patton Rogers is the Executive Director of the Cornell Brooks Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University and the NATO Country Director of the Full Spectrum Drone Warfare project, supported by NATO SPS. An expert on drones, disruptive technologies, and the history of weaponry and strategy, James has worked with the UN Security Council, UNOCT, and UNCTC (amongst others). He is the author of ‘Precision: A History of American Warfare’ (Manchester, 2023).

Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

In a bustling Mexican household, seven-year-old Sol is swept up in a whirlwind of preparations for the birthday party for her father, Tona, led by her mother, aunts and other relatives. As the day goes on, building to an event both anticipated and dreaded, Sol begins to understand the gravity of the celebration this year and watches as her family does the same.

This poignant and emotionally expansive film from Lila AvilŽs (The Chambermaid) cements her skill at directing dynamic, ensemble performances in her stunning sophomore effort.

T—otem screens as part of "Cine Con Cultura". Courtesy of Janus Films and Sideshow Pictures.

Set in Paraguayan Chaco, Eami a magic-realist film by Paraguayan director Paz Encina is the story of the Ayoreo Totobiegosode people, told from the perspective of a young girl.

Eami is a young girl and member of the Ayoreo Totobiegosode community whose homeland is invaded by settlers intent on brutally corralling the Ayoreo and driving them out of their ancestral lands. Embodying Asoj‡, the bird-god-woman, Eami falls into trance in which she walks slowly and stunned through her beloved forest as she prepares to leave it forever.

The trance grants Eami the ability of an omniscient and timeless look, which, from the mixture between documentary and fiction, becomes the narrator of the story. She hears the voices of her grandparents, while she is joined by one of her animal friends, the lizard, who guides her. He knows that Eami must leave the forest. She must leave everything behind, and leave, so she doesn't die there.

The film takes place in the Paraguayan Chaco, the territory with the highest deforestation rate in the world, where currently over 25,000 hectares of forest are cut down per month, or 841 hectares per day, or 35 hectares per hour. The forest barely lives on, and it does only due to a reservation that the Totobiegosode obtained by law. They call this place Chaid’, which means "Ancestral place", or "the place where we have always been", and it is currently part of the Natural and Cultural Heritage of the Ayoreo Totobiegosode.

Eami is a story of the displaced. ItÕs the memory of a people that had to leave its original place, that eversmaller forest, to become Òco–oneÓ, an ayoreo word that means insensitive or insensate, and itÕs the word they use to define us.

Eami screens as part of Cine Con Cultura 2024. Courtesy of MPM Premium.

With a small film crew, Wim Wenders accompanied his old friend Ry Cooder, who had written the music for Paris, Texas and The End of Violence, on a trip to Havana, and immersed himself in the world of Cuban music. Over the course of several months, he observed and accompanied the musicians' first at home in Havana; then, weeks later, in April 1998, on their trip to Amsterdam for the first public performance of the band (who had never played together outside a studio); then, still later, in July 1998, to their triumphal concert at New York's Carnegie Hall.

The result is Buena Vista Social Club, a seductive documentary that follows the old heroes of the traditional Cuban son music on their path from being completely forgotten to becoming world famousÑwithin the period of just a few months. The music documentary became a cinematic sensation and an international success, earning an Academy Award nomination for best documentary film, the German Film Prize in Gold, Germany's Golden Camera, and the Grand Prize for Film in Brazil, as well as garnering numerous other awards.

Buena Vista Social Club screens as part of our "Party Like It's 1999" and "Cine con Cultura" series. Courtesy of Janus Films.

Registration Link in person: https://cvent.me/dx9K9m

Registration Link online: https://cornell.zoom.us/s/93668620332

A fireside chat between Andrew Karolyi and Iván Duque about Duque's new book: "Our Future: A Green Manifesto for Latin America and the Caribbean", Planeta, 2024.

Andrew Karolyi, Charles Field Knight Dean of the Cornell SC Johnson College of BusinessIván Duque, Former President of Colombia (2018-2022)
A reception will be held after the fireside chat at Sage Hall atrium.
Please register to attend and keep posted about this event.

Registration Link in person: https://cvent.me/dx9K9m

Registration Link online: https://cornell.zoom.us/s/93668620332