The Fulbright U.S. Student Program provides full funding for graduate and professional students conducting research in any field or teaching in more than 150 countries. Open to U.S. citizens only. The Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad program supports doctoral students conducting research in modern languages or area studies for six to 12 months.

Open to U.S. citizens and permanent residents of the United States. Travel to Western European countries is not eligible.

Register for the virtual session.

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In the treacherous and swampy forests that make up the so-called "green border" between Belarus and Poland, refugees from the Middle East and Africa are lured by government propaganda promising easy passage to the European Union. Unable to cross into Europe and unable to turn back, they find themselves trapped in a rapidly escalating geopolitical stand-off. An unflinching depiction of the migrant crisis captured in stark black-and-white, this riveting film explores the intractable issue from multiple perspectives: a Syrian family fleeing ISIS caught between cruel border guards in both countries; young guards instructed to brutalize and reject the migrants; and activists who aid the refugees at great personal risk.

Thirty years after Europa Europa, three-time Oscar¨ nominee Agnieszka Holland brings a masterful eye for realism and deep compassion to this blistering critique of a humanitarian calamity that continues to unfold. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, Green Border is a poignant and essential work of cinema that opens our eyes and speaks to the heart, challenging viewers to reflect on the moral choices that fall to ordinary people every day.

Filmmaker Agnieszka Holland will join for a Zoom Q&A with Professor Ewa Bachminska, Senior Lecturer of Polish Language in the Department of Romance Studies at Cornell, following the screening on Sunday, September 15, 2024 at noon.

Green Border screens as part of our "Doc Spots" series. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

The lecture offers an overview of the radical right's interactions with mainstream parties and the effect they have on setting political agendas in the region. The focus is on sensitive policy areas such as minority policies and asylum regulations. Based on a study of shifts in major parties’ policy positions and in minority-related policies, the lecture addresses the question to what extent the radical right has changed the quality of democracy in Eastern Europe. This question shall be answered by comparing three groups of countries that are distinct in terms of the relevance of radical right parties: Bulgaria and Slovakia; Hungary, Poland, and Romania; and the Czech Republic and Estonia.

About the speaker

Michael Minkenberg is professor of Comparative Politics at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). He studied Political Science, History, and Economics at the universities of Heidelberg, Freiburg/Br., Bonn and Cologne and at Georgetown University where he received his M.A. in American Government in 1984. He obtained his Ph.D. at the university of Heidelberg in 1989 and his Habilitation (venia legendi) in Political Science at the university of Göttingen in 1997.

Since 1989, he has taught comparative politics at Georgetown University, the universities of Göttingen and Heidelberg, at Cornell University and Columbia University. From 2007-10 he held the Max Weber Chair for German and European Studies at NYU.

Minkenberg's research interests include the radical right in liberal democracies; the relationship between religion and politics in Western societies; and, more recently, the role of state architecture in capital cities. He published widely on these topics in journals such as the European Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, Government and Opposition, West European Politics, Comparative Political Studies, East European Politics and Societies, the International Political Science Review.

His most recent publications are, with Zsuzsanna Végh, Depleting democracies: Radical right impact on parties, policies, and polities in Eastern Europe (Manchester University Press 2023), and Religion und Politik in westlichen Demokratien (Religion and politics in Western democracies) (Wiesbaden: Springer VS 2024).

Migration, Imprisonment and "Race": Toward a Comparative Study between the US and Europe

By Dario Melossi

(University of Bologna)

The number of migrants in prison is very high in most European penal systems today whereas it is quite low in the United States, and it has been that way for a long time. Criminological and historical reconstructions in the United States have advanced the thesis that the initial hostility toward migrants, expressed also in processes of criminalization, slowly turned into a process of assimilation and “whitening” of Southern and Eastern European migrants (however, things did not change that much when, more recently, non-European migrants became prevalent). At the same time, between the period of Reconstruction and the Great Migration, Americans of African origins became increasingly the target of processes of criminalization. Consequently, the number of migrants in prison became negligible, while the “overrepresentation” of African Americans became commonplace. Is there something to be learned today in Europe from such a story? Is there the danger that also in Europe there may be a possible shift from xenophobia to racism in processes of criminalization and prisonization? In this first, tentative, and for now descriptive, analysis, I present data taken from the recent Italian migration context in the last 30 years, connecting imprisonment rates and migrants’ nationalities, in order to start thinking some of these issues through.

If you love languages, our funding opportunities are for you! Learn one of more than 50 languages offered at Cornell with a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship or Rare and Distinctive Language Fellowship. Opportunities are open to both undergraduate and graduate students.

FLAS fellowships support students studying modern South Asian and Southeast Asian languages and related area studies. Funding is offered in collaboration with the Einaudi Center’s South Asia and Southeast Asia Programs.

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Prospects for European Security after the War

Whatever the outcome of the Russian war against Ukraine, in its wake Ukraine will need to choose a security policy to defend its sovereignty from future threats. Its choice holds implications for broader European security. Some observers advocate Ukraine becoming a member in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), thereby gaining protection from the U.S. “nuclear umbrella.” Others doubt the effectiveness of “extended nuclear deterrence”—the threat of U.S. nuclear retaliation for attacks, including those carried out with conventional armed forces, on an ally's territory. But nuclear deterrence was never put to the test in Cold War Europe, and today extended nuclear deterrence is an unreliable and risky approach to Russian aggression.

An examination of the role of nuclear deterrence during the 1961 Berlin Crisis demonstrates that Soviet military strategy against U.S. nuclear weapons posed the risk of escalation. In vulnerable NATO territories, such as the Estonian city of Narva, such a risk still exists. A Cold War–era alternative to nuclear deterrence offers the possibility of a non-nuclear defense for Ukraine. Proposals such as the “spider in the web” strategy draw on concepts of the security dilemma and non-offensive, confidence-building defense to provide for Ukrainian security in a Europe threatened by Russian expansion, without relying on the threat of nuclear war.

About the Speaker
Matthew Evangelista is President White Professor of History and Political Science Emeritus in Cornell’s Department of Government. His most recent book, recently published in paperback and available to download for free through Open Access, is Allied Air Attacks and Civilian Harm in Italy, 1940-1945: Bombing among Friends (Routledge, 2023).

Host:
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

Co-sponsor:
Institute for European Studies