Ambassador William B. Taylor served as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009. In 2019, he served as chargé d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv. Currently, he is the Vice President for Russia and Europe at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). Taylor visits the Cornell community to discuss diplomacy and the latest developments in the Ukraine-Russia crisis.

Speaker

Amb. Bill Taylor, Vice President, Russia and Europe at the U.S. Institute of Peace

Moderators

Prof. Nicholas Rostow, Visiting Professor of Law at Cornell Law School

Steve Israel, Director, Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at Cornell University and former U.S. Representative (D-NY)

Organizers

This event is co-sponsored by the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

REGISTER HERE.

Zar, a constellation of belief and therapeutic response to spirit winds, has long been considered a ritual trace attesting to the movement of African slavery in the Indian Ocean world. This talk considers representations of the spirit healing ritual zar in Iranian ethnographic filmmaking in the 1960s and 70s. In attending to the abstraction of zar as it travels across one Iranian filmmaker’s oeuvre, I interrogate the model of historicity opened up by Indian Ocean slavery’s enigmatic archival legacy.

Parisa Vaziri is an assistant professor of Comparative Literature and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. Her research explores the legacies of Indian Ocean slavery from an interdisciplinary perspective. Her book project, Racial Blackness and Indian Ocean Slavery: Iran’s Media Archive, is forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press and explores Iranian cinema as a site of historical transmission for the legacy of slavery in Iran.

This event is presented in part of CO+POS' Black History Month programming.

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!

2020 > Romania > Directed by Radu Jude
With Serban Lazarovici
"In this blend of documentary and drama, the oppressive investigation of a high-school student in Romania, in 1981, for anti-authoritarian graffiti is the subject of a stage production intercut with an astounding, extended set of archival television clips that reveal the surprisingly alluring shams on which the Communist dictatorship depended." (Richard Brody, The New Yorker) Subtitled. More at www.bigworldpictures.org/films/uppercaseprint/index.html
2 hrs 8 min