The Einaudi Center’s global racial justice research team presents the inaugural session of Race Matters, a new webinar series that fosters in-depth conversations on colonial questions and racial justice across international relations.

This panel brings together global experts for a candid appraisal of disciplinary instruments (methods, archives, concepts, ontologies, and epistemologies) and institutions (practices of knowledge production and incorporation as policy). The debate centers the question: How effectively do our tools for producing and shaping knowledge and policy serve the cause of advancing racial equality and justice globally?

Some of the panelists critique methods and lines of inquiries in scholarship on race and racism. Others presume an insurgency by self-determining political communities—including in the academy­—against colonizing institutional practices and in favor of the expansion of archives and imaginaries.

This conversation represents an initial framing of questions and critiques that will continue in four additional Race Matters panels through the fall 2021 semester. Read more about the series below.

Moderator: Siba Grovogui, Africana Studies, Cornell University

Panelists:

Daniel Bendix, Franziska Müller, and Aram Ziai, coeditors of Beyond the Master’s Tools? Decolonizing Knowledge Orders, Research Methods, and Teaching (2020)Mustapha K. Pasha, Meera Sabaratnam, and Robbie Shilliam, series editors of Kilombo: International Relations and Colonial QuestionsDiscussants: Oumar Ba, Political Science, Morehouse College; Sarah Then Bergh, Africana Studies PhD candidate, Cornell University

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Race Matters: A webinar series sponsored by Cornell’s Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Africana Studies and Research Center, and Department of Government

Race Matters brings together international relations experts for critical conversations on colonial questions and racial justice across international relations. Join us to explore scholarship on race and racism and the policies, institutions, and systems that perpetuate racial inequality and violence worldwide. Continuing throughout 2021, Race Matters will identify opportunities for transformative change and highlight collective and individual actions toward a more just world.

Learn about the Einaudi Center’s work on racial justice and all of our global research priorities.

Register now: https://cornell.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_hYI75wwITDOvrOW_ZTHY6Q

The Institute for European Studies is proud to acknowledge and celebrate the success of the graduating students in the European Studies minor and fellowship and grant recipients from the 2020-2021 academic year. Please join us for this brief virtual reception.

In this panel, Utku Balaban discusses the relationship between postwar urban growth and Islamic revivalism in Turkey. Rather than in a distant past dating back to the nineteenth century, the roots of the decades-long political success of Turkish Islamism lie in the growth of new working-class neighborhoods in the outskirts of metropolitan areas after the 1980s. Focusing on Istanbul, Balaban argues, Islamic revivalism in Turkey is an outcome of the vertical redevelopment of single-story slums into multistory buildings and the ensuing mushrooming of small industrial facilities in working-class neighborhoods in the 1980s. This dual development redefined Turkish Islamism as a cosmology to regulate the everyday life practices of urban workers and reframed the conflict-ridden relationship between the owners of these facilities and their urban workers as a religious fraternity based on a common urban culture. Turkish Islamism is not old and provincial, but new and urban. After Balaban’s presentation, Pamela Karimi and Ijlal Muzaffar will respond from the perspectives of their own research in Tehran and Karachi.

Speaker:
Utku Balaban | Amherst College

Response by:
Pamela Karimi | UMass Dartmouth
Ijlal Muzaffar | Rhode Island School of Design

Moderated by Esra Akcan | Cornell University

This panel is organized as part of the Institute for European Studies’ partnership with MESA Global Academy. It is sponsored by the MESA Global Academy. You may find information about past events and video recordings at https://einaudi.cornell.edu/programs/institute-european-studies/events/….

Nobel prize–winning economist Amartya Sen joins Cornell’s Kaushik Basu for the 2021 Bartels World Affairs Lecture, hosted by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

At the turn of the millennium, many would have said that understanding the need for democracy was the most important change in the world over the preceding century. Yet in the past 20 years, democracy has been treated with contempt and hostility in many parts of the world—including countries in the West (such as Hungary, Poland, and others), but also elsewhere.

It is important to ask why this is happening and how we should deal with it, Sen advises.

“Some countries seem to be undergoing a big transition in this respect, and my own country, India, may be a significant example—despite its being often described as the largest democracy in the world, which in some sense it still is,” Sen said. “As someone who is dismayed by recent developments, I would like to discuss the nature of the problems we may be facing and what can be done about them.”

Sen’s talk, “Attacks on Democracy,” will kick off a discussion with Cornell faculty and students moderated by Basu. Three faculty commentators and audience members, including several students, will join Sen for conversation and Q&A on democratic challenges—and ways forward. The event is part of the Einaudi Center’s democratic resilience global research theme.

Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard University. He has served as president of the Econometric Society, American Economic Association, Indian Economic Association, and International Economic Association. Translated into more than 40 languages, Sen’s books include Collective Choice and Social Welfare (1970, 2017), Development as Freedom (1999), Identity and Violence (2006), and The Idea of Justice (2009). Sen’s awards include the Bharat Ratna (India); Commandeur de la Legion d'Honneur (France); National Humanities Medal, George Marshall Award, and Eisenhower Medal (USA); Bodley Medal and Edinburgh Medal (UK); Ordem do Merito Cientifico (Brazil); Aztec Eagle (Mexico); and the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Moderator:
Kaushik Basu is the Carl Marks Professor of International Studies, professor of economics in the College of Arts and Sciences, and former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank.

Faculty Commentators:
Robert Hockett, Edward Cornell Professor of Law, Cornell University

Marco Battaglini, Edward H. Meyer Professor of Economics, Cornell University

Rachana Kamtekar, Professor of Philosophy, Cornell University

The Bartels World Affairs Lecture was established in 1984 to foster a broadened worldview among Cornell students, especially undergraduates. The lecture and related events are made possible by the generosity of Henry E. Bartels ’48 and Nancy Horton Bartels ’48.

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Our hearts are with Cornellians currently in India and South Asia, or with family or friends in the region, during the COVID-19 tragedy. Consider supporting this aid effort led by South Asian students, including Cornellians.