The Laidlaw Scholars Leadership and Research Program promotes ethical leadership and international research around the world—starting with the passionate leaders and learners found on campuses like Cornell. Open to first- and second-year students, the two-year Laidlaw program provides generous support to carry out internationally focused research, develop leadership skills, engage with community projects overseas, and become part of a global network of like-minded scholars from twenty universities worldwide.

At this session, we'll share more information about the program, including independent international projects with the Einaudi Center’s trusted partners around the world for the summer 2026 leadership-in-action portion of the program, and tips for writing a successful application. Applications are due January 12, 2026.

Register here. Can’t attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu.

The Laidlaw Scholars Leadership and Research Program promotes ethical leadership and international research around the world—starting with the passionate leaders and learners found on campuses like Cornell. Open to first- and second-year students, the two-year Laidlaw program provides generous support to carry out internationally focused research, develop leadership skills, engage with community projects overseas, and become part of a global network of like-minded scholars from twenty universities worldwide.

At this session, we'll share more information about the program, including independent international projects with the Einaudi Center’s trusted partners around the world for the summer 2026 leadership-in-action portion of the program, and tips for writing a successful application. Applications are due January 12, 2026.

Register here. Can’t attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu.

In this chapter, I am examining the Pashtun nationalist claims in the context of the Afghanistan government’s historical resistance to officially recognizing the Durand Line. What has been the reaction of Afghanistan’s successive governments to the Durand Line? Can this resistance be characterized as a national reaction irrespective of the people’s ethnicity, language and religion?

Or would it be more accurate to describe it as a political project by the ethnocentric Pashtun ruling elites to unify Pashtuns and to maintain their monopoly on power?

This topic is important because the official position of the Afghan government on Durand Line has had both external and internal consequences, fostering geopolitical conflict with its eastern neighbor, Pakistan, as well as alienating its non-Pashtun citizens. If the problem persists, the current instability in Afghanistan will continue with its people paying the price.

Speaker
Sharif Hozoori has a PhD in International Relations from the Center for International Politics, Organization, and Disarmament at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi.

Currently, Sharif is a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Government. His research focuses on Afghanistan politics and foreign policy, comparative politics, Central Asian and Middle Eastern affairs.

Sharif has authored several journal articles and book chapters in both national and international publications. His recent book, The Political Elites and Foreign Policy at Mullah Omar’s Emirate and Karzai’s Republic (in Persian), was published in 2024 but subsequently banned by the Taliban authorities. His most recent article, “Taliban 1.0 and 2.0 in Afghanistan: Same Policies, Persistent Vision,” appeared in the Journal of Strategic Studies in June 2025.

Sharif is presently working on two additional book chapters and one journal article. The current talk is based on his under-review book chapter contribution to Oxford University Press’s Oxford Handbook of South Asian Borders.

About the speaker

Herbert Lin is a senior research scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. His work focuses on the national security impact of emerging technologies, especially digital technologies such as cyber, artificial intelligence, and influence operations. He directs and serves as editor-in-chief of the Stanford Emerging Technology Review (setr.stanford.edu). Lin is Chief Scientist, Emeritus for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council, leading key studies on public policy and information technology from 1990 to 2014. He served on President Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity in 2016, was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2019, participated in the Aspen Commission on Information Disorder in 2020, and was on the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board from 2016 to 2025. Previously, he was a professional staff member for the House Armed Services Committee, focusing on defense policy and arms control. Lin holds a doctorate in physics from MIT.

Avocationally, he is a longtime folk and swing dancer (and sometimes dance teacher), a very mediocre magician (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqgpaiK1xh8), and a connoisseur of dim sum.

In the late 1990s, as the hearings of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) began, stories of past abuse, including sexual violence, within the exiled camps of the African National Congress (ANC) emerged. Despite women alluding to or directly describing violence they had suffered within the ANC, ultimately the final report of the TRC made little reference to sexual violence or violence against women within the ANC. It instead focussed on ‘political’ violence, including torture and execution, meted out to members suspected of being (or found to be) spies. While officially gender neutral, this political violence was inescapably gendered male, as only male victims were discussed, and always within the frame of ‘political violence’, even when the torture they suffered had a sexual character. Women’s experiences were not investigated as political violence. This paper reads the TRC’s and ANC’s deployments of the concept of ‘politics’ to ask how these approaches frame or erase violence against women in the context of a political movement, and how particular violence is defined as ‘political’ or ‘intimate.’

Speaker

Rachel Sandwell is assistant professor in the Department of History at Cornell University. She works on the intellectual and social history of decolonization in southern Africa, with a particular focus on women and gender politics. Her first book, National Liberation and the Political Life of Exile: Sex, Gender, and Nation in the Struggle Against Apartheid, was published with Ohio University Press, New African Histories series in late 2025.