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.

There is an oft-told story about the concept of strategic stability and the function of arms control. The conventional story says that stability was a condition inherent to the logic of nuclear deterrence, and that arms control was a project to restrain the superpower strategic competition and promote stability. This lecture revises that story in two ways. First, it shows that stability was a metaphor introduced to security studies from distant fields having nothing to do with the study of strategy.

Second, it shows that stability was used to rationalize policies that had little to do with restraint. It turns out that key early arms control thinkers held close relationships with ballistic missile contractors. Top science advisors to the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations served as corporate board members and paid consultants to these companies. The scientists’ dual roles as employees of weapons contractors and as policy advisors were vulnerable to a strong conflict of interest.

The talk analyzes the impact of that conflict on US arms control policy and explores the techniques of concealment scientists and policymakers used to guard privileged financial arrangements.

About the Speaker
Benjamin Wilson is an Associate Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. In 2025, he will publish a book with Harvard University Press about US strategists and science advisors during the Cold War.

Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

Co-host
Department of Science & Technology Studies

Insights from the Research of the Citizen Lab

In this presentation, Ronald J. Deibert, University of Toronto, will provide an overview of the Citizen Lab’s research with a special focus on case studies around mercenary surveillance and digital transnational repression. In particular, he will discuss the real-world impacts and unique ethical issues involving the type of mixed methods digital accountability research they have developed.

About the Speaker
Ronald J. Deibert is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto. The Citizen Lab undertakes mixed-methods research on global security, digital technologies, and human rights. The Citizen Lab’s reports routinely make world news, including front-page coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, the Financial Times, and other major outlets. Deibert is the author of Black Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet (Random House: 2013) and RESET: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society (House of Anansi, 2020). In 2013, he was appointed to the Order of Ontario. He was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal for being “among the first to recognize and take measures to mitigate growing threats to communications rights, openness and security worldwide.” In 2022, he was appointed Officer of the Order of Canada.

Host:
Cornell Brooks School Tech Policy Institute

Co-Host:
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

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

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.

RAD fellowships support students studying modern languages that are less frequently taught in the United States. Funding is offered by the Einaudi Center for intensive summer language study.

Can't attend? Contact flas@einaudi.cornell.edu.

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The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.

International Law, Norms, and the Decline in Interstate War

This event focuses on a discussion paper, “International Law, Norms, and the Decline in Interstate War,” by Kathryn Sikkink and Averell Schmidt. The authors will not present the paper formally, and participants are expected to read the paper in advance. Please e-mail pacs@cornell.edu for the paper.

The authors argue that international laws governing the initiation of war – jus ad bellum – reduce the likelihood of interstate war under two conditions: when treaties are interpreted as prohibiting interstate war and when the application of treaties is not counteracted by other international norms. The development of international law in the interwar period shows that the letter of treaties is not always closely related to states’ interpretation of their normative commitments. This disjuncture is key to understanding the impact of international law on interstate war initiation.

Sikkink and Schmidt demonstrate statistically that ratification of treaties understood to reflect the norm prohibiting interstate war is associated with a decrease in states’ propensity to initiate wars deemed unlawful by treaties and illegitimate by international norms. Indeed, only three of the 64 illegal and illegitimate wars occurring between 1929 and 2010 were initiated by belligerents that had each ratified more than one anti-war treaty. They couple this statistical analysis with case studies from Latin America, demonstrating the role of laws and norms in shaping the decision to go to war.

About the Authors
Kathryn Sikkink is the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She works on international norms and institutions, transnational advocacy networks, the impact of human rights law and policies, transitional justice, and the laws of war.

Her publications
International, Norms, Moral Psychology, and Neuroscience (with Richard Price); The Hidden Face of Rights: Toward a Politics of Responsibilies; Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century; The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics (awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Center Book Award and the WOLA/Duke University Award); Mixed Signals: U.S. Human Rights Policy and Latin America; Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (co-authored with Margaret Keck and awarded the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas for Improving World Order and the ISA Chadwick Alger Award for Best Book in the area of International Organizations); and The Persistent Power of Human Rights: From Commitment to Compliance (co-edited with Thomas Risse and Stephen Ropp).

Averell Schmidt is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in International and Public Affairs at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. He received his Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University in May 2024. He was previously a Transitional Justice Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, a Research Fellow in the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and a Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow at the Notre Dame International Security Center.

Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

In a post-January 6th US, a reasonable concern of fascism is manifesting in one particular way: silencing dissent and pluralism. This talk is about identifying the ways that silencing contentious politics benefits far right extremism and harms far left pro-democratic work in this complex political environment.

Dr. Marcus Board argues that we must protect grassroots communities and advance the interests of democracy - even when they appear contradictory to the interests of the country. Using various data sources, including original surveys, in-depth interviews, and case studies, he makes the case for resistance politics as a pro-democratic staple and distinct from fascist violence.

About the Speaker
Dr. Marcus Board is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Howard University. He is the author of Invisible Weapons: Infiltrating Resistance and Defeating Movements (Oxford 2022), winner of the W.E.B. DuBois Best Book Award (NCOBPS), Best Book on Race, Ethnicity and Justice (APSA), and the Most Outstanding Book Award (Association for Ethnic Studies). Dr. Board is the Black Politics Committee Chair, Faculty Advisor for the Political Science Society, and a Scholar Coach with the Faculty Summer Academy Program - all at Howard University.

Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies