Politics and Protest: Historical, Sociological, and Political Perspectives

Drawing from first-hand experience and research into the U.S. nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s and the Iraq antiwar movement of 2002-09, David Cortright (University of Notre Dame) will discuss the challenge of attempting to evaluate if policy is shaped by social movements against war and nuclear weapons.

By examining specific episodes and social action campaigns and their impacts, he will review, and in some cases contest, historical and political interpretations of these events. His arguments will engage sociological debates on the boundaries between civil resistance movements and engagement in institutional politics and include a set of conclusions on strategies for peace and disarmament action.

Register to attend the lecture and reception.

About the Speaker

David Cortright is professor emeritus of the practice at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. Previously, Cortright was the director of policy studies at the Keough School’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and director of the institute’s Peace Accords Matrix project, the largest existing collection of implementation data on intrastate peace agreements.

Cortright has written widely about nonviolent social change, nuclear disarmament, and the use of multilateral sanctions and incentives as tools of international peacemaking. He has provided research services to the foreign ministries of Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland, and has served as consultant or advisor to agencies of the United Nations, the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, the International Peace Academy, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Hosts and Sponsors

This event is a University Lecture hosted by the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.

Nonproliferation and Disarmament Today, A Nuclear Reckoning

Building on renewed awareness of nuclear dangers arising from Christopher Nolan's epic film, the presentation assesses the status of the international nonproliferation regime and the increased risk of the use of nuclear weapons arising from Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine. The nonproliferation regime has been relatively successful in preventing the cascade of nuclear weapons development that some feared early in the atomic age, although significant proliferation dangers remain. Russian threats of nuclear weapons use and the risk of catastrophe at the Zaporizhzhia atomic station recently prompted the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to move the hands of its iconic clock closer to midnight than at any time since Oppenheimer and his colleagues created these weapons 78 years ago. The talk explores strategies for containing proliferation dangers and renewing the impetus for nuclear arms reduction and disarmament.

About the Speaker

David Cortright is professor emeritus of the practice at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. Previously, Cortright was the director of policy studies at the Keough School’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and director of the institute’s Peace Accords Matrix project, the largest existing collection of implementation data on intrastate peace agreements.

Cortright has written widely about nonviolent social change, nuclear disarmament, and the use of multilateral sanctions and incentives as tools of international peacemaking. He has provided research services to the foreign ministries of Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland, and has served as a consultant or advisor to agencies of the United Nations, the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, the International Peace Academy, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Host

Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

Mitchell A. Orenstein, Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, will discuss how Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 changed Europe. It shattered any remaining illusions that the EU could achieve peaceful coexistence with Russia through greater integration and united Europe instead around NATO. While Europe quickly reshaped its energy strategy and imposed unified sanctions on Russia, the invasion revealed Europe's continuing reliance on the United States for basic security and initiated a period of soul searching about Europe's lack of "strategic autonomy." Central and East European states that had long warned of Russia's violent intentions rose in importance, while France and Germany saw their influence diminished after decades of accommodating Russia. European leaders had to admit that they had been wrong to ignore the warnings of front-line states. In addition, the invasion reignited European Union and NATO enlargement, with Finland and Sweden joining NATO and Ukraine and Moldova offered EU candidate status. The result of these trends is a more geopolitical Europe with a sharper dividing line between an internal zone of integration and an external zone of power projection.

About the speaker

Dr. Mitchell Orenstein is Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Senior Fellow at Foreign Policy Research Institute. His sole-authored and co-authored works on the political economy and international affairs of Central and Eastern Europe have won numerous prizes. His most recent book, Taking Stock of Shock (Oxford University Press, 2021), co-authored with Prof. Kristen Ghodsee, evaluates the social consequences of the 1989 revolutions that ended communism in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Orenstein is also the author of The Lands in Between: Russia vs. The West and the New Politics of Hybrid War (Oxford University Press, 2019), a study of how intensifying geopolitical conflict has shaped politics in the lands in between Russia and the West.

Cohosts

Institute for European Studies
Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

Stories of Queer Feminist Alliances in the Peacebuilding Movement

Lesbian feminist organizing has played a significant role in women’s peacebuilding work, including anti-war and abolitionist organizing. Yet women’s lesbian and queer identities as a part of their organizing are continually marginalized in the histories of the women’s peacebuilding movement and feminist strategies for resisting patriarchal violence. What can explain the silence about these lesbian and queer lives, especially as told about the American and UK women’s peacebuilding movements?

Jamie Hagen, Lecturer in International Relations at Queen’s University Belfast, will discuss how this silencing perpetuates heteronormative practices in gender, peace, and security work. Her research surfaces stories of queer women in organizing for peace, both past and present. Part of this work is also articulating the complex ways people align themselves with LGBTQ identities and how this has shifted historically when working in international security spaces such as the United Nations.

About the Speaker

Dr. Jamie J. Hagen is a Lecturer in International Relations at Queen’s University Belfast, where she is the founding co-director of the Centre for Gender in Politics. Her work sits at the intersection of gender, security studies, and queer theory. Jamie brings a feminist, anti-racist approach to her work, bridging gaps between academic, policy, and activist spaces. She is the lead researcher on a British Academy Innovation Fellowship (2022-2023) focusing on improving engagement with lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer women in Women, Peace, and Security Programming. She is co-editor of the forthcoming edited volume Queer Conflict Research: New Approaches to the Study of Political Violence (BUP).

Host

Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

Climate Cascades

International organizations (IOs) are rapidly reorienting around climate change, despite powerful principal states having divergent preferences. When and why do IOs prioritize climate change? Richard T. Clark, Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University, will argue that they do so as a result of an endogenous process of staff learning and rotation. IO staff surveil and implement programs in target states. When working in climate-vulnerable countries, they come to see climate change as an issue warranting aggressive action. As these staff are rotated and promoted, interest in climate diffuses outwards and upwards through the institution. To test this theory, original data is introduced, tracking the International Monetary Fund's attention to climate change and the career paths of key staff. This is complemented with interviews of IMF personnel to support this theory.

About the speaker

Dr. Richard T. Clark is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. His research interests center on international organizations, international finance, public opinion of foreign economic policy, and climate politics. He is particularly interested in policymaking at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and how these organizations bargain with member states. His work has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, International Organization, and the Journal of Politics, among other outlets. His research has been recognized with several awards, including the 2022 Best Dissertation award from the International Collaboration section at APSA and the 2021 Henry Owen Memorial Award from the Bretton Woods Committee. He holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Host

Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

An Environmental and Technological History of Cold War Mega-Projects in Latin America

Weaponizing Geography demonstrates the consequences of unbuilt mega-projects. Sebastian Diaz Angel will discuss the untold story of how a series of high modernist Cold War projects came into being and what their proponents hoped to achieve, as well as the successes, failures, and consequences of their actions. It examines the so-called “South American Great Lakes System” (SAGLS), a geographical and environmental engineering project (1964-1973) proposed by the Hudson Institute of New York, a think tank related to the U.S. Department of Defense. With the support of influential Latin American elite members, engineers, and war strategists, this think tank sought to transform the major rivers of the continent into a series of massive interlocked, channelized, and navigable artificial reservoirs. Much like the North American Great Lakes, these waterways would provide (in theory) inexpensive riverine transportation, inexhaustible sources of hydropower, and a landscape facilitating large-scale agroindustry, mining, and counterinsurgency operations in allegedly “unexploited and unexplored” tropical regions.

Please join us for this virtual conversation. Register here.

About the speaker

Before starting his Ph.D. at Cornell’s History Department, Dr. Sebastian Diaz Angel had an M.A. in Geography, a B.A. in History, and a B.A. in Political Sciences. He worked as the Digital Map Curator at the National Library of Colombia, lectured at Externado University, and led Razón Cartográfica, an academic network promoting research on the history of geography and cartography in Colombia and Latin America. Sebastian specializes in maps studies and has a profound interest in environmental history, science and technology studies, geopolitics, public history, and the digital humanities.

Host

Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

Does evoking historical parallels change public opinion regarding foreign policy?

Seeking international support to counter Russia’s February 2022 invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has publicly addressed foreign politicians and public in several democratic nations. Media coverage paid special attention to his explicit comparison of Ukraine’s current situation to salient historical events in the audiences' countries.

Since public opinion can influence foreign policy decisions in democracies, we investigate whether evoking the past of the audience's country effectively increases popular support for aiding Ukraine.

Anil Menon and colleagues conducted survey experiments simultaneously in four countries where Zelensky delivered speeches rich in historical parallels – Germany and Israel (Holocaust), United Kingdom (WWII), and the United States (Pearl Harbor and 9/11). Exposure to excerpts from Zelensky's speeches triggered distinctive emotional reactions in all countries consistent with the content tailored for each country.

Only in Israel did exposure increase public support for bolstering Ukraine’s war efforts. Thus, while rhetoric emphasizing past-present commonalities might evoke emotional reactions, its persuasive potential appears limited.

About the Speaker

Anil Menon is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Merced. Previously, he was a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Government at Cornell University and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict at Harris Manchester College, Oxford University. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor.

His research is motivated by three broad questions. How do traumatic experiences – ranging from interstate wars and forced migration to public health crises – shape short- and long-term political attitudes, behaviors, and institutions? What are the historical roots of contemporary patterns of economic and political development? Are rhetorical appeals to the past persuasive?

Cohosts

Institute for European Studies

Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies