This is a hybrid event. Registration information is below.

This academic year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of the first major interdisciplinary research project undertaken by the then newly established Peace Studies Program, now the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies -- The Air War in Indochina.

The report, subsequently published by Beacon Press, was based entirely on open-source materials and interviews, and presented an assessment of the war and especially its toll on civilians that remains unmatched to this day.

About the speakers

This seminar features Cornell Professor Emeritus Norman Uphoff, one of the project’s original principal investigators, discussing the history of the study; and Oxford Professor Neta Crawford, co-founder of the Costs of War Project, explaining how she and her colleagues have used similar methods to study the impact of contemporary warfare, including strategic bombing. Professor Matthew Evangelista will introduce and chair the session.

Register here

This seminar is part of the spring seminar series with the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS).

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.

Just a little more than six months ago, the United States marked the twentieth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, and the end of America’s longest war as the last U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan. To mark the occasion, the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs organized a half-day conference of practitioners and academic thought leaders to reflect on the past, present, and future of US grand strategy and the complicated inter-relationships between domestic and foreign policy.

In just six months, existing challenges, such as China’s projection of power in the South China Sea, have intensified and altogether new challenges have emerged, most dramatically the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The NATO alliance, once derided as a Cold War Relic, is once again central, and defense spending is once again increasingly swiftly in most western democracies. This panel discussion will engage these and other developments since September 2021 and examine what they portend for the future of US foreign policy.

Panelists

Annie Pforzheimer is a Senior Non-Resident Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an Adjunct Professor at the City University of New York, and a public commentator on foreign policy. Her previous thirty-year diplomatic career included positions such as Deputy Chief of Mission in Kabul; director of the U.S. security assistance program in Mexico; lead human rights officer in Turkey and South Africa; and Director for Central America migration issues at the National Security Council. Ms. Pforzheimer is a graduate of Harvard University and the National Defense University, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

James Rogers is DIAS Assistant Professor in War Studies, within the Centre for War Studies, at Southern Denmark University, and Associate Fellow within LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics. He is currently Special Advisor to the UK Parliament's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drones and a UK MoD Defence Opinion Leader. His research focuses on drone warfare, contemporary security policy, and the history of warfare, and it has been featured in the Washington Post, Economist, CNN, and, the Guardian, among other outlets.

Daniel Stoian is a Fellow with the Negotiation Task Force at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University and a Visiting Scholar at Cornell's Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies. He most recently served as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Legislative Affairs Bureau at the U.S. Department of State. Previously he served as the Deputy Executive Director in the South Central Asia Bureau, overseeing the operations of 27 SCA missions and 17 domestic offices across NEA and SCA. He received his masters of public administration at Harvard University, and completed his undergraduate work in computer science engineering and international relations at the University of California at Davis.

Moderators

Sarah Kreps is the John L. Wetherill Professor of Government, Adjunct Professor of Law, and Director of the Tech Policy Lab at Cornell University. She is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Dr. Kreps has held fellowships at the Council on Foreign Relations (where she is a life member), Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and the University of Virginia’s Miller Center for Public Affairs. She has a BA from Harvard University, MSc from Oxford, and PhD from Georgetown. Between 1999-2003, she served on active duty in the United States Air Force.

Douglas L. Kriner is Clinton Rossiter Professor in American Institutions in the Department of Government and the faculty director of the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at Cornell University. He is the author of five books, including (with Dino Christenson) The Myth of the Imperial Presidency: How Public Opinion Checks the Unilateral Executive; After the Rubicon: Congress, Presidents, and the Politics of Waging War; and (with Francis Shen) The Casualty Gap: The Causes and Consequences of American Wartime Inequalities.

Forging Lasting Peace: Movements for Justice in a Pluralist World (Bartels World Affairs Lecture)

In our ethnically, racially, linguistically, and religiously diverse world, how do we find common ground? Amid ongoing conflict and violence, how do we foster lasting peace? In our world full of inequalities, what practices of activism and solidarity lead to transformative change? Drawing on her experiences of mobilizing, demanding, and brokering peace, 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee shares how action and activism can shape a just world.

A book signing and reception with refreshments will follow the lecture.

Lecture: 5:00–6:30 p.m. | Alice Statler AuditoriumBook signing and reception: 6:30–7:30 p.m. | Park AtriumFree ticket required for in-person attendance: Reserve your ticket. Join the lecture virtually by registering at eCornell.

***
Learn more about our distinguished speaker by reading her book, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War. Pick up your copy from The Cornell Store and bring it to the book signing! Buffalo Street Books will also have copies for sale at the event.

***

How did Leymah Gbowee's protests lead to lasting peace? Read a Bartels explainer by Naminata Diabate.

***

About Leymah Gbowee

Nobel Peace laureate Leymah Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist, trained social worker, and women's rights advocate. She currently serves as executive director of the Women, Peace, and Security Program at Columbia University's Earth Institute and is the founder and current president of the Gbowee Peace Foundation Africa, founding head of the Liberia Reconciliation Initiative, and cofounder and former executive director of the Women, Peace, and Security Network Africa. She is also a founding member and former Liberian coordinator of Women in Peacebuilding Network/West Africa Network for Peacebuilding.

Host and Sponsors

The Bartels World Affairs Lecture is a signature event of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Part of Einaudi's work on Inequalities, Identities, and Justice, this year's lecture is cosponsored by Einaudi's Institute for African Development and Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, in cooperation with Peace is Loud. To learn more about Peace is Loud and discover other empowering women peacebuilders, visit www.peaceisloud.org.

Bartels World Affairs Lecture

The Einaudi Center’s flagship event brings distinguished international figures to campus each academic year to speak on global topics and meet with Cornell faculty and students, particularly undergraduates. The lecture and related events are made possible by the generosity of Henry E. Bartels ’48 and Nancy Horton Bartels ’48.

Pray the Devil Back to Hell (2008) is the inspiring account of a group of ordinary women—Muslim and Christian, rich and poor, urban and rural—who came together to bring peace to their beloved but war-torn Liberia. The story of their protest's historic achievement is suspenseful and ultimately incredibly satisfying. According to Desmond Tutu, the film “eloquently captures the power each of us innately has within to make this world a far better, safer, more peaceful place.”

Join the Institute for African Development (IAD) at Cornell Cinema for a free screening of this documentary about the women's peace movement led by Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Peace laureate and speaker at this year's Bartel's World Affairs Lecture. Part of the Einaudi Center's work on Inequalities, Identities, and Justice, this year's lecture and film screening are cosponsored by Einaudi's IAD and Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.

Find out about the Bartels lecture and reserve your ticket to see Leymah Gbowee in person on May 3.

***

How did Leymah Gbowee's protests lead to lasting peace? Read a Bartels explainer by Naminata Diabate.

***

Discussants:

N’Dri Thérèse Assié-Lumumba, Director, Institute for African Development; Professor, Africana Studies and Research Center, College of Arts & Sciences

Muna B. Ndulo, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of International and Comparative Law; Elizabeth and Arthur Reich Director, Leo and Arvilla Berger International Legal Studies Program, Cornell Law School

What worlds take root in war? This talk takes us to the southern border of Lebanon where resistant ecologies thrive amid gusts of perennial war. In frontline villages, armed invasions, indiscriminate bombings, and scattered landmines have become the conditions within which everyday life is waged. Here, multi-species partnerships such as tobacco-farming and goat-herding carry life through seasons of destruction. Neither green-tinged utopia nor total devastation, these survival collectives make life possible within an insistently deadly region. Sourcing an anthropology of war from where it is lived decolonizes distant theories of war and brings to light creative practices forged in the midst of ongoing devastation. War is a place where life must go on.

Sponsored by the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Department of Anthropology, Critical Ottoman and Post Ottoman Studies, and Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.

Please adhere to Cornell University’s COVID-19 guidelines. Stay informed at covid.cornell.edu.