Join the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs as we welcome H.R. McMaster, to discuss "Battlegrounds" moderated by Rep. Steve Israel and Chris Riback.

H.R. MCMASTER is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford University. A native of Philadelphia, H.R. graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1984. He served as an Army officer for thirty-four years and retired as a Lieutenant General in 2018. He remained on active duty while serving as the 26th Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. He taught history at West Point and holds a PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

From Lt. General H.R. McMaster, U.S. Army, ret., the former National Security Advisor and author of the bestselling classic Dereliction of Duty, comes a bold and provocative re-examination of the most critical foreign policy and national security challenges that face the United States, and an urgent call to compete to preserve America’s standing and security.

Across multiple administrations since the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy has been misconceived, inconsistent, and poorly implemented. As a result, America and the free world have fallen behind rivals in power and influence. Meanwhile threats to security, freedom, and prosperity, such as nuclear proliferation and jihadist terrorism have grown. In BATTLEGROUNDS, H.R. McMaster describes efforts to reassess and fundamentally shift policies while he was National Security Advisor. And he provides a clear pathway forward to improve strategic competence and prevail in complex competitions against our adversaries.

BATTLEGROUNDS is a groundbreaking reassessment of America’s place in the world, drawing from McMaster’s long engagement with these issues, including 34 years of service in the U.S. Army with multiple tours of duty in battlegrounds overseas and his 13 months as National Security Advisor in the Trump White House. It is also a powerful call for Americans and citizens of the free world to transcend the vitriol of partisan political discourse, better educate themselves about the most significant challenges to national and international security and work together to secure peace and prosperity for future generations.

The Institute of Politics and Global Affairs is a non-partisan institute dedicated to elevating public discourse and stimulating civic engagement.

"When They Come For Your Identity: The Ongoing Destruction of Living and Historical Heritage in the Uyghur Region, China"

Since 2017, a cultural genocide is unfolding in Western China. This illustrated lecture reveals the staggering scope: The living, historical, and archaeological heritage of the Uyghurs, the Kazakhs and other indigenous peoples is being systematically demolished. Pilgrimage sites and houses of worship are razed, historical cemeteries obliterated (one dating to 960AD), indigenous architecture destroyed -- even home interior decoration is forcibly torn down. Native cultural and religious practices are forbidden; hundreds of native artists, poets, musicians, and academics have been disappeared into concentration camps, alongside hundreds of thousands of other innocent people. This presentation focuses on the material destruction, and places it in the context of the unfolding genocide.

I also discuss how the campaign relates to the legal constraints of the 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention (from which cultural genocide was dropped, due to objections from the former colonial powers), and to China's current commitments to cultural heritage protection as a human right, as defined in the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in 2018 -- the closest we have to a legal writ against cultural genocide. I also look briefly at how the new Chinese state program of accelerated, forced cultural assimilation is being expanded to Tibetans and other non-Chinese peoples ruled by China.

About the speaker:

Magnus Fiskesjö is an associate professor of anthropology and core faculty member of the Cornell Institute of Archaeology & Material Studies (CIAMS). Professor Fiskesjö's research concerns ethnic relations and political anthropology in China and Southeast Asia. He is affiliated with the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies as a steering committee and/or core faculty member of the Judith Reppy Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, the East Asia Program and the Southeast Asia Program.

Join a webcast as some of the world’s most prominent human-rights leaders, along with his physicist colleagues and students, gather to honor Professor Yuri Orlov.

Renowned dissident Yuri Orlov, professor emeritus, died at age 96 in September. Born in Moscow, Orlov pursued a distinguished career in physics until his activities in support of human rights led to his arrest by the KGB, years of prison and labor camp, and Siberian exile. The Moscow Helsinki Group, which he founded, inspired human-rights monitoring groups throughout the world, including Human Rights Watch. Deported to the United States in 1986, he continued his human rights activity and, at Cornell, resumed his physics research and later taught physics and human rights. He retired as Professor Emeritus of Physics at the age of 91.

Learn more about Professor Orlov's life and legacy—and what it means to be an activist and dissident— by attending this special remembrance.

Part of International Education Week #IEW2020 with Global Cornell.

Co-sponsored by the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at the Mario Einuadi Center for Interational Studies, the Migration and Human Rights Program at Cornell Law School, and the National Security Archives.

Gaurav Kampani, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Tulsa, will join will join the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies for a discussion of “The West's Imagined versus India’s Conventional Nuclear Reality.”

Please note that the author will not give a formal presentation of his work, so it is best to read in advance. A link to the reading will be sent to you upon confirmation of registration.

Please pre-register at https://cornell.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwudOCurDssGNJ6hMav_EP6ZLuGIp….

This is part of the Peace and Conflict Studies Reading Group Series.

In this CUSLAR and LASP Public Issues Forum, speakers from Asociacion Sembrando Semillas de Paz, or Sembrandopaz, will speak to the challenges of grassroots peace-building with a human rights framework in post-civil war Colombia. A large part of their work includes a focus on sustainability and agroecological farming practices.

This event will be in Spanish with interpretation into English.

Lillian Hall '84 is an agronomist by profession and currently serves as the international relations coordinator and manager for Sembrandopaz at the Villa Barbara farm in Sincelejo, Colombia. She is an alumna of Cornell University and lived for nearly 30 years in Nicaragua, where she developed her expertise in international public relations as director of a small NGO in Nicaragua and served as a leader of delegations for understanding and solidarity

Andres Ruiz is a community leader in Sucre, Colombia. He has worked with Sembrandopaz for more than 20 years. He has served as the leader of the victims division for more than 9 years, and has worked on the forefront of the group’s various reconciliation projects. He has also worked on the part of the Municipal government of Coloso, Colom-bia in the Familias en Accion (Families in action) as well as the Colombia Mejor (A Better Colombia) initiatives.

Register at: tinyurl.com/SowingSeedsNov2020

The Committee on U.S. Latin American Relations (CUSLAR), in partnership with the Cornell Latin American Studies Program and the Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, is sponsoring this event highlighting the role of community initiatives in constructing peace in Colombia. The event is sponsored in part by the Student Activities Finance Commission and funded in part by the LASP Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language (UISFL) grant from the US Department of Education.