Join the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies’ undergraduate global scholars for a showcase of their capstone presentations providing public commentary and perspectives on global democracy.

Undergraduate global scholars advocate for building democracy on campus and around the world. They have partnered with the Einaudi Center's democratic threats and resilience faculty fellow Kenneth Roberts and Lund Practitioner in Residence Thomas Garrett—expert researchers and practitioners on building democracy—to design their projects.

Join Einaudi Center and Brooks School researchers for three-minute speed talks and community conversation on our contemporary moment.

Speakers will jump off from interdisciplinary and international research, experiences, and world events to provide a fresh perspective on current U.S. politics and public policy. Together we'll look at challenges faced and solutions found in a variety of academic fields and places around the world—to help us think through how to address emerging issues at home.

The event features clusters of speed talks on related topics—including free speech, U.S. elections, and international aid—with time for Q&A and conversation on each topic.

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Faculty Speakers

Lessons from Latin America

Kenneth Roberts, Democratic Threats Fellow (LACS) | GovernmentGustavo Flores-Macías (LACS) | Government and Public PolicySantiago Anria (LACS) | Global Labor and Work

International Implications

Magnus Fiskesjö (EAP/SEAP/PACS) | AnthropologyBryn Rosenfeld (IES) | GovernmentWilliam Lodge II (SAP) | Health Equity and Public Policy

Domestic Consequences

Mabel Berezin, IES Director | SociologyGautam Hans | LawMoon Duchin | MathematicsEllen Lust, Einaudi Center Director | Government and Public Policy

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Sponsors

This conversation is hosted by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, partnering with Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy's Governance and Local Development Institute and Data and Democracy Lab.

Find out how graduate and undergraduate students can get started at Einaudi.

Join us for our Wednesday Lunch Series, featuring guest speakers from Cornell's faculty and staff as well as the surrounding community. Enjoy an informal discussion where you can learn more about the speaker’s work or research, how they ended up doing what they are doing, current issues in higher education and the local community. A free lunch will be served.

Cynthia Marasigan is a historian whose research and teaching interests include United States history from the mid-19th century to the present, with particular engagement in U.S. Empire studies, comparative and relational studies of race, U.S.-Philippine and Filipino American history, and Afro-Asian histories.

Her current book manuscript, Empire’s Color Lines: How African American Soldiers and Filipino Revolutionaries Transformed Amigo Warfare (forthcoming, Duke University Press), explores intersections of U.S. imperialism, Jim Crow, and colonial resistance by analyzing a range of interactions between Black soldiers and Filipinos during the Philippine-American War and its aftermath.

Who Owns the Sea? Coral Divers and the Play of Property in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia

To whom does the sea belong? In a world where European legal codes and juridical forms remain hegemonic, property is said to end at the coast--the geographical terminus of the legal concept of private ownership itself. Yet in reality the coast and sea are alive with the play of property. Along the shores and coastal waters of Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, forms of access, belonging, rights, ownership, territory, and even legal property at sea are constantly negotiated and re-negotiated. This talk offers three cases exploring the play of property at sea in Eastern Indonesia, drawn from my book project--an ethnography of the Indonesian live coral trade and the commercial divers who supply rare and beautiful corals and fish for the global aquarium industry. Aboard a small diving boat, I watched as the divers navigated and negotiated these diverse claims of ownership and belonging to the region’s coral reefs. First, I explore indigenous and customary institutions of ownership and belonging at sea. Second, I show how divers navigate the acquisition of permits and permission to gather corals from both states and spirits. Third, I examine how divers turn their coral money into private property through coastal land reclamation projects. At the fraying edge of the legal order, I show how property relations and forms of belonging are made and remade through these everyday encounters.

Joseph Klein is a Research Associate with the Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions (SEACoast) and the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His work explores fisheries labor, marine product supply chains, and coral reef futures in Indonesia. He is currently working on a book project about Indonesian commercial divers and the global aquarium industry, as well as a co-authored book on the colonial legacies of coastal hardening in Southeast Asia.

This event is co-sponsored by the Southeast Asia Program. Thank you!