"Japanese Education and Society in Crisis" (video)
A talk by Yoshifumi Tawara, Secretary General of the Children and Textbooks Japan Network 21. Part of the Japan at Chicago Lecture Series: Celebrating Protest. Sponsored by the Japan Committee of the Center for East Asian Studies, the Human Rights Program, and the Center for International Studies.Author(s):
“Democracy, Governance, and War in Oil Exporting Nations” (video)
A panel featuring Terry Lynn Karl, William and Gretchen Kimball University Fellow and Gildred Professor of Political Science at Stanford University; Miriam R. Lowi, Visiting Research Scholar at Princeton’s Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia; Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science of The
"The Talibanization of South Asia: Can it Be Stopped?" (video)
A talk by Pervez Hoodbhoy, Department of Physics, Quaid-e-Azama University. Dr. Hoodbhoy received his bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics, master's in solid state physics, and Ph.D in nuclear physics, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been a faculty member at the Department of Physics, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad since 1973. He is cha
"The Oil and Glory" (video)
A talk by journalist and author Steven LeVine. Pipeline politics became a modern day version of the 19th Century's Great Game, in which Britain and Russia had employed cunning and bluff to gain supremacy over the lands of the Caucasus and Central Asia. “The Oil and Glory” is the story of how, at the dawn of the 21st century, the game was played once more across the harsh e
"New Partnership Paradoxes in U.S.-China Relations" (video)
Keynote Address at the 2008 China Symposium by Sun Zhe, professor of the Institute for International Studies and Director of the Center for U.S.-China Relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Professor Sun identifies three new "partnership paradoxes" in U.S.-China relations: Trade, Taiwan and Democracy. (1) China and the U.S. today are traversing an economic glacier of mutual interdepe
"Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy" (video)
A talk by Ayesha Siddiqa, Islamabad-based independent political and defence analyst and author. Pakistan has emerged as a strategic ally of the US in the 'war on terror'. It is the third largest receiver of US aid in the world, but it also serves as a breeding ground for fundamentalist groups. How long can the relationship between the US and Pakistan continue? This book shows how P
"The Closing of the ICTY and its Effect on Justice and Accountability in the Former Yugoslavia (vide
This panel explores how the impending closing of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) will affect justice and accountability in the Balkans including: the integration of international human rights standards on a national level, the challenges and opportunities confronting the domestic courts and the role of the media/civil society.
Distinguished panelists in
"The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order" (video)
A talk by Parag Khanna, Director of the Global Governance Initiative of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. In "The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order", Parag Khanna examines the intersection of geopolitics and globalization to argue that America's dominant moment has been suddenly replaced by a geopolitical marketplace wherein the European Union an
Genocide Conference Panel 1: “Defining the 'Crime without a Name'" (video)
This panel will compare various instances of genocide and explore the possibility of developing models that can be used to prevent the occurrence of genocide.
Marie Fleming, Professor of Philosophy, Florida State University;
Juan Mendez, President, International Center for Transitional Justice, New York, & former Special Adviser to the U.N. Secretar
"Muslim Peace Building in Conflict Regions of Southeast Asia" (video)
A historical overview of the situation in southern Thailand and southern Philippines is presented, followed by a discussion on peace building efforts in conflict regions. Panelists give special attention to welfare and security issues in these areas. The panel is moderated by Kikue Hamayotsu (Ph.D., Department of Political Science, Northern Illinois University). Panelists include: Kriya Lanputeh (Yala Islamic University), Abdulghoni Suetair (Prince of Songkla University), Pattama Hamingma (Asian
"The Next Great Clash" (video)
A talk by Michael Levin. In The Next Great Clash, Michael Levin presents evidence of a global political order on the verge of a historic power shift from West to East. A reemerging China is the only nation with the latent capacity to challenge American hegemony, and Levin demonstrates that such challenges to the status quo usually lead to war. From the World Beyo
"Pens and Swords: How the American Mainstream Media Report the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" (video)
A talk by Marda Dunsky, former Arab affairs reporter for the Jerusalem Post and editor on the national/foreign desk of the Chicago Tribune. As world attention is renewed and refocused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the sixtieth anniversary of its seminal year of 1948, Marda Dunsky takes a close look at how more than two dozen major American print and broadcast outlets have reported the conflict i
PGE Distinguished Lecture: "Is Development Sustainable? Not Even Close" (video)
A talk by Robert Repetto. Is development sustainable? Certainly not the way the world is now going about it. Major trends are heading straight toward ecological and human disasters and if they are not changed and changed soon, development efforts will fail for billions of people, comprising mainly the world?s most vulnerable populations. Climate change, water
"Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight over Presidential Power" (video)
A talk by Jonathan Mahler and Neal Katyal.
In his latest book, The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight over Presidential Power, Jonathan Mahler chronicles the challenge to the assertion of presidential power in the designation of enemy combatants. Written with the cooperation of the attorneys who represented Hamdan, Lt. Commander Charles Swift and G
"Challenges for the New Administration in Iraq and Afghanistan" (video)
A talk by Juan Cole.
Juan Cole will discuss the future of U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan beyond the November presidential elections. Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He has written extensively about Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and South Asia. He studies and writes about contemporary Isl
"International Reactions to the Coup in Honduras"
Rodolfo Pastor is Minister of Culture, Arts and Sports of Honduras, and, since the coup of June 28 that overthrew the government of President Manuel Zelaya, he has also been Visiting Professor of History at Harvard University. Pastor discusses the current political situation of Honduras, the Honduran political system, as well as the upcoming electi
"The Cuban Transition: Imagined and Actual" (video)
Rafael Hernández is the editor of Temas, the leading Cuban magazine in the social sciences and the humanities, which is renowned for its contribution to intellectual controversy on the island. Hernández addresses Cuba's unique social diversity and the emergence of growing inequality that accompanied and has followed the crisis of the 1990s.<
Opening Remarks (video)
Dain Borges, Director, Center for Latin American Studies
Mark Hansen, Dean, Social Science Division
Ambassador João Almino, Consul General of Brazil in Chicago
Marina Silva, Senator, Green Party (from Brazil via video)
"Teach-in on the Haiti Emergency" (video)
Greg Beckett, Anthropology PhD and Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences, and Ann Clark, Principal at Nicholas Clark Architects, Ltd, contextualize US-Haitian relations and Port-au-Prince itself, and discuss the nature of Haitian political and social life before the earthquake.
“Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy” (video)
A talk by Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz. The current global financial crisis carries a "made in America" label. In "Freefall", Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz explains how America exported bad economics, bad policies, and bad behavior to the rest of the world, only to cobble together a haphazard and ineffective response when
