April 7, 2008
In this issue
- Coming up at the Mershon Center
- Other events
- Festschrift honors scholarship of Mershon fellow Alexander Stephan
- Herrmann to present at Phi Beta Delta conference
Having trouble reading this newsletter? You can read it online.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Shireen Hunter
"Islam and Democracy: Are They Compatible?"
Noon, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
Shireen Hunter is a Visiting Professor at Georgetown University and Distinguished Scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, with which she has been associated since 1983. Her areas of expertise include the Middle East (especially the Persian Gulf region), the Mediterranean, Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus (North and South), and she has done extensive work on North-South relations, energy (Persian Gulf, Caucasus, Central Asia), developing-country issues (political, social, economic, security), and Islam (Russia, Europe, the United States). Hunter is author or editor of 19 books and monographs, including Reformist Voices of Islam: Mediating Religion and Modernity (M.E. Sharpe, June 2008); Islam and Human Rights: Advancing a U.S.-Muslim Dialogue (CSIS, 2005); Modernization, Democracy and Islam (Praeger, 2005); Islam in Russia: the Politics of Identity and Security (M. E. Sharpe, 2004); and Strategic Development in Eurasia After September 11 (Frank Cass, 2003). Read more and
RSVP
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Ussama Makdisi
"Anti-Americanism in the Arab World: A Brief History"
Noon, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
Ussama Makdisi is an Associate Professor of History and the first holder of the Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies at Rice University. He is author of The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (California, 2000), as well as "Anti-Americanism in the Arab World: An Interpretation of Brief History" which appeared in the Journal of American History and "Ottoman Orientalism" and "Reclaiming the Land of the Bible: Missionaries, Secularism, and Evangelical Modernity" both of which appeared in the American Historical Review. His current research focuses on American missionaries in the Middle East.
Read more and
RSVP
Friday-Saturday, April 18-19, 2008
Conference
Cold War as the Periphery: Global Change in the 1960s and Beyond
Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
Cold War as the Periphery will explore how the "diffusion of power" from Washington and Moscow toward the developing world transformed global politics in the 1960s and beyond. Bringing together graduate students and junior faculty, it will examine the connections between three broad conceptual questions: How did the political and material terrain of the pan-European world change during this period? How did actors inside and outside government bureaucracies interpret and value these changes? How did geopolitical "flashpoints" in the global South rally, reflect, and reconstitute understandings of global power after 1960? Taken together, these questions aim to investigate the paradoxes of global change in the postcolonial era. Read more and
RSVP
Monday, April 21, 2008
Ebrahim Yazdi
"Iranian Politics and U.S.-Iranian Relations"
Noon, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 1501 Neil Ave.
Ebrahim Yazdi is Secretary-General of the Freedom Movement of Iran, which has been declared illegal by some Iranian officials. He has a long history of involvement in Iranian politics, and has been equally praised and condemned by figures on all sides of the issues. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Yazdi became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs in the interim government of Mehdi Bazargan. When the U.S. embassy was taken over by radicals, Yazdi was asked to go in and resolve the crisis. Before he could take any action, Ayatollah Khomeini went on state television to endorse the embassy takeover. The entire cabinet of the Interim Government, including Yazdi, resigned in protest the next day. Yazdi also opposed continuation of the Iranian war against Iraq after the Iranian victory in Khorramshahr in 1983. He and others in the Freedom Movement of Iran filed for candidacy in subsequent elections, but were barred from running. A long-time resident of Houston, Texas, Yazdi was a faculty member at the Baylor College of Medicine. He is the author of several medical, religious, and political texts. Read more and RSVP
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Saranga Jain
"The Impact of Child Marriage"
3:30-4:30 p.m., Thurber House, 77 Jefferson Ave.
Sponsored by the Columbus Council on World Affairs
The Columbus Council on World Affairs invites all current members to a special gathering exploring the topic of child marriage worldwide. Renowned expert Saranga Jain of the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) will present her findings and insights on the impact of child marriage on the health, education, and well-being of girls worldwide. Jain has recently conducted a global analysis of factors associated with child marriage. She makes regular presentations on the issue to USAID, the United Nations, and the U.S. Senate. Kathleen Selvaggio, Senior Policy Advocate of the ICRW, will brief guests on U.S. legislation on child marriage that is currently awaiting Congressional approval. To RSVP, please call Clare Kirlin at (614) 229-4599, ext. 401.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women
Film screening and discussion with the filmmaker Dai Sil Kim-Gibson
6:30 p.m., 180 Hagerty Hall, 1775 College Road
Sponsored by the East Asian Studies Center
A powerful documentary about Korean women forced into sexual servitude by the Japanese Imperial Military during World War II, Silence Broken dramatically combines the testimony of former comfort women who demand justice for the "crimes against humanity" committed against them, along with contravening interviews of Japanese soldiers, recruiters and contemporary scholars. Dai Sil Kim-Gibson received her Ph.D. in religion from Boston University. Her movies include Sa-I-Gu, A Forgotten People: The Sakhalin Koreans, Wet Sand: Voices from LA, and her most recent film, Motherland. She is also the author of the book Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women, and is currently working on a joint memoir, Shoulder Friends, with her husband, Donald D. Gibson.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Graham Allison
"Nuclear Terrorism: The Economic and Social Effects of an Attack"
5:30 p.m., OCLC-Online Computer Library Center, 6565 Kilgour Place, Dublin, OH
Sponsored by the Columbus Council on World Affairs
Graham Allison is Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. As Founding Dean of the modern School of Government, under his leadership from 1977 to 1989, a small, undefined program grew to become a major professional school of public policy and government. Allison has served as Special Advisor to the Secretary of Defense under President Reagan and as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy and Plans under President Clinton, where he coordinated DOD strategy and policy toward Russia, Ukraine, and the other states of the former Soviet Union. He has the sole distinction of having twice been awarded the Department of Defense's highest civilian award, the Distinguished Public Service Medal, first by Secretary Cap Weinberger and second by Secretary Bill Perry. Allison's publications include Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (1971), recently released in an updated and revised second edition (1999), which ranks among the bestsellers in political science; Realizing Human Rights: Moving from Inspiration to Impact (2000); Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy: Containing the Threat of Loose Russian Nuclear Weapons and Fissile Material (1996). Allisons latest book, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, was published in 2004 and was selected by The New York Times as one of the "100 most notable books of the year." To attend this event, register online.
Few scholars leave such a deep footprint in their fields that their colleagues are happy to follow in their steps. One such academic is Alexander Stephan, Ohio Eminent Scholar, Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Senior Fellow at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies.
More than 30 of Stephan’s colleagues in the United States and Germany have come together to contribute essays for a festschrift in his honor called Kulturpolitik und Politik der Kultur/Cultural Politics and the Politics of Culture (Peter Lang, 2007).
The book reflects Stephan’s scholarly interests in the contours of politics and culture in German-American relations as well as broader traditions of cultural mediation. Topics range from current concerns about public policy and cultural diplomacy, Americanization and anti-Americanism to historical considerations of Central European artists and writers who had significant impact on the politics of culture after World War II.
Contributions include:
• Volker R. Berghahn (Columbia University) on "U.S. Cultural Diplomacy and the Ford Foundation during the Cold War: Fighting Totalitarianism and Fighting Anti-Americanism"
• John Mueller (The Ohio State University) on "Extrapolations from a Book about Nothing"
• Richard Ned Lebow (Dartmouth College) on "Sarastro, Meet Mao Zedong"
• Dorothy Noyes (The Ohio State University) on "Cultural Warming? Brazil in Berlin"
• Paul Michael Lützeler (Washington University in St. Louis) on "Germany Today, or the Atlantic Dream"
Stephan is author or editor of 32 books, and has written more than 200 articles, book chapters, and essays in Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. His most recent books include:
• The Americanization of Europe: Culture, Diplomacy, and Anti-Americanism after 1945 (Berghahn Books, 2006)
• America on my mind. Zur Amerikanisierung der deutschen Kultur seit 1945 [America on My Mind. The Americanization of German Culture After 1945] (Fink, 2006)
• Überwacht. Ausgebürgert. Exiliert. Schriftsteller und der Staat [Observed, Expatriated, Exiled: Writers and the State] (Aisthesis, 2007)
Kulturpolitik und Politik der Kultur/Cultural Politics and the Politics of Culture is edited by Helen Fehervary and Bernd Fischer, both professors of Germanic Languages and Literatures at The Ohio State University.
Richard Herrmann, Director of the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, will be the featured luncheon speaker at the annual national conference of the Phi Beta Delta Honor Society for International Scholars on Friday, April 18, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, 33 East Nationwide Blvd. Phi Beta Delta is an honor society dedicated to recognizing scholarly achievement in international education. The conference includes two days of workshops based on the conference theme of "Different Heritages, Common Humanity." For a complete list of conference sessions and to view a registration form, visit the Office of International Affairs website.
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