*Events* March 10th-14th
Monday, March 10, 2014
Pizza With Your Prof: Professor Mila Rosenthal
5:00pm - 6:00pm
Columbia University Morningside Campus Lerner Hall, East Ramp Lounge
Pizza with your Prof: Mila Rosenthal, "My Experience Working for Rights, Justice, and Less Awfulness"Join us for our Professor Speakers Series! Professor Mila Rosenthal will discuss her experiences working in the field of human rights and development particularly on issues concerning poverty alleviation, labor rights, child welfare, and post-war reconstruction. She previously worked as Deputy Executive Director of Research and Policy at Amnesty International USA and is currently Vice President of Social Innovations for Concern Worldwide US. Professor Rosenthal also teaches the Human Rights Thesis Seminar and the course Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in Policy, which addresses many of the central debates about economic and social rights and examines how those debates apply to specific rights and topics including development, health, housing, work, food, and education. There will be pizza!Sponsor: ISHR Education Program
Using Brazils Racial Continuum to Examine the Short-Term Effects of Affirmative Action in Higher Education
6:00pm - 8:00pm
Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, 802
In 2004, the University of Brasilia established racial quotas reserving 20% of available admissions slots for students who self-identified as black. A number of features of Brazil, including the nature of the university system and the existence of a racial continuum, make this an insightful opportunity to explore the effects of affirmative action in higher education. Using both data provided by the university and data collected by the authors, we find that racial quotas raised the proportion of black and dark-skinned students, and that displacing applicants were, by many measures, from families with significantly lower socioeconomic status than displaced applicants.
"Memory for the Future: Collaborative Witnessing in Post-Dictatorship Chile"
7:00pm - 9:00pm
Columbia University Morningside Campus Faculty House
In December 2013, a transnational group of scholars, artists, and activists came together at Columbias Global Center in Santiago de Chile to reflect on the manifold ways in which cultural memory of the Pinochet dictatorship has been and can be mobilized in the service of different visions for Chiles social and political future. This workshop, sponsored by Columbia Universitys Center for the Study of Social Differences Women Creating Change: Mobilizing Memory project, incited all members of the group to think not only about the politics and performances of memory in Chile and beyond, but also abo! ut their own scholarly practices and methods for engaging with sites of memory and the complex connective histories of which such spaces are a part. This roundtable discussion brings together five graduate student members of the Women Creating Change group to discuss the impact of site-based, collaborative, feminist, and transnational engagements with the past on their own critical and personal understanding of the social and political work memory enables, as well as their own role as producers of memory work within the field of memory studies.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Putin's Presidency: Two Years After Election
12:00pm - 1:00pm
Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 1219
Please join the Harriman Institute for a lecture by Andranik Migranyan, Director, Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, New York.Dr. Migranyan is a member of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy of the Russian Federation, member of the Valdai Discussion Club, Chairman of the Research Council of the CIS Institute, Chairman of the commission of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation (first convocation), and Member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation (second convocation). He previously served as member of the Presidential Council of the Russian Federation (19932000); Professor of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations - MGIMO; Senior Adviser to the Committee on Foreign Relations, Supreme Council of the Russian Federation (19921993); Chief Advisor to the Committee on CIS Problems of Russian Parliament (The State Duma) (19941995); Vice-president, Reforma Foundation (19932003); First Vice-President, Soglasiye Foundation (20042008). Dr. Migranyan is the author of over 600 publications in Russian and other languages, including Democracy and Morality (1989),Russia in Search for Identity (1997); Russia: From Chaos to Order? (2001); The United States After the First Obama Term (2012) - editor; Democracy in a Russian Mirror (2013) author and co-editor with Adam Przeworski.
Seminar on Modern Europe with Bruno Palier
4:00pm - 5:30pm
Columbia University Morningside Campus Faculty House
Professor Palier will discuss national growth strategies and welfare state reforms. European countries have followed very different economic and welfare state strategies over the past years. The relationship between these strategies has vast implications for the level and type of growth achieved, the power of labor and capital, and the degree of social investment and solidarity. Professor Palier will analyze the economic and welfare-state strategies pursued by various European countries and discuss how the relationship between the two has influenced the evolution of European political economies over the past years. http://www.cee.sciences-po.fr/en/le-centre/research-team/62-bruno-palier.htmlRSVP to Rapporteur, Cyrielle Jean, at cgj2109@columbia.edu
A Conversation with Vladimir Voinovich
6:00pm - 8:00pm
Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 1512
Conversation with Vladimir VoinovichAcclaimed writer Vladimir Voinovich joins Harriman Institutes former Director Catharine Nepomnyashchy for a discussion on literature and politics.Vladimir Voinovich was born in 1932 in Soviet Central Asia. His writing career began in Moscow Radio, where he became famous for a song honoring Russian cosmonauts. His satiric writings made him one of Russia's most popular young writers until he was expelled from the Writer's Union in 1974 and forced to emigrate in 1980. Vladimir Voinovich is the author of The Fur Hat,Moscow 2042, The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin and Monumental Propaganda.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
"Ukraine: Peril and Opportunity" with Amb. Paula J. Dobriansky
12:15pm - 1:15pm
Discussion on "Ukraine: Peril and Opportunity," with Ambassador Paula J. Dobriansky, sponsored by Institute for the Study of Human Rights and Harriman Institute. Dr. Dobriansky is a Senior Fellow at Harvard University's JFK Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Dobriansky previously served in several senior positions with the U.S. Government, including Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs (2001-2009). She received the Secretary of State's highest honor, the Distinguished Service Medal.Welcome by Alex Cooley, Professor of Political Science at Barnard College and Deputy Director at Harriman Institute.Introduction by David L. Phillips, Director of the Program on Peace-building and Rights at Columbia University's Institute for the Study of Human Rights. Phillips served as senior advisor and foreign affairs expert in the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations
"An Inconsolable Memory: Films by Aryan Kaganof"
3:30pm - 8:30pm
Join Richard Pea (Columbia), Hlonipha Mokoena (Columbia), Sean Jacobs (The New School) and Anna Grimshaw (Emory University) in a panel discussion about his work.
The screenings will include:The U.S. premiere of "An Inconsolable Memory", Kaganofs 2013 documentary on The Eoan Group Book Project, an initiative to collect the forgotten history of a set of coloured performers from Cape Towns District Six who performed Italian opera to mixed audiences during and after apartheid;
The world premiere of "Night is Coming: A Threnody for the Victims of Marikana", an examination of past and current South African culture through the lens of the 2012 strikes in the Rustenburg area of Marikana, South Africa (unrest that resulted in the deaths of 48 people, most of whom were striking miners, in the single most lethal use of force by South African security forces against civilians since the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960);
The U.S. premiere of "Guerilla Blues and Holy Ghosts", a compelling portrait of Gylan Kain, one of the founders of The Last Poets, the Harlem spoken-word group established in 1968 which is said to be a precursor to hip-hop;
The U.S. premiere of "The Uprising of Hangberg", Kaganof and Dylan Valleys dynamic documentary of the struggles of the marginalized communities of the Hout Bay suburb of Cape Town, which occurred when police tried to forcibly remove them from their homes; and "Nice to Meet You, Please Dont Rape Me", Kaganofs 1994 musical satire of the newly post-apartheid South Africa.
Featured screenings begin at 5:30 pm on Tuesday, March 11. On Wednesday, March 12, a panel discussion on Kaganofs work will take place at 4:30 pm.
Additional screenings of films by Aryan Kaganof will run from 12:00 pm on March 11. Films are intended for an adult audience. Admission is free. Registration and further information at www.italianacademy.columbia.edu
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Texts, Risks, and Revolution: Holding Up a Mirror to the Arab World
6:15pm - 8:15pm
Internationally acclaimed writer and director Sulayman Al Bassam in conversation with his collaborator Georgina Van Welie on making theatre across the cultural divide. Political by definition, performed in both English and Arabic with actors and a creative team from across the Arab world and the West, their projects have revisited Western texts from an Arab perspective and challenged Western perceptions of the Arab world. They will discuss their ten year Arab Shakespeare project, a recent production for The Comedie Francaise in Paris and Sulaymans new play The Petrol Station. The new play follows the lives ! of a pair of half-brothers as they vie for the loyalty and favors of their aging father, all against the backdrop of a vicious civil war of a neighboring country.
The Petrol Station will play at The Kennedy Center on March 18, 2014. More information can be found at The Kennedy Center page.
Tow Center: Computational Storytelling
6:30pm - 8:30pm
Columbia University Morningside Campus Pulitzer Hall, Lecture Hall
Join the Tow Center for a presentation, panel, and Q&A on Computational Storytelling. The evening includes three short presentations followed by a moderated, panel discussion on Computational Storytelling, including automated text production technologies and how they can be useful in news production, and questions from the audience.
The panelists are: Larry Birnbaum, Northwestern University and Narrative Science Mark Riedl, Georgia Tech Jichen Zhu, Drexel University Moderated by: Reg Chua, Reuters Light refreshments will be served. RSVP here. Watch live on Livestream: March 13, 2014 at 6:30 p.m. (EST) Send your questions on Twitter #TowTalk
Larry Birnbaum is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and of Journalism, at Northwestern University.Larry is a founder and PI of the Knight Lab, an interdisciplinary center for innovation in news and media technology at Northwestern, as well as co-Director of the Intelligent Information Laboratory there. Larry is also a Founder and Chief Scientific Advisor of Narrative Science Inc. His research encompasses artificial intelligence, natural language processing, machine learning, human-computer interaction, and intelligent information systems. He has authored or coauthored more than 130 articles and holds 17 patents. Larry received his B.S and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Yale University (the latter in 1986) and joined the Northwestern faculty in 1989.
Reg Chua is Executive Editor, Editorial Operations, Data & Innovation at Thomson Reuters. Among other duties, he oversees data and computational journalism at Reuters, including the Connected China project, the graphics team, and works with corporate technology and R&D teams to develop newsroom systems and tools. He was previously Editor-in-Chief of the South China Morning Post; prior to that, he had a 16-year run at The Wall Street Journal, including as a Deputy Managing Editor in New York, where he managed the global newsroom budget, supervised the graphics team, and helped develop the papers computer-assisted reporting capabilities. He also ran the Journals Hong Kong-based Asian edition for eight years, opened the papers bureau in Hanoi, and was its correspondent in the Philippines.
Dr. Mark Riedl is an Assistant Professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing and director of the Entertainment Intelligence Lab. Dr. Riedls research focuses on the intersection of artificial intelligence, storytelling, and virtual worlds. Dr. Riedl seeks to understand how computational systems can represent, reason about, and create narratives and interactive stories. His primary research is in automated narrative generation, the creation of fictional narratives by intelligent systems. He also explores how intelligent systems can improve human experiences in games and virtual worlds through dynamic game adaptation and automated game design.Dr. Riedl earned a PhD degree in 2004 from North Carolina State University. From 2004 to 2007, he was a Research Scientist at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies. He joined the Georgia Tech College of Computing in 2007. His research is supported by the NSF, DARPA, ONR, the U.S. Army, U.S. Health and Human Services, Disney, and Google. He is the recipient of a DARPA Young Faculty Award.
Dr. Jichen Zhu is an assistant professor in Digital Media of the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design at Drexel University, with a joint appointment at the Department of Computer Science, College of Computing. Her research focuses on the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI), human-computer interaction, creative expression, and critical/media theory. Her particular emphasis is developing new forms of cultural artifacts afforded by intelligent systems as well as innovating new AI techniques informed by expressive goals. Her current interests include interactive narrative, serious games, computational creativity, and digital humanities. Jichen received a Ph.D. in Digital Media from Georgia Tech. She also holds a MS in Computer Science from Georgia Tech, a Master of Entertainment Technology from Carnegie Mellon University, and a BS from McGill University.
Adrian Favell, "The Fourth Freedom: Free Movement and Migration in Europe Before and After the Crisis"
6:00pm - 8:00pm
Friday, March 14, 2014
European Big City At Home: Foreign Popular Culture in Belgrade Between the Wars
7:15pm - 9:15pm
Please join the Harriman Institute and the East Central European Center for the Njegos Endowment for Serbian Language and Culture lecture series with Jovana Babovic, U. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.