Events 04/20-04/24

Monday, Apr 20th

The EU Growth Challenge and the Investment Plan for Europe

Monday, April 20, 2015 - 6:00pm - 7:30pm

Columbia University Morningside Campus Jerome Greene Hall, Room 107

European growth has been in stagnation since the financial crisis of 2007-2009. But Europe is suffering not only from low growth. Even more worryingly, its long-term growth potential is in decline. For two decades, investment has been too low, and arguably much went to the wrong sectors. This has undermined productivity, hampering Europe's growth potential and putting its competitiveness at risk.

Debora Revoltella, Chief Economist of the European Investment Bank, will present the need for an investment plan for Europe, focusing on competitiveness enhancing investments. Her analysis will focus on research within the European Investment Bank and how this research inspired the development of the EU Investment Plan - the Juncker Plan.

The event is sponsored by the Program in Economic Policy Management, the Center on Global Economic Governance and the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment.

For further information regarding this event, please contact Christine Francis by sending email to cf2553@columbia.edu or by calling 2128546982.

Tuesday, Apr 21st

Emerging Powers and Conflict Management: Lessons from Central Asia

Tuesday, April 21, 2015 - 5:00pm - 7:00pm

Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 1512

The international management of internal armed conflicts is becoming a primary area of dispute in world politics. At the global level, the UN Security Council has become deadlocked over the appropriate international response to rebellions and civil wars, including those in Sudan, Sri Lanka, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine. At a domestic level, states such as Russia and China have rejected international liberal norms and practices and managed internal conflicts through alternative mechanisms. Meanwhile, in post-conflict environments, such as Angola, Cambodia, Tajikistan or Rwanda, international peace interventions constructed within a liberal peacebuilding framework have given way to authoritarian political outcomes. An array of non-liberal norms, discourses and practices in relation to peace and conflict have gained ground, both within local spaces of armed conflict and at global sites of policy contestation.  This panel of distinguished international scholars and practitioners of peace-building will examine the implications for the rise of such illiberal practices in the management of conflicts in post-Soviet Central Asia and critically evaluate the implications of this turn to authoritarian conflict management.

Chair: Alexander Cooley

Panelists: David Lewis and John Heathershaw

Discussants: Severine Autesserre and Christoph Zuercher

Severine Autesserre is Assistant Professor of Political Science, specializing in international relations and African studies, at Barnard College, Columbia University. Dr. Autesserre works on civil wars, peacebuilding, peacekeeping, humanitarian aid, and African politics. She is the author of Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention(Cambridge University Press, 2014) and The Trouble with the Congo: Local Violence and the Failure of International Peacebuilding(Cambridge University Press, 2010), as well as various scholarly and policy articles.

John Heathershaw is Associate Professor in International Relations at the University of Exeter and Principal Investigator (2012-2016) of the ESRC Research Project Rising Powers and Conflict Management in Central Asia.

David Lewis is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Exeter, UK. He previously held academic posts in the Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, and worked at the Brussels-based think-tank, the International Crisis Group, where he led research projects in Central Asia and Sri Lanka. Davids current research focuses on the impact of geopolitical change on international peace and conflict. He is Co-Investigator on a major research project, Rising Powers and Conflict Management in Central Asia (2012-2016), which examines Russian, Chinese and Western responses to conflict in Central Asia. His other main research interests are in the politics, security, and economic development of post-Soviet authoritarian states in Eurasia.

Christoph Zrcher is a professor at  the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa.  His research and teaching interests include conflict, peacebuilding, and international development. His regional focus is on the Former Soviet Union especially on Russia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia including Afghanistan. He is the editor of Potentials of Disorder. Explaining Violence in the Caucasus and in the Former Yugoslavia (Manchester UP, 2003) and the author of The Post-Soviet Wars: Rebellion, Ethnic Conflict and Nationhood in the Post-Soviet Era (New York: University Press, 2007) and Costly Democracy. Peacebuilding and Democratization after War (Stanford, Stanford UP, 2013).

For further information regarding this event, please contact Ilke Denizli by sending email to zid2000@columbia.edu .

Wednesday, Apr 22rd

Human Rights Under Xi Jinping: Is There Room for Optimism?

Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - 12:00pm - 1:30pm

Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 918

Lecture Series:Human Rights in East Asia and Beyond: Critical Perspectives  with Sophie Richardson, China Director, Human Rights Watch. Moderated by Andrew Nathan, Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, Columbia University.

No registration required.

Sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.

For further information regarding this event, please contact Katherine Forshay by sending email to kdf2116@columbia.edu.

Model Citizenship and Early Social Democracy in Uruguay, 1890-1930

Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - 12:00pm - 2:00pm

Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building Room 802

Talk with Gerardo Caetano Hargain, Instituto de Ciencia Poltica, Universidad De La Repblica, Montevideo.

For further information regarding this event, please contact ILAS by sending email to ilasRSVP@gmail.com.

The Dream of a Democratic Public: European Hopes in a Problematic Present (Craig Calhoun)

Wednesday, April 22, 2015 - 6:00pm - 7:30pm

Columbia University Morningside Campus Fayerweather Hall, Room 411

Craig Calhoun, Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science

Professor Calhoun is a world-renowned social scientist whose work connects sociology to culture, communication, politics, philosophy and economics. He became the Director of LSE in 2012, having left the U.S. where he was University Professor at NYU, Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge and President of the Social Science Research Council.

Professor Calhoun obtained a D.Phil. in History and Sociology at Oxford University and a Masters in Social Anthropology at Manchester. He is the author of several books including Nations Matter, Critical Social Theory, Neither Gods Nor Emperors and most recently The Roots of Radicalism (University of Chicago Press, 2012).

This event is Part 7 of the 2014-15 Europe Seminar. The Europe Seminar brings scholars from North America, Europe, and the world to Columbia for intense talks on European history, politics, economics, and society.

For further information regarding this event, please contact Lily Glenn by sending email to lg2637@columbia.edu.

Thursday, Apr 23rd

A History of the Ugly

Thursday, April 23, 2015 - 12:00pm - 1:30pm

Columbia University Morningside Campus Barnard Center for Research on Women 101 Barnard Hall

In medieval and Renaissance literature, ugliness often serves as an outward mark of a characters internal depravity. Such a character is self-condemned, destroyed from within. But there are also cases of ugly characters who stand up for their ugliness, as though in protest against the moral code constructed by the larger societyor even by the text itself: it is not that their ugliness hides an internal beauty, but that they reject the standard of what constitutes beauty or ugliness, frolicking and reveling in the cool mud of what has been condemned as dirty or loathsome.

Assistant Professor of English and Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Rachel Eisendrath focuses on what Ben Jonson called turdy-facy-nasty-paty-lousy-fartical characters in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, and Jonson.

For further information regarding this event, please contact Lindsay Stuffle by sending email to lstuffle@barnard.edu or by calling 2128542037.

Friday, Apr 24th

The Hearst Digital Media Lecture: "The Future of Global Coverage and Audience Engagement"

Friday, April 24, 2015 - 6:00pm - 8:00pm

Columbia University Morningside Campus Graduate School of Journalism Pulitzer Hall Lecture Hall (3rd Floor)

As part of the 2015 Alumni Weekend, Columbia Journalism School hosts the second of two annual Hearst Digital Media Lectures. In his concluding event as Hearst Professional-in-Residence, Editor-in-Chief of Quartz, Kevin Delaney will be in conversation with Lydia Polgreen J'00, The New York Times Deputy International Editor discussing the future of global coverage and audience engagement.

Reception to follow promptly at 7PM. RSVP is required.

To RSVP: Students, Faculty, Staff: Email JSchoolRSVP@columbia.edu

Watch Kevin Delaney's previous lecture Kevin J. Delaney is editor in chief and co-founder of Quartz online. He was a reporter at The Wall Street Journal for a decade, with that time split between hardship postings in Paris and San Francisco. While covering Internet companies such as Google, Twitter, and Facebook for the Journal, he became convinced that newspapers could do much more to ensure that good journalism thrives in the digital age. He returned to New York and became managing editor of WSJ.com, where he led efforts that helped greatly expand the Journals online readership and championed innovative journalism projects that went on to win prizes. Early in his career, Kevin was a reporter for SmartMoney Magazine and a TV producer in Montreal. --

Lydia Polgreen J'00 is leading a company-wide initiative at the New York Times to expand its audience outside the United States. Previously, Ms. Polgreen was Deputy International Editor, the South Africa bureau chief, a correspondent for the New Delhi bureau and chief of the West Africa bureau. Before that, Ms. Polgreen was a metro reporter for The Times, beginning in 2002. Before joining The Times, Ms. Polgreen was a staff writer for the Orlando Sentinel from February to June of 2002. From July 2000 to January 2002 she was a staff writer for the Albany Times Union, covering city hall, police investigations and other local issues. She began her career as assistant editor and business manager for The Washington (D.C.) Monthly from August 1998 to August 1999. She received her B.A. in liberal arts from St. Johns College in 1997. In 2000 she graduated, with honors, from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism with her M.S. in journalism. Ms. Polgreen was a 2006 recipient of the George Polk Award for foreign reporting, in recognition of her travels deep into the war-torn western regions of Sudan to report on the carnage in Darfur. She received the 2008 Livingston Award for international reporting, for her series, The Spoils, a riveting account of how mineral wealth has brought misery and exploitation to much of Africa. In 2007, she was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum Ms. Polgreen currently resides in New York.

For further information regarding this event, please contact Lauren Schaefer by sending email to ls2999@columbia.edu .