Ralph Bunche Institute

OUT OF THE FRAME: CRISES IN SUDAN AND THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
2024-04-17 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Halifax) | Virtual, bit.ly/3QVelvP, New York
The historical record is marked by events, people, and communities that remain just out of the frame. They are there, clearly visible, but no one pays attention to them. And we should.
The Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity (Graduate Center—City University of New York), in cooperation with Marion Kaplan, Professor Emerita of Hebrew and Judaic Studies (NYU) and Raz Segal, Endowed Professor in the Study of Modern Genocide (Stockton University), offers a year-long virtual series, Out of the Frame, to center topics long overlooked. Please join us for the last of the series:
Wednesday 17 April 2024. 12:00-1:00 PM (EDT) Virtual
“Out of the Frame: Crises in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo”
The ongoing conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan have witnessed mass killings of civilians, internal displacement, and the destruction of infrastructure. Yet the humanitarian crises in two of Africa’s largest countries remain outside the international spotlight.
This roundtable discussion features human rights activist/scholars Fred Bauma and Nisrin Elamin. Executive Secretary of Ebuteli, a Kinshasa-based research institute, Mr Bauma is a member of Lutte pour le Changement (LUCHA), a key pro-democracy movement in the DRC; he is a leading exponent of non-violent politics in Africa today. Prof Elamin (University of Toronto) investigates the connections between land, race, belonging and empire-making in Sudan and the broader Sahel region. She uses land and struggles over land as a lens through which to examine state surveillance of Sahelian migration. Chair: Prof Zachariah Mampilly, Marxe Endowed Chair of International Affairs at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College.

The U.S.-European Relationship in a Time of Populism and War - A Talk by Karen Donfried
2024-05-08 18:30 - 20:30 UTC | Segal Theater, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Can the traditionally strong relationship between the U.S. and Europe weather the storms on the horizon? Get an in-depth, insider’s view at this crucial time from Karen Donfried, who helped shape policy in the region as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs under President Biden. Donfried will provide valuable insight on this complex relationship, helping us to understand the Biden administration’s posture toward Europe, the high stakes of supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia, the role of populism in contemporary transatlantic relations, European concerns about a possible second Trump presidency, regulation of AI in Europe and the U.S., and more. Before serving as Secretary of State Blinken’s top adviser on Europe and Eurasia, she was also a special assistant to President Obama and senior director for European affairs on the National Security Council at the White House. Donfried is a senior fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
This event is the annual Otto and Fran Walter Memorial Lecture.
Presented with the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies and the European Union Studies Center.
A video of this event will be posted a few days later on our YouTube Channel.
Please contact Jimmy Cok at jcok@gc.cuny.edu in advance for CART services or any additional accessibility requests or concerns for in-person events.​ This event will be livestreamed, and closed captions will be provided.

Call for Papers
2024-09-01 08:00 - 2024-09-30 23:30 UTC | Virtual, bit.ly/3QVelvP, New York
Call for Papers
Deadline: Sep 30 2024

The CUNY Human Rights Workshop (HRW) is an interdisciplinary, scholarly forum that fosters discussion and debate on emerging scholarship and policy work relating to human rights issues, broadly defined. The workshop is open to faculty and graduate students (within and beyond CUNY) as well as human rights practitioners.
The HRW invites submissions to present at our monthly session at The CUNY Graduate Center. (Zoom sessions are also possible for those who cannot present in person). We invite paper proposals for works in progress, works in pre-publication, and recently published articles to be considered. Please submit your paper proposal here. Proposals should include a title, an abstract of no more than 300 words, and a one-page CV. We encourage applicants to submit their proposals before 30 September 2024.
For questions and inquiries, please email Professor Danielle Zach: dzach@gradcenter.cuny.edu

The Global Dimensions of America's New Racial Politics
2024-09-17 18:30 - 20:30 UTC | Graduate Center Room 5203, 365 Fifth Ave, New York, NY, 10016, United States
CGEP Colloquia
Rogers Smith (University of Pennsylvania)
The Global Dimensions of America’s New Racial Politics
Tuesday, September 17 @ 6:30pm (ET)

Is the UN Still Relevant in Resolving Major Wars?
2024-09-19 08:30 - 14:30 UTC | Virtual, bit.ly/3QVelvP, New York
Is the UN Still Relevant in Resolving Major Wars?

The seminar we are organizing explores the potential of various UN interventions in resolving major wars based on historical precedents, especially regarding the Russia-Ukraine and Hamas-Israel wars, as well as the role the ICC and ICJ might play in these conflicts.
Thursday 19 September 2024. 8:30 AM (EDT) Virtual

PLEASE RSVP BELOW BEFORE TUESDAY 17.

Lunch and snacks will be provided.

REGISTER 19 SEPT | Is the UN Still Relevant

"A Conversation about Being Human: Political Modernity and Hospitality in Kurdistan-Iraq"
2024-09-26 12:00 - 13:00 UTC | NY
“A Conversation about Being Human: Political Modernity and Hospitality in Kurdistan-Iraq”
Protesting that culture of censorship and suppression, the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity (Graduate Center—City University of New York), in cooperation with Marion Kaplan, Professor Emerita of Hebrew and Judaic Studies (NYU) and Raz Segal, Endowed Professor in the Study of Modern Genocide (Stockton University), will host a year-long virtual series, “In Praise of Books.” We celebrate new scholarship by emerging as well as established scholars, prizing their creativity and rigor.

Please join us for the fall series:
Thursday 26 September 2024. 12:00-1:00 PM (EDT) Virtual

REGISTER HERE VIA ZOOM

"From the global South to the human rights stage: A study of global frame resonance using a comparative case of Women, Life, Freedom and Bloody November in Iran."
2024-09-26 18:30 - 20:30 UTC | Graduate Center Room 5203, 365 Fifth Ave, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Danial Vahabli is a sociology PhD student at Stony Brook University and the Graduate Fellow of Institute for Advanced Computational Science. His research uses both computational methods and qualitative methods to study the intersection of culture, globalization, and resistance. His dissertation project focuses on international media representations of domestic protests with insights from social movement studies, world society theory, and media studies. He is also interested in protest art and its role in everyday acts of resistance.

"Weimar and Us: Lessons for Today from Interwar Germany—Part I: The Military, Political Violence, and Defense of the Republic" Isabel Hull in Conversation with Steven Remy
2024-10-09 18:30 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Graduate Center, Skylight Room 9th Floor, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
A major national election looms and the leader who years earlier had encouraged an insurrection is campaigning to a devoted audience. Politically tinged trials unfold in the courts, and political violence appears to be spreading amidst armed protests and assassination attempts. The above could describe Weimar Germany in the 1920s, but also characterizes the United States of America in 2024. This series seeks insights from the history of the Weimar Republic that might illuminate our current social and political climate—a fraught era for the American republic just as Weimar was for Germany.
In the first of three events, join historians Isabel Hull (John Stambaugh Professor of History Emerita, Cornell University) and Steven Remy (History, Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center) for a conversation about
The Military, Political Violence, and Defense of the Republic
Date and Location:
Wednesday, October 9, 2024
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM, The Skylight Room, 9th Floor
The Graduate Center, CUNY (365 Fifth Avenue)
Please RSVP by clicking the button below.

Isabel V. Hull (Ph.D. Yale 1978) is John Stambaugh Professor of History Emerita at Cornell University. Her research has ranged broadly in German history from the early modern to the modern period, and from governance, the history of sexuality, military culture, to international law. A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law in the First World War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014) won the American Society of International Law book prize in 2016. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Hull was awarded the Max Weber Stiftung-Historisches Kolleg Prize for lifetime achievement in German history and studies in 2013. She is currently writing a book on the international law governing when states could legitimately go to war (jus ad bellum) in Europe just before 1914.
Steven Remy has taught modern European history at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center since 2002. He teaches courses in modern European and German history, Nazi Germany, the politics and culture of memory in 20th-century Europe, colonial wars, and historical methodology. Steven Remy is a scholar of modern German history. The Heidelberg Myth: The Nazification and Denazification of a German University (Harvard, 2003), examined the responses of scholars to National Socialism. The Malmedy Massacre: The War Crimes Trial Controversy (Harvard, 2017) deals with debates over war crimes trials in the U.S. and Germany. His most recent book is War Crimes: Law, Politics, & Armed Conflict in the Modern World (Taylor & Francis, 2023).
This event is presented by the European Union Studies Center of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, co-sponsored by the DAAD Alumni Association USA and supported by the “Germany on Campus” program of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany.

"Weimar and Us: Lessons for Today from Interwar Germany—Part II: Political Economy and Crisis of 'The System'" David Abraham in Conversation with Benjamin Hett
2024-10-16 18:30 - 20:00 UTC | Graduate Center, Room 9205, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
A major national election looms and the leader who years earlier had encouraged an insurrection is campaigning to a devoted audience. Politically tinged trials unfold in the courts, and political violence appears to be spreading amidst armed protests and assassination attempts. The above could describe Weimar Germany in the 1920s, but also characterizes the United States of America in 2024. This series seeks insights from the history of the Weimar Republic that might illuminate our current social and political climate—a fraught era for the American republic just as Weimar was for Germany.
In the second of three events, join legal scholar David Abraham (Professor Emeritus, University of Miami) and Benjamin Hett (The Graduate Center and Hunter College) for a conversation about
Political Economy and the Crisis of “The System”
Date and Location:
Wednesday, October 16, 2024
6:30 PM-8 PM, Room 9205, 9th Floor
The Graduate Center, CUNY (365 Fifth Avenue)
Please RSVP by clicking the button below.
David Abraham is professor emeritus of law at the University of Miami School of Law specializing in property, immigration, and citizenship law, citizenship and identity, and law and the transition to capitalism. A historian by training, he received a BA, an MA, and a PhD in history from the University of Chicago. He received a JD in 1989 from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. After teaching for many years in the history department at Princeton University, he served as law clerk to Judge Leonard Garth of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and as an associate with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. He joined the Miami faculty in 1991. Abraham has published widely on issues of politics and economics in Weimar Germany and is the author of The Collapse of the Weimar Republic, which examined the conditions and fate of a social democratic, class-compromise effort to establish a viable welfare state. Abraham has been a Fellow at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin and the American Academy in Berlin as well as a guest Professor in Jena and Leipzig. He has also received Alexander von Humboldt and DAAD Research Fellowships. And although never a political scientist, he won the APSA’s Best Book Chapter prize a few years ago.
Born in Rochester NY, Benjamin Carter Hett earned a J.D. at the University of Toronto (1990) and practiced litigation in Canada for four years before earning a Ph.D. in history at Harvard (2001). He has taught at Harvard College and the Harvard Law School and, since 2003, at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is the author of The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic (Henry Holt, 2018), winner of the 2019 Vine Award for History and named one of the year’s best books by The Times of London and the Daily Telegraph, and The Nazi Menace: Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Road to War (Henry Holt, 2020) named an editors’ choice by the New York Times Book Review. His other books include Burning the Reichstag: An Investigation into the Third Reich’s Enduring Mystery (Oxford, 2014), winner of the 2015 Hans Rosenberg Prize, and Crossing Hitler: The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand (Oxford, 2008), which won the 2007 Fraenkel Prize and was made into a documentary film and a television drama for the BBC. Hett has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies.
This event is presented by the European Union Studies Center of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, co-sponsored by the DAAD Alumni Association USA and supported by the “Germany on Campus” program of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany.

First US Amb. to Ukraine at the GC
2024-10-17 18:00 - 20:00 UTC | NY
** While the formal event will begin at 6pm, please note that we have organized a reception for students commencing at 5.30pm so that they can meet and chat with Dr. Popadiuk. We encourage you to attend and meet a distinguished alumnus of our program.
Roman Popadiuk is a retired member of the career Senior Foreign Service and was the first US ambassador to independent Ukraine. He was Executive Director of the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation and is President of the Diplomacy Center Foundation.
Janet Elise Johnson is Endowed Chair in Women’s and Gender Studies and Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, CUNY.
Cosponsored by the Ralph Bunche Institute and IRrelevant.
RSVP Here

Who Has Human Rights? Liberal Consensus, Left Critique, and Far-Right Authoritarian Crisis
2024-10-19 16:00 - 17:00 UTC | Graduate Center Room 5203, 365 Fifth Ave, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Vanessa Wills (George Washington University)
Who Has Human Rights? Liberal Consensus, Left Critique, and Far-Right Authoritarian Crisis
Wednesday, October 19 @ 4:15pm (ET)
Minorities and Philosophy Annual Lecture, co-sponsored with the Philosophy Department Colloquium

Sexual Agency and Sexual Justice as Feminist Resistance: From Self-Reflexivity to Coalition Building
2024-10-22 18:30 - 20:30 UTC | Graduate Center Room 5203, 365 Fifth Ave, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Sarah Clark Miller (Penn State University)
Sexual Agency and Sexual Justice as Feminist Resistance:
From Self-Reflexivity to Coalition Building
Tuesday, October 22 @ 6:30pm (ET)

"New European democracies embraced the international supervision of human rights and expanded the West".
2024-10-24 18:30 - 20:30 UTC | Graduate Center Room 5203, 365 Fifth Ave, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Dr. Leonardo Castilho is a Human Rights Officer with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in New York. After working for NGOs in his hometown of Rio de Janeiro, Leonardo joined the UN in 2005 and has since worked for OHCHR and UNFPA in various positions in New York, Geneva, and in different countries in Latin America. He began his university studies on Law and International Relations at PUC-Rio, obtained master’s degrees from Sciences-Po Paris and Oxford University, and later obtained a PhD degree on International Relations / Political Science from the Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies. Leonardo was recently a Fellow of the Berlin/Potsdam KFG Research Group International Rule of Law: Rise or Decline?

“Weimar and Us: Lessons for Today from Interwar Germany, Part III: National Socialism and the Decline of the Weimar Republic” Sheri Berman in Conversation with John Torpey
2024-10-30 18:30 - 20:00 UTC | Graduate Center, Skylight Room 9th Floor, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
TIME CHANGE: Our event will begin at 7 pm tonight (originally 6:30 pm) due to major delays in northeast corridor Amtrak trains. We apologize for the inconvenience.
A major national election looms and the leader who years earlier had encouraged an insurrection is campaigning to a devoted audience. Politically tinged trials unfold in the courts, and political violence appears to be spreading amidst armed protests and assassination attempts. The above could describe Weimar Germany in the 1920s, but also characterizes the United States of America in 2024. This series seeks insights from the history of the Weimar Republic that might illuminate our current social and political climate—a fraught era for the American republic just as Weimar was for Germany.
In the third and final event of this series, join political scientist Sheri Berman (Barnard College, Columbia University) and sociologist John Torpey (The Graduate Center) for a conversation about
National Socialism and the Decline of the Weimar Republic
Date and Location:
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
6:30 PM-8 PM, The Skylight Room, 9th Floor
The Graduate Center, CUNY (365 Fifth Avenue)
Please RSVP by clicking the button below.
Sheri Berman is a professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her research interests include European history and politics; the development of democracy; populism and fascism; and the history of the left. She has written about these topics for a wide variety of scholarly and non-scholarly publications, including the New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, and VOX. She currently serves on the boards of the Journal of Democracy, Dissent and Political Science Quarterly. Her most recent book, Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Regime to the Present Day, was published by Oxford University Press in 2019.
John Torpey is professor of sociology and history and director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the Graduate Center, CUNY. He is the author or editor of a number of books, including Intellectuals, Socialism, and Dissent: The East German Opposition and its Legacy (1995); The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State (2000; 2nd ed. 2018); Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World (edited with Jane Caplan; Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001); Politics and the Past: On Repairing Historical Injustices (2004); Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe: Transatlantic Relations after the Iraq War (2005), Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: On Reparations Politics (2006); The Post-Secular in Question (2012); Legal Integration of Islam: A Transatlantic Comparison (with Christian Joppke, 2013); Transformations of Warfare in the Contemporary World (edited with David Jacobson, 2017); and The Three Axial Ages: Moral, Material, Mental. He is on the editorial board of Theory and Society and edits a series for Temple University Press titled “Politics, History, and Social Change.”
This event is presented by the European Union Studies Center of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, co-sponsored by the DAAD Alumni Association USA and supported by the “Germany on Campus” program of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Incas, Aliens, and Anarchists
2024-12-03 18:30 - 20:30 UTC | Graduate Center Room 5203, 365 Fifth Ave, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Jesse Spafford (Victoria University of Wellington)
Incas, Aliens, and Anarchists
Tuesday, December 3 @ 6:30pm (ET)

RBI Holiday Party
2024-12-13 17:00 - 20:00 UTC | Graduate Center Room 5203, 365 Fifth Ave, New York, NY, 10016, United States
This Event Was Cancelled. Please apologize for the inconvenience
Friday, December 13, 5:00 p.m. (ET)
GC Room 5203

Victim Activists in Mexico: Social and Political Mobilization amid Extreme Violence and Disappearances
2025-02-19 12:00 - 13:00 UTC | Virtual, bit.ly/3QVelvP, New York
Books are under attack in the United States. PEN America counted 10,000 books banned in public schools, with public libraries close behind.

Protesting that culture of censorship and suppression, the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity (Graduate Center—City University of New York), in cooperation with Marion Kaplan, Professor Emerita of Hebrew and Judaic Studies (NYU) and Raz Segal, Endowed Professor in the Study of Modern Genocide (Stockton University), is hosting a year-long virtual series, “In Praise of Books.” We celebrate new scholarship by emerging as well as established scholars, prizing their creativity and rigor.
Please join us for the third of the series:

Wednesday 19 February 2025.
12:00-1:00 PM (EST) Virtual
“Victim Activists in Mexico: Social and Political Mobilization amid Extreme Violence and Disappearances”

Professor Alexandra Délano Alonso will engage authors Yael Siman and Matthew Hone in a conversation about their new book, Victim Activists in Mexico: Social and Political Mobilization amid Extreme Violence and Disappearances. Amid the extreme violence that plagues Mexico, enforced disappearances have surged, exacerbated by systemic macro-criminality and widespread impunity. Families of the disappeared face nearly insurmountable challenges. Yet a robust movement has emerged, led predominantly by courageous relatives—primarily mothers—who have become victim-activists. Prof Alexandra Délano Alonso, Professor of Politics and Global Studies (The New School), and Profs Yael Siman (Iberoamericana University) and Matthew Hone (Stockton University) will discuss grassroots struggles for justice and the many forms of resistance these families have developed.
Chair: Center Director, Debórah Dwork

Odious Debt and the Making of Latin America: A 400-Year History of Moral Bankruptcy
2025-02-21 12:00 - 13:30 (America/New_York) | Graduate Center History Lounge, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Edward Jones Corredera
Senior Research Fellow
Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law
Bio: Edward Jones Corredera is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law and a Lecturer at the UNED. He is the author of Odious Debt: Bankruptcy, International Law, and the Making of Latin America (OUP 2024). He completed his PhD in History at the University of Cambridge in 2020 and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

“State of Democracy in India: Challenges and Prospects”
2025-05-07 16:00 - 19:00 UTC | Graduate Center Room 5203, 365 Fifth Ave, New York, NY, 10016, United States
The Ph.D./MA Program in Political Science (CUNY Graduate Center)
The Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies (CUNY Graduate Center)
The Hannah Arendt Center (Bard College)

“State of Democracy in India: Challenges and Prospects”

Guest Speaker: Yogendra Yadav (Political Activist)
Tuesday, May 6, 2025

5th Floor (Room 5203) – Ralph Bunche Institute
CUNY Graduate Center
365 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10016

4:00pm-6:00pm (Reception to follow)

Register Here

Contemporary China: Demystifying Economic and Social Changes
2025-09-05 08:00 - 17:00 UTC | Graduate Center Elebash Recital Hall, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
A panel of experts helps us understand the complex realities of China today.

Elebash Recital Hall
From the perspective of the West, China is easily misunderstood. Is it capitalist or communist, an adversary or a vital economic partner, a modernized nation or a retrograde regime? A panel of experts demystifies the vast economic and societal changes that have transformed China in recent decades. They discuss China’s remarkable strides toward eradicating poverty and the simultaneous growing inequality that has produced a new billionaire class; the decline in the birthrate despite the end of the One Child Policy; and how increased access to technology, with the limitations of censorship, is affecting the social landscape.
Featuring Yong Cai, associate professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Qin Gao, professor of social policy and social work at Columbia University; Rongbin Han, professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia; and Branko Milanovic, research professor at the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, CUNY Graduate Center, author of Capitalism, Alone and Visions of Inequality. Moderated by John Torpey, professor of sociology and history and director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Presented with the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, the China at CUNY Initiative, and the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies.
A video of this event will be posted a few days later on our YouTube Channel.
Please contact Jimmy Cok at jcok@gc.cuny.edu in advance for CART services or any additional accessibility requests or concerns for in-person events.​ This event will be livestreamed, and closed captions will be provided.
Review our Building Entry Policy for in-person events

Political Incorporation of Immigrants in Japan: The Focus on the Intention of Citizenship Acquisition
2025-09-08 16:00 - 18:30 UTC | Graduate Center Room 5203, 365 Fifth Ave, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Join us for our first co-sponsored event of the Fall 2025 Semester
Political Incorporation of Immigrants in Japan:
The Focus on the Intention of Citizenship Acquisition

The Public Policy Workshop and IRelevant – are collaborating with the Ralph Institute for International Studies and the International Migration Studies Program to sponsor a presentation by Prof. Hirohisa Takensohita, who is visiting from the Department of Political Science at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan.
He will speak on, “Political Incorporation of Immigrants in Japan: The Focus on the Intention of Citizenship Acquisition,” on Monday next week 9/8 at 4.15pm. The event will be in person in the Ralph Bunche Institute suite and remote.
Prof. Michael Sharpe will moderate the conversation.

Monday, September 8th, 4:15 p.m. (ET)
Ralph Bunche Institute
365 Fifth Ave, Room 5203
New York, NY 10016

Copyright © 2025 Ralph Bunche Institute, All rights reserved.

Ukraine Moving Towards Peace?
2025-10-15 18:00 - 20:00 UTC | Graduate Center, Skylight Room 9th Floor, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
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RSVP HERE

Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right
2025-11-04 08:00 - 17:00 UTC | Graduate Center Room 8301, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Join for a conversation between Laura Field and Richard Wolin on the intellectual descent from mid-century conservatism to Trumpism—one tracing its historical gestation, the other its ideological mutation—and as a warning that the U.S. now faces a radical, post-conservative right driven more by myth and ressentiment than by any genuine political philosophy.

Book Event: The Information State
2026-03-16 18:00 - 19:30 (America/New_York) | Graduate Center, Skylight Room 9th Floor, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
A conversation between Jacob Siegel and Eli Karetny

Date: March 16, 2026
Time: 6:00PM
Place: Skylight Room, Graduate Center CUNY 365 Fifth Ave, New York.

We’re often told that disinformation is everywhere and that it’s endangering our democracy. But what if the war on disinformation itself is really just a weapon to squash any and all legitimate dissent?
The Information State is an incisive examination of how we reached the point where anything that contradicts the dominant narrative can be labeled dangerous disinformation. Tablet contributor Jacob Siegel charts how the technological infrastructure built to make society safer and more rational has steadily replaced democratic freedoms with systems of digital control. Commercial Internet applications now double as military-grade surveillance and influence tools. Government tech partnerships established after 2001 in response to the global war on terror took on a life of their own and now target Americans.
Instead of competing for voters’ support, the information state uses censorship, mass surveillance, and algorithmic manipulation to shape public perceptions as it tries to engineer reality. Government officials requested that social media companies boost stories about Donald Trump’s alleged connections to Russia, while censoring those about Hunter Biden’s laptops, the origins of the COVID-19 virus, and the war in Ukraine.
An alliance between government and tech companies formed to wage the war on terror has evolved into an unholy new kind of technocratic state and turned against America’s own citizens. Laws signed by President Obama as he left office fused together the media, NGOs, the national security complex, and big tech companies into an unelected ruling party. In short, the information war came home and completely overtook American politics during the hyperpolarization of the Trump era and the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Information State is an urgent, necessary book that sounds the alarm on where society is headed in the age of AI if we don’t relearn how to think for ourselves and ask searching questions about whether information can ever be a substitute for truth.We’re often told that disinformation is everywhere and that it’s endangering our democracy. But what if the war on disinformation itself is really just a weapon to squash any and all legitimate dissent?
The Information State is an incisive examination of how we reached the point where anything that contradicts the dominant narrative can be labeled dangerous disinformation. Tablet contributor Jacob Siegel charts how the technological infrastructure built to make society safer and more rational has steadily replaced democratic freedoms with systems of digital control. Commercial Internet applications now double as military-grade surveillance and influence tools. Government tech partnerships established after 2001 in response to the global war on terror took on a life of their own and now target Americans.
Instead of competing for voters’ support, the information state uses censorship, mass surveillance, and algorithmic manipulation to shape public perceptions as it tries to engineer reality. Government officials requested that social media companies boost stories about Donald Trump’s alleged connections to Russia, while censoring those about Hunter Biden’s laptops, the origins of the COVID-19 virus, and the war in Ukraine.
An alliance between government and tech companies formed to wage the war on terror has evolved into an unholy new kind of technocratic state and turned against America’s own citizens. Laws signed by President Obama as he left office fused together the media, NGOs, the national security complex, and big tech companies into an unelected ruling party. In short, the information war came home and completely overtook American politics during the hyperpolarization of the Trump era and the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Information State is an urgent, necessary book that sounds the alarm on where society is headed in the age of AI if we don’t relearn how to think for ourselves and ask searching questions about whether information can ever be a substitute for truth.

The Origins and Future of the United Nations
2026-04-20 17:00 - 19:00 UTC | Graduate Center Room 5203, 365 Fifth Ave, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Moderator
John Torpey, Director
Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies
Presenters
Lukas Haynes, RBI Visiting Scholar, discussing Peace Through Power:
FDR’s Military Leaders and the Pragmatism of the UN Charter
Tapio Kanninen, RBI Senior Fellow, discussing Revitalizing the United Nations:
Making and Keeping the Peace
Commentators
Richard Gowan, International Crisis Group
Stephen Schlesinger, World Policy Institute (ret.)
Date and time
Monday, April 20, 2026 5-6:30pm
Wine and Cheese Reception to Follow
Place
Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, Room 5203
CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016

The Reality of UFOs/UAP
2026-05-06 18:00 - 20:30 UTC | Proshansky Auditorium, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
A presentation by journalist Leslie Kean who has been investigating and reporting on the subject for over 25 years. Q&A moderated by RBI Acting Director, Eli Karetny.
RSVP for The Reality of UFOs/UAP - May 6. 6PM

Leslie Kean is an investigative journalist and author of the 2010 New York Times bestseller UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record. She has been covering UFOs/UAP for the mainstream since 2000. Kean and reporter Ralph Blumenthal have contributed articles to The New York Times on UFOs/UAPs for eight years, beginning with a game-changing front page story about a secret Pentagon UFO program in 2017, written with Helene Cooper. Kean’s over two decades of reporting on UFOs was profiled in The New Yorker in 2021. Kean and Blumenthal broke the story of whistleblower David Grusch in The Debrief in 2023, which led to an open Congressional hearing. Kean also helped produce two seasons of the NatGeo documentary series “UFOs: Investigating the Unknown” (2025) streaming on Hulu.

Kean is also the author of Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program and was Ezra Klein’s NY
