Ralph Bunche Institute

Book talk- Night on Earth: International Humanitarianism in the Near East
2023-04-04 08:00 - 17:00 UTC | Graduate Center, Skylight Room 9th Floor, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Thursday, April 20
6:00 pm, Skylight Room
The Graduate Center, City University of New York
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016

A book talk with author Davide Rodogno, Geneva Graduate Institute
in conversation with Rajan Menon. City College/CUNY and Joshua Craze, writer.

Co-presented by the European Union Studies Center, The Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies and Centro Primo Levi.

This event is presented in person only. RSVP to eusc@gc.cuny.edu

“Western humanitarians pretended to act upon a kind of tabula rasa, when in fact there was no tabula rasa there, and there was a very long Ottoman humanitarian tradition.”

Constructed after Jim Jarmusch’s film and driven by profound empathy, Davide Rodogno’s Night on Earth is a broad-ranging account of international humanitarian programs in Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Near East from 1918 to 1930. The author shows that international ‘relief’ and ‘development’ were intertwined long before the birth of the United Nations with humanitarians operating in a region devastated by war and famine and in which state sovereignty was deficient. Influenced by colonial motivations and ideologies, these humanitarians attempted to reshape entire communities and nations through reconstruction and rehabilitation programs. The book draws on the activities of a wide range of secular and religious organizations and philanthropic foundations in the US and Europe including the American Relief Administration, the American Red Cross, the Quakers, Save the Children, the Near East Relief, the American Women’s Hospitals, the League of Nations, and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Rodogno applies the metaphor of relationship between taxi drivers and passengers, to the givers and recipients of humanitarian aid. Inevitably, miscommunication, tensions and distortions take place, especially in the Ottoman context which was linguistically, culturally and politically removed from the mentality of the providers of relief. Both geographies and chronologies become central to these equivocations and, in some ways, carry on their impact well beyond that period.

This geographical area is rich in terms of the reflection on sovereignty. The history of the mandates, the independence of Turkey, the processes of Sovietization or the role of the Refugee Settlement Commission all happened in Ottoman Lands. In scholarly research, the Ottoman Lands are studied separately but in fact – as in the mental imaginaire of the Western humanitarians described in the book – these lands were considered to be one. Many of these actors found themselves in places spanning from Georgia to what would soon become the Soviet Republic of Armenia or Greece, or Lebanon and Palestine, because these institutions had a very broad reach parallel to that of warfare.

Rodogno also repositions chronological perspectives. For instance, the recent years’ academic focus on 1918 is meaningful for Western Europe as the end of World War I. However, for these areas, 1918 is not an end. If anything, it is the beginning or the continuation of many wars. Humanitarians operating in Central and Western Europe moved down to the Balkans and to other former Ottoman Lands after 1918 precisely because they could deploy resources and extend their raison d’être to where humanitarian aid was needed by civilian populations. By delving into a specific chapter of humanitarian history, Night on Earth offers a fruitful sounding board to re-evaluate the questions and problems we face today in this field.

Davide Rodogno is a Professor of International History and Politics and the Head of the Interdisciplinary Master Programs at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, the Director of the Certificate in Advanced Studies in Advocacy in International Affairs at the Geneva Graduate Institute. He specializes in researching international organizations and associations, philanthropic foundations, and transnational networks and movements since the 19th century. His research interests include the history of human rights, of minorities, of crimes against humanity and International Law, the concept and practice of international development programs, state-building and international administration since creation of the League of Nations.

Joshua Craze has written on art, war, and literature. His works have appeared in n+1, Cabinet, and the Guardian. His Grammar of Redaction, which examined the strange linguistic categories of the redacted documents of the war on terror, was exhibited at the New Museum, New York, and he has written catalogue essays for Jenny Holzer’s redaction paintings. He has had residencies at Dar al-Ma’mûn, Marrakech, where he was a UNESCO artist laureate in creative writing; Art OMI, New York; and, most recently, at the Embassy of Foreign Artists, in Geneva, where he began research for a new project in the archives of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

Rajan Menon is director of the Grand Strategy program at Defense Priorities and the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Chair Emeritus in International Relations at the Powell School, City College of New York/City University of New York. He is also a Senior Research Scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University and a Non-Resident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Menon has been a fellow at the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Affairs and the New America Foundation, academic fellow at the Carnegie Corporation, research scholar at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (the Wilson Center), and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His books include Soviet Power and the Third World (Yale University Press, 1986), The End of Alliances (Oxford University Press, 2007), Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order, coauthored with Eugene Rumer (MIT Press, 2015), and The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention (Oxford University Press, 2016). His next book, Russia After Putin, co-authored with Eugene B. Rumer, is under contract to Oxford University Press.

In addition to publications in numerous academic journals, Menon has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, Chicago Tribune, Boston Review, Foreign Policy, and The National Interest. He has appeared as a commentator on ABC, CNN, MSNBC, the BBC, NPR, France 24 Television, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and Radio Australia.

Human Rights Workshop: "Responsible Sovereignty and Individual Accountability: Liberal Internationalist Aspirations from the 1990s"
2023-03-23 18:00 - 19:30 | CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
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. Participants are expected to have read a pre-circulated work prior attendance. For further information, please emailiirtifa@gradcenter.cuny.edu.

Jennifer Welsh (McGill University). Title: “Responsible Sovereignty and Individual Accountability: Liberal Internationalist Aspirations from the 1990s”
March 23, 6pm-7:30 pmIn-person: CUNY Graduate Center

Register Here: https://forms.gle/sd3mA57vWsT8mca48

Human Right's Workshop: "Advocacy for Human Rights with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris: The Case of Slavery Reparations"
2023-02-23 18:00 - 19:30 | NY
CUNY HUMAN RIGHTS WORKSHOP
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. Participants are expected to have read a pre-circulated work prior attendance. For further information, please emailiirtifa@gradcenter.cuny.edu.

February 23, 6pm-7:30pm
Discussant: John Torpey
In-person: CUNY Graduate Center
Register Here: https://forms.gle/c9gK7HaLNNcDFnqv5

One Year Later: Russia's War on Ukraine
2023-02-23 12:00 - 14:00 | CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
A talk with Metin Hakverdi, Social Democrat member of the German Bundestag ***Zoom link to be announced***

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine: A Year of War and Genocide
2023-02-23 12:00 - 13:00 | Virtual, bit.ly/3QVelvP, New York
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, escalating the war it had unleashed in 2014. With an avowed goal of de-Ukrainization, Russia rejects the idea of Ukrainian statehood and has declared genocidal goals in Ukraine.

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine: A Year of War and Genocide
Thursday, 23 February 2023, noon-1:00 pm (EST)

Please mark the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by joining us for a conversation about the war, its long-term consequences, and its genocidal nature. The discussion will feature Eugene Finkel, a scholar of genocide and author of the forthcoming To Kill Ukraine, and Elissa Bemporad, an expert on anti-Jewish violence in Ukraine.
Born in Ukraine, Eugene Finkel is the Kenneth H. Keller Associate Professor of International Affairs, Johns Hopkins University. The author of several books, including Ordinary Jews: Choice and Survival during the Holocaust (2017) and Bread and Autocracy: Food, Politics and Security in Putin’s Russia (2023), Finkel is a scholar of genocide, mass violence, and politics in Eastern Europe. Elissa Bemporad is Professor of History and Ungar Chair in East European Jewish History and the Holocaust at Queens College and CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author or editor of numerous works, receiving the National Jewish Book Award twice: for Becoming Soviet Jews (2013) and for Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets (2019). She is currently working on a biography of Ester Frumkin.
Chair: Natalya Lazar, Program Manager, The Initiative on Ukrainian-Jewish Shared History and the Holocaust in Ukraine, at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

This event is hosted in association with:
The Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Center—CUNY
The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, USHMM

“The Bedouin Village of Rah'ma: Toward Recognition and Beyond”
2023-02-16 13:00 - 14:00 | Virtual, bit.ly/3QVelvP, New York
The Bedouin of the Negev desert have long sought legal recognition from the State of Israel. Without legal status, they are denied their basic rights as Israeli citizens: access to public health services, water, electricity, public transportation, is inadequate or unavailable. Rah’ma is one of the few unrecognized villages that has been promised recognition, yet that promise remains unfulfilled. Still: a school has been approved and built, public utilities have improved, and village residents see some hope. What makes Rah’ma different from other Bedouin villages in the Negev? What paved the way to the promise of recognition? What changes will recognition bring? And can Rah’ma be a model for Israeli-Bedouin relations going forward? Please join for a discussion between Sliman Elfregat, Rah’ma school principal; Debbie Golan, co-founder and president of Atid Bamidbar; and Dvir Warshavsky, Ministry of Education project director. Chair and moderator: Eli Karetny, deputy director of the Ralph Bunche Institute.
This event is hosted in association with:
The Center for Jewish Studies, The Graduate Center—City University of New York
CUNY Academy for the Humanities and Sciences, The Graduate Center–CUNY
The School of General Studies and the Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Stockton University
The Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University

REGISTER HERE https://gc-cuny-edu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_YM_0xJ14SGGSZ-0ISpTpzw

“Israel/Palestine: What the Archives Reveal and Conceal”
2023-02-15 12:00 - 13:00 | Virtual, bit.ly/3QVelvP, New York
The story of the past calls for extensive use of archival documents. But, adducing risk to state security, Israeli archives, especially the state archives, block access to key collections that pertain to the state’s history in general and the Palestinian Nakba and ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular. Palestinian researchers who seek to tell the story of the Palestinian past using Palestinian personal papers and archival materials face additional, unofficial, obstacles. Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, professor of sociology at the Hebrew University and a 2022 Guggenheim Distinguished Scholar, and Yaacov Lozowick, a historian who served as Israel’s chief archivist from 2011-2018, will discuss what Israeli archives reveal and conceal. Please join for a challenging conversation that will range from the role of archives in the power dynamics of the conflict to the stories still to be told if access to the archives were unfettered. Chair and moderator: Hebrew University professor Amos Goldberg, head of the Avraham Harman Research Institute for Contemporary Jewry.
This event is hosted in association with:
The Center for Jewish Studies, The Graduate Center—City University of New York
CUNY Academy for the Humanities and Sciences, The Graduate Center–CUNY
The School of General Studies and the Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Stockton University
The Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University

REGISTER HERE

Crossing the Bridges
2023-02-10 12:30 - 13:30 | CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
A book talk with author Eva Hoffman Jedruch about her mother’s struggle to survive during WWII

Cultivating Food Security in Ukraine
2023-02-08 12:00 - 14:00 | CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
A panel of experts on the prospects of food security amid the Russian War on Ukraine

Register: bit.ly/3CC3ths

After the End of the World
2023-01-10 08:00 - 2023-02-23 17:00 | United Nations Headquarters
At United Nations Headquarters in New York CityThe exhibition is sourced with artifacts and documents from the archives of the United Nations and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and draws upon the expertise of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at the Graduate Center—CUNY

“Finding the Disappeared: The Role of Truth Commissions and Post-Conflict Justice Initiatives in Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico”
2022-12-01 12:00 - 13:30 | Virtual, bit.ly/3QVelvP, New York
The historical record is marked by voids: elided events; disappeared people; erased accounts; marginalized communities. So is our own era.
The Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity (The Graduate Center—City University of New York), in association with the School of General Studies and the Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Stockton University) and the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies (New York University), offers a year-long virtual series,The Marginalized and the Erased, to tackle a number of those blank spots.
Please join us for the third in the virtual series:
THURSDAY 1 DECEMBER 2022 12:00-1:00 (EST)
“Finding the Disappeared: The Role of Truth Commissions and Post-Conflict Justice Initiatives in Columbia, Guatemala, and Mexico

A challenging conversation about recovering disappeared persons and the promotion of human rights.

A stellar panel of scholar/activists will explore the role of truth commissions and other international justice efforts to document, sanction, and establish reparations for 20th and 21st century rights violations in Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico. Professor and Senior Researcher at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology in Mexico City, Aída Hernández promotes women’s and indigenous people’s human rights in Mexico. An activist researcher, her work with families of missing person focuses on strategies of resistance. Tatiana Devia, a staff attorney for the Transitional Justice Program at (the non-profit) Corporate Accountability Lab, has investigated human rights abuses in Colombia and analyzed the work of Truth Commissions through a gender lens. Ana María Méndez Dardón, Director for Central America Program, Washington Office on Latin America, served as special projects officer to the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). She seeks to strengthen access to justice in Guatemala and has shone a bright light on women illegally detained during the Rios Montt dictatorship.
Chair: Prof. Victoria Sanford

REGISTER 1 DEC | FINDING THE DISAPPEARED

Subjective Security
2022-11-29 19:30 - 21:30 | Graduate Center, Room 9205, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Subjective SecurityOlúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (Georgetown University)Tuesday, November 29, 6:30 p.m. (ET)GC Room 9205-06And online via Zoom
We are excited to welcome philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò as our fourth and final colloquium speaker of Fall 2022. The talk will be followed by a Q&A with the speaker.This is an in-person event that will allow for virtual participation via Zoom. The in-person talk will be followed by a reception with wine and snacks.If you plan to attend virtually, please register in advance for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about joining.Members of the public who wish to attend should email us. They may enter the GC if they show proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test taken within 7 days prior to the visit.

Abstract
The distinction between “negative” and “positive” freedom focuses on the political and ethical subject’s relationships with herself and with other people. Materialists have tended to focus more on the direct contribution of the social circumstances in which the subject finds herself (e.g. her relationship to the means of production and the means of subsistence). In this talk I try out one strategy for reconciling the former focus with the latter, one rooted in the political ideal of self-determination, which I associate with the latter group of thought. I’ll attempt to describe subjective security as a resource that allows a person to extend herself across time, institutions, and persons in ways that are vital for securing her freedom, and sketch some political implications of this view.
Speaker Bio
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. His work focuses on Africana and social/political philosophy and emphasizes themes and figures from anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, and Black radical traditions of thought and practice. He is also the author of Reconsidering Reparations (Oxford University Press, January 2022) and Elite Capture (Haymarket Press and Pluto Press, May 2022).

Limitarianism from a Global Perspective
2022-11-15 18:30 - 20:00 | Graduate Center, Room 9205, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Limitarianism from a Global PerspectiveIngrid Robeyns (Utrecht University)Tuesday, November 15, 6:30 p.m. (ET)GC Room 9205 And online via Zoom
We are excited to welcome philosopher Ingrid Robeyns as our third colloquium speaker of Fall 2022. The talk will be followed by a Q&A with the speaker.This is an in-person event that will allow for virtual participation via Zoom. The in-person talk will be followed by a reception with wine and snacks.If you plan to attend virtually, please register in advance for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about joining.Members of the public who wish to attend should email us. They may enter the GC if they show proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test taken within 7 days prior to the visit.

Abstract
Limitarianism is the view that there should be an upper limit to how many resources a person can appropriate; in most cases, the focus is on economic resources, and the claim is that there should be a limit to how rich a person can be. Limitarianism is thus a view in the wider family of egalitarian proposals, but urges us to focus explicitly on the harms and bads done by extreme wealth concentration.However, most of the reasons given for limitarianism are focusing on the effects among a political community of voters. Similarly, most of the institutional proposals that have been put forward on how one could move in the direction of a limitarian world focus on the possibilities given by the fiscal system. In other words, in the existing literature there is a significant focus at what this means for political actions within a country. In this talk, I ask what the limitarian view needs when considered from a global perspective. Does limitarianism become implausible if we consider the realities of an interconnected world? Or does it require us to make modifications or put additional requirements to the institutional proposals to advance limitarianism?
Speaker Bio
Ingrid Robeyns holds the chair in ethics of institutions at Utrecht University. She works mainly in normative political philosophy, but also engages in interdisciplinary research. Some of the topics on which she published are the capability approach, concepts of wellbeing, gender inequality, methods in normative political philosophy, climate justice, as well as specific institutional proposals, such as universal basic income or inheritance taxation. Her most recent work is on limitarianism, on which she is writing a book aimed at a broader audience (in North America, forthcoming with Astra Publishing House).

Russia’s War on Ukrainian Heritage, Yet Another War Crime
2022-11-10 08:00 - 17:00 | NY
Originally published at https://katoikos.world/analysis/russias-war-on-ukrainian-heritage-yet-another-war-crime.html
By Tom Weiss, RBI Emeritus Director
The nineteenth-century German poet Heinrich Heine’s words inspired Raphael Lemkin, the drafter of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: “Burning books is not the same as burning bodies…but when one intervenes … against mass destruction of churches and books one arrives just in time to prevent the burning of bodies.”[1]
Lemkin’s immediate reference was the November 1938 Kristallnacht crimes, the coordinated program and cultural destruction in the Third Reich, but there are far too many other instances across time and space. While Vladimir Putin’s docket in The Hague is already lengthy, the war crime of destroying cultural heritage is yet another reason to say “nyet” to Russian recolonization.
The UN General Assembly’s condemnation and decision to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council reflected the continuing and contemporary relevance of what former UNESCO director-general Irina Bokova labeled “cultural genocide” with reference to Iraq and Syria. This expression is not a legal term, but UNESCO applies it to connote cultural removal akin to “ethnic cleansing”—a term coined in the early 1990s to describe mass atrocities in the former Yugoslavia, which also has no formal legal definition. Cultural cleansing and ethnic cleansing are evocative; both capture dramatic crimes that shock the human conscience.
Scholars have paid only fleeting attention to this emphasis in Lemkin’s work—the relevance of biological and cultural genocide, [2] but it certainly applies to Ukraine. UNESCO has compiled a growing list that in mid-November counts 210 sites that have been damaged or destroyed since Moscow’s invasion began on 24 February 2022. It includes 91 religious sites, 76 buildings of historical or artistic interest, 18 monuments, 15 museums, and 10 libraries.
Unfortunately, recent history is replete with similar tragic examples. Shortly after ISIS (or Da’esh) took the city of Palmyra in Syria in the summer of 2015, they exploded the 2,000-year-old Temple of Baalshamin. For informed observers, the destruction was linked to the group’s ongoing murder, human trafficking, slavery, and terror in Syria and Iraq. Mass atrocities also accompanied the destruction of cultural heritage when insurgents deliberately shelled the Mostar Bridge in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1993, destroyed the fabled mosques, mausoleums, and libraries of Timbuktu in Mali in 2012, as well as when the Taliban dynamited the sixth-century Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2001.
Social scientists are taught to ask, “so what?” Moreover, we should add, “Can anything be done?” Affirmative responses are suggested by the history of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is a remarkable human rights achievement despite its contested application and nonapplication—e.g., in Libya but not in Syria, Myanmar, and Ukraine.
The concepts applied by the commission mirror those of cultural specialists—the essential responsibilities are to prevent, to react, and to rebuild. The heightened attention in academic and public policy discourse to the demands of coming to the rescue of people now also characterizes the challenge of protecting cultural heritage.
In fact, the intimate link between attacking bricks and attacking blood, or murdering history and people, provides means to unite the tasks of protecting heritage and humans because the international political disputes about when and where to intervene in specific crises to protect people do not characterize the protection of cultural heritage. Rogues that destroy heritage—such nonstate thugs as ISIS, such pariah states as Taliban Afghanistan, and such major powers as China in Xinjiang—are immediate targets for external opprobrium. Widespread if not quite universal international condemnation erupts rather than endless debates about whether outside interveners are neo-colonialists or cosmopolitans.
Ironically, many iconoclasts who destroy heritage and murder people can use social media to help recruitment. Ironically, such performative destruction constitutes a “benefit” for them, which is dramatically overshadowed by the costs borne by local residents and the rest of us.
Could reframing intervention to protect heritage make it easier to reach a consensus about robust international action that would also protect the people whose culture is under siege? That question animated a research project and the resulting open-access publication of the J. Paul Getty Trust, Cultural Heritage and Mass Atrocities.
Amidst the political gloom that dominates the present moment, there is a bit of good news. The public’s awareness and shock about the destruction of such renowned sites as the Bamiyan Buddhas, Mostar Bridge, Palmyra, Sana’a, and Timbuktu, also lay behind the nearly universal international revulsion and outrage in January 2020, when Donald Trump mindlessly threatened to target 52 Iranian cultural sites when Tehran menaced retaliation for the assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.
In short, protecting heritage has become visible on the international public policy agenda. It is no longer a “niche topic,” the exclusive domain of cultural specialists. If any further indications were necessary, the failure to protect adequately Iraqi cultural heritage during the initial US occupation suggested the need to broaden perspectives and participation. The rescue of individuals caught in the crosshairs of violence and menaced by mass atrocities invariably are amidst conscious cultural heritage destruction. Indeed, for those of us who analyze politics and design responses, including military ones, it is important that insiders at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) speak increasingly of the “security-heritage nexus.”
It is essential that we be preoccupied not only with visible World Heritage sites recognized by UNESCO but also less well-known, everyday structures—Uyghur mud-brick temples in China, Christian village cemeteries in Iraq and Syria, local Rohingya mosques in Myanmar, and Russia’s campaign since 2014 to eliminate Tatar traces in the occupied Crimea. While they do not make for media coverage, these more commonplace sites have become a daily bill-of-fare of destruction, another indication of the widespread onslaught against the people whose heritage they represent, as part of efforts to eliminate histories along with human beings.
The core R2P ethical framework is to halt mass murder and mass forced displacement, actual or anticipated. Its emergence reflected an altered political reality. Although specific decisions about exactly when and where to invoke R2P remain controversial, few observers question whether global responses to mass atrocities are justified. Instead, the debate centers on precisely how best to achieve R2P’s lofty aims.
So too is the intersection between violent attacks on humans and heritage. The protection of immovable cultural heritage is not a distraction for proponents of the robust protection of people. There is no need to add another crime to the four mass atrocities agreed by the UN’s 2005 World Summit. Rather, protecting cultural heritage is a fundamental aspect of protecting people from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.[3] In addition, emphasizing such protection within the R2P framework has the potential to widen support for the evolving norm and its evolution in customary law as well as contribute to ongoing conversations about legitimate sovereignty.
Responsible states view mass atrocities as an international concern and not merely one of domestic jurisdiction. The destruction of cultural heritage should be viewed similarly because of the universal value and the intimate links between attacks on cultural objects, structures, and monuments and attacks on vulnerable populations.
While destroying cultural heritage is not new—examples go back to antiquity—neither is the impulse to protect and preserve it; the contemporary convergence of two factors has altered the politics of protection and the feasibility of international action. First, the destruction of cultural heritage has riveted the attention not only of curators, archaeologists, historians, and activists but also of major media outlets and popular audiences. Second, they find themselves in the company of a cottage industry of social scientists, international lawyers, and military officers exploring R2P’s application to the protection of cultural heritage.
There is no need to split hairs between safeguarding people and the cultural heritage that sustains them. Trying to establish a priority between them constitutes a false choice, reminiscent of juxtaposing development and the environment. The staff from the Middle East Institute, the Asia Society, and the Antiquities Coalition evaluated the widespread devastation in Asia and concluded: “The fight to protect the peoples of the region and their heritage cannot be separated.”

[1] Quoted in Robert Bevan, The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War, 2nd ed. (London: Reaktion Books, 2016), 15.
[2] Raphael Lemkin, “Acts Constituting a General (Transnational) Danger Considered as Offences Against the Law of Nations,” (1933); and Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, and Proposals for Redress (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 1944), xiii.
[3] UN, 2005 World Summit Outcome, General Assembly resolution 60/1, 24 October 2005, paragraphs 138–140.

“From Ancient Seaport to Medieval Crossroads: One Era Passes, Another Begins”
2022-10-27 12:00 - 13:30 | Segal Theater, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
October 27 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
Free

CIRCLE FOR LATE ANTIQUE AND MEDIEVAL STUDIES PRESENTS:
“From Ancient Seaport to Medieval Crossroads: One Era Passes, Another Begins”
A lecture by:
Richard Bulliet
Professor Emeritus, Middle Eastern History
Columbia University
This is the inaugural lecture for the Circle for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, which seeks to engage scholars working on the late antique and medieval periods of Eurasia and Afro-Asia in an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural dialogue.
Prof. Bulliet’s lecture will focus on the degree of continuity between late antique and the medieval period and across geographies. The transportation infrastructure of the southern portion of the antique world shifted from maritime trade and liquid cargoes to camel caravans and dry cargoes. This shift signaled the passage from Late Antiquity to Medieval times. The chronology of the shift correlates with the geographic spread of one-humped camel herding, which accelerated after the Arab conquests.
Richard W. Bulliet is Emeritus Professor of History at Columbia University. His publications concentrate on the history of Islam (Islam: The View from the Edge and Cotton, Climate, and Camels in Early Islamic Iran) and the history of premodern transportation (The Camel and the Wheel and The Wheel: Inventions and Reinventions). He is also the lead author of the eighth edition of a world history textbook (The Earth and Its Peoples) now in preparation. During his career at Columbia, he directed The Middle East Institute for twelve years and taught Middle East History, History of Technology, and History of Domestic Animals.
John Torpey, Presidential Professor of History and Sociology and Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, will give a short introduction.
The Circle is convened by Parvaneh Pourshariati, Associate Professor of History at the New York City of College of Technology, CUNY.
The Circle for Late Antique and Medieval Studies is based out of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the Graduate Center, CUNY. The Circle gratefully acknowledges the co-sponsorship by the History, Classics and Archeology Programs and the Middle East and Middle Eastern Americans Center at the Graduate Center, CUNY.
Register the Zoom webinar: https://gc-cuny-edu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_XUYYU9O2RsudaQiTq95gBg
RSVP for the in person event to: circleforlateantiquemedieval@gmail.com

“Post-Roe America: Women and Human Rights”
2022-10-27 12:00 - 13:00 | Virtual, bit.ly/3QVelvP, New York
The historical record is marked by voids: elided events; disappeared people; erased accounts; marginalized communities. So is our own era.

The Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity (The Graduate Center—City University of New York), in association with the School of General Studies and the Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Stockton University), and the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies (New York University), offers a year-long virtual series, The Marginalized and the Erased, to tackle a number of those blank spots.

Please join us for the second of the series:

27 October 2022
“Post-Roe America: Women and Human Rights”

A challenging conversation about the loss of bodily autonomy and human rights

With the extinction of abortion access as a constitutional right, obstetric care has become a legal labyrinth and cybersecurity for individuals has emerged as a serious concern. Frontline expert Dr Lisa Harris will address the thorny question of how the SCOTUS decision shapes medical practice. And cybersecurity experts Eva Galperin and Jennifer Granick will plumb the weaponization by law enforcement and ordinary citizen bounty hunters of women’s telephone call histories, browser histories, text messages, emails, location data, and payment records. Lisa Harris is Associate Chair of Ob/Gyn at the University of Michigan Medical School; her research sits at the intersection of clinical obstetrical and gynecological care and law, policy, and politics. Eva Galperin, at the forefront of cybersecurity research, policy, and practice, is dedicated to providing privacy and security for vulnerable populations around the world; Galperin serves as Director of Cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Jennifer Granick is a lawyer and prize-winning author. As the Surveillance and Cybersecurity Counsel with the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, Granick litigates, speaks, and writes about privacy, security, technology, and constitutional rights.
Chair: Marion Kaplan

https://gc-cuny-edu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_oefcEHJDS_uCYXYvDK3zeA

The Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity, The Graduate Center—City University of New York
In association with:
The School of General Studies and the Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Stockton University
The Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University

Agential Power and Structural Power, Causal and Non-Causal
2022-10-13 18:30 - 20:30 | Political Science Lounge, GC Room 5200, 365 Fifth Ave, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Agential Power and Structural Power, Causal and Non-Causal Arash Abizadeh (McGill University)Thursday, October 13, 6:30 p.m. (ET)Political Science Lounge, GC Room 5200 And online via ZoomCo-sponsored by the GC Political Theory Colloquium
We are excited to welcome political philosopher Arash Abizadeh as our second colloquium speaker of Fall 2022, in collaboration with the GC Political Theory Colloquium. The talk will be followed by a Q&A with the speaker.This is an in-person event that will allow for virtual participation via Zoom. The in-person talk will be followed by a reception with wine and light snacks.If you plan to attend virtually, please register in advance for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about joining.Members of the public who wish to attend should email us. They may enter the GC if they show proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test taken within 7 days prior to the visit.

Abstract
Many theorists of social power assume that agents’ power operates only by way of their intentional actions and their causal role in effecting outcomes. The former assumption is true of agential power, the latter of causal power, but neither is true of the social power of agents in general. Distinguishing between agential and structural power, I defend a notion of structural power as a type of non-intentional, passive power agents have in virtue of their position in a social structure and independently of their intentional actions. Distinguishing between causal and non-causal power, I also defend a non-causal type of power by which agents effect or elicit outcomes without causing them. Agential and structural power, moreover, are internally related: structural power is in certain contexts latently agential.
Speaker Bio

Arash Abizadeh is Professor in the Department of Political Science and Associate Member of the Department of Philosophy at McGill University. His research focusses on democratic theory; democracy’s relation to identity, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism; immigration and border control; social and political power; and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy, particularly Hobbes and Rousseau.

Visit our YouTube page to watch videos of past events, like our Facebook page,and follow our twitter @global_ethics. CGEP Director: Carol C. Gould. Distinguished Professor, Philosophy and Political Science,The Graduate Center and Hunter College, CUNYThe Center for Global Ethics and Politics is part of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Copyright © 2022 Center for Global Ethics and Politics, All rights reserved.You are receiving this email because you have attend a previous event or have expressed interest in the ongoing activities of CGEP.

Must the Subaltern Speak Publicly? Political Liberalism and the Ethics of Fighting Severe Injustice
2022-09-30 12:00 - 13:30 | Virtual, bit.ly/3QVelvP, New York
Must the Subaltern Speak Publicly?Political Liberalism and the Ethics of Fighting Severe InjusticeAlasia Nuti (University of York)Friday, September 30, 12:00 p.m. (ET)Online via Zoom
We are excited to welcome political theorist Alasia Nuti as our first colloquium speaker of Fall 222. The talk will be followed by a Q&A with the speaker.This is an online event. Please register in advance for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about joining. Follow this link to register: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwrduyorzMjH9cPZBtY09mMIT_fHloHNkgd

Abstract
The victims of severe injustice, but no other group in society, are allowed to employ disruption and violence to seek political change. This article argues for this conclusion from within Rawlsian political liberalism, which, however, has been criticised for allegedly imposing public reason’s suffocating norms of civility on the oppressed. It develops a novel view of the applicability of public reason in non-ideal circumstances – the ‘no self-sacrificed view’ – that is focused on the excessive costs of following public reason when suffering from severe injustice. On this view, those treated in what Rawls describes as less than a reasonably just way are relieved of the duty of public reason and therefore entitled to employ disruption and violence. Turning to the requirements that actually apply to the oppressed, the article also shows that, when properly developed, political liberalism offers original and nuanced normative guidance on how to fight severe injustice uncivilly.
Speaker Bio
Alasia Nuti is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Political Theory at the University of York. She received her PhD, which was awarded the Elizabeth Wiskemann Prize for the Study of Inequality and Social Justice from the Political Studies Association, from the University of Cambridge. Her first book “Injustice and the Reproduction of History: Structural Injustice, Gender, and Redress” (Cambridge University Press, 2019) received the Honourable Mention from the ECPR Prize in Political Theory in 2021. In 2022, Alasia was awarded the Early Career Prize from the Britain and Ireland Association for Political Thought. She is currently working on a monograph (Oxford University Press, under contract) on a revised account of political liberalism and the task of containment, which is co-authored with Gabriele Badano.

You are also welcome to attend an upcoming event at the Graduate Center that was co-organized by some of our CGEP fellows: Feminism in Crisis? Philosophical Interventions, CUNY Graduate Student Conference, Oct. 1, 2022, 9am-6pm, Room 5414, and online. Robin Dembroff (Yale University) will keynote. Register to attend here.

Visit our YouTube page to watch videos of past events, like our Facebook page,and follow our twitter @global_ethics. CGEP Director: Carol C. Gould. Distinguished Professor, Philosophy and Political Science,The Graduate Center and Hunter College, CUNYThe Center for Global Ethics and Politics is part of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Fall Events Center for Global Ethics and Politics
2022-09-30 12:00 - 13:00 | NY
As the Fall 2022 semester begins, the Center for Global Ethics and Politics would like to update everyone on our schedule and invite you to participate in the Center’s ongoing activities. This fall, the Center will host four exciting talks — please mark your calendars!

Alasia Nuti (University of York, UK)Must the Subaltern Speak Publicly? Political Liberalism and the Ethics of Fighting Severe InjusticeFriday, September 30 @ 12:00pm (ET), via Zoom Arash Abizadeh (McGill University)Agential Power and Structural Power, Causal and Non-CausalThursday, October 13 @ 6:30pm (ET),In-person at the GC Political Science Lounge, Room 5200 Co-sponsored by the GC Political Theory Colloquium Ingrid Robeyns (University of Utrecht)Limitarianism from a Global PerspectiveTuesday, November 15 @ 6:30pm (ET)In person at the GC, Room TBA Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò (Georgetown University)Title TBATuesday, November 29 @ 6:30pm (ET)In-person at the GC, Room TBA
For the talk that will take place online, an invitation will be sent out in advance with a Zoom registration link. We hope to broadcast the in-person talks simultaneously over Zoom.In case you missed our Spring 2022 events — excellent sessions on “Ethics of AI and Health Care: Towards a Substantive Human Rights Framework” with Matthew Liao; “Protest, Silencing, and Epistemic Activism,” with José Medina; “Global Injustice, Moral Obligation and the Political Action Paradox” with Elizabeth Kahn; and “Women are Women,” with Carol Hay–you can catch up on the videos of these talks and all of our past events at our YouTube channel or by visiting our Center website. You can also find our podcasts there.This past spring, our Center Director, Prof. Carol Gould, published an article on “Socializing the Means of Free Development” (Philosophical Topics, Vol. 48, no. 2 (2022): 81-103). https://www.jstor.org/stable/48652122. She also presented her paper “From Fraternity to Feminist Activist Solidarities: Confronting Structural Injustice and Gendered Authoritarianism” at the Conference on Feminist Politics for Today (Honoring the Work of Bat-Ami Bar On) at Binghamton University, May 7, 2022.We are happy to report some news about our former fellows: Jonathan Kwan has taken up a position as Assistant Professor of Philosophy at New York University Abu Dahbi, and Gregory Slack was appointed to that rank in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Middle Tennessee State University. Sid Issar has started a position as Assistant Professor of Political Theory at the University of Louisville. Rachel Brown, currently Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, recently had her book manuscript Unsettled Labors: Migrant Caregivers in Palestine/Israel accepted for publication by Duke University Press, and Jesse Spafford, Postdoctoral Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, had his book Social Anarchism and the Rejection of Moral Tyranny accepted by Cambridge University Press. Current Graduate Fellow Callum Zavos MacRae recently published an article commenting on a piece by Jesse Spafford which had appeared in the Journal of Value Inquiry in 2020. MacRae’s article is entitled “Communists, Anarchists, and Suckers: A Reply to Spafford on ‘Conditional Exchange’” Journal of Value Inquiry, 2021. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10790-021-09837-7. Looking ahead, please hold the following dates for our spring colloquia: Seyla Benhabib (Columbia Law), “The Crisis of International Law and its Implications for the Refugee Convention” Tuesday, February 7, 6:30pm-8:15pm. Alison Jaggar (University of Colorado Boulder), Wednesday, March 8, 4:15pm-6:15pm. Co-sponsored with the Philosophy Colloquium and the Marx Wartofsky Lecture. Briana Toole (Claremont McKenna and the Princeton University Center for Human Values), Tuesday, March 28, 6:30pm-8:15pm.Laura Kane (Worcester State University and former CGEP Graduate Fellow), Tuesday, April 18, 6:30pm-8:15pm. Stay up to date with what’s happening at the Center by following us on twitter @global_ethics, like us on Facebook, or subscribe to our mailing list here. Best wishes for a fine start to the semester, and we look forward to your participation in our activities here at the Center!

Visit our YouTube page to watch videos of past events, like our Facebook page,and follow our twitter @global_ethics. CGEP Director: Carol C. Gould. Distinguished Professor, Philosophy and Political Science,The Graduate Center and Hunter College, CUNYThe Center for Global Ethics and Politics is part of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

“Forgotten, Ignored, and Distorted Histories of Romani People: Past and Present”
2022-09-29 12:00 - 13:30 | Virtual, bit.ly/3QVelvP, New York
The historical record is marked by voids: elided events; disappeared people; erased accounts; marginalized communities.

The Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity (Graduate Center—City University of New York), in association with the School of General Studies and the Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Stockton University) and the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies (New York University), offers a year-long virtual series, The Marginalized and the Erased, to tackle a number of those blank spots.

Please join us on September 29, 2022 at 12:00 noon (EDT) for the first of the series:

“Forgotten, Ignored, and Distorted Histories of Romani People: Past and Present”

Groundbreaking scholars Ethel Brooks, Ioanida Costache, and László Csősz move between past and present as they plumb the history of anti-Roma racist violence, and the erasure of that history even as the violence persists. Drawing upon testimonies and documents, their presentations reveal individual, communal, and institutional obstacles to remembrance and education. Chair of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University, award-winning scholar Prof. Ethel Brooks serves (among many positions) as Chair of the Board of the European Roma Rights Center. Dr Ioanida Costache, recipient of a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, focuses on Romani historical trauma and artistic practice. Prof. László Csősz, historian and senior archivist at the National Archives of Hungary is also a Claims Conference University Partnership in Holocaust Studies Senior Lecturer at the ELTE University in Budapest. His current project explores the wartime history of the Hungarian Roma.
Chair: Debórah Dwork

https://gc-cuny-edu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_vVXGC9gxRoq1jYLe3FFKpA

The Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity, The Graduate Center—City University of New York
In association with:
Center for Jewish Studies at The Graduate Center—City University of New York
The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme, Education Outreach Section, Outreach Division, Department of Global Communications, United Nations

The School of General Studies and the Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Stockton University
The Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, New York University

Suppression of Self-Determination
2022-09-21 13:00 - 15:00 | CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Launch of a report into Spain’s influence on the tools of repression used to silence activists around the world.

September 21, 2022
1PM – 3PM EST CUNY Graduate Center365 5th Ave, New York NY 10016

A light lunch will be served

Registration: unpo@unpo.org

Besieged Voices from Ukraine (part 2)
2022-06-23 12:00 - 13:00 | NY
Please join this event organized by our Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity.

Date: June 23/2022

Time: 12-1pm EDT

Registration link: bit.ly/3xj5Dzd

Russia’s attack on Ukraine has caused the death and injury of thousands, the forced flight of millions, and the physical destruction of cities and towns. Poet Iya Kiva, journalist Olga Tokariuk, and art historian expert on Jewish heritage in Ukraine, Eugeny Kotlyar, will address the complexities of lives disrupted and the experience of unfolding war from the perspectives of their three professions. Please join us to learn from them.
Co-Chairs: Natalya Lazar and Elissa Bemporad.

PANEL DISCUSSION RE-EXAMINING THE CURRENT INTERNATIONAL FRAMEWORKS ON MIGRATION
2022-05-05 12:00 - 13:30 | NY
An Initiative to Bridge Scholarly Efforts on the Study of Human Rights

Invites you to the second event of the Spring 2022 series:

PANEL DISCUSSION
RE-EXAMINING THE CURRENT INTERNATIONAL FRAMEWORKS ON MIGRATIONDate: Thursday, May 5 2022
Time: 12:00 p.m (EDT)

Register Here Via Zoom

Sponsored by:

Women are Women by Carol Hay (UMass Lowell)
2022-04-28 18:30 - 20:30 | Graduate Center, Room 5302, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Women are Women
Carol Hay (UMass Lowell)
Thursday, April 28, 6:30 p.m. (ET)
CUNY Graduate Center, Room 5382
And online via Zoom
This week, we are excited to welcome feminist philosopher Carol Hay as our fourth and final colloquium speaker of Spring 2022.
This is an in-person event that will allow for virtual participation via Zoom. The in-person talk will be followed by a reception with wine and light snacks.
In-person attendance is restricted to members of the Graduate Center community. Members of the public are encouraged to participate virtually via Zoom. If you plan to attend virtually, please register in advance for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about joining.
________________________________________
Abstract
Who counts as a woman? Is there some set of core experiences distinctive of womanhood, some shared set of adventures and exploits that every woman will encounter on her journey from diapers to the grave? The relatively recent visibility of and sensitivity to the experiences of trans people gives us new reason to return to questions that feminists and other gender theorists have been grappling with for decades. These questions take on new urgency in light of the increasing violence and discrimination trans people face across the world—in one of the most recent instances of this discrimination, for example, Ukrainian trans women are reportedly being denied passage out of the country, despite their legal status as women and the imminent danger they face at the hands of Russia’s transphobic policies, because they are being misgendered as men.
According to the account I defend, womanhood is best understood as a family resemblance concept. I propose a normative reading of this view that recognizes that decisions about which features are taken to make up paradigmatic cases of womanhood are fundamentally political. This makes possible a conception of womanhood that does not continue to center the experiences of traditionally femme, non-disabled, straight cis white women, while simultaneously making sense of actual historical failures in this regard.
I’ll argue that when a TERF complains that trans women haven’t had the same experiences as “real” women who were assigned female at birth, what she’s really saying is, “Trans women haven’t had the same experiences as women like me.” If 30-plus years of intersectional feminism has taught us anything, it’s that this is precisely the move that feminists need to stop making.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Carol Hay is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Her most recent book Think Like a Feminist: The Philosophy Behind the Revolution (W.W. Norton & Co., 2020, 2022) has been called “a crisp, well-informed primer on feminist theory” by Publisher’s Weekly and “a winning mix of scholarship and irreverence” by Kirkus Reviews. Dr. Hay’s academic work focuses primarily on issues in analytic feminism, liberal social and political philosophy, oppression studies, Kantian ethics, and the philosophy of sex and love. Her 2013 book Kantianism, Liberalism, & Feminism: Resisting Oppression received the American Philosophical Association’s Gregory Kavka/UCI Prize in Political Philosophy. Her 2019 op-ed “Who Counts as a Woman?” received the American Philosophical Association’s Public Philosophy Op-Ed Prize. Dr. Hay’s public philosophy has appeared in venues such as the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Aeon magazine, and IAI News.
Visit our YouTube page to watch videos of past events, like our Facebook page,
and follow our twitter @global_ethics.
CGEP Director: Carol C. Gould. Distinguished Professor, Philosophy and Political Science,
The Graduate Center and Hunter College, CUNY
The Center for Global Ethics and Politics is part of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies
at The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

CGEP: Carol Hay on "Women are Women"
2022-04-28 18:30 - 20:30 | Graduate Center, Room 5302, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Carol Hay (UMass Lowell)Thursday, April 28, 6:30 p.m. (ET)CUNY Graduate Center, Room 5382And online via Zoom
We are excited to welcome feminist philosopher Carol Hay as our fourth and final colloquium speaker of Spring 2022. This is an in-person event that will allow for virtual participation via Zoom. The in-person talk will be followed by a reception with wine and light snacks.In-person attendance is restricted to members of the Graduate Center community. Members of the public are encouraged to participate virtually via Zoom. If you plan to attend virtually, please register in advance for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about joining.

Abstract
Who counts as a woman? Is there some set of core experiences distinctive of womanhood, some shared set of adventures and exploits that every woman will encounter on her journey from diapers to the grave? The relatively recent visibility of and sensitivity to the experiences of trans people gives us new reason to return to questions that feminists and other gender theorists have been grappling with for decades. These questions take on new urgency in light of the increasing violence and discrimination trans people face across the world—in one of the most recent instances of this discrimination, for example, Ukrainian trans women are reportedly being denied passage out of the country, despite their legal status as women and the imminent danger they face at the hands of Russia’s transphobic policies, because they are being misgendered as men.
According to the account I defend, womanhood is best understood as a family resemblance concept. I propose a normative reading of this view that recognizes that decisions about which features are taken to make up paradigmatic cases of womanhood are fundamentally political. This makes possible a conception of womanhood that does not continue to center the experiences of traditionally femme, non-disabled, straight cis white women, while simultaneously making sense of actual historical failures in this regard.
I’ll argue that when a TERF complains that trans women haven’t had the same experiences as “real” women who were assigned female at birth, what she’s really saying is, “Trans women haven’t had the same experiences as women like me.” If 30-plus years of intersectional feminism has taught us anything, it’s that this is precisely the move that feminists need to stop making.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Carol Hay is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Her most recent book Think Like a Feminist: The Philosophy Behind the Revolution (W.W. Norton & Co., 2020, 2022) has been called “a crisp, well-informed primer on feminist theory” by Publisher’s Weekly and “a winning mix of scholarship and irreverence” by Kirkus Reviews. Dr. Hay’s academic work focuses primarily on issues in analytic feminism, liberal social and political philosophy, oppression studies, Kantian ethics, and the philosophy of sex and love. Her 2013 book Kantianism, Liberalism, & Feminism: Resisting Oppression received the American Philosophical Association’s Gregory Kavka/UCI Prize in Political Philosophy. Her 2019 op-ed “Who Counts as a Woman?” received the American Philosophical Association’s Public Philosophy Op-Ed Prize. Dr. Hay’s public philosophy has appeared in venues such as the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Aeon magazine, and IAI News.

“Fleeing a Home, Seeking a Home: Jewish Refugees in Modern Times”
2022-04-28 12:00 - 13:30 | NY
In the thick of a refugee crisis, with an official count of 82.4 million forcibly displaced persons worldwide, the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity (GC–CUNY) and the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies (NYU) continue to offer a year-long series that tackles historical and current cases.

Please join us on Thursday, 28 April 2022. 12:00-1:15 PM (Eastern Daylight Time):
“Fleeing a Home, Seeking a Home: Jewish Refugees in Modern Times”

This panel grapples with refugee Jews displaced by war in three different geopolitical contexts: Ukraine, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Profs Jeff Veidlinger, Eliyana Adler, and Shay Hazkani recapture lost voices of displacement and rethink the meaning of “refugee” as they explore the experiences of Ukrainian Jews who left their homes in the wake of anti-Jewish violence unleashed during the Russian Civil War; Polish Jews who, in the midst of the Holocaust, fled the Germans and were deported by the Soviets to Central Asia; and of Moroccan Jews, who immigrated to Israel shortly after the establishment of the Jewish state. Chair: Prof. Elissa Bemporad.
This event is hosted in association with The Holocaust and The United Nations Outreach Programme, Outreach Division, Department of Global Communications, United Nations.

https://gc-cuny.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_x68dd0OMSCCmf3U2S6Yt4Q

The End of Peace: How Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine is Transforming Europe and Transatlantic Relations
2022-04-26 12:00 - 14:00 | NY
The Otto and Fran Walter Memorial Lecture
Tuesday, April 26, at 12:00 noon EST At this critical moment in history, political scientist Ivan Krastev helps us understand how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine impacts the balance of power in Europe, transatlantic relations, and the future of democracy. How does the war change existing divisions, and what should the role of NATO, and by extension the U.S. government, be? Krastev, author of the recent New York Times op-ed “We Are All Living in Putin’s World Now,” sheds light on these questions as the situation changes rapidly on the ground. Krastev is the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, IWM Vienna, and the author of The Light that Failed: A Reckoning (with Stephen Holmes), about the backsliding of democracy in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989, among other books. He speaks with John Torpey, professor of sociology and history and director of the EU Studies Center.

REGISTER HERE VIA ZOOM

The International Criminal Court at 20: What Next for International Criminal Justice?
2022-04-22 12:00 - 13:30 | CCNY Downtown Auditorium, 25 Broadway, 7th Floor, New York, NY, United States
The International Criminal Court at 20: What Next for International Criminal Justice? on April 22, from 12:00-1:30 pm:
Zoom Registration Link: https://bit.ly/3wQvrUB​
In-person Registration Link: https://form.jotform.com/220934980725967
ICC at 20 Event Flyer

The Life and Scholarship of Eric Weitz: A Memorial Panel Tribute to CCNY's Distinguished Professor of History
2022-04-21 13:00 - 15:00 | CCNY Downtown Auditorium, 25 Broadway, 7th Floor, New York, NY, United States
April 21, 2022, from 1:00 to 3:00 pm:
Zoom Registration Link: http://bit.ly/3qrvC5c​
In-person Registration Link: https://form.jotform.com/220934980725967
Weitz Memorial Panel 4-21

War and Justice in the 21st Century with ICC's founder Luis Moreno Ocampo
2022-04-20 18:00 - 19:30 | CCNY Downtown Auditorium, 25 Broadway, 7th Floor, New York, NY, United States
The Keynote Address on April 20, 2022, 6:00-7:30 pm, by founding and former Chief International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo:
Zoom Registration Link: https://bit.ly/3wRFLM7
In-person Registration Link: https://form.jotform.com/220934980725967
Moreno Ocampo Keynote Flyer
