Events 02/16 - 02/22

Monday, February 16th

The Politics of the 1998 and 2015 Ruble Crisis Compared

Monday, February 16, 2015 - 12:00pm - 1:00pm

Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 1219

Juliet Johnsons research focuses on the politics of money and identity, particularly in post-communist Europe. She is currently McGill Director of the European Union Centre of Excellence Montreal, an Executive Committee member of PONARS Eurasia, and a member of McGill Universitys Board of Governors. She is the author of A Fistful of Rubles: The Rise and Fall of the Russian Banking System (Cornell 2000), lead editor of Religion and Identity in Modern Russia: The Revival of Orthodoxy and Islam (Ashgate 2005) and author of numerous scholarly and policy-oriented articles, including in the Journal of Common Market Studies,Comparative Politics, the Journal of European Public Policy, the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Social and Cultural Geography, Post-Soviet Affairs, Central Banking, and Review of International Political Economy, among others. Her next book is entitled Priests of Prosperity: The Transnational Central Banking Community and Post-Communist Transformation. For many years she was editor-in-chief and co-editor of Review of International Political Economy. She has been an Advisory Council member for the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Research Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, and the A. John Bittson National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. At McGill, she has served as Associate Dean (Research and Graduate Studies) for the Faculty of Arts and won the Facultys H. Noel Fieldhouse Award for Distinguished Teaching. She received her PhD and MA in Politics from Princeton University and her AB in International Relations from Stanford University. Alexander Kliment is a Director in the Eurasia and Emerging Markets Strategy practices at Eurasia Group, a political risk analysis firm that he joined in 2006. He has previously worked as a correspondent for the Financial Times in So Paulo Brazil (FT Tilt) and Washington, DC (FT). Alex is a frequent contributor to international print and TV media. He is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and Columbia University. Alex is from New York City and lives there.

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

Wednesday, February 18th

Exclusionary Inclusion: Popular Sectors and Social Movements in Venezuelan 21th-Century Socialism

Wednesday, February 18, 2015 - 1:00pm - 2:00pm

Avery Hall, Room 115

The Venezuela popular model of incorporation under Chavismo  could be defined as tutelary and exclusionary: tutelary because it involved the creation and promotion of popular organizations by President Chvez and exclusionary because the reason for mobilizing and controlling those organizations the creation of a social base of support for his governments project meant the rejection of social organizations that did not align politically and ideologically with the Bolivarian Revolutionary project.  This form of incorporation compromised the autonomy of aligned popular sector organizations and also perpetuated time honored clientelist practices and undermined representative democracy at the local level.

Maria del Pilar Garcia-Guadilla Mara Pilar Garca-Guadilla is a Tenured Professor at the Universidad Simon Bolvar in Caracas, Venezuela , the Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Laboratory in Environmental, Urban and Sociopolitical Conflicts Management (GAUS) and an activist  in the  Human Rights, Environmentalist and Womens Social Movements.  She  holds a Ph.D in Sociology from the University of Chicago and a Postdoc. in Social Movements from the University of London. Currently, she is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for Inter-American Policy & Research (CIPR) at Tulane University where she is working in the book:  De la democracia liberal al Estado Comunal en Venezuela (1961-2014): las luchas por el reconocimiento la inclusin y la participacin.

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

Syria: A Chance for Peace? The Perspective of the United Nations Special Envoy

Wednesday, February 18, 2015 - 6:00pm - 8:00pm

Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 1501

The United Nations Studies Specialization at SIPA and the International Conflict Resolution Specialization at SIPA invite Columbia students and faculty to a conversation with UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura. The Special Envoy will outline his assessment of the country's ongoing civil war and the prospect for peace. After his opening remarks, Professor Elisabeth Lindenmayer, Director of United Nations Studies at SIPA and Acting Director of International Conflict Resolution at SIPA, will moderate a conversation followed by a question-and-answer period. Advance registration and CUID are required. This is the latest installment in the United Nations Studies Specialization's series of discussions with Special Envoys and Special Representatives of the UN Secretary-General known as Voices from the Field.

For further information regarding this event, please contact Ryan Berger by sending email to rb2963@columbia.edu .

Thursday, February 19th

Technology and the City: Democracy, Equity, and Engagement

Thursday, February 19, 2015 - 6:00pm - 7:00pm Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 1501

Join Dean Merit E. Janow for presentations by the winners of the first year of the Deans Public Policy Challenge Grant

Featuring:

Keynote speaker: Minerva Tantoco, New York Citys First Technology Officer

Nick Beim, Partner at Venrock and leading technology investor in pioneering internet companies and big data innovators

Ted Bailey, Founder and Chairman of Dataminr, which revolutionizes real-time analysis of Twitter and was praised by the Wall Street Journal for a business model [that] suggests almost infinite possibilities For further information regarding this event, please contact Stacie Burroughs by sending email to sb3693@columbia.edu.

SAI: Patnaik and Chandrasekhar on "Modi, Development, and the Indian Economy"

Thursday, February 19, 2015 - 6:15pm - 8:00pm Knox Hall, Room 208

A discussion with Prabhat Patnaik and C.P. Chandrasekhar "Narendra Modi, 'Development', and the Indian Economy Today"

Prabhat Patnaik held the Sukhamoy Chakravarty Chair of Planning and Development at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning (CESP) in the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University at the time of his retirement in 2010. C.P. Chandrasekhar is a Professor at Centre for Economic Studies and Planning (CESP), School of Social Sciences, at Jawaharlal Nehru University. For further information regarding this event, please contact Bill Carrick by sending email to wac2112@columbia.edu .

Friday, February 20th

Symposium on "Monuments and Memory: Material Culture and the Aftermaths of Histories of Mass Violence"

Friday, February 20, 2015 - 10:00am - 6:00pm Columbia University Morningside Campus International Affairs Building In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, a groundbreaking symposium will be held at Columbia University and sponsored by the Armenian Center of Columbia University, Columbia's Institute for the Study of Human Rights, the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University and the Armenian General Benevolent Union. Peter Balakian, Donald M. Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities at Colgate University, and Rachel Goshgarian, Assistant Professor of History at Lafayette College, are organizers and hosts of the event.

The sympo! sium will be groundbreaking in its comparative analysis of Jewish monuments in eastern Europe, Muslim monuments in the Balkans, and Armenian Christian monuments in Turkey. Issues of preservation, social justice, and restitution will be discussed. The symposium will take place in Room 1501 of Columbia University's Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, located at 420 West 118th Street, from 10 am until 6 pm with breaks for lunch and coffee. A reception will follow.

This event is free and open to the public.