At the end of the Seven Years War in 1763, realization grew that, at several times the level of annual revenue, the Public Debt had become a permanent institution to be serviced in perpetuity. This talk looks at land and socialization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in light of this “financialization” of the British economy, a process that would have a spiraling effects across the globe. The objects under investigation here are the follies of garden Britain, Ireland and America, compared with the Zamindari bagan-baris and thakur-baris (garden estates and estate-temples) of colonial Bengal as a coterminous type. The follies and thakur-baris can be read as differential markers in a dispersed set of concerns and anxieties over nature, economy, government and religion, all of these headings being themselves synthesized and systematized into new epistemic fields through the course of the long eighteenth century. The talk looks at the entanglement of two of these new epistemic fields – “economy” and “religion” – in this context, particularly in the places where the singular, secular temporal expectancy of a ballooning, perdurable Public Debt was seen as interjecting into eschatologically-defined conceptions of obligation and existence. The shards of the Mughal Empire in India, and the “Augustan Age” of eighteenth-century Britain, abruptly joined into a single system by the fact of global capital, present signal comparisons and contrasts in their constructions of time even as they are bound by the same temporal devices of debt and finance. It is as if folly and thakur-bari, signifiers of disparate tempos of memory and divinity, speak to each other through a kind of imperfect translation, a heteroglossia called the economic.

Arindam Dutta is Associate Professor of Architectural History in the Department of Architecture, MIT. Dutta teaches surveys and advanced research courses at the graduate level, and directs the SMArchS Program at MIT’s Department of Architecture. His teaching interests are in the area of modern architectural theory and history, imperialism and globalization, gender and body politics, Marxist thought, and post-structuralism. Dutta obtained his Ph.D. in the History of Architecture from Princeton University in 2001. He has degrees in architectural design from the Harvard Design School and the School of Architecture in Ahmedabad, India. Graduating with gold medals from his undergraduate institution in India, Dutta has been the recipient of the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, the Getty Fellowship, in addition to numerous research grants and awards. Dutta’s articles have appeared in the Journal of Society of Architectural Historians, Grey Room, the Journal of Arts and Ideas, and Perspecta. Dutta is the author of The Bureaucracy of Beauty: Design in the Age of its Global Reproducibility, (New York: Routledge, 2007), a wide-ranging work of cultural theory that connects literary studies, postcoloniality, the history of architecture and design, and the history and present of empire.

Cosponsored by the South Asian Institute and the Institute of Religion, Culture, and Public Life.

The purpose of this workshop is to explore from many different angles the meanings of the ways in which Muslims pray God. How and why was the commandment of prayer established? What is its significance in connection with the Prophet’s Ascent (Mi’raj)? How should we comprehend the time of prayer as different from the serial time of our works and days? How should we understand also the different times of the five prayers? For example the systematic grouping of zuhr and asr on the one hand, maghrib and isha on the other hand by Shi’i Muslims while such a grouping is exceptional among Sunni Muslims? What interpretations for the very gestures accomplished during a prayer? How do we decipher the signs that are written by the praying body?

These are but just a few of the questions that could be raised by the different presenters and discussed. They are merely indicative and other perspectives on the “phenomenology of Muslim prayer” are welcome.

Co-sponsored by the IRCPL and Institute of African Studies.

Please join us for the opening conversation for the 2013 Religion Graduate Students Association Conference:

The history of religion in the African diaspora is a history of movement.  But what happens when religion is on the move?  This panel will explore how an interdisciplinary approach to migratory experiences in the African diaspora — on United States soil, in the Caribbean, and across the Atlantic divide — might attune us to how mobility is not only an aspect of religious experience across traditions, times and spaces, but is also constitutive of religious beliefs, practices and communities.  By treating religion as an embodied and spatial phenomenon that intersects with racial, gendered, political and economic structures in complex and often unexpected ways, this panel aims to broaden the our theoretical and methodological repertoire for future studies of religion in the African diaspora inclusive of movement, migration, missions and new media.

Moderator: Josef Sorett, Columbia University

Panelists: Randall Jelks (Kansas University); Lerone Martin (Eden Theological Seminary); Frances Negrón-Muntaner (Columbia University); Carla Shedd (Columbia University).

Co-sponsored by  Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL), Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER), Institute for Religion in African American Studies (IRAAS), Religions of Harlem Project.

Sponsored by CUNY Center for the Humanities, the PhD Program in Sociology and the Committee for the Study of Religion.

For more information, please visit: http://centerforthehumanities.org/events/The-Spheres-of-Life-as-Seen-by-Tolstoy-and-Weber

Historical dialogue and accountability is a growing field of advocacy and scholarship that encompasses the efforts in conflict, post-conflict, and post-dictatorial societies to come to terms with their pasts. Historical dialogue seeks to provide analysis of past violence grounded in empirical research; to acknowledge the victims of past violence and human rights abuses; to challenge and deconstruct national, religious, or ethnic memories of heroism and/or victimhood; to foster shared work between interlocutors of two or more sides of a conflict; to identify and monitor how history is misused to divide society and perpetuate conflict; and to enhance public discussion about the past.

This conference seeks to consider related questions, in addition to discussing the state of the relatively new field of historical dialogue and its relationship to other discourses such as transitional justice, memory studies, oral history, historical redress and religious studies. We will address the possibilities and limits of these concepts and methods, searching for unexplored connections and elaborating upon how historical analysis can be used to resolve long-standing sectarian conflicts.

An internationally diverse group of presenters will participate in panels covering a wide range of regional and thematic topics, including:

Local Memory, Global Relations: China, Japan, Korea; Visual Representation and Exhibits as Historical Dialogue; Teaching Controversy: Pedagogy and Contested Histories; and Religion and Memory in Historical Dialogue.

For detailed information on registration, schedule, location, and programming, please visit

www.hrcolumbia.org/ahda/conference

or email us at ahda@columbia.edu

Please join us for a talk by Andrew Preston, Professor of History at the University of Cambridge and author of American Foreign Relations: A Very Short Introduction (forthcoming); Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (2012); Nixon in the World: U.S. Foreign Relations, 1969-1977 (2008); The War Council: McGeorge Bundy, the NSC, and Vietnam (2006).

From the first colonists to the presidents of the 21st Century, religion has always shaped America’s relationships with other nations. During the presidency of George W. Bush, many Americans and others around the world viewed the entrance of religion into foreign policy discourse, especially with regard to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a “new” development. Despite the official division between church and state, the presence of religion in American foreign policy has been a constant. Yet aside from leaders known to be personally religious, such as Bush, Jimmy Carter and Woodrow Wilson, few realize how central faith has always been to American governance and diplomacy–and indeed to the idea of America itself. This paper will trace some of the main themes of the relationship between religion and American foreign relations, and use two more detailed case studies — John Foster Dulles and international organization; and missionaries and the establishment of a human rights discourse — by way of example.

Co-Sponsored by the Department of History, The Heyman Center for Humanities, and the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life.

For directions to the Heyman Center, please click here.

Jai Bhim Comrade (2011, 198 minutes)
Followed by a discussion with director Anand Patwardhan

Fourteen years in the making, Anand Patwardhan’s documentary Jai Bhim Comrade  tells a story of Dalit and communal politics in Maharashtra, and the ongoing struggles of Dalits for justice and equality. When a statue of B. R. Ambedkar in Mumbai’s Ramabai colony was desecrated in 1997, angry crowds gathered, and the police opened fire, killing ten unarmed persons, all of them from the Dalit community. Vilas Ghogre, an activist, poet and singer, who witnessed the events, later hung himself in despair. Jai Bhim Comrade traces the decade-long story of the protest through the poetry and music of Ghogre and others. Jai Bhim Comrade was named Best Film at both the Mumbai International Film Festival and Film South Asia, Katmandu, Nepal, and received the Firebird Award at the Hong Kong International Film Festival.

Anand Patwardhan earned a B.A. in English Literature from Bombay University, a B.A. in Sociology from Brandeis University, and a Master’s degree in Communications from McGill University. He has been making award-winning political documentaries for nearly three decades, pursuing diverse and controversial issues that illuminate social and political life in India. Many of his films were at one time or another banned by state television channels in India and became the subject of litigation by Patwardhan who successfully challenged the censorship rulings in court. His film War and Peace/Jang aur Aman (2002) received a Best Documentary award from the National Film Awards of India in 2004, as well as top prizes at film festivals in Karachi, Kerala, Mumbai, Sydney, Tokyo, and Zanzibar.

Seating is limited and will be on a first-come, first seated basis.  There is no charge for admission. The film is approximately three hours long.  There will be a brief intermission at about 4:30pm, followed by a discussion to begin at about 6:20pm.

Sponsored by the The Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Barnard College, the South Asia Institute and the Film Department, School of the Arts

As concepts of citizenship are challenged not only by processes of globalization but also by renewed demands of recognition and rights, do our understandings of consent as an essential underpinning of democratic societies demand rethinking?

Etienne Balibar is currently a Visiting Professor with the Department of French and Romance Philology at Columbia University.  He serves as Professor Emeritus of moral and political philosophy at Université de Paris X – Nanterre and Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine. Some of his recent publications include Europe, Constitution, Frontière (2005); L’Europe, l’Amérique, la Guerre. Réflexions sur la mediationeuropéenne (2003); and Politics and the Other Scene (2002).

Genevieve Fraisse is a preeminent French feminist philosopher serving as  Research Director at the National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris, France. She is the author of numerous publications, notably, “La Fabrique du féminisme, Textes et entretiens” (Le Passager clandestin, 2012); “A côté du genre, sexe et philosophie de l’égalité” (Le Bord de l’eau, 2010); and “Du Consentement” (Seuil, 2007).

Sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Human Rights and the Institute of African Studies, with the Maison Française, the Department of English and Comparative Literature, the Alliance Program, and the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life.

Please join the Columbia Maison Francaise for a three-part conference, presented in connection with Sleep Song performed at Harlem Stage (see details at bottom)
For more information, please visit our website at www.maisonfrancaise.org

Poet, slammer, and musician Mike Ladd has conducted formal and informal interviews in the U.S. with over 30 Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans since 2009. This fieldwork was preparation for a poetry and music collaboration with Vijay Iyer titled Holding It Down: The Veterans’ Dreams Project. En route, he encountered two other poets: Maurice Decaul, Iraq War veteran of the United States Marine Corps, and Ahmed Abdul Hussein, originally from Baghdad, where he now is at the head of the House of Poetry. In summer 2011, Ladd and his fellow poets were in residence at the Royaumont Foundation, located north of Paris, France, with world-class musicians Vijay Iyer, Serge Teyssot-Gay and Ahmed Mukhtar. Together, they gave voice to the dreams and nightmares haunting those who lived through the Iraq War. In this French abbey, founded in 1228 and transformed into a multidisciplinary arts center that invites creative personalities to work together in a transcultural perspective, they collaborated to create a dialogue on the meaning of war and how to make a path toward peace. Out of this work, Sleep Song was born.

This performance will have its American premiere at Harlem Stage in New York City on November 30 and December 1, 2012. In connection with this performance, a conference of three roundtables with artists, academics, and cultural administrators will take place at the Columbia University Maison Française on the theme of War and Artistic Creation. Each of the three panel discussions will address a specific theme.

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Please join us for the launch of Marvine Howe’s new book, Al Andalus Rediscovered: Iberia’s New Muslims and a roundtable conversation with the author,  Marvine Howe, a former New York Times foreign correspondent and author of books on Turkey and Morocco; Jose Moya, Professor of History at Barnard College; Michele Wucker, President of the World Policy Institute; and Claudia Dreifus, writer for the New York Times Science Times.

Iberia is a place of historic and symbolic significance to all three of the world’s major religions. Myths concerning Islam’s origins collide with the story of the Christian reconquista, the subsequent Spanish Inquisition, and the massive expulsion of Muslims and Jews some five hundred years ago. Yet Muslims have made a comeback in the region, which is becoming one of Europe’s fastest growing Muslim communities. This volume recounts the “retaking” of Al-Andalus by Iberia’s new Muslims, which include groups as diverse as students, boat workers, female professionals, and clerics, and their successful integration within a strongly Roman Catholic culture. Marvine Howe shares not only the experiences of Iberia’s Muslims but also the actions of Spanish and Portuguese officials, academics, NGOs, and ordinary citizens who have sought better ways to incorporate Muslims and other immigrants into Iberian society—despite domestic and European pressure to do otherwise.

Co-sponsored by the IRCPL, CDTR, and Blinken European Institute.

A conversation with Wallace S. Broecker, the “Grandfather of Climate Science,” on the subject of climate change, natural disasters, and apocalyptic visions and predictions. Wally Broecker is the Newberry Professor of Geology in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. He is also a scientist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and an Academic Committee member of the Earth Institute. Broecker is arguably one of the world’s greatest living geoscientists. For more than half a century, his major research interest has been the ocean’s role in climate change. He was among the pioneers in radiocarbon and isotope dating – the quintessential processes for creating maps of the Earth’s past climate fluctuations since as early as the Pleistocene period. Broecker’s studies regarding biogeochemical cycles of carbon and the influence of climate change on polar ice and ocean sediments have earned him decades of international attention.

Moderated by The New York Times correspondent John M. Broder. A reporter for the Times since 1996, Broder took over coverage of energy and environment in Washington after covering the 2008 presidential campaign. He is responsible for following domestic legislative issues, advances and energy technology and international climate-change negotiations.

Apocalypse Now: End Time and the Contemporary Imaginary is a yearlong series of conversations with writers that explores our current fascination with apocalyptic visions.

Please join us for an intimate conversation with the editors of Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Maginalisation: Christophe Jaffrelot and Laurent Gayer (editors), Karen Barkey (moderator), and Anupama Rao (discussant).

Numbering more than 150 million, Muslims constitute the largest minority in India, yet they suffer the most politically and socioeconomically. Forced to contend with severe and persistent prejudice, India’s Muslims are often targets of violence and collective acts of murder.
While the quality of Muslim life may lag behind that of Hindus nationally, local and inclusive cultures have been resilient in the south and the east. Within India’s cities, however, the challenges Muslims face can be harder to read. In the Hindi belt and in the north, Muslims have known less peace, especially in the riot-prone areas of Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Jaipur, and Aligarh, and in the capitals of former Muslim states — Delhi, Hyderabad, Bhopal, and Lucknow. These cities are rife with Muslim ghettos and slums. However, self-segregation has also played a part in forming Muslim enclaves, such as in Delhi and Aligarh, where traditional elites and a new Muslim middle class have regrouped for physical and cultural protection.

Combining firsthand testimony with sound critical analysis, this volume follows urban Muslim life in eleven Indian cities, providing uncommon insight into a little-known but highly consequential subject. For more information got to: http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?281642

Co-sponsored by IRCPL, the Alliance Program, South Asian Institute.

Please join the Columbia Maison Francaise for a conversation with Alexis Spire on The Weight of the Colonial Past on Immigration Policy in France. Alexis Spire will discuss how French immigration policies bear the marks of a colonial past that has often been disguised or camouflaged by the French government.

Alexis Spire is a Research Fellow with the CNRS at the University of Lille 2. He is a sociologist and a specialist of French immigration and asylum policy. His books on this topic include Etrangers à la carte : L’administration de l’immigration en France (1945-1975) (2005) and Accueillir ou reconduire : Enquête sur les guichets de l’immigration (2008).

Due to Hurricane Sandy, we have, unfortunately, had to cancel Apocalypse Now: A Conversation with Karen Thompson Walker.

A conversation with bestselling author Karen Thompson Walker on the subject of time, natural disasters, and apocalyptic visions and predictions. A Columbia MFA graduate, her first book The Age of Miracles has been featured in the New York Times and on NPR. Karen wrote the Age of Miracles while working in publishing. Moderated by Abby Kluchin, a founding faculty member of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. Abby also teaches in Columbia University’s Core Curriculum and at the Cooper Union. She has a Ph.D. in philosophy of religion from Columbia and a longstanding devotion to speculative fiction.

Apocalypse Now: End Time and the Contemporary Imaginary is a yearlong series of conversations with writers, historians, and scientists that explores our current fascination with apocalyptic visions.

A Roundtable discussion with Etienne Balibar, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Lydia H. Liu, and Samuel Moyn. Moderated by Josef Sorett.

The universalism of human rights is often countered with cultural relativism, particularism, and other symmetric or dissymmetric oppositions. But what are the conditions under which one speaks for or against a certain kind of universalism? Does the logic of inclusion/exclusion apply to both sides of the dichotomy? For instance, is racism intrinsic to the discourse of human rights? What are the limitations of “human rights” as a concept or as a political project for the purpose of framing struggles for social justice? The panelists on this roundtable will debate and exchange views on these questions as they aim to reframe the discussion of human rights in the contemporary world.

Co-sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Human Rights and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society.

A wide-ranging discussion with the Reverend Jesse Jackson, the legendary civil rights leader and first major African American presidential candidate, and Katrina vanden Heuvel, the acclaimed social critic and publisher of The Nation magazine, on matters of race, religion, and politics in America today. With the election just days away, this timely discussion will explore the critical intersections of race and religion in the 2012 presidential campaign and their implications for America’s political future. The conversation will be moderated by  Obery Hendricks, Visiting Scholar in the Department of Religion at Columbia University.

View photos of the conversation here.
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A talk with Francesca E. S. Montemaggi, presenting findings from an ethnography in a Christian evangelical church in Wales, UK. In the pluralistic environment of Western liberal democracies, a strand of North American Christian evangelicalism has been promoting successful a model of church-doing that seeks to respond to contemporary diversity of life-styles. The example of church-doing proposed by US Pastor Rick Warren focuses on community. In the UK, Christians seeking to revive contemporary Christianity have been receptive to this ‘vision’. This talk  maintains that this model operates a shift from doctrine to community. The church in the study began with the vision of a church as a faith-driven community centre. The aim was to create a welcoming place where everybody could feel accepted. more

Charlotte Pierce Baker will lead a conversation about mental illness -a topic that is so often kept in silence- and the family.  Her presentation will engage the audience “as participant” in order to create an atmosphere of sharing. She will intersperse explanation and information with passages read from her most recent book,  This Fragile Life:  A Mother’s Story of a Bipolar Son– all the while, inviting questions and comments from the audience.  

Charlotte Pierce-Baker, Ph.D. is a scholar, activist, teacher, and author. She is a Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies/ English at Vanderbilt University. Her most recent publication, a memoir/ biography titled This Fragile Life:  A Mother’s Story of a Bipolar Son (Lawrence Hill Books, June, 2012) is the narrative of an African American family struggling with bipolar disorder.  more

David Tartakover (b. 1944, Israel) is a graphic designer, political activist, artist and design educator. He studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, where he has taught in the Department of Visual Communication for the past 36 years. Since 1975, Tartakover has operated his own design studio in Tel Aviv, specializing in cultural and political projects. His work has won numerous prizes in Israel and abroad, including a gold medal at the 8th Lathi Poster Biennial, Finland (1989) and Grand Prix at the Moscow International Poster Biennial (2004). He is a 2002 Israel Prize laureate, celebrated for his contributions to Israeli design and culture. Tartakover’s work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions internationally and included in the permanent collections of museums in China, Europe, Japan and the United States. As a collector and researcher of the history of Israeli design, Tartakover also curates design exhibitions at museums in Israel and abroad. His publications include Where We Were and What We Did (Keter Publishing, 1996), an Israeli lexicon of the 1950s and 60s, and Tartakover, a monograph of his work from the past 40 years (Am Oved Publishing, 2011). He is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) and was president of the Graphic Designers Association of Israel (GDAI).

A conversation with best-selling author George Dyson on the subject of technology, time, and apocalyptic visions and predictions. A historian of technology, his most recent publications include Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence and Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe. In addition to his writing, Mr. Dyson also builds kayaks. Moderated by Mark C. Taylor, co-director of the IRCPL and Chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University. He has written over twenty books, the most recent of which are titled Rewiring the Real and Refiguring the Spiritual.

Apocalypse Now: End Time and the Contemporary Imaginary is a yearlong series of conversations with writers that explores our current fascination with apocalyptic visions.

The artist Lino Mannocci  will reflect on his interest in stories from the Classical World such as “Apollo and Marsyas” and from the Old and New Testament such as “Lot and his Daughters” and the “Annunciation”.  The essence of these narratives has shaped thousands of years of western culture and significant traces of them still permeate our daily lives. Mannocci believes that even in a non-ideological period like ours   these echoes and auras can still enrich and inform contemporary painting.

Lino Mannocci is an Italian artist who studied in Italy and in England.  Over the last thirty years he has shown in London, Italy, and in the United States.  Famous for his postcard paintings, Mannocci’s work can be viewed on his website here.

Seating is limited. Please RSVP here.

Cosponsored by the Jill Newhouse gallery.

A conversation with Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson on the subject of evangelicals and the environment. Wilkinson is the author of Between God and Green: How Evangelicals Are Cultivating a Middle Ground on Climate Change. The Boston Globe writes, “If you understand American evangelical Christianity…as the politically and theologically complex, fractious, and ultimately mainstream phenomenon that it is, then you’ll appreciate the nuance and sensitivity with which Wilkinson navigates her subject. [She] tells a vitally important, even subversive, story at the heart of this carefully researched book.”

Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson is a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group, where she specializes in organizational culture and behavior change. A Rhodes Scholar, Wilkinson holds a doctorate in environmental studies from Oxford and a BA in religion from Sewanee: The University of the South. Her extensive experience in sustainability includes work for the Natural Resources Defense Council, consulting on strategic communications and stakeholder engagement, and teaching environmental social science at Oxford.

Co-Sponsored by the Columbia University History Department and the Department of Religion.

The IRCPL is sponsoring a two day workshop on ‘Religion, conflict and accommodation in Indian history: the medieval period’ on September 28-29, 2012. Last year, this project organized a workshop on ancient and early medieval India, focusing on historical relations between Vedic religion and Buddhism in North India and between Saivas, Vaisnavas and Jainas in South India. This year’s workshop will focus on the medieval period – and the focus of the discussions will be mainly on the developing complexities of the relations between Islamic communities and power centers and their Hindu counterparts. As the project is interested in exploring the sources of conflict and strategies of accommodation, both these dimensions will figure in the presentations. Papers will analyze how Sufi orders generated specific forms of cosmopolitanism in Mughal India, intellectual exchanges and dialogues between Muslim and Hindu groups and narrative communities, complexities of the relations of power, and related issues. As in the last workshop, methodological questions about anachronism, the relation between internal and external languages and judgments will also figure in the deliberations.

See below for list of participants and programme.

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A reception welcoming Columbia faculty and students interested in learning about upcoming events and funding opportunities at the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL) . Learn about applying for research grants and assistantships, proposing faculty seminars, and convening events. Meet the directors and staff of the IRCPL.

Karen Barkey, Professor of Sociology and History and co-director of the IRCPL, and Humeira Iqtidar, Professor of Politics at King’s College, will lead a closed workshop on  the question of how toleration is conceived of in the modern era and explore the relationship of liberalism to toleration.

The workshop builds on recent research that attempts to reconceptualize the place of tolerance and toleration in contemporary politics and their relationship to liberalism. In particular, participants will examine versions of toleration, both in the contemporary context and historically, which cannot be contained within current definitions of liberalism.  Convened by Karen Barkey (Columbia) and Humeira Iqtidar (Kings College London), participants include: Ira Katznelson (Columbia), Jeremy Menchik (American University Beirut), Uday Mehta (CUNY), Timothy Shah (Georgetown), and Lorenzo Zucca (Kings College London).

If you are interested in learning more about the workshop, please email: mav2121@columbia.edu or cre2106@columbia.edu

A conversation with best-selling author, journalist, and political activist Rebecca Solnit on the subject of apocalyptic fantasies, visions, and predictions and the politics of the End Time. Author of thirteen books about art, landscape, public and collective life, ecology, politics, hope, meandering, reverie, and memory, her most recent publications include A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster and Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics. Moderated by Mark C. Taylor, co-director of the IRCPL and Chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University. He has written over twenty books, the most recent of which are titled Rewiring the Real and Refiguring the Spiritual.

Apocalypse Now: End Time and the Contemporary Imaginary is a yearlong series of conversations with writers that explores our current fascination with apocalyptic visions.

Seating is on a first come basis; please arrive early to ensure a seat.

As a part of a public lecture series on The History and Future of Religious Violence and Apocalyptic Movements, The Hertog Global Strategy Initiative and the IRCPL present a lecture by Omer Bartov entitled The Voice of Your Brother’s Blood: A Galician Town in the Time of the Holocaust.

Omer Bartov is the John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History at Brown University and chair of the department of History. He was born and raised in Israel and received his BA degree from Tel Aviv University. He was awarded his D.Phil. from Oxford University in 1983, and taught at Tel Aviv University until 1989. Bartov is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Academy in Berlin, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Davis Center at Princeton, and others. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His books include The Eastern Front, 1941-45 (1985), Hitler’s Army (1991), Murder in Our Midst (1996), Mirrors of Destruction (2000), Germany’s War and the Holocaust (2003), The “Jew” in Cinema (2005), and Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine (2007). His books have been translated into many languages. Bartov has also written for such magazines as The New Republic, The Nation, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, and other European and Israeli journals. He is now completing a new book, The Voice of Your Brother’s Blood: Buczacz, Biography of a Town, to be published with Simon & Schuster in the next couple of years.

This event is free and open to the public. For more information and a full schedule of events, visit http://globalstrategy.columbia.edu.

As a part of a public lecture series on The History and Future of Religious Violence and Apocalyptic Movements, The Hertog Global Strategy Initiative and the IRCPL present a lecture by Nina Shea on Blasphemy Codes in the Contemporary World.

An international human-rights lawyer for over thirty years, Nina Shea joined the Hudson Institute as a Senior Fellow in November 2006, where she directs the Center for Religious Freedom. Since 1999, Shea has served as a Commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. She has been appointed as a U.S. delegate to the United Nation’s main human rights body by both Republican and Democratic administrations. For over a decade, she has worked extensively for the advancement of individual religious freedom and other human rights in U.S. foreign policy as it confronts a resurgent Islamic extremist ideology, as well as nationalist and remnant communist regimes. For seven years ending in 2005, she helped organize and lead a coalition of churches and religious groups that worked to end a religious war against non-Muslims and dissident Muslims in southern Sudan; she regularly writes on the plight of religious minorities around the world; and, she authored and/or edited three widely-acclaimed reports, Update: Saudi Arabia’s Curriculum of Intolerance (2008), Saudi Arabia’s Curriculum of Intolerance (2006), and Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Invade American Mosques (2005), all of which translated and analyzed Saudi governmental publications that teach hatred and violence against the religious “other.” She is the co-author of Silenced: How Apostasy & Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide(Oxford University Press, 2011). Her 1997 book on anti-Christian persecution, In the Lion’s Den, remains a standard in the field. She regularly presents testimony before Congress, delivers public lectures, organizes briefings and conferences, and writes frequently on religious freedom issues. For the ten years prior to joining Hudson, Shea worked at Freedom House, where she directed the Center for Religious Freedom, an entity which she had helped found in 1986 as the Puebla Institute. She is a member of the bar of the District of Columbia. She is a graduate of Smith College, and American University’s Washington College of Law. Nina Shea has written dozens of articles published in the Washington Post, Weekly Standard, National Review Online and the Dallas Morning News.

As a part of a public lecture series on The History and Future of Religious Violence and Apocalyptic Movements, The Hertog Global Strategy Initiative and the IRCPL present a lecture by Harvey Cox, Jr. on Religion, Violence, and Nonviolence.

This event is free and open to the public. For more information and a full schedule of events, visit http://globalstrategy.columbia.edu.

Harvey Cox is Hollis Research Professor of Divinity at Harvard, where he began teaching in 1965, both at HDS and in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. An American Baptist minister, he was the Protestant chaplain at Temple University and the director of religious activities at Oberlin College; an ecumenical fraternal worker in Berlin; and a professor at Andover Newton Theological School. His research and teaching interests focus on the interaction of religion, culture, and politics. Among the issues he explores are urbanization, theological developments in world Christianity, Jewish-Christian relations, and current spiritual movements in the global setting (particularly Pentecostalism). He has been a visiting professor at Brandeis University, Seminario Bautista de Mexico, the Naropa Institute, and the University of Michigan. He is a prolific author. His most recent book is The Future of Faith (HarperCollins, 2009). His Secular City, published in 1965, became an international bestseller and was selected by the University of Marburg as one of the most influential books of Protestant theology in the twentieth century. His other books include When Jesus Came to Harvard: Making Moral Decisions Today, The Feast of Fools; The Seduction of the Spirit; Religion in the Secular City; The Silencing of Leonardo Boff: Liberation Theology and the Future of World Christianity; Many Mansions: A Christian’s Encounters With Other Faiths; Fire From Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality; The Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century; and Common Prayers: Faith, Family, and a Christian’s Journey Through the Jewish Year.

As a part of a public lecture series on The History and Future of Religious Violence and Apocalyptic Movements, The Hertog Global Strategy Initiative and the IRCPL present a lecture by Richard W. Bulliet on Violence and Islamo-Christian Civilization.

RICHARD W. BULLIET is Professor of Middle Eastern History at Columbia University where he also directed the Middle East Institute of the School of International and Public Affairs for twelve years. He came to Columbia in 1976 after undergraduate and graduate work at Harvard and eight years as a faculty member at Harvard and Berkeley. He is a specialist on Iran, the social history of the Islamic Middle East, and the history of technology. His most recent scholarly work is Cotton, Climate, and Camels in Early Islamic Iran: A Moment in World History (2009). His earlier books include Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers (2005), The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization (2004), Islam:  The View from the Edge (1994), Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period (1979), The Camel and the Wheel (1975), and The Patricians of Nishapur (1972). He has also written five novels, beginning with Kicked to Death by a Camel (1973) and is co-author of a world history textbook The Earth and Its Peoples (5ed. 2009).

This event is free and open to the public. For more information and a full schedule of events, visit http://globalstrategy.columbia.edu.

Sponsored by the Hertog Global Strategy Initiative and IRCPL.

As a part of a public lecture series on The History and Future of Religious Violence and Apocalyptic Movements, The Hertog Global Strategy Initiative and the IRCPL present a panel discussion on Religious Violence and Apocalyptic Movements with:

R. Scott Appleby, Director of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Professor of History, University of Notre Dame; Martha Crenshaw, Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Professor of Political Science, Stanford University; Mark Juergensmeyer, Director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara; and Jessica Stern, Member of the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law, Stanford University, Lecturer on Public Policy, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University. Moderated by Monica Duffy Toft, Associate Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government

This event is free and open to the public. For more information and a full schedule of events, visit http://globalstrategy.columbia.edu.

Further information about the participants:

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What is the proper place and role of religion in a constitutional democracy or international human rights regime? Does the presence of religious symbols and rituals in public and official spaces foster exclusion or inclusion of those who differ?  Do demands for jurisdiction by religious authorities over personal law (marriage, divorce, sexual morals, rituals, etc.) expand or undermine the political equality and human rights of citizens?

This workshop steps back to examine the European and transatlantic past and present with interdisciplinary and geographically diverse scholars and students to take up the issues from the perspective of constitutional, political, and legal theory.

Organized by Jean Cohen, Yasmine Ergas, and Samuel Moyn. Participants include John Bowen, Christian Joppke, Tariq Modood, Maleiha Malik, Cecile Laborde, Rajeev Bhargava, Denis Lacorne, Riva Kastoryano, Genevieve Fraisse, Patrick Weil, Alicia Cebada Romero, Aurelia Bardon, and Carlo Invernizzi Accetti.

A panel and short performance exploring the spiritual dimensions of Harlem’s aesthetic legacies and contemporary vitality. From the Spirituals, through Blues and Jazz and right on up to Hip Hop, religion has occupied a place of privilege in black musical repertoires. At the same time, Harlem has in many ways figured preeminently as a sacred place and space in American history. Wedding these themes together, historian Josef Sorett will moderate a panel featuring Jim Davis Jr., Abyssinian Baptist Church’s Director of Music Ministries and Fine Arts; Farah Jasmine Griffin, literary scholar and cultural critic at Columbia University; vocalist Melba Joyce of the Count Basie Orchestra; trumpet-player Marcus Printup of Jazz at Lincoln Center; and harpist Riza Printup.

This event is part of the Harlem Jazz Shrines celebration. Co-sponsored by the Office of Government and Community Affairs, and the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University.

A conversation with author of Mark Z. Danielewski, author of House of Leaves and Only Revolutions. Moderated by Mark C. Taylor, Chair of the Department of Religion and Co-Director of the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life.

Rewiring the Real is a yearlong series of conversations with writers about the interplay of literature, technology and religion.

A graduate student conference on how religious traditions have been instrumental in both reflecting and constructing humans’ notions of animals and have integrated such notions into comprehensive mythical, symbolic, and ritual frameworks of meaning and action.  This conference engages both the shifting complexity of the modern world and a growing body of scholarship in religious studies.

For more information, please click here.

Keynote speakers include Wendy Doniger, the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions in the University of Chicago Divinity School; and Kimberley C. Patton, Professor of the Comparative and Historical Study of Religion at Harvard Divinity School.

Sponsored by the Religion Graduate Students’ Association of Columbia University.

Registration encouraged.  REGISTER HERE

A conversation with Mustafa Akyol and the Reverend Daniel Madigan on the common ground that exists between Christianity and Islam, and between conservative and moderate traditions in both religions. They will discuss how, within Islam, Quranic interpretation can lead either to humanist depictions of freedom and democracy or to a justification of authoritarian political force.

Mustafa Akyol is a columnist for two Turkish newspapers, Hürriyet Daily News and Star. His articles have also appeared in Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty, copies of which will be sold at the event.

Daniel Madigan, a Jesuit priest, is the Jeanette W. and Otto J. Ruesch Family Associate Professor in the Department of Theology at Georgetown University.

A talk by Nathan Schneider, who writes about reason, religion, and politics for publications including Harper’s, The Nation, The New York Times, Commonweal, Religion Dispatches. He is editor of the online literary magazine Killing the Buddha and the website Waging Nonviolence. His book about the search for proof of God’s existence is forthcoming.

A conversation with Michael E. Lewitt, founder and former president of Harch Capital Management and current portfolio manager at Cumberland Advisors, on the relationship between choice and debt. He is the author of The Death of Capital: How Creative Policy Can Restore Stability, and his widely read newsletter, The Credit Strategist, covers economics, politics and the financial markets. Moderated by Mark C. Taylor, Chair of the Department of Religion and Co-Director of the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life.

Burden of Choice is a conversation series about how proliferating choices in a liberal democracy both liberate and constrain us, including charitable giving on February 15; guns on February 29; and waste on March 28.

Directions to the Heyman Center. Enter the Wien Hall Gate on 116th Street between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive.

A book talk by Deborah Baker, author of The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism,  which was a finalist for the 2011 National Book Award. The Convert tells the story of Margaret Marcus of Larchmont, who became Maryam Jameelah of Lahore, and her relationship with her adoptive father and mentor, Mawlana  Abul Ala Mawdudi, the Pakistani political leader and cleric who founded Jamaat-e-Islami in 1941.  She is also author of In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding, which was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography in 1994, and A Blue Hand: The Beats in India (2008).

Sponsored by the South Asia Institute at Columbia University

A conference on the factors that have led to greater, or more restricted, liberties in countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa, focusing on the role of religious actors, international bodies like the UN, civil society, and developments since the Arab Spring.

Speakers: Dr. Nouzha Guessous (University Honorary Professor, Feminist, Human Rights and Social Activist; A Key Creator of Morocco’s Progressive 2004 Family Code); Dr. Radwan Masmoudi (President, Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, Tunisia); Dr. Toby C. Jones (Specialist on Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University);Dr. Tarek Masoud (Egyptian Specialist on Political Transitions, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government); Dr. Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro (Chairman, United Nations Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry on Syria).

Discussants: Dr. Alfred Stepan (Wallace Sayre Professor of Government, Columbia University) and Nina zu Fürstenberg (President, Board of Govenors, Reset-Dialogues On Civilizations).

Co-Sponsored by The Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion; The Middle East Institute; and Reset- Dialogues on Civilizations, a Rome-based non-profit that promotes dialogue and intercultural understanding through international conferences and its online magazine.

homepage image credit: (nz)dave

A conversation with Allison Macfarlane, professor of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University. Her research focuses on environmental policy and international security involving nuclear energy, and she is the editor of Uncertainty Underground: Yucca Mountain and the Nation’s High-Level Nuclear Waste. Moderated by Klaus Lackner, Maurice Ewing and J. Lamar Worzel Professor of Geophysics.

Burden of Choice is a conversation series about how proliferating choices in a liberal democracy both liberate and constrain us, including charitable giving on February 15; guns on February 29; and debt on April 3.

Directions to the Heyman Center. Enter the Wien Hall Gate on 116th Street between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive.

A roundtable discussion on Mali’s 2012 elections with Susanna Wing (Haverford College), Jaimie Bleck (University of Notre Dame), and Brandon County (Columbia University). Moderated by Manthia Diawara (New York University).

Sponsored by the Center for Democracy, Toleration, and Religion.

Screening of documentary film The Redemption of General Butt Naked abut Joshua Milton Blahyi, aka General Butt Naked, a ruthless and feared warlord during Liberia’s 14-year civil war. Today, he has renounced his violent past and reinvented himself as a Christian evangelist on a journey of self-proclaimed transformation. Blahyi travels the nation of Liberia as a preacher, seeking out those he once victimized in search of an uncertain forgiveness. But in the end, are some crimes unforgivable?

Q&A with Gregory Henry, executive producer of the film, and Colin Waugh, author of Charles Taylor and Liberia: Ambition & Atrocity in Africa’s Lone Star State.

Event is open to the general public, but registration is required. Register Here.

Co-sponsored with the Office of the University Chaplain

A talk by David Buckley, a doctoral candidate in government at Georgetown University. Moderated by Alfred Stepan,  the Wallace Sayre Professor of Government at Columbia; and Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Professor of French and Romance Philology and of Philosophy at Columbia.

PhD Thesis Series on Religion and Politics co-sponsored with Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

A conversation with John Feinblatt, the chief policy adviser to Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York and the lead architect of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Moderated by Gillian Metzger, Stanley H. Fuld Professor of Law at Columbia University.

Burden of Choice is a conversation series about how proliferating choices in a liberal democracy both liberate and constrain us, including charitable giving on February 15; waste on March 28; and debt on April 3.

A conversation with Charles Best, Founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org, an online charity that provides a way for people to donate directly to public schools. Through peer-to-peer philanthropy, the nonprofit has raised more than $1o0 million for 200,000 projects at public schools across the country. Moderated by Mark C. Taylor, Chair of the Department of Religion and Co-Director of the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life.

Burden of Choice is a conversation series about how proliferating choices in a liberal democracy both liberate and constrain us, including guns on February 29; waste on March 28; and debt on April 3. 

Directions to the Heyman Center. Enter the Wien Hall Gate on 116th Street between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive.

A public talk by Glenn Bowman, Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Kent and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at IRCPL.

His talk is part of the Religion and Mobility Faculty Seminar, organized by Karen Barkey, Professor of Sociology and History, and Valentina Izmirlieva, Professor of Slavic Languages, and sponsored by the IRCPL.

Co-sponsored with the Center for Democracy, Toleration, and Religion and the Middle East Institute.

image credit: Mark Fischer

A lecture by Alioune Badara Diop, a political scientist at Université Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis, Senegal. Moderated by Ousmane Kane, associate professor of international and public affairs at SIPA at Columbia University.

Co-sponsored with Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

A private seminar discussion with Glenn Bowman, Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Kent and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at IRCPL. Participation is by invitation. If interested in attending, please email Chelsea Ebin at cre2106@columbia.edu.

A public talk, Mobilities and Immobilities: Reflections of Fieldwork in Palestine, will follow on Tuesday, February 14, at 5pm.

Glenn Bowman’s talks are part of the Religion and Mobility Faculty Seminar, organized by Karen Barkey, Professor of Sociology and History, and Valentina Izmirlieva, Professor of Slavic Languages, and sponsored by the IRCPL.

Co-sponsored with the Center for Democracy, Toleration, and Religion.

4:00 – 6:00 pm: A discussion with Bachir Souleymane Diagne, Etienne Smith, Alfred Stepan, and Alioune Badara Diop, a political scientist at Université Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis, Senegal. Moderated by Mamadou Diouf.

6:15 – 7:30 pm: A screening of film Democracy in Dakar, which looks at the involvement of the youth and rap singers in the elections in 2007.

Co-sponsored with Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

*Please note room change to Room 1501 at International Affairs Building

A talk by Bernard Haykel, professor of Near Eastern Studies and director of The Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, at Princeton University.

Saudi Arabia’s leaders have claimed that their regime is immune to the revolutionary changes associated with the Arab Spring uprisings. The Saudis have been quite actively engaged with these events and in complicated ways, domestically as well as regionally. They have encouraged some of the uprisings and attempted to clamp down on others.  This talk will explore Saudi Arabia’s policies in response to the Arab Spring, which include enforcing religious sanctions against public demonstrations within the Kingdom, increasing various domestic subsidies in an effort to co-opt potential dissent, stabilizing the monarchy in Bahrain and stewarding a new government into power in Yemen.

Co-sponsored with Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

A conversation with Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit From the Goon Squad as well as Look at Me and The Keep. Moderated by Willing Davidson, fiction editor of The New Yorker.

Rewiring the Real is a yearlong series of conversations with writers about the interplay of literature, technology and religion, including Mark Z. Danielewski on April 24. 

A Talk by Yuri Stoyanov, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
This lecture intends to explore movements in Western and Central Eurasia  like Manichaeism, Paulicianism, Bogomilism, and Ismailism (which as early as the tenth century expanded in Central and later in South Asia and often condemned by its Sunni opponents as a ‘Manichaean’ sect). Why did normative Christian and Islamic elites view them as heretical? How did they defy this label to achieve the character of religious internationals?

Co-sponsored by IRCPL, CDTR, the Unit for Culture, Religion and Communication at the Global Health Research Center of Central Asia and the Harriman Institute.

With a Mormon candidate for the presidency and the unprecedented media attention given to Mormons recently, this conference  will take a broad view of the history of Mormon participation in American political life, from Joseph Smith’s 1844 run for the presidency to the Reed Smoot trials of the early 20th century and to the rise of Ezra Taft Benson during the Eisenhower administration, which ushered in a new era of Mormon identification with the Republican Party.

Speakers include Randall Balmer, Jana Reiss, Richard Bushman, Claudia Bushman, Joanna Brooks, Matthew Bowman,Sarah Barringer Gordon, Jan Shipps, David Campbell, Russell Arben Fox, Max Perry Mueller, Philip Barlow, and Peggy Fletcher Stack. The Religious Test, a documentary about American voters’ perceptions of Mormons, will also be screened.

Moderated and organized by Randall Balmer and Jana Riess. Sponsored by the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life.

No registration required. Seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Members of press may contact chriscdtr@gmail.com.

Conference schedule and participant bios and paper abstracts follow:

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A talk by Arolda Elbassani, CDTR Visiting Researcher, PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute, Florence. Moderated by Karen Barkey, Professor of Sociology, Columbia University.

Since the fall of communism, Muslim organizations have boomed in number and strength in Albania. Yet, they represent an exceptional case of Islam which is both liberal, tolerant, pro-democratic and pro-European.  The Albanian brand of moderate Islam has persisted over radical influences which have penetrated the porous post-communist terrain characterized by open competition for sources and ideas.

Co-sponsored with Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

A conversation with Michael Laffan, Professor of History, Princeton University and author of The Makings of Indonesian Islam; and with Duncan McCargo, Visiting Scholar, Weatherhead East Asian Institute and author of Mapping National Anxieties: Thailand’s Southern Conflict.
Co-sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute (WEAI) and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR).

A conversation with Paul Kollman, who will draw upon his research in African Christianity as well as other trends in religious studies to offer some suggestions about how studies of religion and mobility have been already undertaken and how they might profitably move forward. Kollman is an associate professor in the Department of Theology and Fellow of the Kellogg, Kroc, and Nanovic Institutes at the University of Notre Dame, as well as Acting Director of the Center for Social Concerns at Notre Dame. In 2005 he published The Evangelization of Slaves and Catholic Origins in Eastern Africa and his current project is a book on the Catholic missionary evangelization of eastern Africa.

A conversation with Neal Stephenson, author of Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Anathem, and most recently Reamde. Moderated by Alfred E. Guy Jr, director of Yale College Writing Center.

Rewiring the Real is a yearlong series of conversations with writers about the interplay of literature, technology and religion, including Jennifer Egan on February 7 and Mark Z. Danielewski on April 24. 

A conversation with Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, Absurdistan, and most recently Super Sad True Love Story. Moderated by McKenzie Wark, professor of media and cultural studies at The New School and author of Gamer Theory.

Rewiring the Real is a yearlong series of conversations with writers about the interplay of literature, technology and religion, including Neal Stephenson on December 1; Jennifer Egan on February 7; and Mark Z. Danielewski on April 24.

A workshop with Christophe Jaffrelot (CERI, Sciences Po); Karen Barkey (Columbia); Rajeev Bhargava (Columbia); Shabnam Hashmi; Gagan Sethi (Jan Vikas Society).The 2002 pogrom in Gujurat, India, which resulted in 2,000–mostly Muslim–casualties. It was exceptional not only because of its magnitude but also because of its spread to the countryside, where a large number of Muslims were attacked by their Hindu neighbours. After the pogrom, NGOs committed themselves to relief work, judicial assistance and attempts at reconciliating Hindus and Muslims. This workshop will engage NGO activists involved in reconciliation work to share their experience and assess the impact of their efforts.The workshop is part of the ongoing Sacred Sites project, organized by Karen Barkey and Elazar Barkan.

Co-sponsored with Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion.

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On September 17th, 2011, a group of protestors began their occupation of Zuccotti Park in the financial district of Manhattan. The #OCCUPYWALLSTREET movement has grown to include hundreds of people who live in the park and thousands more who occupy it during the day. Similar protests have begun in other cities around the United States and throughout the world. The leaderless movement has spread largely via the Internet and through the use of mobile technology and social media. How do we understand this movement? What is new about it, and how has it arisen? Where is it going, and how has it already changed? A roundtable of Columbia University professors will explore these questions and provide a platform for campus-wide discussion.

Participants include Saskia Sassen (Sociology), Nadia Urbinati (Political Science), Stathis Gourgouris (ICLS), and Suresh Naidu (Economics and SIPA).

Seating is limited, and registration is required. Please RSVP to jlb2210@columbia.edu.

Sponsored by the Heyman Center for the Humanities, the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society (ICLS) and the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life (IRCPL).

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A screening of Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer, a documentary film about the mystical prayer that has been in use since the Apostles, but remains largely unknown in the West. For the first time on film, desert hermits, monks and nuns reveal the simple prayer, bringing us into their private cells, caves and sanctuaries in the Middle East, Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, and Russia.

A conversation with the film’s director, Dr. Norris J. Chumley, bestselling author and Emmy-Award-winning executive producer/director. He is also a blogger for Huffington Post and a professor at New York University.

A two-day conference organized by South Asia Institute. Keynote speakers include Aitzaz Ahsan (Lawyer’s Movement; Supreme Court Bar Association) and Sara Hossain (Barrister-at-Law, High Court Division, Supreme Court of Bangladesh).

Schedule of Speakers

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How have recent laws, policies, and social pressures affected the civic and political engagement of Muslim Americans since 9/11?  This conference will examine political and electoral participation of Muslim Americans; the effects of counter-terrorism and de-radicalization policies and new policing and urban zoning laws on Muslim American communities; and how increases in profiling, racialization and mobilization have reshaped Muslim American engagement in the public sphere.

Co-sponsored with the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA); Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR); Middle East Institute (MEI); and the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU).

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A talk by Denis Lacorne on his new book, Religion in America: A Political History. The book identifies two competing narratives in American history and national identity: a secular one, derived from the philosophy of the Enlightenment, and a religious one, rooted in the Protestant Reformation and Puritanism. It is the third volume in the publication series by Columbia University Press and IRCPL.

Denis Lacorne is director of research at Center of International Research and Studies (CERI), Sciences Po, and a specialist of political history in the U.S.

Co-sponsored by the Alliance Program, the Center for Democracy, Toleration and Religion, the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life and the Maison Francaise. Partial support is provided by Cultural Services of the French Embassy.

A discussion with Humeira Iqtidar, research fellow at the Centre of South Asian Studies and at King’s College, Cambridge University. Moderated by Karen Barkey, Professor of Sociology at Columbia.

Sponsored by the Center for Democracy, Tolerance, and Religion.

A conference for the project Religion and Human Rights Pragmatism. What causes persuasion, diffusion, and change of human rights norms and practices? What are the processes by which human rights norms change across cultures?  Does normative change happen through exposure to new ideas, by astute strategies of persuasion, by rewards for good behavior and punishments for bad, or as a result of deep social and economic changes that create a climate in which rights can thrive?

A round table discussion with Marcus Mietzner, Steven A. Cook, and Alfred Stepan.

Marcus Mietzner, Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University, is the author of Military Politics, Islam and the State in Indonesia: From Turbulent Transition to Democratic Consolidation, which was highly praised by The Economist. Professor Mietzner’s research on models of controlling the military during democratic transition in Indonesia can be posited as a potential guide for Egypt’s transition.

Steven A. Cook, is the authoritative scholar on the Egyptian military, Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington DC, and author of Ruling But Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey and a forthcoming book on the Egyptian transition.

Moderated by Professor Alfred Stepan, Wallace Sayre Professor of Government, author of two books on civil-military relations and a number of texts on failed and successful democratic transitions. Professor Stepan has made two visits to Egypt since March 2011.

Sponsored by the Center for Democracy, Tolerance, and Religion and the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies.

A discussion with Professor Marcus Mietzner, Australia National University. Moderated by Professor Ann Marie Murphy.

Mietzner will review the state of decentralization in Indonesia ten years after its launch in 2001 and will focus on those impacts of decentralization that have made the Indonesian state stronger and center-periphery relations more stable than at any other point in the country’s history.

Co-sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion.

A reception welcoming Columbia faculty and students interested in learning about upcoming events and funding opportunities at the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL) and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR). Learn about applying for research grants and assistantships, proposing faculty seminars, and convening events. Meet the directors and staff of the IRCPL and CDTR.

The event is co-sponsored with the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR).

What are the consequences of the increasing salience of “spirituality” in American civic and political life? Do actors and groups publicly identified as spiritual challenge commonly held understandings of social and political involvement? This conference explores the institutions and traditions that construct spiritual activities and identities, and it considers their relations to systems and patterns of political participation and public engagement in the contemporary United States.

Panelists and respondents include: Nancy Ammerman (Boston University), Courtney Bender (Columbia University), Philip Gorski(Yale University), David Kyuman Kim (Connecticut College), Pamela Klassen (University of Toronto), Ruth Marshall (University of Toronto), Elizabeth McAlister (Wesleyan University),Omar McRoberts (University of Chicago), John Lardas Modern (Franklin and Marshall College), Joel Robbins (University of California, San Diego), and Josef Sorett (Columbia University).

For more information, or to RSVP, contact Charles Gelman, at gelman@ssrc.org.

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VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS OF JAZZ 1pm
Since its inception, jazz music has inspired artists to represent the arrangements of its rhythms and nuances of its tone through photography, painting, collage, and other media. Join curator, scholar, and author Professor Robert O’Meally, photographer Kwame Brathwaite, and curator Erica Agyeman for a brief discussion addressing the visual representations of jazz.

JAZZ AND THE SPIRIT: THE ARTS OF HARLEM IN THE AMERICAN RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION    2pm
From the Spirituals, through Blues and Jazz and right on up to Hip Hop, religion has occupied a place of privilege in black musical repertoires.  At the same time, Harlem—that premier staging ground of African-American cultural expression—has in many ways figured pre-eminently as a sacred place and space in American history. Wedding these themes together, Professor Marcellus Blount, composer, pianist, arranger Courtney Bryan, Reverend Dr. Calvin O. Butts, III and historian Josef Sorett explore the spiritual dimensions of Harlem’s aesthetic legacies and contemporary vitality.

Please visit: http://www.harlemjazzshrines.org/ for more information.

The African metropolis represents one of the most challenging and important spaces of our time. Insight on African cities has driven some of the most innovative and provocative recent scholarly debates considering development, the nature of citizenship, and the postcolonial urban condition. In contrast with a familiar, sometimes apocalyptic reading of ?failed? African cities which characterizes them as dysfunctional, chaotic and decaying, there is a burgeoning scholarship which explores the way that African cities actually work and the very orderly, dynamic, and creative processes which animate them. more

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A conversation with comedian Lewis Black, a regular commentator on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He is a two-time Grammy Award-winner for the comedy albums The Carnegie Hall Performance (2006) and Stark Raving Black (2010) and is author of several books, including Nothing’s Sacred (2005) and I’m Dreaming of a Black Christmas (2010).

Moderated by Mark C. Taylor, Chair of the Department of Religion and Co-Director of the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life.

Sponsored by the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life

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A talk by Murat Somer, a Democracy and Development Fellow at the Institute for International &
Regional Studies, Princeton University.

Moderated by Karen Barkey, Director of Undergraduate Studies Sociology and Professor of
Sociology and History, Columbia University.

Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion.

A book launch and panel discussion of Religion and International Relations Theory with editor Jack Snyder (Political Science, Columbia); contributor Elizabeth Shakman Hurd (Luce Visiting Fellow, Princeton); Michael Doyle (Political Science, Columbia); and Courtney Bender (Religion, Columbia).

Religious concerns stand at the center of international politics, yet key paradigms in international relations—realism, liberalism, and constructivism—barely consider religion in their analysis of political subjects. The essays in this volume rectify this; they introduce models that integrate religion into the study of international politics and connect religion to a rising form of populist politics in the developing world.

Registration is encouraged. Please register here.
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A Conversation with Eboo Patel, the founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core, an international nonprofit that aims to promote interfaith cooperation. He is a member of President Barack Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships and author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim.

“Shop Talk and God Talk” is a yearlong series of conversations with professionals working on how the study of religion shapes their work and their global perspectives. Organized by Lisa Miller, senior editor of Newsweek. Co-sponsored with Columbia Journalism School and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

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The purpose of this workshop is to discuss the various meanings of legal pluralism and its impact on human rights and on gender hierarchies. Is legal pluralism an obstacle to human rights, particularly of women? Is status based legal pluralism defensible if the groups exercising the coercive power of the state involve patriarchal norms and/or non-democratic hierarchical authority structures? Should one differentiate between ethnic and religiously based legal pluralism when the rights of women are at stake?

Turkey, India, and to some extent, the United States offer excellent material for analyzing democracy, secularism and constitution-making.  Conference panels will use TESEV DP research to evaluate current debates in Turkey on constitutionalism, constitution-making, transitional justice and reparations, and religion-state relations and to reflect on how these issues have been engaged in the United States and India and what each case can offer to scholarship and policymaking.
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The following people will be participating in the discussion:

Mona El-Ghobashy (Assistant Professor Comparative Politics, Barnard College)
Timothy Frye (Marshall D. Shulman Professor of Post-Soviet Foreign Policy)
Mirjam Kuenkler (Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University)
Alfred Stepan (Wallace Sayre Professor of Government at SIPA and Political Science as well as the Co-Director of the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life at Columbia University)

Moderated by:

Michael Doyle (Member, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University)

Click here to listen.

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A talk by Olivier Roy on his new book, Holy Ignorance.  Roy, one of the world’s most distinguished analysts of political Islam, finds in the modern disconnection between faith communities and sociocultural identities a fertile space for fundamentalism to grow. Instead of freeing the world from religion, secularization has encouraged a kind of holy ignorance to take root, an anti-intellectualism that promises immediate access to the sacred and positions itself in direct opposition to contemporary pagan culture.  Books will be on sale at the talk.

Click here to listen.

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A talk by Sami Pihlstrom, Director of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies at the University of Helsinki and Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. After having received his PhD in philosophy in 1996 from the University of Helsinki, he has authored more than ten books (seven in English) and dozens of articles on pragmatism, the problem of realism, transcendental philosophy, philosophy of religion, and related topics. He is one of the founders of the Nordic Pragmatism Network and one of the Editors of Sats: North European Journal of Philosophy, as well as Book Review Editor of Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society.

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A talk by Dilek Cindoglu, Visiting Senior Scholar at Columbia University’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWaG). What are the real world impacts of Turkey’s headscarf ban? Despite the contrary expectations from the headscarf ban  towards women’s emancipation and liberation in the public,  the headscarf ban it is actually limiting women’s labor force participation in contemporary Turkey.

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5:00 pm: Screening of Restrepo, an Academy Award nominated documentary about a platoon of U.S. soldiers fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. Based on reporting for Vanity Fair and winner of the Grand Jury Prize for the best documentary at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.

6:30 pm: Discussion with filmmakers Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington. Junger is a journalist and author of the books The Perfect Storm and War, based on his reporting from Afghanistan. Hetherington is an award-winning photographer and author of Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold. Moderated by Paul Elie, senior editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Co-sponsored with Columbia Journalism school as part of the Delacorte Lectures on Magazine Journalism; Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma; Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies; and Columbia-SIPA Veterans Association.

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A panel discussion and book launch with contributors to After Pluralism: Reimagining Religious Engagement, the first volume in the book series by Columbia University Press and the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life:

• Courtney Bender, Associate Professor, Religion, Columbia University
• J. Terry Todd, Associate Professor, Religious Studies, Drew University
• Janet Jakobsen, Director, Center for Research on Women, Barnard College
• Winnifred F. Sullivan, Director, Law and Religion Program, University Buffalo Law School
• Rosemary Hicks, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for the Humanities, Tufts University
• Moderated by Craig Calhoun, President of the Social Science Research Council.

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This conference studies the diverse images of shared heroes across the Abrahamic traditions. It explores and compares the invention and reinvention of the heroes over time and space within their specific cultural contexts in the late Middle Ages and the early modern times. Considering the different roles and functions certain heroes have filled in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam indeed reveals how different societies and cultures communicate, consciously and unconsciously, and how they interact.

To RSVP (required), please contact Kerren Marcus, knm2121@columbia.edu.

For more information, please visit http://iijs.columbia.edu.

Organized by Micha Perry (Yale University) and Rebekka Voß (Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität). Co-sponsored by the Columbia University Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies & the Program in Judaic Studies at Yale University with support from the Columbia University Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life.

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A conversation with Eliza Griswold, an award-winning journalist and fellow at the New America Foundation. Her recent book is The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam (2010). Moderated by Randall Balmer, Professor of Religion at Barnard College.

“Shop Talk and God Talk” is a yearlong series of conversations with professionals working on how the study of religion shapes their work and their global perspectives. Organized by Lisa Miller, senior editor of Newsweek.

Co-sponsored with Columbia Journalism School and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

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A conference with Christophe Jaffrelot, Alliance Visiting Professor (Sciences Po-CERI, Paris) and author Hindu Nationalism: A Reader (2008), A History of Pakistan and Its Origins (2004), and The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India (1998), Alfred Stepan (Columbia University), Philip Oldenberg (Columbia University), and many others.

Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion.

Click here to listen at SIPA’s website.

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A screening and conversation with the director of Constantine’s Sword and Sister Rose’s Passion. The film based on James Carroll’s book of the same title, Constantine’s Sword is Carroll’s personal exploration into Christianity’s violent historical roles. Sister Rose’s Passion is an Academy Award-nominated film about a Dominican nun’s personal campaign against anti-Semitism in the Catholic faith.

Oren Jacoby is an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker. In 2004, Sister Rose’s Passion won Best Documentary Short Film at the Tribeca Film Festival. He has also won CINE Golden Eagles, the Royal Television Society journalism award, and the MacArthur Golden Owl award.

“In the Names of Gods” is a month-long film series sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion.

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A screening of Chaplains Under Fire, a documentary about the presence of military chaplains in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. The film explores the daily lives of the chaplains, their interactions with fellow soldiers, and the issue of constitutionality at the heart of their service. With special guests directors Lee Lawrence and Terry Nickelson.

Terry Nickelson has been involved in several film projects, contributing to a PBS series on preventive diplomacy and filming a documentary on Rwandan refugees.  Lee Lawrence is a freelance writer; she wrote an award-winning series on military chaplains in 2007 for the Christian Science Monitor.

“In the Names of Gods” is a month-long film series sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion.

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Victor Anderson, Vanderbilt University
Serene Jones, Union Theological Seminary
Barbara Savage, University of Pennsylvania

Co-moderators:
Cathy Cohen, University of Chicago
Josef Sorett, Columbia University

Seating is limited. To RSVP, send email to: dwm2110@columbia.edu

A discussion with:

• Christopher Caldwell, senior editor at The Weekly Standard, columnist at the Financial Times, author of Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West
• Adam Gopnik, writer for The New Yorker, author of Paris to the Moon and Angels and Ages;
• Patrick Weil, visiting professor at Yale Law School, director of the Center for the Study of Immigration, Integration and Citizenship Policies, at the University of Paris 1, and author of How to be French: Nationality in the Making since 1789.
• Chaired by Peter Awn, professor of Islamic Religion and Comparative Religion and director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University.

A cocktail reception with the speakers will follow. To attend the event, please RSVP to: mj2412@columbia.edu

Co-sponsored by the Columbia-Paris Alliance Program, the American Foundation, and the Middle East Institute at Columbia University.

A talk by YOGENDRA YADAV, a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) and Co-Director of Lokniti, a research programme on comparative democracy. His research interests include modern Indian political thought and Indian socialism.

Co-sponsored with the South Asia Institute and Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

A discussion with Aqil Shah, current PhD in Political Science at Columbia University and Harvard Society of Fellows 2010-2012. Moderated by Jack Snyder, The Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations, and Alfred Stepan, Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government.

PhD Thesis Series on Religion and Politics co-sponsored with Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

A lecture by NIRAJA GOPAL JAYAL, Visiting Professor at Princeton University and Professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is author of Democracy and the State: Welfare, Secularism and Development in Contemporary India (1999) and director of the Ford Foundation project Dialogue on Democracy and Pluralism in South Asia.

The Annual Mary Keating Das Lecture co-sponsored with the South Asia Institute and Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

A symposium on Jews and Native Americans, two peoples made into Others by Christian Euro-America in fascinatingly similar yet different ways: as remnants of primitivity, as tribal peoples, as enduring threats and unassimilable enemies, and as romanticized traditionals possessing the solution to the ills of modernity.

Directions: Enter at 116th Street (at Broadway or Amsterdam)
Enter building through Schermerhorn Hall; Follow signs when you enter to the elevators to the Symposium in 754 Schermerhorn Ext.

Co-sponsored with the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies.

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A discussion with OUSMANE KANE, Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University.

Religion, Ethnicity and Politics Lecture Series co-sponsored by Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR) and Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP).

A screening of My Father, My Lord (2007) and a discussion with Uri Cohen, Professor of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures.

A film series co-sponsored with the Religion Departments of Columbia University and Barnard College.

A prestigious group of over a dozen Iranian scholars, media entrepreneurs, and democratic activists will discuss the role of new forms of media in the pursuit of social change within Iran.  The forum will feature a series of talks in Low Library in the morning and interactive break-out sessions on various topics in the afternoon. For more information and registration, please visit: www.newgenerationforum.org

Co-sponsored with the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion.

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The discipline that was once called “Oriental Studies” has been divided up in various ways in today’s university. This conference is concerned not with “the death of the discipline” as so many others have been, but rather with the diversity of the disciplines when it comes to studying the non-Western World.

Join us for student papers, two faculty discussion panels, and a keynote address by Professor Aamir Mufti of UCLA. For more information, including a schedule, presentation abstracts and directions, see http://www.columbia.edu/~add2115/gradconf/

A talk by SENER AKTURK, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University. Reception to follow.

For more information, please contact Mucahit Bilici at mbilici@jjay.cuny.edu.

This talk is part of the Religion and Politics Lecture Series, which is co-sponsored by The Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR), Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP).

A conversation and book signing with NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and columnist for the New York Times. He is co-author of the recent bestseller Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (2009), copies of which will be on sale.  Moderated by Sheila Coronel, Professor of Professional Practice at the Columbia Journalism School.

Co-sponsored with Columbia Journalism School and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

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A conference on the challenges faced by Muslim immigrants and their children in the process of integration in France and the United States.

Organized by Ousmane Kane (SIPA, Columbia) and Khadija Mohsen Finan (Science Po, Paris) with Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Malika Zeghal, Rosemary Hicks, Mohamed Nimeir, Solenne Jouaneau, Ahmet Kuru, Louise Cainkar, Valerie Amiraux, Simona Tersigni, Ousmane Kane, Aminah Mohammed Arif, Hisham Aidi, Robert Lieberman, Mucahit Bilici, Mahamet Timera and Samim Akgonul.

Co-sponsored with Columbia University Seminar for the Study of Contemporary Africa; School of International & Public Affairs (SIPA); Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, & Religion (CDTR); Department of Religion at Barnard College; Institute for Religion, Culture, & Public Life (IRCPL); Middle East Institute; Institute of African Studies; Maison Française; The European Institute; Department of French & Romance Philology; Migration Working Group.

download the conference agenda

A lecture and concert with Grammy-nominated Amjad Ali Khan, a maestro without peer in Indian classical music. Accompanied by his two sons, Amaan Ali Khan and Ayaan Ali Khan, he will play some of his most popular songs with the sarod, a soulful string instrument.

Tickets for Lecture in Lerner Hall, 6-7PM
http://cuarts.com/calendar/view/type/4/event_id/5288

Tickets for Concert in Miller Theatre, 8-10PM
www.millertheatre.com

The most prominent politicians and intellectuals of the left in India will gather to discuss the role of the left in the future of a globalized India.

Speakers include Prabhat Patnaik, (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and Planning Board of the Indian state of Kerala), Sitaram Yechury (author of Saffron Brigade and columnist with Hindustan Times), C.P. Chandrasekhar (Jawaharlal Nehru University and co-author of Crisis as Conquest: Learning from East Asia), Jayati Ghosh (Jawaharlal Nehru University), Javeed Alam (author of Domination and Dissent, Who wants Democracy?), Sanjay Reddy (Barnard College and SIPA), Arjun Jayadev (University of Massachusetts), Anush Kapadia (Columbia University), and Akeel Bilgrami (Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University).

Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR), the Heyman Center for the Humanities, and the Committee on Global Thought.

A graduate conference on how new media technologies have transformed the way people imagine and communicate with the divine.

Keynote speakers include BERNARD STIEGLER, Director of the Department of Cultural Development at Centre Georges-Pompidou, MARK C. TAYLOR, Chair of Religion at Columbia University, BRIAN LARKIN, Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, and SAMUEL WEBER, Professor of German at Northwestern University.

Co-sponsored with Religion Graduate Students Association at Columbia University.

A discussion with AHMET KURU, Assistant Professor of Political Science at San Diego State University and author of Secularism and State Policies toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey.

Religion, Ethnicity and Politics Lecture Series co-sponsored by Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR) and Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP).

A discussion with Haroon Moghul, current PhD in Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University. Moderated by Sudipta Kaviraj, Professor of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures and Bachir Souleymane Diagne, Professor of French and Romance Philology

PhD Thesis Series on Religion and Politics co-sponsored with Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

A discussion with Al Jazeera Director General,  Wadah Khanfar, who transformed the single channel into a media network with multiple properties including Al Jazeera English.  Ranked as one of the most “Powerful People in the World” by Forbes Magazine, Khanfar began his career as a news correspondent in South Africa and later reported on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. One of his first mandates as managing director was to launch the Al Jazeera Code of Ethics and Code of Conduct in July 2004 at the First Al Jazeera International Forum.

Co-sponsored with the Middle East Institute and Columbia’s School of Journalism.

A screening of The Green Pastures (1936) and discussion with Josef Sorett, Professor of Religion.

A film series co-sponsored with the Religion Departments of Columbia University and Barnard College.

A discussion with Ajay Chaudhary, current PhD in Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University. Moderated by Sudipta Kaviraj, Professor of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures.

PhD Thesis Series on Religion and Politics co-sponsored with Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

A discussion with MICHAEL BUEHLER, Postdoctoral Fellow in Modern Southeast Asian Studies 2008-10 at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute. Moderated by Alfred Stepan, Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government.

Religion, Ethnicity and Politics Lecture Series co-sponsored by Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR) and Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP).

A discussion with Iren Ozgur, 2009 PhD in Political Science at Oxford University. Moderated by Karen Barkey, Professor of Sociology.

PhD Thesis Series on Religion and Politics co-sponsored with Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

A discussion with TARIQ MODOOD, Professor of Sociology at the University of Bristol and director of the Research Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship at the University of Bristol.

Co-sponsored with Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

A discussion with JULIANE HAMMER, Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at George Mason University and author of Palestinians Born in Exile: Diaspora and the Search for a Homeland (2005).

Religion, Ethnicity and Politics Lecture Series co-sponsored by Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR) and Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP).

A screening of A Man Escaped (1956) and discussion with Joshua Dubler, Society of Fellows.

A film series co-sponsored with the Religion Departments of Columbia University and Barnard College.

A discussion with Emily Bech, current PhD in Political Science, Columbia University. Moderated by Jack Snyder, The Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relationsm, and Alfred Stepan, Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government.

PhD Thesis Series on Religion and Politics co-sponsored with Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

A discussion with FATMA GOCEK, Associate Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at University of Michigan and author of Social Constructions of Nationalism in the Middle East (2002) and Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire: Ottoman Westernization and Social Change (1996).

Religion, Ethnicity and Politics Lecture Series co-sponsored by Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR) and Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP).

A conversation with GEORGE RUPP, president of the International Rescue Committee and former president of Columbia University as well as author of Globlization Challenged: Conviction, Conflict, Community (2006). Moderated by Mark C. Taylor, Chair of the Department of Religion.

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A discussion of human-rights report by the Cairo Institute of Human Rights (CIHRS) and its implications for U.S. policy, with remarks from Bahey Eldin Hassan (General Director, Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies), Jeremie Smith (Director, Geneva Office of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies), Radwan Ziadeh (Founding Director, Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies).

In 2009, human rights in the Arab world have significantly deteriorated, prompting CIHRS to refer to the region as a “bastion of impunity.” The report points to increased suppression of political dissent and raises concerns about religious freedom, the deteriorating status of religious minorities and the tendency of regimes to align themselves with radical Islamists.

Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Human Rights (CSHR) and co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR).

A discussion and screening of “Heaven’s Taxi” and “Iran Zendan”, two feature films that address the political situation and treatment of prisoners in Iran since the 2009 presidential election.  Panelists include Daryush Shokof, Hasan Demicri, Taies Farzan, Vadim Glowna, Bahman Maghsoudlou, Mahnaz Talebitari, and Daryoush Zandi.

Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Human Rights (CSHR).  Co-sponsored by the Human Rights Working Group at SIPA, the Human Rights Concentration at SIPA and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR).

A discussion with Gérard Araud, Ambassador of France to the United Nations, on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons as a new resolution on the Iranian crisis is under discussion at the United Nations. Moderated by Richard Bulliet, Professor of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University.

To RSVP: mj2412@columbia.edu

Co-sponsored by the Columbia-Paris Alliance Program; the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR); the Middle East Institute (MEI); the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and the UN Studies Program.

“Western Responses to the Torture of Muslims”
4-5:30pm: Keynote address by Sherene Razack, Professor of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. She is author of Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims From Western Law and Politics (2008) and Dark Threats and White Knights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism (2004).

“The New Muslim Cool”
6-8pm: A screening of the film “The New Muslim Cool,” by Jennifer Taylor, with a discussion with Zaheer Ali (Columbia University). The film is about Puerto Rican American rapper Hamza Perez’s ride through the streets, projects and jail cells of urban America, following his spiritual journey to some surprising places. Please visit:
http://www.newmuslimcool.com

Co-sponsored with Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race; Middle East Institute; and the Institute of African Studies Institute for Social Policy and Understanding’s Center for the Study of American Muslims George Mason University’s Ali Vural Ak Center for Islamic Studies.

Speakers: Can Paker (Chair, TESEV), Etyen Mahçupyan (Turkish/Armenian Journalist, former Editor in Chief of Agos), Dilek Kurban (Program Officer, TESEV), Henri Barkey, (Lehigh University, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) Zehra Arat (SUNY Purchase), Jeremy Walton (New York University).

Panels will address how questions related to identity, nation-state and citizenship are being reshaped from below and how the Turkish state responds to minority, ethnic and religious challenges to citizenship in Turkey.  They will also examine the role and limits of state institutions and civil society in responding to social pressure for change.

Co-sponsored by the Institute of Turkish Studies, the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR), the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life (IRCPL), and the Middle East Institute (MEI)

A conversation with DAVID SHIPLEY, op-ed editor at The New York Times. He also served in the Clinton Administration as Senior Presidential Speechwriter and was the executive editor of The New Republic Magazine. Moderated by Mark C. Taylor, Chair of the Department of Religion.

Co-sponsored with Columbia Journalism School and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion.

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A presentation of the film Household Saints (1993) with a discussion by Elizabeth Castelli, Professor of Religion.

A film series sponsored by the Religion Departments of Columbia University and Barnard College

A workshop led by Sudipta Kaviraj, Professor of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures, and Rajeev Bhargava, Director of the Center for Studies in Developing Societies (Delhi). Discussion will focus on the role of religion in India throughout its history, particiularly the dynamics of conflict and accommodation between Buddhists and conventional Vedic religion and among Saivas, Vaisnavas and Jains in ancient and medieval society.

Click here for schedule and more information.

Co-sponsored with the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion and the Heyman Center for the Humanities. For directions to the Heyman Center, click this link: http://heymancenter.org/visit.php

A discussion with CHRISTOPHE JAFFRELOT, Alliance Visiting Professor (Sciences Po-CERI, Paris), THOMAS BLOM HANSEN, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, and RAJEEV BHARGAVA, Professor of Political Science at the University of Delhi and Director of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies.

Co-sponsored with the Alliance Program; the South Asia Institute; the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures; and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion.
 

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A lecture by CHARLES TAYLOR, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at McGill University and winner of the 2007 Templeton Prize and the 2008 Kyoto Prize.

Co-sponsored with the Committee on Global Thought; Heyman Center for Humanities; Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion.

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A discussion led by MARTA LAGOS, Director of Latin Barometer in Santiago, MARGARET CRAHAN, Senior Research Scholar at the Institute of Latin American Studies, ALFRED STEPAN, Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government. Participants also include John Burdick (Syracuse University), Timothy Steigenga (Florida Atlantic University), David Smilde (University of Georgia), Alejandro Natal (Interdisciplinary Program for Third Sector Studies, El Colegio Mexiquense, Mexico), and Diana Lima (Institute Universitário de Pesquisas do  Rio de Janeiro).

Co-sponsored with the Center for the Study of Toleration, Democracy and Religion and the Institute for Latin American Studies.

Brown Bag Lecture Series presents a talk with Yakov Rabkin, Professor of History at University of Montreal and author of A Threat from Within: A History of Jewish Opposition of Zionism.

Co-sponsored with the Middle East Institute.

A conversation with JON MEACHAM, the editor of Newsweek magazine and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House as well as American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation. Moderated by Randall Balmer, Professor of Religion.

Co-sponsored with Columbia Journalism School and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion.
 

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A presentation of the film Ghostbusters (1984) with a discussion by Courtney Bender, Professor of Religion.

A film series sponsored by the Religion Departments of Columbia University and Barnard College.

A talk by JACK MILES, Senior Fellow for Religious Affairs with the Pacific Council on International Policy and Distinguished Professor of English and Religious Studies, University of California, Irvine. A MacArthur Fellow, he is winner of the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for God: A Biography.

For directions to the Heyman Center, visit: http://heymancenter.org/visit.php

Co-sponsored with the Heyman Center for the Humanities.

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A conference in honor of B.R. AMBEDKAR, chief architect of the Indian constitution and Columbia alumnus. Participants include President Lee C. Bollinger; Vice President Nicholas B. Dirks; Gnana Alyosius; Masood Alam Falahi; Marc Galanter; Gopal Guru; Rajkumar Hans; Christophe Jaffrelot; Pratap Mehta; Smita Narula; Balmurli Natrajan; Gyan Pandey; Sudha Rani; Anupama Rao; Nat Roberts; Palanimuthu Sivakami; Jebaroja Singh; Anand Teltumbde; Gauri Viswanthan.

Co-sponsored with Center for Human Rights and Documentation; Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race; Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Culture; Institute for Social and Economic Research. Made possible by additional funding from the Dr. Ambedkar International Mission (AIM) Inc. U.S.A; Provost’s Office of Columbia University; Taraknath Das Foundation; and the US Department of Education.

For a full conference schedule, visit  the South Asia Institute’s site.

Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and author of Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus, which won a National Jewish Book Award and Germany’s Geiger Prize.

Intrigued with Islam: Jewish Scholars, Travelers, and Converts in Modern Europe
Tuesday, October 13, 6:30-8pm
International Affairs Building, Room 707
420 W. 118th St.

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Jesus as Aryan Hero: The Peculiar Conversion of Christianity into National Socialism
Thusday, October 15, 6:30-8pm
International Affairs Building, Room 707
420 W. 118th St.

[download podcast]

A talk by Abdallah Schleifer, Professor Emeritus and Senior Fellow at the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at the American University in Cairo.

Co-sponsored with the Middle East Institute.

A conversation with JAMES TRAUB, who writes on politics and international affairs for The New York Times Magazine and has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly and National Review. Moderated by Jack Snyder, The Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations.

Read a review of the event at the Columbia Journalism School’s website.

Co-sponsored with Columbia Journalism School and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion.

[download podcast]

A lecture by Etienne Balibar, Professor Emeritus at the Sorbonne and Distinguished Professor at University of California, Irvine, on racism, nationalism and the plight of non-European immigrants in a newly unified Europe.

Co-sponsored with the Maison Francaise at Columbia University.

As part of the World Leaders Forum, internationally renowned artist Alfredo Jaar will present a selection of projects he has created in response to conflicts around the world. Following will be a conversation with Alfredo Jaar and Dean of the School of the Arts, Carol Becker.

For RSVP information, visit the World Leaders Forum site.

Co-sponsored by the School of the Arts and the World Leaders Forum.

A discussion with CHARLES TAYLOR, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at McGill University and winner of the 2007 Templeton Prize and the 2008 Kyoto Prize, ALAN MONTEFIORE, Emeritus Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford, and EMMANUEL PICAVET, Professor of Political Philosophy, University of Paris.

Co-sponsored by Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life, the Committee on Global Thought, and the Alliance Program

Video of the Panel

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Video of the Discussion

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Schedule: Friday, Sept 25, 12-6pm, and Saturday, Sept 26, 10am-6pm

A conference on the multiple meanings of the new urban wars and the limits of power and of war. Discussions will focus on asymmetric armed conflict, US Army training for the “urban enemy,” cities and urban space as a technology for war, re-appropriating the city of fear, and civil war refugees and their flight from and to cities.

Speakers include Arjun Appadurai, Elazar Barkan, Ted Byfield, Partha Chatterjee, Tony Conrad, Susan Crile, Claire Cutler, Ashley Dawson, James Der Derian, Gar Smith (Environmentalists Against War), Yasmine Ergas, Karen Jacobsen, Fiona Jeffries, Danny Kaplan, Jennifer S. Light, Peter Marcuse, Suketu Mehta, Rosalind C. Morris, Les Roberts, Saskia Sassen, Jan Schneider, Richard Sennett, Jessica Stern, Ida Susser, Gediminas Urbonas, Sudhir Venkatesh, Eyal Weizman, Florian Schneider and Susanne Lang (Dictionary of War Project).

For more information, please visit http://cgt.columbia.edu/events/cities_and_new_wars/

Co-sponsored with the Committee on Global Thought; Center for the Study of Human Rights; Department of Sociology; Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; ISERP; Mailman School of Public Health; New York Theological Seminary.

A presentation of the film Wings of Desire (1987) directed by Wim Wenders with a discussion by Jonathan Schorsch, Professor of Religion.

A film series sponsored by the Religion Departments of Columbia University and Barnard College.

A two-day conference promoting a public dialogue between science and religion on environmental sustainability. Speakers include Jeffrey Sachs (Earth Institute), Wayne G. Ramsey (Fetzer Institute), James Hansen (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies) and other scholars, leaders, and activists. For more information: www.columbia.edu/cu/cssr

Sponsored by Center for the Study of Science and Religion and the Earth Institute at Columbia University with the Fetzer Institute.

A lecture by AIJAZ AHMAD, a leading Marxist thinker and prominent commentator on South Asian politics, on global Islamist jihadi groups. He is Professorial Fellow at the Centre of Contemporary Studies in New Delhi and author of several books, including In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures.

Co-sponsored by the Heyman Center for the Humanities; Committe on Global Thought; and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion.

An undergraduate interdisciplinary conference on East Asia. Panels include “Recovering the Individual: Contemporary Asian Art,” “Soft Power in Asia,” and “Rice and Steel: Urban Development in Northeast Asia.” The Columbia East Asia Review (CEAR), an undergraduate peer-review academic journal, will also launch its second volume. To learn more about the conference, please visit www.eastasiasymposium.org.

A conversation with PAUL AUSTER, acclaimed novelist, essayist and translator. His many works include The New York Trilogy, Moon Palace, The Brooklyn Follies and, most recently, Man in the Dark. Moderated by Mark C. Taylor, Chair of the Department of Religion and Co-Director of the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life.

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Loren Ryter, Visiting Scholar and Lecturer at the University of Michigan, on Indonesia’s New Order, in which state-sactioned criminal groups were given license to control gambling, prostitution, drug distribution, and protection rackets in exchange for political support.

Sponsored by Southeast Asian Student Initiative. For more information, contact: mb3120@columbia.edu

A lecture with Professor James Collins, Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University, on language shifts in Indonesia due to colonial genocide, natural disasters as well as complex socio-economic factors.

Sponsored by the Southeast Asian Student Initiative. For more information, contact:  mb3120@columbia.edu

A Panel Discussion with Nilüfer Göle, Professor of Sociology at Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, and is author of The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling.

Cosponsored with the Center for the Study of Religion, Toleration and Democracy.

A lecture by PHILIP BOBBITT, the Herbert Wechsler Professor of Federal Jurisprudence and the Director of the Center for National Security at Columbia University. He has written extensively on constitutional law as well as international security and strategy in such works as The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History and, most recently, Terror and Consent.

A lecture by G. MURAT TEZCUR (Political Science, Loyola University) as part of the Religion, Ethnicity, and Politics Lecture Series. Moderated by Macartan Humphreys (Political Science, Columbia University).

Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion, the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), and the Middle East Institute (MEI).

A lecture by ZEYNEP AKBULUT KURU (University of Washington, Seattle) as part of the Religion, Ethnicity, and Politics Lecture Series. Moderated by Nadia Guessous (Anthropology, Columbia University).

Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion, the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), and the Middle East Institute (MEI).

A lecture by SIMON C. TAY, chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, on the future of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The talk will address its charter, economic community and relationship with the Obama administration as well as global priorities in human rights, environment and security.

Sponsored by Southeast Asian Student Initiative. For more information, contact: mb3120@columbia.edu

A lecture by AMY LIU (Emory University) on what part language plays in statebuilding and governments’ tendency to share linguistic powers when the threat of state destabilization is high.

Sponsored by the Southeast Asia Student Initiative. For more information, contact: mb3120@columbia.edu

A public lecture by Charles Taylor, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at McGill University and Templeton Prize-winning author of A Secular Age (2007). His talk is based on his Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences (CCAPRCD) in Quebec, which he co-chaired.

Co-Sponsored by the Heyman Center for Humanities; Center for the Study of Democracy, Tolerance; and the Committee on Global Thought.

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Indonesia is the largest Muslim-majority state in the world and underwent a successful transition to democracy in 1998. Panelists will reflect on the past ten years of the country’s democratic experiment, in particular on the role of Islamic organizations in the democratic transition, the role of veto actors in the consolidation process, and the relationship between Islamic law and democratic institutions.

Presenters and Discussants include Alfred Stepan, Edward Aspinall, John Bowen, L. Carl Brown, Michael Buehler, Jose Casanova, Greg Fealy, Robert Hefner, Nadirsyah Hosen, Mirjam Künkler, Michael Laffan, Marcus Mietzner, Musda Mulia, Sidney Jones and Franz Magnis Suseno.

Co-sponsored by the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS), Princeton University

Click here for more details

In recent decades, scholars of religion have attempted to shift attention away from belief and doctrine to practices, rituals identities and institutition. This focus has allowed scholars to recognize that “lived religion” is a multilayered and dynamic phenomenon, but it has kept them from examining other ways in which belief remains central to religious practices. By re-examining what it means to believe, this conference explores if and how belief matters.

Discussants include Courtney Bender, Mark C. Taylor, Penny Edgell, Joshua Dubler, Wayne Proudfoot and Zareena Grewal.    Co-sponsored by the Religion Graduate Students Association at Columbia University.

A lecture by CEREN BELGE (Political Science, Harvard University) as part of the Religion, Ethnicity and Politics Lecture Series. Moderated by George Gavrilis (International Relations, University of Texas at Austin).

Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion, the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), and the Middle East Institute (MEI).

A lecture by TRUDY JACOBSEN, an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Monash Asia Institute, on the Khmer Rouge’s methods of torturing and targeting women during the Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979) in Cambodia.

Sponsored by Southeast Asian Student Initiative. For more information, contact:  mb3120@columbia.edu

A conversation with David Ignatius, columnist for The Washington Post and author of Body of Lies, which was recently adapted into a feature film. Moderated by Nicholas Lemann, Dean and Henry R. Luce Professor of the Graduate School of Journalism.

Co-sponsored with Columbia Journalism School.

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University Lecture by Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History. Hosted by President Lee C. Bollinger and Provost Alan Brinkley.

Sponsored by University Program and Events.

A performance of extracts from the operas The Daughters of Ishmael in Wind and Storm by Assia Djebar and Margaret Garner by Toni Morrison and Richard Danielpour. Accompanied by a discussion with Assia Djebar, Toni Morrison, Leila Ahmed (Harvard Divinity School), and Angela Davis (University of California Santa Cruz).

Co-sponsored with the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society.

A talk by JEAN LECA (Sciences-Po, Paris) on current global political dynamics in reference to the concepts of uncertainty, vulnerability, and legitimacy. He will use Algeria as a case study for democratic processes in the Arab world. Introduction by Peter Awn, Director of the Middle East Institute and Dean of General Studies. Light lunch will be served.
Co-sponsored by the Alliance Program and Middle East Institute.

Read Leca’s articles (PDF):

• “Democratization in the Arab World: Uncertainty, Vulnerability and Legitimacy,” Democracy Without Democrats?: The Renewal of Politics in the Muslim World (1994).

• “Opposition in the Middle East and North Africa,” Government and Opposition (1997).

A lecture by CHRISTOPHE JAFFRELOT (Sciences Po-CERI, Paris) on the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the rise of ethnic nationalism and ideology in India. Moderated by Alfred Stepan, the Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government at Columbia University.

Co-sponsored by the Alliance Program; Southern Asian Institute; Center for Democracy, Toleration and Religion; and the Political Science Department.

A lecture by DAN SLATER, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, addressing Indonesia’s elites and their response to the country’s democratic transition. Slater will discuss elite strategies during the 1999-2004 period and likely results from the upcoming 2009 elections.

Co-sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR).

A lecture by SENEM ASLAN (Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University)as part of the Religion, Ethnicity, and Politics Lecture Series. Moderated by Ayca Cubukcu (Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University).

Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion, the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), and the Middle East Institute (MEI).

Turkey is the only member of NATO and candidate member of the European Union that is a Muslim-majority country. Assertive secularism, multiparty democracy, and military interventions are other puzzling aspects of Turkish politics. This conference aims to present an integrated picture of Turkey by bringing together comparative perspectives on its past, present, and future, and delving into such issues as the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, secularism, religion, democracy, civil-military relations, and the European Union membership.

Participants include Alfred Stepan, Ergun Ozbudun, Andrew Arato, Karen Barkey, Richard Bulliet, Ümit Cizre, David Cuthell, ?ükrü Hanio?lu, Stathis Kalyvas, Rashid Khalidi, Mirjam Künkler, Ahmet Kuru, Joost Lagendijk, Joan Scott and Nur Yalman.

Co-sponsored by the Turkish Studies Institute, the Middle East Institute, and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion.

• Watch coverage on Ebru TV and Turk.net.

Click here for more information

A conversation with DALIA SOFER, author of the novel The Septembers of Shiraz based on her family’s flight from post-revolutionary Iran. It was named one of the New York Times Notable Books of 2008. Moderated by Dohra Ahmad, Assistant Professor of English at St. John’s University.

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A conversation with ERGUN OZBUDUN, Professor of Law at Bilkent University in Turkey and IRCPL Distinguished Scholar in Residence. He is the author of Contemporary Turkish Politics: Challenges to Democratic Consolidation and the co-editor of Atatürk: Founder of a Modern State. He recently chaired the academic committee to draft a new constitution for Turkey.

Co-Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR), the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), and the Middle East Institute.

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Are candor and respect compatible when discussing other religions in the public sphere? This conference investigates the dangers of neglecting both in the realms of governance, diplomacy and journalism.

Panelists include Bat Ye’or, Faisal Devji (The New School University), Philip Hamburger (Columbia Law School), Marci Hamilton (Cardozo Law School), Leonard Leo (US Commission on International Religious Freedom), Tomoko Masuzawa (University of Michigan), Flemming Rose (Culture Editor, Jyllands-Posten), Alfred Stepan (Columbia University) and Winnifred Sullivan (SUNY at Buffalo Law School).

Sponsored in partnership with Mark Kingdon and Columbia Law School.

A lecture by JOHN SIDEL, the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at LSE, on anti-colonialist revolutions in the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Co-sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR).

A conversation with Uzodinma Iweala, author of Beasts of No Nation and named one of Granta‘s Best Young American Novelists. Moderated by Mamadou Diouf, the Leitner Family Professor of African Studies and Director of Institute for African Studies.
 

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The 36th Bampton Lectures will be delivered by Irving Weissman, the Virginia and D. K. Ludwig Professor for Clinical Investigation in Cancer Research and Director of the Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine Institute at Stanford University. He is also the 2008 Koch Prize Winner for advances in the biomedical sciences.

Co-Sponsored with the Department of Religion and the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life at Columbia University.

• “Adult Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine,” Wednesday, January 21, 5-7pm
   

  
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• “Cancer and Leukemia Stem Cells: A New Paradigm for Research, Diagnosis and Therapy,” Thursday, January 22, 5-7pm
   

  
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• “Embryonic and Pluripotent Stem Cells: Science and Medicine meet Politics and Religious Organizations,” Tuesday, January 27, 5-7pm
   

  
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• “Self and Nonself: Co-evolution of Stem Cells and Immunity and Speculations on Stem Cells and the Mind,” Thursday, January 29, 5-7pm

A conversation with Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and the acclaimed Everything is Illuminated, which was adapted into a feature film directed by Liev Schreiber.

Moderated by Jenny Davidson, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

Copies of his book will be on sale courtesy of Book Culture.

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A talk by Riza Yildirim, Postdoctoral Scholar at Harvard University. Moderated by Ahmet T. Kuru, Postdoctoral Scholar at Columbia University.

Co-sponsored with the Center for the Study of Democracy,

Toleration and Religion (CDTR), Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), and Middle East Institute (MEI).

For more information: Ahmet Kuru: ak2840@columbia.edu

A public talk with Gail Omvedt, sociologist and author of Seeking Begumpura: The Social Vision of Anticaste Intellectuals (2008). Dr. Omvedt has also worked actively with social movements in India, including the Dalit and anti-caste movements, environmental movements, farmers’ movements and especially with rural women.

Co-sponsored with the Southern Asian Institute.

A book presentation by Gilles Kepel, Professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at Sciences Po, Paris. His book investigates the ideological quagmire of terrorism and martyrdom and explores the terms of a new and constructive dialogue between Islam and the West, one for which Europe, with its expanding and restless Muslim populations, may be the proving ground.

Moderated by Alfred Stepan, Co-Director of IRCPL.

Co-sponsored with the Middle East Institute and the Alliance Program at Columbia University.

A talk by Akif Kireççi, Assistant Professor of History at Bilkent University, with Richard Bulliet, Professor of History at Columbia University.

Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR), Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), and the Middle East Institute.

For more information: Ahmet Kuru: ak2840@columbia.edu

A book presentation by Laurence Louër (Professor of Middle East Studies at Sciences Po-CERI in Paris) and moderated by Gary Sick (Middle East Institute).

Co-sponsored with the Alliance Program at Columbia University.

A talk by Mucahit Bilici, Assistant Professor of Sociology, John Jay College, with Taylor Carman, Professor of Philosophy at Barnard College.

Since the tragic events of 9/11, there has been an upsurge in ethnic comedy by Muslims in America. This talk will explore the landscape of Muslim ethnic comedy in the United States and its intricate relationship with Islamophobia.

Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR), Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP).

For more information: Ahmet Kuru: ak2840@columbia.edu

Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at McGill University and Templeton Prize-winning author of A Secular Age (2007).

What is Enchantment?
Monday, November 17, 8-10pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1501

Audio:
 

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The Secular Age in a Global Context
Wednesday, November 19, 6-8pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1501

Audio:
 

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[download podcast]

More on the web: read the ongoing discussion of Charles Taylor’s “A Secular Age” at The Immanent Frame

Co-sponsored with Center for Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR); Committee on Global Thought (CGT); and Heyman Center for the Humanities.

A public roundtable with Rajeev Bhargava (Center for the Study of Developing Societies), José Casanova (Georgetown University) and Alfred Stepan (Columbia University).

Co-sponsored with Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and Center for Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

“Turkey’s Role in Shaping the Future,” a World Leaders Forum program with keynote address by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister of the Republic of Turkey.

Hosted by Alan Brinkley, Provost and Allan Nevins Professor of American History at Columbia University. Moderated by Alfred Stepan, Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government. For more information, and to register, please visit www.worldleaders.columbia.edu

Co-sponsored with the School of International and Public
Affairs; the Center for Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR); and the Middle East Institute at Columbia University.

A conference on India’s tradition of social peace and tolerance in public life, an example that demonstrates a successful democracy does not depend on the decline of religious belief in society.

Convened by Sudipta Kaviraj, Professor of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures, and Rajeev Bhargava, Professor of Political Science at the University of Delhi, is Director of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies.

Co-sponsored with Center for Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

A conference on the legacy of Edward Said’s work and its part in the larger phenomenon of Orientalism with regard to the question of Palestine and the Jewish question.

Includes lectures by Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies and Literature, and Joseph Massad, Associate Professor of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures.

Co-sponsored with Middle East Institute (MEI).

To celebrate its inauguration, the Institute is hosting an afternoon of public lectures on religion in contemporary society with Salman Rushdie, Thomas Krens, Charles Taylor, and Orhan Pamuk.

Click here for more information

The Past and Future of Religion & Toleration (IRCPL Launch Event)
*Toleration Faculty Working Group with Charles Taylor, Emeritus Prof. of Philosophy
 

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SALMAN RUSHDIE in conversation with Gauri Viswanathan (IRCPL Launch Event)

* Opening Remarks by Lee C. Bollinger
* Introduction by ORHAN PAMUK
 

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[download podcast]

As part of the series “New Evidence, 1400-1800,” a lecture with Jaime Lara, Associate Professor of Christian Art and Architecture at Yale University Divinity School, and José ardo Tomás, a member of the Department of History of Science at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Barcelona.

Co-sponsored with Departments of Spanish and Portuguese and of Religion; Institute for Latin American Studies; Institute for Comparative Literature and Society; and Mexican Cultural Institute of New York.

While distinctions between religious and secular activist media often seem self-evident, this panel asks what they might share. Panelists include Birgit Meyer (VU University Amsterdam), Charles Hirschkind (University of California, Berkeley) and Peter Redfield (University of North Carolina).

Co-sponsored with Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and Center for Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

Richard Locke, Professor of Writing at Columbia’s School of the Arts, in conversation with Philip Gourevitch, writer and editor of The Paris Review, on his most recent book Standard Operating Procedure, which he co-authored with filmmaker Errol Morris. The book and Morris’ film explore Abu Ghraib.

Copies of his books will be on sale courtesy of Book Culture.
 

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An open forum with Naz Modirzadeh, Senior Associate at Harvard School of Public Health, and Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University.

Organized by Lila Abu-Lughod, William B. Ransford Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies.

Co-sponsored with Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWAG) and Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference (CCASD).
 

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An open forum that addresses the limitations of current models of religious pluralism used in academic and political contexts.

Organized by Courtney Bender, Professor of Religion, the discussion culminates two years’ work by an interdisciplinary group and highlights some of the empirical and analytical issues that will appear in a forthcoming edited volume.

Historian and novelist Tariq Ali discusses his new book The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power with an introduction by Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and Professor of Anthropology. Copies of the book will be on sale courtesy of Book Culture.

Co-sponsored with Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC).
 

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A talk by Karsten D. Voigt, Coordinator of German-North American Cooperation at the German Federal Foreign Office.

Karsten D. Voigt asserts that religion, however, has more strongly, if subtly, shaped society and politics in Europe than meets the eye, and the process of secularization seems to have been reversed in recent years. He argues Germany is no exception to that. Europeans and Americans simply have different approaches to religion, which are influenced by their respective historical experiences.

Cosponsored with the Center for the Study of Democracy,
Toleration and Religion (CDTR); the Institute for the Study of Europe
(ISE); the Council for European Studies at Columbia University;
Deutsches Haus at Columbia; and the German Consulate General New York.

A talk by Ali Bardakoglu, Professor of Theology and President of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs.

This talk will examine the Ottoman  millet system  and its ability to let the peaceful co-existence of tens of different cultural, ethnic,
and religious groups in the Ottoman Empire.

Prof. Bardakoglu is the President of Directorate of Religious Affairs which coordinates 70,000 mosques, in addition to other religious affairs in Turkey.

Cosponsored with the Center for the Study of Democracy,
Toleration and Religion (CDTR) and Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP).

Click here to watch video on Ebru Television.

A talk by Michael Buehler and Alfred C. Stepan. In recent years a growing number of districts in Indonesia have adopted shari’a laws. This has been interpreted as a sign for the growing influence of fundamentalist Islam in Indonesian politics after the demise of the military-backed dictatorship of President Suharto in 1998. Analyzing shari’a politics in Indonesia over the last 50 years, Michael Buehler will show in his talk that the recent implementation of Islamic laws, however, has non-fundamentalist origins. He will then provide possible answers for why this is the case.

Cosponsored with the Center for Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.

Michael Buehler is a doctoral candidate at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Click here to read paper.

The conference will explore how Senegal’s Sufi population has contributed to the country’s democratic development and culture. As part of the conference, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture will present A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal, an exhibition curated by the Fowler Museum at UCLA featuring Senegalese calligraphic art and murals as well as representations of Sheikh Amadou Bamba, the founder of the Sufi Mouride brotherhood.

Cosponsored with Institute of African Studies; the Center for Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion; and the Comittee on Global Thought. Convened by Mamadou Diouf, the new Director of Columbia’s Institute for African Studies and Professor of History in Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures.

Click here for more information.

Denis Lacorne will discuss his new book De La Religion en Amerique: Essai d’histoire politique (2007), a comparative analysis of religion in America, which has received a popular and critical reception in France. An English translation is forthcoming.

Denis Lacorne is Director of Research at le Centre d’Etudes et de Recheches Internationales at L’Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, where he is also a professor of comparative politics.

• Rise and Fall of American Secularism: Friday, March 28, noon–2 p.m., 80 Claremont, Room 101.

The current Turkish 1982 Constitution was written after the 1980 military coup and under great military-Kemalist influence. Some argue that amending the constitution will be the end of secularism. Others argue that the new constitution will be more democratic and will allow for the greater practice of religious freedom, such as the right of veiled women to attend public universities. The conference will investigate this sharp difference of opinion. Three key drafters of the constitution will discuss their proposed changes in the morning session. In the afternoon session, three specialists on comparative constitutions in democracies will respond. The day will conclude with a round-table discussion and questions.

Cosponsored with the Center for the Study of Religion, Toleration and Democracy and convened by Professor Alfred Stepan and Ahmet Kuru, a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Democracy.

Click here to view event program.

The conference will investigate how some religions in conflict have collaborated on agreed access to major religious sites they all hold sacred. A number of sites in India, Morocco, Indonesia, and Palestine/Israel will serve as models for toleration.

Cosponsored with the Center for the Study of Human Rights, the Center for Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion, and the Institute for Historical Justice in Reconciliation in Salzburg, Austria and convened by Elazar Barkan, Professor of International and Public Affairs.

Click here to view paper abstracts.

Schedule Notes:
Day one: 9 a.m.–6:45 p.m.
Day two: 9:30 a.m–12:30 p.m

Rajeev Bhargava, Professor of Political Science at the University of Delhi, is Director of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies and the leading scholar on Indian secularism.

• Rehabilitating Secularism, Friday, February 8, 12–2 p.m., The Heyman Center for the Humanities, Common Room.

• To be Secular or Not: How Should States Deal With Religious Diversity? Thursday, February 21, 12–2 p.m, Kellogg Center, International Affairs Building, Room 1512.

Speaker series chaired by Jack Snyder, Professor of Political Science, in cooperation with Professor Alfred Stepan.

The series showcases research that addresses the role of religion in international relations:

• Peter Katzenstein: “Civilizational States, Secularisms and

Religions, Wed., January 23. Click here to read paper.

• Elizabeth Shakman Hurd: “Secularism and IR Theory,” Wed.,

January 30. Click here to read paper.

• Michael Barnett: “Religion, Humanitarianism and International

Relations,” Thurs., February 14. Click here to read paper.

• Daniel Philpott:”When God Means War, When God Means

Peace: Explaining the Wild Variation in Religious Politics,” Wed.,

April 9.  Click here to read paper.

• Daniel Nexon: “Religion and International Relations: No Leap

of Faith Required,” Tue. April 22.

• Monica Toft: “Hypotheses on Religion and War,” Wed. April 30. Read papers “Getting Religion? The Puzzling Case of Islam and Civil War” and “Issue Indivisibility and Time Horizons as Rationalist Explanations for War.”

Cosponsored with the Political Science Department; the
Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies; and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion (CDTR).

Martin Seymour Lipset stressed, more than fifty years ago, that ‘prerequisites’ for democracy include economic development and political legitimacy. Since the beginning of the so called Arab Spring, aspects of political legitimacy dominate discussions, while economic development seems to have been put on the back burner, if not forgotten altogether. In this talk, Dr. Filali-Ansary will revisit the way in which issues of legitimacy are linked to discussions of religious and cultural traditions. He will explore how this leads us to raise fresh questions about the on-going transitions in Muslim contexts and the prospects of democratisation in the Third World, more generally.

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Putting immigrant rights advocate Amy Gottlieb, scholar Douglas Thompkins, and journalist Jordan Flaherty in conversation, this round-table discussion focuses on the intersections of incarceration, immigration policies, and the practices of the carceral state. The panel discussion will be moderated by Rosemary Hicks, Visiting Scholar at the Bard Prison Initiative.
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The distinguished British sociologist of religion David Martin has argued, above all on the basis of the global spread of Pentecostalism, that we are living through a period comparable in significance to the Protestant Reformation.  This lecture seeks to evaluate that claim by examining a number of other major “points of departure” in human history, most of them associated with the birth of major world religions.  Professor Torpey will seek to identify patterns in these other episodes that might help us set our own time in a broader perspective and hence to make better sense of it.

An unknown number of young Armenians survived the massacres of 1915 as adopted daughters and sons of Muslim families. Fewer others became wives and, in exceptional cases, husbands. While some of these survivors (particularly young men) re-united with their families or relatives in later years, or were taken into orphanages by missionaries and relief workers, many others lived the rest of their lives as “Muslims,” taking on Turkish, Kurdish, or Arabic names. Until recently, the stories of these survivors have been silenced, either in the form of total erasure or of serious trivialization by all historiographies (cf. Trouillot). Based on a critical reading of various historiographies, memoirs and fiction on Islamized Armenians, as well as interviews with the “grandchildren” of Islamized Armenian survivors from different parts of Turkey, the presentation discusses the implications of both this historical silence and the recent forms of unsilencing for contemporary academic and political debates, and asks questions about the category of  “the survivor” in genocide scholarship.

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Please join us for a lecture by Eric Gregory, Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Recent developments in political theory, religious studies, and social criticism have led to revived interest in political theology as an alternative to more conventional approaches to “religion and politics.”  This lecture examines these developments in light of various encounters with the contested legacy of Augustine of Hippo.  Particular focus will be given to debates about secularity, realism, and moral sentiment in democratic culture.

Professor Gregory is the author of Politics and the Order of Love: An Augustinian Ethic of Democratic Citizenship (University of Chicago Press, 2008). His interests include religious and philosophical ethics, theology, political theory, law and religion, and the role of religion in public life. In 2007 he was awarded Princeton’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. A graduate of Harvard College, he earned an M.Phil. and Diploma in Theology from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and his doctorate in Religious Studies from Yale University. more

Dr. Seyed Masoud Noori, Former Faculty Member at the Center for Human Rights Studies at Mofid University in Qom, Iran and currently a Visiting Scholar at Emory Law, will explain the relationship between Shariah and state law in Muslim-majority countries’ constitutions approved since 2000, as well as the role of Shariah in basic and fundamental codes in those countries. He will focus on Iraq’s and Egypt’s constitutions, as these two models balance Shariah and state law, and he will examine how these models affect human rights issues.

Co-sponsored by: Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Middle East Institute, Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life, Human Rights Institute.

Featuring a conversation between Winnifred Sullivan and Julio Medina, this talk will focus on religious mobility within confined spaces, focusing on religious conversion within the American penal system. This conversation will not only explore the complexities of conversion within prisons, but also the ways in which religious faith -and activism- are integral components of the modern prison-industrial complex. Moderated by Brett Dignam, Clinical Professor of Law at Columbia Law School.

Winnifred Sullivan is Department Chair and Profess of Religious Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington and Affilliate Professor of Law at the Maurer School of Law. She is the author of Paying the Words Extra: Religious Discourse in the Supreme Court of the United States (Harvard 1994), The Impossibility of Religious Freedom (Princeton 2005), and Prison Religion: Faith-based Reform and the Constitution (Princeton 2009). Julio Medina is the Executive Director/Founder and CEO of Exodus Transitional Community, Inc. Under his leadership, Exodus Transitional Community (ETC) has served over 3,000 men and women and has become one of the most successful re-entry programs throughout the country. Professor Brett Dignam joined the Columbia Law School faculty in 2010.  She came to Columbia from Yale Law School, where she led the Prison Legal Services, Complex Federal Litigation and Supreme Court Advocacy clinics. more

In this lecture, Eddie Glaude will consider how the “blind spots” in African American religious historiography block the way to a more nuanced engagement with the powerful phenomenon of celebrity preachers and their mega churches.  More specifically, he will examine W.E.B. Du Bois’s classic essay, “Of the Faith of the Fathers,” as a paradigmatic example of the evasion of forms of African American Christian expression that complicate traditional narratives of the prophetic role of black churches in African American politics.  Glaude maintains that a different story must be told about the relationship between African American religion and political debate if we are to understand more fully how shifts and changes among African American Christians today affect the form and content of black public debate about political questions.  Too often certain rigid assumptions about that relationship impede inquiry. His aim then is not so much to engage in a close reading of the ministries of celebrity black preachers but, rather, to open up conceptual space for a fuller understanding of the political significance of African American mega churches and their pastors at the beginning of the 21^st century.

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The Sociology Colloquium at City University of New York, Graduate Center presents “Conceptualizing Religion: A Comparative Perspective,” a lecture by Volkhard Krech (Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany)

Volkhard Krech is Professor of Religious Studies at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, and director of the International Research Consortium on “Dynamics in the History of Religions” as well as of the Center for Religious Studies (CERES).  His research interests cover the history of religions, processes of sacralization, religion and violence, religion and the arts, and the history of Religious Studies.  He has published numerous articles and books on these issues, including Wo bleibt die Religion? Zur Ambivalenz des Religiösen in der modernen Gesellschaft (What Becomes of Religion? On the Ambivalent Status of the Religious in Modern Society; Bielefeld 2011), Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe in Past and Present Times (ed. with Marion Steinicke, Brill 2011), “Sacrifice and Holy War: A Study of Religion and Violence” (in W. Heitmeyer and J. Hagan, eds., International Handbook of Violence Research, 2003), Georg Simmels Religionstheorie (Georg Simmel’s Theory of Religion; Tübingen 1998), and Religionssoziologie (Sociology of Religion; Bielefeld 1999).  He is the editor, together with Marion Steinicke, of the series Dynamics in the History of Religions (Brill), and, together with others, of the series Religion in der Gesellschaft (Religion in Society; Ergon).

A wine and cheese reception will follow the lecture and discussion

1974 Volvo and the Mise-en-scene
Thursday, March 7, 2013, 7 pm

The final lecture in the 38th Bampton Lectures in America series, is rooted in 1974 and beyond.  Liam Gillick looks at the mise-en-scène as a model for social and cultural organization. Continued shifts in technology and the rise of Neo-Liberalism are countered by the rise of new identifications and subjectivities.

RSVP  recommended but not required. more

1963 Herman Kahn and Projection
Tuesday, March 5, 2013, 7 pm

For the third lecture, 1963 is the pivot for Liam Gillick’s consideration of projection – both social and political. The rise of insurgency and the consolidation of the scenario as a tool of political and financial control is combined with new models of the presented self within developing sub-cultures.

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1948 B. F. Skinner and Counter Revolution
Thursday, February 28, 2013, 7 pm

1948 is the starting point for Liam Gillick’s second lecture. Examining conspiracy, behavioralism, post-war restructuring and the delusions around applied modernism it will reveal the various counter measures, both intentional and structural, that shaped the post-war sense of self.

RSVP  recommended but not required.

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Please join us for the 2013 Bampton Lectures in America, presented by the artist Liam Gillick. Drawing upon the artist’s published work on the following periods, notably the books “Erasmus is Late” (1995), “Literally no Place” (2002) and “Construction of One” (2005 onwards) and his more recent polemic essays on work, abstraction and the contemporary, these four lectures will present the social stresses, bounding ideas, and applied effects that these moments have had on contemporary art – proposing a new way to approach both the super-subjective and documentarian strands of recent work. Using narrative, specific historical fragments and an extensive image archive the lectures will be an extended expression of the artist’s practice.

Contemporary art is the product of a complex set of social, economic and psychological markers. This series of lectures presents a particular genealogy of the modern period in order to contribute a revised understanding of the origins of contemporary art and its analysis.

1820 Erasmus and Upheaval
Tuesday, February 26, 2013, 7 pm

Starting in 1820, prior to the European revolutionary upheavals of 1848, this lecture will address the immediate aftermath of the French and American revolutions and the stresses which led to new models of work, life and social organization.

RSVP  recommended but not required.

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Friday, February 22

10:00am–12:00pm: Panel on Constitutionalism and Legal Pluralism

Paper by Dieter Grimm (Humboldt University) with comments by Andrew Arato (The New School) and Turkuler Isiksel (Columbia University)

2:00–4:00pm: Panel on Religious Legal Pluralism and Family Law

Paper by Linda McClain (Boston University) with comments by Mirjam Kunkler (Princeton University) and Karen Barkey (Columbia University)

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Guy Ben-Porat is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Public Policy & Administration at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His most recent publication is Between State and Synagogue: The Secularization  of Contemporary Israel. A thriving, yet small, liberal component in Israeli society has frequently taken issue with the constraints imposed by religious orthodoxy, largely with limited success. However, Guy Ben-Porat suggests, in recent years, in part because of demographic changes and in part because of the influence of an increasingly consumer-oriented society, dramatic changes have occurred in secularization of significant parts of public and private lives. Even though these fissures often have more to do with lifestyle choices and economics than with political or religious ideology, the demands and choices of a secular public and a burgeoning religious presence in the government are becoming ever more difficult to reconcile. The evidence, which the author has accrued from numerous interviews and a detailed survey, is nowhere more telling than in areas that demand religious sanction such as marriage, burial, the sale of pork, and the operation of businesses on the Sabbath. The conclusion of this research lay beyond the Israeli case study and suggest that secularization, defined as the decline of religious authority, can evolve independently from secularism, a world view, and a liberal ideology. Consequently, while secularization can be observed in Israel, its political implications regarding liberalism, freedom and equality are by no means certain.

Co-Sponsored by The Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life.

The Herbert H. Lehman Center for American History at Columbia University presents a talk by Barbara J. Fields, Professor of History, Columbia University.

Lunch will be served; RSVP required: lehmancenter@columbia.edu

The Gangster Story is the dark flipside of America’s driving Horatio Alger Myth, the rags-to-riches rise set in the criminal realm, with a spectacular demise the required ending in this twist on the great fable of individual success. Few writers have a better perspective on the phenomenon than Paul Lieberman, who has tracked various forms of organized crime for decades. He is the author of the book “Gangster Squad,” an epic account of the secretive (and real life) police squad tasked with driving the mob from Los Angeles after World War II…a work then turned into a multiplex action film starring Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin and Emma Stone, and with Sean Penn as L.A.’s signature gangster, Mickey Cohen. The nonfiction book is a classic tale of the Noir Era that still defines the so-called City of Angels, a time when truth was not found in the sunshine and justice not obtained in a marble courthouse — indeed, Los Angeles goes half a century without a single conviction in a mob murder. The Warner Bros. film version of “Gangster Squad,” in contrast, is a big budget good-guys-v.-bad adventure with an oversized villain, as critics have noted, in the mold of the Batman and James Bond franchises. What gives?

Read Paul Lieberman’s article, “Leapfrogging the Book: A Newspaper Story Jumps to Film” here.

Co-sponsored by the Columbia Journalism School.

Please join us for a screening of Sin Nombre, a 2009 film that tells two powerful intersecting stories of immigration through Mexico to the US border. Written and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, and shot in Mexico, the film “is an elegant, heartbreaking fable, equal parts Shakespearean tragedy, neo-Western and mob movie but without the pretension of those genres.”

The screening will be followed by a discussion with Jackie Vimo, Director of Advocacy at the New York Immigration Coalition. Jackie has been be working for over 15 years in the field of public policy on a broad array issues, including:  HIV/AIDS, public health, public assistance, LGBTQ issues, housing, workers’ rights, racial justice, and immigration.  Jackie has done work in Argentina, where her family lives, and has held positions in New York and San Francisco social justice organizations such as Make the Road New York and The New York AIDS Coalition.  more

Alyshia Gálvez is a cultural anthropologist (PhD, NYU 2004) whose work focuses on the efforts by Mexican immigrants in New York City to achieve the rights of citizenship. This talk asks: How do spaces of devotion become spaces of activism? What role does faith play in the construction of civic spaces and civil society among recent immigrant groups? What are the limitations of these forms of social mobilization? This talk will explore a decade of Guadalupan-based devotion and activism for immigration rights among recent Mexican immigrants in New York City. Based on Gálvez’s extended ethnographic research in New York City and many years of activism and advocacy, she will reflect on the changing immigrant rights movement and its intersection with faith based institutions and organizations.

Seating is limited; please RSVP here.

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The Elementary Forms of Religious Life is usually associated with totemic religion in faraway places, but in writing it, Durkheim had in mind a social world much closer to hand in the France of his time. Sociologist Karen Fields will adapt Durkheim’s methodology to explore curious features of that world and our own. Karen Fields borrows from the method of Emile Durkheim in her research exploring the invisible ontology of the social world. Her publications include a re-translation of The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1995), and Racecraft (with Barbara J. Fields, forthcoming).

Moderated by Emmanuelle Saada, Professor of French History and Director of the Center for French and Francophone Studies.

Co-sponsored by the Columbia Maison Française, Department of History, and Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life

The Herbert H. Lehman Center for American History at Columbia University presents a conversation with Rebecca A. Kobrin, Russell and Bettina Knapp Assistant Professor of American Jewish History, Columbia University, and Andrew S. Dolkart, James Marston Fitch Associate Professor of Historic Preservation and Director of the Historic Preservation Program, Columbia University.

Lunch will be served

RSVP required: lehmancenter@columbia.edu

A talk by Jose Casanova, one of the world’s top scholars in the sociology of religion. The talk will explore, first, the concept of diffused “civil” religion in contradistinction to differentiated “eclesiastical” or “denominational” religion. It will then examine the pattern of congruent relations between “civil” and “denominational” religion in America in comparison to two divergent European patterns: the French laicist oppositional model between civil and Catholic religion and the Nordic secular integrational model between civil and Lutheran religion. Finally, it will examine the conditions under which both “civil” and “denominational” religions in America may turn “uncivil,” ending with some critical reflections about the contemporary culture wars around gender and sexual mores. Jose Casanova is a professor at the Department of Sociology at Georgetown University, and heads the Berkley Center’s Program on Globalization, Religion and the Secular.

Seating is limited and on a first come, first seated basis; please RSVP here.

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A workshop on religion and human rights pragmatism, which focuses on strategies for promoting rights through persuasion and dialogue across cultural and religious divides. The panelists and audience for these open workshops will include scholars and non-academic practitioners in the human rights field.  Students are welcome to attend.

Sponsored by Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion, supported by a grant from the Luce Foundation.

A conference on how some religions in conflict have collaborated on shared access to religious sites they hold sacred.  Negotiations over these sites in Turkey, North Africa, the Balkans and Palestine/Israel serve as models for toleration.

Co-sponsored by Bogaziçi University, Istanbul, and the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR), the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL), and the Institute for the Study of Human Rights (CSHR) at Columbia University.

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