Please join us for a lecture with: Bill Emmott, former editor-in-chief, The Economist Tomoko Kubota, Independent Journalist and Oral historian Moderated by: Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor of History, Columbia University About the Speakers: Bill Emmott Bill Emmott is a writer and consultant best known for his 13 years as editor in chief of The Economist in 1993-2006, a publication he first joined in 1980 and served in Brussels, Tokyo and London. During his time as editor the publication’s weekly circulation more than doubled from 500,000 to over 1 million, enjoying worldwide growth to become the leading current affairs and business magazine worldwide. Since stepping down at the age of 49, Bill has combined deep research into political and economic trends in Europe, Asia and at a global level for his series of well received books with bespoke consulting and advisory work for major firms and institutions. He served as an adviser to Swiss Re from [...]

Please join the Harriman Institute and the Human Rights Advocates Program (HRAP) at Columbia's Institute for the Study of Human Rights for a presentation by human rights advocate Maria Abrahamyan. According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, gender stereotyping is one of the root causes for discrimination, abuse, and violence, leading to violations of a wide array of human rights. States not only have an obligation to eliminate discrimination, but also to refrain from stereotyping per se. In this talk, Maria Abrahamyan will discuss how states fail those obligations, leading to de facto "legalization" of harmful stereotypes. Abrahamyan is the author of a domestic violence trial monitoring report that reveals how the Armenian justice system re-victimizes women based on stereotypes, creating barriers to women’s access to justice. Abramyan will also reference reports by the Prison Monitoring Group on obvious discriminatory treatment towards LGBT people, illuminating how the “unwritten laws” of prisons [...]

Speaker: Elsa Stamatopoulou, Former Chief of the Secretariat of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues; Director, Indigenous Peoples' Rights Program, Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University. Elsa Stamatopoulou's pioneering book Cultural Rights in International Law explores international protections of cultural rights. In her former role as the Chief of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and current one as the Director of the Institute for the Study of Human Rights' Indigenous Peoples' Rights Program, she is an advocate of the protection of cultural rights and of putting concerned communities in the driving seat on this issue. In this talk, she will discuss historical shifts and current developments in the protection of cultural rights internationally, while reflecting on the scope and contemporary reasons behind the existence, or lack thereof, of international protections of cultural rights. This event is co-sponsored by Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute and the Institute for the Study [...]

The Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies presents “How to Tackle an Historical Problem: The Case of Henry Kissinger and the Ending of the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War” Marc Trachtenberg, Research Professor of Political Science, UCLA Moderated by Robert Jervis, Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Affairs, Columbia University, and Member of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies Tuesday, October 22, 2019 12:15pm-2:00pm 1302 International Affairs Bio Marc Trachtenberg, an historian by training, is currently a Research Professor of Political Science at UCLA. He's the author of a number of books and many articles, most of which deal with international politics in the twentieth century. Event Contact Information: Spencer Davis 212-854-4616 sld2173@columbia.edu

Please join the Program on U.S.-Russia Relations and the Ukrainian Studies program at the Harriman Institute for a panel discussion with Yelena Goltsman, founder/co-president, RUSA LGBT, and Bogdan Globa, founder/president, QUA - LGBTQ Ukrainians in America. Moderated by Masha Udensiva-Brenner. This event is supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. In 2013, the Russian State Duma passed a law banning the “propaganda” of “nontraditional” sexual relations to minors. This created an atmosphere of impunity, with spikes in homophobic crimes and “huntings” of LGBTIQ people all over Russia. The following year, revolution broke out in Ukraine and Russian television networks presented it as a fascist, Western-sponsored, gay conspiracy. Throughout the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Russia's strategy has continued to include anti-LGBTIQ messaging both at home and in Ukraine. How has Russian propaganda during the conflict influenced queer politics? Is there any chance that, with Ukraine’s new government and the recent protests in Russia, LGBTIQ issues [...]

Please join us for a talk with Rhiannon Dowling, Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Harriman Institute. Rhiannon Dowling will present on her book project, a cultural and intellectual history of crime in the Soviet Union, which argues that, of all of the promises that the Soviet state failed to fulfill, the most crucial, and most devastating, was the promise to eliminate crime with its causes. Dowling examines the changing approaches to the Soviet “war on crime” by intellectuals, bureaucrats, jurists, and the public (including convicted criminals) as the problem of crime became increasingly central to Soviet life and identity in the decades after Stalin’s death. Her project also investigates the Soviet Union's first post-Stalin criminological institute from its formation in 1963 through the height of its influence in the 1970s, along with journalistic writing, films, and television programs from the thriving genre of crime fiction. These sources, as well as private and public letters, diaries, memoirs, [...]