2017
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Monday, November 6, 2017 Assistant Professor of Sociology, Rutgers University Olin, Room 202 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5 This talk will explore Iraqi women’s social, political activism and feminisms relying on an in-depth ethnography of post-2003 women’s rights organizations and a detailed historical study of women’s social, economic and political experiences since the 1960s. Through a transnational/postcolonial feminist approach Ali will look particularly at the context following the US-led invasion and occupation and analyse the realities of Iraqi women’s lives, political activism and feminisms especially the challenges posed by sectarianism, militarism and “global” interferences. Zahra Ali is a sociologist whose research explores dynamics of women and gender, social and political movements in relation to Islam(s) and the Middle East and to contexts of war and conflicts with a focus on contemporary Iraq. She is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rutgers university. Her book “Women and Gender in Iraq: between Nation-building and Fragmentation” is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press (2018). She also edited Féminismes Islamiques, the first collection on Muslim feminist scholarship published in France (La Fabrique editions, 2012), and translated and published in German (Passagen Verlag, 2014). This event is co-sponsored by Human Rights Project, the Sociology Program, and Gender and Sexuality Studies |
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Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Mary Pattillo
Harold Washington Professor of Sociology & African American Studies Northwestern University Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium 4:00 pm EST/GMT-5 School choice is promoted as one strategy to improve educational outcomes for African Americans. Key themes in Black school choice politics are empowerment, control, and agency. Using qualitative interviews with poor and working-class Black parents in Chicago, Pattillo explored: how do these themes characterize the experiences of low-income African American parents tasked with putting their children in schools? Also, what kind of political positions emerge from parents’ everyday experiences given the ubiquitous language of school choice? Parents’ stories convey limited and weak empowerment, limited individual agency, and no control. What should we learn? Mary Patillo is the author of Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class and Black on the Block: the Politics of Race and Class in the City; she co-edited Imprisoning America: the Social Effects of Mass Incarceration. |
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Wednesday, September 27, 2017
Dror Ladin, ACLU Staff Attorney
Olin, Room 102 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5 Intelligence agencies often claim that their work must be conducted in secret for the sake of national security. But with secrecy comes a lack of oversight, enabling grave abuses of those targeted by intelligence agencies and significant danger to the democratic process. One of the most extreme examples of this dynamic is the CIA's construction and operation of a network of secret prisons called "black sites," where prisoners were tortured. For years, the CIA fought to keep the program secret. Over years, however, sustained efforts by civil rights lawyers, government leakers, intrepid reporters, and Senate overseers forced the grim details of the CIA program into the light. The CIA's torture program was designed and implemented by two psychologists working as independent contractors. The CIA paid the company they formed 81 million dollars to design, implement, and oversee the agency's program of “enhanced interrogation." The psychologists' methods include exposure to extreme temperatures, starvation, stuffing in boxes, and infliction of various kinds of water torture. Although every previous attempt at seeking justice for CIA torture had failed, three survivors and victims of CIA torture sued the psychologists in federal court in 2015. The ACLU represented Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, and the family of Gul Rahman in their fight for accountability. After prevailing over numerous obstacles, they secured the first-ever settlement at the end of the summer. A lead ACLU attorney on the case, DROR LADIN will reflect on its significance and his own impressions of the process and protagonists. Ladin is a staff attorney at the ACLU National Security Project, and was previously a Skadden Fellow at the ACLU Immigrants' Rights project. Earlier, he clerked for a U.S. Court of Appeals judge. |
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Thursday, September 7, 2017
Katherine Benton-Cohen
Associate Professor of History, Georgetown University Olin, Room 101 4:30 pm EST/GMT-5 “Inventing the Immigration Problem: The Dillingham Commission and Progressive-Era America,” examines the enormous impact of the largest study of immigrants in US History. From 1907 to 1911, a staff of 300—over half of them women--compiled 41 volumes of reports and a potent set of recommendations that shaped immigration policy for generations to come. The talk will discuss the Commission’s surprising origins in US-Asia relations, its enthusiasm for distributing immigrants throughout the United States, and its long-term effect not just on federal policy, but on how Americans think about immigration in general. Katherine Benton-Cohen is associate professor of history at Georgetown University. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including those from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She is the author of Borderline Americans: Racial Division and Labor War in the Arizona Borderlands (Harvard University Press, 2009), as well as her forthcoming book on the history of the Dillingham Commission. |
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Wednesday, May 17, 2017 Come celebrate the end of the year with fellow MESers. Meet faculty, hear about exciting new courses, study abroad programs, senior projects, and a number of incredible iniatives MES students are working on. Snacks will be served. All are welcome. |