Panel Discussion on Political Action for Students 2012 Election — 4/26, 4:30 p.m.

Panel Discussion: “Breaking the Mold in 2012: New Tactics for Young People’s Political Action”

Thursday, April 26, 4:30pm  PAC 001

The panel will be about new ways of organizing and the influence of young people’s participation on the election of 2012, as well as the benefits of working with and outside the two-party system.

Participants:  Dan Fischer  ’12, Occupy Wesleyan    Szelena Gray, Rootstrikers    Nathan Kleinman, Occupy Philadelphia and Congressional Candidate (PA-13)     Alex Levin ’12, College Republican National Committee     David Thompson ‘11, Citizens’ Congress    Liz Valentin ‘11, Citizens’ Congress

 

The “North Africa Spring” Symposium — 3/2 afternoon

You are invited to attend the symposium on the “North Africa Spring” on Friday, March 2nd. The symposium will run from 2pm – 5.30pm at the Russell House (including a reception after the event). It will feature two speakers. Leonardo Villalon, a political scientist at the University of Florida, will speak on “Spring Storms Across the Sahara: The Francophone Sahel in the Wake of the north African Spring”. Katherine Hoffman, an anthropologist at Northwestern University, will discuss: “Revolution’s Refugees: Tunisian Amazigh Responses to Displaced Libyans and their Commuter Rebellion”. Their presentations will be followed by commentary from Wesleyan faculty in Religion, Middle Eastern Studies, and Philosophy. 

 See below for more information about our guest speakers. We also have a website: http://africa.blogs.wesleyan.edu/the-north-africa-spring/ 

Sponsored by The African Studies Cluster, the Government Department, the Thomas and Catharine McMahon Memorial Fund of the Romance Languages and Literatures Department, the Dean of the Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Programs, the College of Letters, and the Anthropology Department.

Wesleyan Forum for International Development! — Sat., Feb. 18

The Wesleyan Forum for International Development

 Saturday, February 18, 2012    9:30 am – 5 pm

Check-in table at 41 Wyllys.

Attendance is free. No registration is required. Come and go as you please.

Free breakfast, Iguanas Ranas lunch and book for those who arrive by 10 am.

  Come engage in a dialogue about what works and what doesn’t in international development. Through lectures, panel discussions and workshops with student groups, you will hear from researchers, alumni and students about their successes and challenges in fields that include public health, education and technology.

For students who have interned, volunteered or worked internationally–or for those interested in doing so in the future–this Forum is a space for you to think critically about how to do so in a way that makes a positive impact. It will connect you to resources for getting involved, including opportunities for internships, fellowships and research. For the complete schedule with locations, click here. Speakers include:

Academics

– David Rice (Executive Director of the NYU Development Research Institute)

– Nafisa Halim (Assistant Professor at BU’s Center for Global Health & Development, researches women’s political empowerment, health and education)

– Rema Hanna (Assistant Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, researches how to improve the provision of services to the poor in developing countries)

– Jenny Ruducha (Research Scientist at BU’s Center for Global Health & Development, conducts impact evaluations of interventions in public health)

Alumni

– Amir Hasson ’98 (Founder of United Villages, a social enterprise that empowers the rural poor in India by providing products, services and information)

– Nathanael Goldberg ’97 (Policy director at Innovations for Poverty Action, which pioneered the use of randomized control trials to test the effectiveness of interventions in development)

– Connor Brannen ’10 (Policy analyst at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT)

– Liana Woskie ’10 (Global Health Corps fellow at Partners in Health)

Students

– Ali Chaudry ’12 (Founder of Possibilities Pakistan, which increases access to higher education by providing free college counseling to Pakistani secondary students)

– Tasmiha Khan ’12 (Founder of Brighter Dawns, which increases access to clean water and sanitation in Bangladesh)

– Kennedy Odede ’12, (Founder of Shining Hope for Communities, which combats gender inequality and extreme poverty by linking free schools for girls with social services in Kenya)

– Raghu Appasani ’12 (Founder of the MINDS Foundation, which raises awareness about mental illness and provides healthcare in India)

 For more information, visit the Forum’s Facebook page.

 This event is sponsored by the Wesleyan Student Assembly, the Department of Government, the Office of Academic Affairs, Wesleyan World Wednesdays and the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship.

 

FGSS Symposium: “Confronting Gender Violence” — 10/7, 2-5 p.m.

Please join us on Friday, October 7, 2 pm – 5pm for the FGSS 2011 Annual Symposium “Confronting Gender Violence: The Personal and the Political,” to be held in Usdan 108.

Panelists will include:

Professor Cynthia Enloe “Wartime Violence Against Women: What Do Soldiers’ Rapes of Women ‘Over There’ Tell Us About Rape Here at Home?” Department of International Development, Community, and Environment and Women’s Studies, Clark University;

Andrea Ritchie “Racial Profiling and Police Brutality Against Women and LGBT People of Color”  Feminist lawyer, scholar and member of the National Collective of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, National Coordinator of the Color of Violence III and member of the editorial collective for Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology; and 

Karen Singleton “Transforming Campus Communities: Creating and Sustaining Comprehensive Responses to Sexual Assault and Intimate Partner Violence”  Director, Sexual Violence Response at Columbia Health, Columbia University, New York 

Sponsored by Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, the Office of Student Affairs, and the Office of Diversity and Institutional Partnerships.   Event Organizers: Associate Professors Anu Sharma and Mary-Jane Rubenstein.

The event is free and open to the public.  For more information, please contact Jennifer Enxuto in the FGSS Office at x3296 or Jennifer Tucker at x5389.

WIRA: “Deciphering Pakistan and U.S.-Pakistan Relations” — 9/30-10/1 — limited seating, get tickets now!

 

The Wesleyan International Relations Association invites you to its 2011 Conference,

“Deciphering Pakistan and US-Pakistan Relations”

organized in collaboration with

Wesleyan South Asian Studies Faculty and Wesleyan Pakistan Flood Relief Initiative.

The conference includes panel discussions, a key note talk,

 a sufi-rock concert by Junoon and a movie screening of Ramchand Pakistani. 

FREE TO ATTEND (Sept 30 – Oct 1). 

Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.

To get more details or to register, visit our website at www.wirac.org

Limited seats available

The conference aims to increase understanding and awareness about Pakistan from its culture to its politics, and US-Pak relations. The conference’s speakers are among the top commentators, officials and scholars on Pakistan and US-Pakistan relations, and the event will be open to the students, faculty and the larger public.

Panelists and guest speakers include:

– Shahid Javed Burki (Former Vice President of World Bank and Former Finance Minister of Pakistan) 

– Stanley Wolpert (Emeritus professor of History in University of California, LA, focuses on political and intellectual history of modern south asia)

– Najam Sethi (the editor-in-chief of The Friday Times and of Geo News in Pakistan. He is the only Asian journalist to receive three international press freedom awards in a decade).

– Ambassador Howard B. Schaffer (Former Ambassador of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh; spent 36 years of foreign service career focusing on US relations with South Asia)

– Asim Khwaja (the Sumitomo-FASID Professor of International Finance and Development at the Harvard Kennedy School and the faculty chair of the MPA/ID program).       

– Humeira Iqtidar (Research fellow at the Centre of South Asian Studies and at Cambridge University. She focuses on secularism, feminism and Islamism).

– Najeeb Ghauri (the founder, Chairman and CEO of NetSol Technologies, Inc, and Vice President of US-Pak Business Council)

Social Events:

– Junoon Concert by Salman Ahmed. Junoon is a sufi rock band from Pakistan and is considered one of Pakistan’s most successful band; the Q magazine regarded them as “One of the biggest bands in the world” and The New York Times called Junoon “the U2 of Pakistan.” Ahmed is the pioneer of Sufi rock, author of Rock n Roll Jihad and UN ambassador for peace (Sample Music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQQLeB7efog)

– Ramchand Pakistani Screening and Q&A with director, Mehreen Jabbar. Ramchand Pakistani is a Pakistani film that tells a true story about a boy who inadvertently crosses the border between Pakistan and India and the following ordeal that his family has to go through. The film has won the Audience award at Fribourg International Film Festival, Switzerland. (Trailer: http://www.ramchandpakistani.com/Preview.htm

Seats are limited. So, please register through the Registration Form.

If you want to buy the tickets for the Concert, Lunch and/or Dinner with the speakers, please go through the Wesleyan Box Office, either in person at the Usdan Univeristy Center or online at http://purchase.tickets.com/buy/TicketPurchase?orgid=24317.  The tickets for the concert, lunch, and dinner are titled respectively, Junoon, Pakistani/Indian Lunch, and Dinner/Discussion With the Speakers.  Tickets are limited, so please make your purchase soon.

For the schedule, visit: http://wirac.org/schedule.phpProceeds from the conference will go to Wesleyan Pakistan Flood Relief Initiative. For more details, please contact our team at wira.conf@gmail.com.

Regards, Wesleyan International Relations Association

FGSS Symposium: “Confronting Gender Violence” — 10/7

Please join us on Friday, October 7, 2 pm – 5pm for the FGSS 2011 Annual Symposium “Confronting Gender Violence: The Personal and the Political,” to be held in Usdan 108.

Panelists will include:

Professor Cynthia Enloe “Wartime Violence Against Women: What Do Soldiers’ Rapes of Women ‘Over There’ Tell Us About Rape Here at Home?” Department of International Development, Community, and Environment and Women’s Studies, Clark University;

Andrea Ritchie “Racial Profiling and Police Brutality Against Women and LGBT People of Color”  Feminist lawyer, scholar and member of the National Collective of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, National Coordinator of the Color of Violence III and member of the editorial collective for Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology; and 

Karen Singleton “Transforming Campus Communities: Creating and Sustaining Comprehensive Responses to Sexual Assault and Intimate Partner Violence”  Director, Sexual Violence Response at Columbia Health, Columbia University, New York 

Sponsored by Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, the Office of Student Affairs, and the Office of Diversity and Institutional Partnerships.   Event Organizers: Associate Professors Anu Sharma and Mary-Jane Rubenstein.

The event is free and open to the public.  For more information, please contact Jennifer Enxuto in the FGSS Office at x3296 or Jennifer Tucker at x5389.

 

 

Wes International Relations Association Conference — Help Organize!

The Wesleyan International Relations Association (WIRA) would like to announce its plans for its prospective inaugural International Relations conference. WIRA plans to hosts International Relations Conferences annually, focused on a different region of the world each year, to give Wesleyan students, faculty, administration and community a chance to hear from specialists on the specific region. This year, WIRA, in collaboration with the Wesleyan Pakistan Flood Relief Initiative and South Asian Studies Certificate Faculty have decided to organize the conference on “Deciphering Pakistan and US-Pak Relations.” As part of this conference, we will invite academics, diplomats and journalists from all over the world to come to Wesleyan University and address the topic from their specific lens of expertise. Given the scale of the conference, we will require considerable planning for it. Thus, we would like to invite the Wesleyan student body to join the Organizing Team for the conference.

Topic – “Deciphering Pakistan and US-Pak Relations” Conference”

Despite being an important strategic player in South Asia, Pakistan is a mystery for many people around the world. Thus, the aim of this conference is to increase understanding and awareness about Pakistan, its problems and contributions. In league with this, the conference will also focus on US-Pak relations which have simultaneously strained and strengthened substantially after 9/11. Our speakers will analyze Pakistan’s geopolitical and social situation, and US-Pakistan relations in a global context.

What is the format of the ConferenceThe event is scheduled for 1st October 2011 at Wesleyan University. This will be a day-long conference which will conclude in the evening with a concert and cultural event. We will have 2-key note speakers, 2 panel discussions and lunch. The conference will be free to attend for all. However, we will charge a nominal fee for the cultural event and lunch. All proceeds will go to the Pakistan Flood Relief efforts.

Confirmed Speakers include Ahmed Rashid, Ambassador Howard B. Schaffer, Asim Ijaz Khawaja, Stephen Cohen, Hassan Abbas, Stanley Wolpert, Adil Najam, Shuja Nawaz and Mehreen Jabbar.

Recruitment of Organizing TeamThis will be the first International Relations Conference at Wesleyan University. We hope Wesleyan students will join the organizing team to help us start the tradition of IR Conferences at Wesleyan University. Not only will this be a great opportunity for students interested in International Relations to network with like-minded students, academics and diplomats but this will also give students great experience in organizing large conferences. We are looking for students for the following positions:

Registration Coordinator, Panel/Speaker Coordinator, Information and Communication Coordinator, Marketing Coordinator, Funding Coordinator, PR and Media Coordinator, Logistics Coordinator, Social Events Coordinator, Publication Coordinator, Web-Designer/Webmaster, Graphic Designer or Other (Please describe).

If you are interested in any of the aforementioned positions, please send an e-mail to achaudhry@wesleyan.eduwith your name, the position (if applicable) that you are interested in and your relevant background (just a few sentences should suffice).  I look forward to hearing from you and I hope you will join us in organizing what promises to be a highly informative and exciting conference!

Earth Day & COE Students and Faculty! Panel and Performances, Fri., April 22

Come experience the College of the Environment’s inaugural think-tank on the topic: Vulnerability of Social, Economic and Natural Systems to Environmental Stress. Reports by Bryan Bannon (College of the Environment), Jeremy Isard (College of Social Studies), Helen Poulos (College of the Environment), Dana Royer (Earth And Environmental Sciences), Phoebe Stonebraker (Biology) and Gary Yohe (Economics) with an introduction by College of the Environment Director Barry Chernoff.

Featuring an excerpt of the CFA commissioned music performance Dear Mother Earth: An Environmental Oratorio by Glenn McClure and a multi-media performance Fascinating! Her Resilience by Gina Athena Ulysse (Anthropology) in collaboration with audio sculpturist Val-Inc.

Free admission with a reception at intermission.

Co-sponsored by the College of the Environment and Center for the Arts with suppport from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

http://www.wesleyan.edu/coe
http://www.wesleyan.edu/cfa
860-685-3355