Politics

Social Justice Conference — April 21! Register now to participate or present a session!

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Social Justice Leadership Conference:  

The Social Justice Leadership Conference (SJLC) is a collaborative effort which provides a space for students, student groups, community members, alumni, faculty, and staff to discuss social justice and to learn and refine leadership skills. SJLC seeks to empower its participants to create change by applying the skills and knowledge acquired during the conference.

Students, student groups, alumni, community members, faculty and staff facilitate sessions in their area of interest or expertise. Sessions focus on leadership skills that may be applied to any social movement and on the many manifestations of injustice and how participants can be involved in creating change.  SJLC provides participants with resources and opportunities for engagement on campus, in Middletown, in Connecticut and across the globe.

Register Here

South Indian Film Festival — April 5-28

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The series is called:  “Phoolan Devi and the Roots of Indian Rage”

Films, Dates, Locations:

Thursday, April 5—8pm at the Goldsmith Cinema, “The Bandit Queen”
1995. India. Dir: Shekhar Kapur. Biopic about Phoolan Devi, bandit leader in North India, 1980s. 119 min.

Saturday, April 7—2pm at the Powell Family Cinema, “Sholay”
1975. India. Dir: Ramesh Sippy. With Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra. 204 min.

Saturday, April 21—2pm at the Powell Family Cinema, “Pather Panchali”
1955. India. Dir: Satyajit Ray. Music by Ravi Shankar. 115 min.

Saturday, April 28—2pm at the Powell Family Cinema, “Eyes of Stone”
1989. India. Dir: Nilita Vachani. Documentary about demonic possession and goddess temples. 90 min. 

Phoolan Devi (a.k.a. the “Bandit Queen”) rose to fame as an outlaw in the rugged landscape of Bundelkhand in central/north India in the 1970s.  She surrendered to the authorities in 1983, was released from prison in 1994, elected to parliament in 1996, reelected in 1999, and was assassinated in 2001.  The film series is part of a wider “Phoolan Devi Opera Project,” a collaborative undertaking by the pianist-composer Gayathri Khemadasa (Fulbright professional scholar in residence at Wesleyan this year) and writer-producer-choreographer Jeff Hush (Wesleyan class of 1984).

Each film will be followed by a panel-led discussion.  Prof. William Pinch will be on the first panel, after “The Bandit Queen” screening.

Admission is free!

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

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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

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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.

 

Vote in WSA Elections

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Dear Students,http://wsa.wesleyan.edu/voting/). Your feedback is very important for all of us students here at Wesleyan to make our university what we all want it to be. As always, your thoughts, complaints, comments, concerns, etc. are welcome at wsa@wesleyan.edu or talk to any of your representatives.

The Winter Elections and Winter Survey are now open at (

Cheers and best of luck going into our last days of Fall semester!

Arya M. Alizadeh ’13, Chair, Elections Committee, Coordinator, WSA

Apps for WSA Rep due by 6 p.m. Sunday

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Dear Students

This a reminder that if you want to run to be on the WSA next semester, you must submit the signed elections petition and 150 word candidate statement by 6 PM this coming Sunday. Petitions should be submitted to the office and the candidate statement should be emailed to wsa@wesleyan.edu.

Elections will open next week, Monday through Friday and all students can vote. Encourage your friends who are abroad to vote too!

Thanks and wish you the best of luck on finals,

Arya M Alizadeh, Chair, Elections Committee Coordinator, WSA

“The Revolution Will Be Financed”: Brad Burnham ’77 — Today, 6:30 p.m.

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It’s been suggested that Wesleyan’s 1960s & 70s counter-culture has now taken the revolution to Wall Street.  They occupy Wall Street, too, I guess–but not in Zuccotti Park.  Instead, venture capitalists like Brad Burnham ’77 have been financing the social media technologies that facilitate popular mobilization—from Tunisia to lower Manhattan.  And maybe the Tea Party, too.

Brad Burnham will speak of such things tonight at 6:30 in PAC 004. 

Brad Burnham graduated from Wesleyan as a government major in 1977. He began his career in venture capital at AT&T Ventures in 1993.  In 2003 Brad co-founded Union Square Ventures, a New York-based venture capital firm that funded Twitter, Zynga, Tumblr, Etsy, and  other popular networks.

LAST/CAMS Talk on the Border and Migration — Tues. at 5 p.m.

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Please join the Latin American Studies Program and the Center for the Americas for a talk by Mark Overmyer Velazquez (UConn) entitled “This Thin Edge of Barbed Wire: Border Disruptions and Narrative Elisions in Latino American Migration History.”

Tuesday, November 15 at 5 pm at CAMS 

We hope to see you there!