Events and Highlights
Other UCLA Events
March 13, 2024 | 6:00 PM PDT
Tomorrow's Women: Empowering Young Israeli, Palestinian, and American Women
The motivation for founding Tomorrow’s Women 20 years ago was driven by the conviction that the cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians must cease. Tomorrow’s Women recognizes young women's potential as catalysts for change and trains young women from Palestine, Israel, and the United States to be strong, compassionate leaders who partner to resolve conflicts and inspire action that promotes equality, peace, and justice for all. In this talk, Noga Bar-Oz, a Jewish Israeli musician and the granddaughter of three Holocaust survivors will join her friend Lana Ikelan, a Palestinian journalist. Recounting their chance meeting as teenagers at a Tomorrow’s Women retreat in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 2016, they will discuss the impact of immersive dialogue and workshops in fostering empathy and mutual understanding. Sharing their personal stories and current work, Noga and Lana's journeys demonstrate Tomorrow’s Women’s mission of inspiring positive change through personal growth and activism, and providing a hopeful outlook on the possibility of a different Israeli-Palestinian reality. Moderator: Tamar Hofnung, Ph.D., Israel Institute Fellow at UCLA's Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies and UCLA’s Department of Sociology. Sponsored by the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies.
March 14, 2024 | 12:15 PM PDT
Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia
Judgment at Tokyo is a riveting story of wartime action, dramatic courtroom battles, and the epic formative years that set the stage for the Asian postwar era. In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the world turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. For Harry Truman, Douglas MacArthur, Chiang Kai-shek, and their fellow victors, the question of justice seemed clear: Japan’s militaristic leaders needed to be tried and punished for the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor; shocking atrocities against civilians in China, the Philippines, and elsewhere; and rampant abuses of prisoners of war in notorious incidents such as the Bataan death march. For the Allied powers, the trial was an opportunity to render judgment on their vanquished foes, but also to create a legal framework to prosecute war crimes and prohibit the use of aggressive war, building a more peaceful world under international law and American hegemony. For the Japanese leaders on trial, it was their chance to argue that their war had been waged to liberate Asia from Western imperialism and that the court was victors’ justice. Speaker: Gary Bass, William P. Boswell, professor of world politics of peace and war at Princeton University. Moderator: Kal Raustiala, Promise Institute Chair in Comparative and International Law at UCLA Law School and professor at the UCLA International Institute. Sponsored by the Burkle Center for International Relations, Asia Pacific Center, Center for Korean Studies and the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law.
March 15, 2024 | 1:00 PM PDT
The War for Chinese Talent in the U.S.
Professor David Zweig, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, draws on decades of research to document China’s “over-the-top” effort to gain the help of immensely talented Chinese who were living and working in the US, as well as the US government’s harsh counterattack, and its strategy to limit and disrupt the transfer of US technology to China. He offers case studies which include stories of several victims of that campaign whose cases were never made public. Zweig highlights the harm this war has done to Sino-American scientific collaboration and the education of Chinese students in America. Prof. Zweig's book on the talent war will be published this summer. Sponsored by the Center for Chinese Studies and the Asia Pacific Center.
March 15, 2024 | 4:00 PM PDT
Saving Democracy in Poland and Notes on Poland, Ukraine, and Russia
In 2023, after seven years of power of the right-wing illiberal party PiS, Poland voted overwhelmingly to restore democracy. This victory was unique among the right-leaning countries of Europe. Adam Michnik, historian, essayist, political publicist, civil rights activist, and dissident and political prisoner under communism, will discuss the pro-democracy efforts of the media, particularly his Gazeta Wyborcza, the largest and most influential newspaper in Central Europe. Drawing from his contacts with many Ukrainian and Russian freedom fighters, Michnik will discuss the current political situation in Poland, Ukraine, and Russia. Sponsored by the Center for European and Russian Studies.
April 2, 2024 | 12:00 PM PDT
Responding to Geopolitical Threats: The EU Expands its Role
The Russian invasion of Ukraine forced Europe to rediscover the importance of geopolitics. Inviting Ukraine to become a candidate for EU membership is one of the most important geopolitical decisions of this century. An invasion or an invitation: two very different ways of addressing the same geopolitical issue. But the EU also made Moldova and Georgia candidates: can it support those as well as they fall victim to further aggression? Meanwhile, the EU was forced to deploy a naval operation to protect shipping in the Red Sea from attack by the Houthis from Yemen. And it is struggling to maintain a military foothold in North Africa in the face of Russian interference. Can the EU expand its role and deal effectively with all of these issues? Speaker: Dr. Sven Biscop, professor, Ghent University and director of the Europe in the World Programme at the Egmont – Royal Institute for International Relations in Brussels. Sponsored by the Burkle Center for International Relations and the Center for European and Russian Studies.
April 4 2024 | 3:00 PM PDT
Making Sense of Consensus: Social Desirability Bias and Hawkish Attitudes among U.S. Foreign Policy Elites
Psychological theories of international relations emphasize how personality traits, political misperceptions, and cognitive biases favor hawkish decision-making by foreign policy elites. In addition to these individual pathologies, we propose how group-level pathologies—namely career and reputational concerns within the Washington think tank community—accentuate these biases by encouraging elites to publicly express more hawkish views than their private beliefs. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a novel survey experiment of more than four-hundred national security and foreign policy professionals about their views towards the People’s Republic of China. Our findings reflect noticeable diversity in their perspectives despite widespread claims of a ‘bipartisan consensus’ in Washington. Moreover, by varying the perceived anonymity of these professionals’ responses, we examine to what degree their public and private preferences towards U.S.-China policy diverge. Speaker: Rory Truex, assistant professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University. Sponsored by the Center for Chinese Studies.
April 10, 2024 | 5:30 PM PDT
Israel's Black Panthers: The Radicals Who Punctured a Nation's Founding Myth
Israel's Black Panthers tells the story of the young and impoverished Moroccan Israeli Jews who challenged their country's political status quo and rebelled against the ethnic hierarchy of Israeli life in the 1970s. Inspired by the American group of the same name, the Black Panthers mounted protests and a yearslong political campaign for the rights of Mizrahim, or Jews of Middle Eastern ancestry. They managed to rattle the country's establishment and change the course of Israel's history through the mass mobilization of a Jewish underclass. This book draws on archival documents and interviews with elderly activists to capture the movement's history and reveal little-known stories from within the group. Asaf Elia-Shalev explores the parallels between the Israeli and American Black Panthers, offering a unique perspective on the global struggle against racism and oppression. In twenty short and captivating chapters, Israel's Black Panthers provides a textured and novel account of the movement and reflects on the role that Mizrahim can play in the future of Israel. Speaker: Asaf Elia-Shalev, staff writer for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which distributes his work to dozens of media outlets in multiple languages. Moderater: Tamar Hofnung, Ph.D., Israel Institute Fellow at UCLA's Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies and UCLA’s Department of Sociology. Sponsored by Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies.
April 16, 2024 | 3:00 PM PDT
The Karlowitz Moment: The Ottoman Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century and the Making of the Modern World
This talk aims to reconsider the Ottoman experience during the long eighteenth century in a global context. The reevaluation begins by revisiting the Karlowitz Congress in 1699, a pivotal moment for both Europe and the Ottoman Empire, following the lengthy wars between the Ottomans and the Sacra Lega, led by the Habsburgs. Through this congress, the Ottoman Empire withdrew from Central Europe, signaling the end of its conquest policy. Traditionally, it has been assumed, a cornerstone in Ottoman history writing, that the Congress symbolized the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, triggering a prolonged period of decline. In contrast, Ali Yaycıoglu, faculty member, Department of History at Stanford University and also director of Islamic Studies and Middle East Studies, Stanford argues that the Karlowitz Moment generated fresh dynamics within the Ottoman Empire, transforming it into a realm of peace, commerce, and reform. The talk explores various themes, including the new era of reform politics aimed at establishing political stability, economic growth, inter-imperial trade, and peace around its borders. These reforms coincided with new intellectual and cultural trends, as well as new popular and religious movements, some challenging the emerging order with variety of radicalisms. All of these developments were somehow connected with the reshuffling of Eurasia following the collapse of the Safavid Empire, the expansion of Russia in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and the British Empire in South Asia and the Indian Ocean World. Sponsored by the Center for Near Eastern Studies.
April 19-20, 2024
Rethinking Cold War Culture and History in Taiwan (2024 UCLA-NTNU Taiwan Studies Initiative Conference)
Over the past decades between the “old” and the “new” Cold Wars, the (in)significance of Taiwan in world culture and history has often been determined by ideological assumptions that are overly simplistic. Yet not only have approaches to Taiwan studies in Taiwan experienced drastic changes (from area studies to postcolonial to settler colonial critiques), the positionality of Taiwan has also demonstrated unique potential for relational comparisons with the world. This conference examines ways of rethinking Cold War culture and history in Taiwan as well as the implications of the global Cold War culture and history for Taiwan studies from interdisciplinary and transhistorical perspectives. Sponsored by the Asia Pacific Center and the Richard C. Rudolph East Asian Library.
May 2, 2024 | 5:00 PM PDT
Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History
Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History is a poignant memoir by journalist Margaret Juhae Lee, who sets out on a search for her family’s history lost to the darkness of Korea’s colonial decades, and contends with the shockwaves of violence that followed them over four generations and across continents. Combining investigative journalism, oral history, and archival research, Margaret reveals the truth about the grandfather she never knew. What she found is that Lee Chul Ha, her grandfather who left her grandmother and two young sons in 1936, was not a source of shame; he was a student revolutionary imprisoned in 1929 for protesting the Japanese government’s colonization of Korea. He was a hero—and eventually honored as a Patriot of South Korea almost 60 years after his death. But reclaiming her grandfather’s legacy, in the end, isn’t what Margaret finds the most valuable. It is through the series of three long-form interviews with her grandmother that Margaret finally finds a sense of recognition she’s been missing her entire life. A story of healing old wounds and the reputation of an extraordinary young man, Starry Field bridges the tales of two women, generations and oceans apart, who share the desire to build family in someplace called home. Sponsored by the Center for Korean Studies, the Asian American Studies Department, the Asian American Studies Center, the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, and CSW|Barbra Streisand Center.
May 15, 2024 | 4:00 PM PDT
Difficult Subjects: Religion and Education under the US-Japan Alliance
To what extent is religion a core part of national citizenship, and to what extent should religions be involved in educating juvenile citizens? Historically, this two-part question has been difficult to answer because people reasonably disagree on matters of democratic principle. But it has also been irresolvable because it hinges on an unwieldy term: religion. Adopting a supranational approach by focusing on the transpacific US-Japan Alliance, this talk tracks the fallout of the “1947 Settlement”—a moment when new Japanese legislation and groundbreaking American jurisprudence clarified that public education should not involve confessional instruction. Although the 1947 Settlement ostensibly clarified the relationship between religion and education, the “new normal” actually elicited considerable confusion, especially as Japan and the United States both embraced religiosity as one of the distinguishing features of Cold War capitalist democracy. This talk tracks how ensuing debates over patriotic ritual, moral instruction, vocational training, and sex education reflected uncertainties about the relationship between religion, democratic citizenship, and capitalist subjectivity. Along the way, it upends some conventional narratives about late twentieth-century “secularization” while also showing how religious studies offers indispensable tools for understanding some of the most vexing legal and political dilemmas of our time. Speaker: Jolyon Thomas, book author. Sponsored by the Center for Buddhist Studies.
May 18, 2024 | 8:00 AM PDT
CISA Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference on South Asia
CISA invites abstracts for presentation at the Annual Graduate Conference on South Asia to be held at UCLA on May 18, 2024. The conference is a unique opportunity for graduate students and faculty to come together and engage in cross-disciplinary conversations about research on South Asia. This one-day conference aims to create a forum for presenting and discussing current research on South Asia from a wide range of disciplines, including the social sciences, humanities, science and technology studies, public policy, and business programs. Program allowing, we also invite presentations in audio-visual and other creative media formats. We welcome submissions from graduate students at all stages of their careers, including early-career researchers, and encourage presentations that are accessible to an interdisciplinary audience and that foster dialogue across fields. The keynote address for this conference will be given by Sunila S. Kale & Christian Lee Novetzke. Sponsored by the Center for India and South Asia.