Center for Global Management

In this talk we will explore the ways in which the Economics discipline continues to perpetuate historically produced Eurocentrism and structural exclusion, to the detriment not only of scientific quality, but also good economic policy. Economic theories, as other social theories, are affected by the context in which they are produced and they might express certain privileged perspectives. While these theoretical frameworks dominate economics textbooks globally, they may not be particularly relevant for understanding global problems or economies with different institutional structures. Speaker: Devika Dutt, Berggruen Fellow at the University of Southern California. Discussant: Alden Young, assistant professor of African American Studies and a faculty member of the International Development Studies program of the UCLA International Institute. Sponsored by the UCLA International Institute.

This symposium brings together some of the world’s leading authorities to examine the role of historians in fanning the flames of ethnic/territorial conflicts across the troubled landscape of the South Caucasus. Examining case studies from Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia to Nagorno Karabakh and its surrounding regions and Nakhijevan in Azerbaijan, scholars will present comparative and connective histories of how the historian’s craft and its proponents have been implicated in the incitement of conflict and the destruction of cultural heritage. Topics include Soviet nationality policy, the production of national histories for the South Caucasian nationalities, the standardization of curricula of national histories under Soviet and post-Soviet rule, and the destruction of historical monuments. A concluding plenary panel will assess the question of historical memory in the South Caucasus and how historians in the region can help facilitate peace and conflict resolution. Sponsored by The Promise Armenian Institute, Center for Near Eastern Studies, Center for European and Russian Studies, The UCLA Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History, The Society for Armenian Studies, and The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR).

Peaceful demonstrations in protest to a rise in gas prices served as a catalyst for violent crowds attacking government buildings and authorities in many of that country’s major cities. With its security forces overwhelmed President Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev assumed unprecedented power and called for help to restore order from the members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), made up of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, the Kyrgyz Republic, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in addition to Kazakhstan. This is the first time the organization has been used in this way. The presentation will explore what are the likely short and long-term implications of these actions, for Kazakhstan and for the other CSTO states. Sponsored by Program on Central Asia.

More than twenty years have elapsed since the United States last brokered a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. In that time, three presidents have tried and failed. Based on newly available documents from American and Israeli archives, extensive interviews with Kissinger, and Indyk’s own interactions with some of the main players, the author takes readers inside the negotiate ions. Here is a roster of larger-than-life characters—Anwar Sadat, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Hafez al-Assad, and Kissinger himself. Indyk’s account is both that of a historian poring over the records of these events, as well as an inside player seeking to glean lessons for Middle East peacemaking. He makes clear that understanding Kissinger’s design for Middle East peacemaking is key to comprehending how to—and how not to—make peace. Moderated by Kal Raustiala. Sponsored by the Burkle Center for International Relations.

After 12 years of uninterrupted rule and a total of 15 years in power, Benjamin Netanyahu was removed as Israel’s Prime Minister. The bitter struggle manifested in four rounds of elections in just over two years (2019–2021), which in the end brought a new coalition government to power. But the “Netanyahu era” has had a lasting effect on Israeli democracy, which amounts to an actual transformation of the rules of the political game itself. Though the man himself is fodder for many a talk, in this presentation Dr. Gayil Talshir will focus primarily on the ideological transformation and structural changes brought about by Netanyahu’s right-wing governments, particularly from 2015-2019: recreating the Jewish collective identity, refashioning the relation to the Supreme Court and civil rights, developing a new paradigm in Middle-Eastern diplomacy, and attempting to control the public media by establishing 'an Israeli-Fox news'. Sponsored by the Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies.

As the global campaign to make ecocide the fifth crime in the Rome Statute gains momentum, what are the prospects for using international criminal law to save the planet? Speakers: Christian Wenaweser, Permanent Representative of Lichtenstein to the UN; Charles Jalloh, Professor of Law, Florida International University; Richard Dicker, Founding Director, International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch; Kate Mackintosh, Executive Director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights. Moderator: Beth Van Schaack, Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor in Human Rights at Stanford Law School. Introductions by Jennifer Mnookin, Dean of UCLA School of Law. This event is co-sponsored by the International & Comparative Law Program at UCLA Law, the Institute for Technology, Law and Policy at UCLA Law, the Burkle Center for International Relations at the UCLA International Institute, and the Emmett Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA Law.

In a world of increasingly heated political debates on migration, relentlessly caught up in questions of security, humanitarian crisis, and cultural “problems,” Migration and Inequality radically shifts the focus to address migration through the lens of inequality. Mirna Safi offers a fresh perspective on how migration is embedded in the elementary mechanisms that shape the landscape of inequality. Sponsored by the Center for the Study of International Migration.

Mounting tensions between Russia and the Ukraine highlight the realities of cyberwarfare. What does international law need to do to be ready for these 21st century threats to peace and security? Speakers: Christian Wenaweser, Permanent Representative of Lichtenstein to the UN; Charles Jalloh, Professor of Law, Florida International University; Richard Dicker, Founding Director, International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch; Kate Mackintosh, Executive Director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights. Moderator: Beth Van Schaack, Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor in Human Rights at Stanford Law School. Introductions by Jennifer Mnookin, Dean of UCLA School of Law. This event is co-sponsored by the International & Comparative Law Program at UCLA Law, the Institute for Technology, Law and Policy at UCLA Law, the Burkle Center for International Relations at the UCLA International Institute, and the Emmett Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA Law.

In this talk, Adeeb Khalid will present an overview of the main themes of his recent book, Central Asia: A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present. Since the region was divided up between the Russian and the Chinese empires, Central Asia has been the crossroads of history. It has experienced every current of modern history, every achievement of modernity and its every disaster, every extreme of the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries. The talk will explore the insights that are to be gained from imagining the region as divided between two imperial formations. Sponsored by Program on Central Asia.

Spying has never been more ubiquitous—or less understood. The world is drowning in spy movies, TV shows, and novels, but universities offer more courses on rock and roll than on the CIA and there are more congressional experts on powdered milk than espionage. This crisis in intelligence education is distorting public opinion, fueling conspiracy theories, and hurting intelligence policy. In Spies, Lies, and Algorithms, Amy Zegart separates fact from fiction as she offers an engaging and enlightening account of the past, present, and future of American espionage as it faces a revolution driven by digital technology. Moderated by Kal Raustiala. Sponsored by the Burkle Center for International Relations.

How do sending states manage labor migration to precarious occupations? Professor Parreñas will address this question by examining the Philippine state migration of domestic workers. Using interviews with government officials, agency staff and workers, she shows how the state legitimizes their promotion of migration by infusing care in their disciplining of domestic workers to be subservient workers. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas is Professor of Sociology and Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Southern California. She is an ethnographer whose current research empirically focuses on contemporary experiences of servitude and engages theories of freedom and morals to analyze the constitution of migrant workers as "unfree" laborers. Sponsored by Asia Pacific Center, Center for Study of International Migration and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies.

The lecture begins with an exploration of the various bases for Iranian “cultural identity” (Iraniyat)—including a long pre-Islamic legacy, the Persian language, Shi’ism, and the bonds and affinities among a people who have inhabited roughly the same territory for nearly three millennia. It makes a distinction between Iranian “cultural” and “national” identities and examines how the latter view of Iranian “national” identity was transformed into nationalist political ideologies from the last decades of the 19th century to the end of the Pahlavi era. It concludes with an analysis of the Islamic Republic’s sacralization of state authority and concerted efforts to promote “religious nationalism” as its official ideology. Ali Banuazizi is a Research Professor of Political Science at Boston College and a research fellow at the Center for International Studies at M.I.T. Sponsored by the Center for Near Eastern Studies, Iranian Studies, Amuzegar Chair in Iranian Studies and Musa Sabi Term Chair of Iranian Studies.

In Bootlegged Aliens, Ashley Johnson Bavery offers a close reading of Northern borderlands, noting how this often-overlooked border influenced government policies toward illegal immigration, business and labor union practices around migrant labor, and the experience of being an illegal immigrant in early twentieth-century industrial America. Author: Ashley Johnson Bavery. Discussant: Tobias Higbie. Sponsored by the Center for the Study of International Migration.

Based on over three years of fieldwork (2016-2019) in Zhanli, a remote Kam village in Guizhou Province, China, the researcher explores the complex dynamics between the discursive practices of the local government and the local villagers concerning the reconstruction of Kam identity and culture in response to social change, particularly the rise of rural tourism. China’s profound demographic and socio-economic transformation has intensified the dominance of Han culture and language and seriously challenged the traditional cultures in ethnic minority areas. Dr. Wei Wang's primary research interests include discourse studies, sociolinguistics, translation studies and language education. Sponsored by the Center for Chinese Studies.

Susanne Schmeier, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education will deliver a presentation on the Successful River Basin Agreements in Other Basins Similar to the Nile. This lecture is part of a 10-part webinar series on the Nile River Basin crisis. This webinar series will bring together scholars and practitioners to present research and policy papers on various aspects of this issue, and carefully consider alternative solutions to the Nile River dispute. Sponsored by the African Studies Center and Engineering.

This lecture reviews the various features of Moroccan migration to the Netherlands from a historical perspective and reflects on the moral panic that surrounds the growing cultural and religious diversity in the Netherlands. Sponsored by the Center for the Study of International Migration and the Center for European and Russian Studies.

As walls make a return to border-crossings, do we need to revise the focus on transnationalism? Transnationalism has become a buzzword in migration studies and beyond for three decades now. This talk aims at discussing the various ways in which the limits of transnationalism need to be addressed. Speaker: Nancy L. Green, Directrice d'études, EHESS, Membre associée retraitée en activité. Sponsored by the Center for the Study of International Migration.

Please join the UCLA Program of Iranian Studies and the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies for a discussion centering the importance of storytelling and the point of view-two guiding principles in the Collective for Black Iranians’ work. Discover how the Collective creatively and critically deconstruct the way we see ourselves as Iranians and invite us to step into a culture that also stands at its Black and African intersections. The Collective was founded out of the necessity to be seen, heard, and understood Through public education, storytelling, and advocacy, the Collective shares its stories of belonging to the intersections of being Black, Iranian and African/of African descent. Sponsored by the Center for Near Eastern Studies, Iranian Studies, Amuzegar Chair in Iranian Studies and Musa Sabi Term Chair of Iranian Studies.