2025
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Tuesday, October 28, 2025
John Ryle, Legrand Ramsey Professor of Anthropology, in conversation with Peter Rosenblum, Professor of International Law and Human Rights
Olin Humanities, Room 203 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 The international human rights movement is in crisis, with a decline in support from major powers, and key institutions such as the International Criminal Court in disarray. In Sweden, however, the government has mounted a large-scale war crimes trial – now in its third year – the most extensive trial in Swedish history. Two directors of Lundin Oil, once the country’s largest energy company, stand accused of complicity in crimes committed during oil exploration in Sudan: in the words of a headline in Bloomberg News, "Oil Billionaire Ian Lundin Risks Jail”. In bringing the Lundin directors to trial the Swedish government is projecting a principle of universal jurisdiction that dates back to the Nuremberg trials and before – the idea that no one anywhere should be beyond the reach of the law. The prosecutions at Nuremberg of executives of German companies that used slave labor in the 1939-45 World War were limited, but it has been argued that the new wave of corporate prosecutions under national law – of which the Lundin trial is the leading example – are an indication of a possible future for the pursuit of human rights. The directors of Lundin Oil are accused of aiding Sudan government forces in a campaign of violent displacement during the 1983-2005 civil war in Sudan (the conflict that led to the independence of South Sudan in 2011). The prosecution alleges that Lundin requested security from the government of Sudan in the knowledge that this would involve forcible displacement, and that they allowed airstrips built by Lundin to be used by Sudan government helicopter gunships to attack villages and kill or expel their inhabitants. But the two Lundin executives deny the charges, asserting that the company operated lawfully. As an anthropologist and human rights researcher with experience in the Sudanese oil zone, John Ryle was called to testify in the trial (one of more than ninety witnesses, including thirty from South Sudan), spending a day under examination on the witness stand in the District Court in Stockholm. He will discuss his experience of participation in the trial, the nature of the communities that live in the oil zone, and their indigenous legal systems, the distinction between restorative and retributive justice, and connections to the current crises in Sudan and South Sudan, and the realities of research in war zones, where often, in the phrase of the late US senator Hiram Johnson, truth is the first casualty. |
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Monday, October 27, 2025
Bard Center for the Study of Hate 2025 Interns Showcase (with pizza!)
Barringer House 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 This past summer the Bard Center for the Study of Hate sent ten student to intern with NGOs that focus on hate, or some subset of it, to work, learn, and analyze how these groups think about hate. You’re invited to join them as they discuss their experiences (over a pizza lunch) Monday, October 27, 2025 in the Barringer Global Classroom. Students interested in the 2026 internships are encouraged to attend. Feel free to email Ken Stern at [email protected] with any questions. |
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Monday, October 20, 2025 Olin Humanities, Room 102 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 For most of the twentieth century, Albina was the only majority Black area in Portland, Oregon. Between 1990 and 2010, Albina gentrified and became majority-white. This talk will look at how longtime Black Portland residents experienced and responded to the loss of Portland’s historically Black place. |
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Saturday, October 18, 2025
Classroom 102 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
A founding principle of the Baghdad Modern Art Group, istilham al-turath “encouraged innovation through Iraq’s unique history and heritage and also presented a means of counteracting Europe’s dominance over modernism,” as scholar Tiffany Floyd has written. Discussing case studies from the exhibition as well as geographically expanding the reach of istilham al-turath, the panel investigates how artists negotiated modernism and nationalism in relation to tradition, influence, inspiration, and transformation. Held in conjunction with the exhibition All Manner of Experiments: Legacies of the Baghdad Modern Art Group, this panel will feature scholars and curators who will speak to one of the central concepts of the Baghdad Modern Art Group: istilham al-turath. Organized by Lara Fresko Madra featuring Saleem Al Bahloly, Alma Chaouachi, Clare Davies, and Anneka Lenssen. This is a 90-minute panel with four 15-minute presentations and a Q&A. All Manner of Experiments: Legacies of the Baghdad Modern Art Group is curated by Nada Shabout, Regents Professor at the University of North Texas and Visiting Professor and Investigator at NYU Abu Dhabi, with Tiffany Floyd, Lecturer of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of North Texas. The exhibition is organized at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, by Lauren Cornell, Artistic Director, with exhibition design by Ian Sullivan, Director of Exhibitions. Zuhra Amini (CCS Bard ’25) and Truth Murray-Cole (CCS Bard ‘26) contributed curatorial research and editorial support to the project. |
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Friday, October 10, 2025
A Talk with the President of French Polynesia, Moetai Brotherson
Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 As the prospects of deep sea mining increase in the region, French Polynesia bears the weight of nuclear testing and unfinished decolonization in the Pacific. Its journey illustrates the quest for justice, resilience, and lasting peace across the region. President Brotherson is from Tahiti. He has a degree in computer science and has held various offices in the region since 2001. In 2007 he published a novel, Le Roi Absent (“The Absent King”). In 2010 he participated in the O Tahiti Nui Freedom expedition, which sailed a single-hulled Polynesian outrigger canoe from Tahiti to Shangha. French Polynesia is an autonomous overseas collectivity of France. He has been president since 2023. |
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Tuesday, April 15, 2025 Bertelsmann Campus Center, Multipurpose Room 8:30 am – 9:50 am EDT/GMT-4 Our book, Disability Worlds, chronicles our immersion in NYC’s wide-ranging disability worlds as parents, activists, anthropologists, and disability studies scholars. Disability consciousness, we show, emerges in everyday politics, practices, and frictions, from genetic testing to the reimagining of kinship, and the perils of what some call “the disability cliff”, while highlighting the remarkable world-changing creativity of neurodiversity activists and disabled artists. In today’s talk, we will focus on a chapter entitled, “Living Otherwise” that tracks the histories and everyday practices of disability arts activists. We explored projects created by people with diverse bodyminds across a dizzying array of genres, producing new culturalimaginaries centered on disability experiences and aesthetics, reframing the very concept of artistry itself. The disability art world ranges from community theater and poetry readings in neighborhood libraries todisability arts boot camps at cultural institutions such as the Whitney Museum and the Gibney Performing Arts Center, dance at Lincoln Center, The Shed, the High Line, Broadway performances, and more. Our research preceded and coincided with the pandemic when many activities shifted online, creating unexpected challenges and opportunities in the disability arts world. Overall, we show how participation inthe arts offers new opportunities, resources, and models for “living otherwise.” Faye Ginsburg is David Kriser Professor of Anthropology at New York University. She is cofounder of the NYU Center for Disability Studies and the Center for Media, Culture & History. She is author of Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community, coauthor of Disability Worlds (2024) and co-editor of How to be Disabled in a Pandemic (2025), along with other books. Rayna Rapp is Professor Emerita in the Department of Anthropology at New York University, and the author of Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America, coauthor of Disability Worlds, and co-editor of How to be Disabled in a Pandemic (2025), along with other books. |
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Wednesday, April 9, 2025 Promoting Legal Protections to Uphold the Ban on FGM in The Gambia (Hilina Degefa) and Training and Supporting Local Human Rights Defenders in Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Trinidad and Tobago (Marian Da Silva) Reem-Kayden Center Laszlo Z. Bito '60 Auditorium 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Please join us for an evening with Hilina Berhanu Degefa and Marian Alejandra Da Silva Parra, our 2024–25 Lester Fellows in Human Rights. Degefa, an expert on women’s rights from Ethiopia, will discuss her work to combat proposals to legalize female genital mutilation in the Gambia. Da Silva Parra, a human rights lawyer from Venezuela, will discuss her project to train and support local human rights defenders in Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Trinidad and Tobago. The fellowships honor the memory and legacy of Anthony Lester QC (Lord Lester of Herne Hill), one of Britain’s most distinguished human rights lawyers. |
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Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Memory-Studies Talk Series: Elise Giuliano
Olin Humanities, Room 303 12:30 pm – 2:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 This talk discusses Dr Giuliano's current research about discourse among ethnic minority populations in Russia’s regions and how to think about the subjectivity and identity of ethnic minorities in multi-ethnic states. Following the end of communist rule in eastern Europe in 1989, most of the new nation-states dedicated themselves to reconstructing a history that viewed Soviet domination following WWII as a departure from their nation’s natural democratic path. Leaders in the post-Soviet states that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 took a more differentiated approach, especially with regard to the recent Soviet past. In Ukraine, especially since Russia’s invasion in 2022, public memory about Soviet history has become more urgent and politicized. This talk will consider what varied interpretations of critical historical episodes mean for the attempt to define a coherent nation-state and discuss how citizens’ lived experiences and personal family histories interact with attempts by political authorities to define a common public memory. Download: Giuliano.pdf |
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Tuesday, April 1, 2025 RKC 103 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 The big consequences for the West of losing "small wars" (like Algeria, Vietnam, or Afghanistan) are due to the constitutive role of "the Orient" in Western identities. This talk will discuss how these identities are committed, in diverse ways, to notions of Western vitality, strength and dominance over non-European peoples. There is no more obvious sign of Western weakness and "Oriental" strength than defeat in war or failure to obtain victory. Unsurprisingly then, such setbacks become sites of political and cultural disruption and production at all levels of Western society. |