Archive for News – Page 44

Top 10 Things That only Happen at SIPA

Posted by Matt Clemons 
· Friday, December 3rd, 2010 
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The following post was contributed by second year SIPA student Richard Parker.  Richard is working in our office this year and he, along with several other students, will be contributing posts throughout the year.

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I decided to take a break from paper writing and finals studying to update the blog. This month has been long and crazy! On the 12th the SIPA Pan African Network (SPAN) hosted their annual African Diplomatic Forum. The theme was: Climate Change as the new Security Threat- Implications for Africa. Our keynote speaker was Congressman Donald Payne and we had two panels with many notable and distinguished panelists. I served as the host for the event and also the coordinator for the Human Security panel. Needless to say I was beat after it was all said and done.

The next week I had a group presentation for my Peacekeeping in Africa class which drained the rest of the energy from my body. We presented on Liberia and to our surprise one of my professors colleagues who works for the UN (at the Liberia desk of course lol) was in the audience observing the presentation.

But after that was Thanksgiving!!!! I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. Me and my mom did the normal turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce etc…which is always a treat…but the rest of the holiday well let’s just say it wasn’t a holiday. On Black Friday, while most people spend hours waiting on line to get in to department stores, I spent hours online in the library writing the first of 4 (four, cuarto, quarte, quattro) 20 (twenty, vingt, venti, veinte) page papers. Only this type of thing happens at SIPA. So in true David Letterman style I present the top 10 things that only happen at SIPA (in no particular order)

10: You meet someone from a country that you can barely find on a map

9: You hear languages that Rosetta Stone doesn’t have a disk for being spoken on the 6th floor café

8: You have professors who are real life rockstars at the United Nations

7: You complain about Lehman library but never manage to study elsewhere and get mad when undergrads take all the tables in group study

6: During finals time when studying with friends, someone says they’re about to make a food run and you know that means either Hamilton’s, Sub Conscious or Appletree

5: You have a 2 minute pitch

4: You cringe at the thought of producer theory

3: Riding in the elevator with Mayor Dinkins or a visiting ambassador or head of state seems normal

2: You know the best time to go to the café in order to avoid the line

1: You study with and learn from the worlds best and brightest

So maybe not as funny if you don’t go to SIPA but it was worth a try anyway. Back to paper writing…see those of you starting in the spring in a month!

Hosting the ADF conference

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Categories : Columbia University, Meet Seeples, News, SIPA
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Events Galore

Posted by Matt Clemons 
· Thursday, December 2nd, 2010 
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Below is some evidence of the choices that SIPA students must sometimes make when it comes to how to spend their time.  There always seems to be something going on at SIPA or on our campus that would be interesting to attend.

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Monday, November 29, 2010

Gender-Based Violence in the Congo
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1501
Gender Policy
Panel Discussion with Dr. Les Roberts, Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health; Paula Donovan, Co-Founder of AIDS-Free World; Dr. Susan Bartels, Co-Head of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative; and Lisa Jackson, Writer and Director of the film “The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo.”

Debate: Nuclear Energy and Climate Change
7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Columbia Law School, Jerome Greene Hall, Room 106
Earth Institute
Debate with Robert Alvarez, Senior Scholar, Institute for Policy Studies, former Senior Policy Advisor to the Secretary of Energy; Peter Bradford, Adjunct Professor, Vermont Law School, former Commissioner, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, former Chair, New York and Maine utility regulatory commissions; Barton Cowan, Visiting Professor, West Virginia University College of Law, of counsel, Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, LLC; Susan Eisenhower, Member, Blue Ribbon Commission for America’s Nuclear Future, Chair Emeritus, Eisenhower Institute; Michael Gerrard, Andrew Sabin Professor of Professional Practice, Director, Columbia Center for Climate Change Law

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Kazakhstan’s Refugee Crisis: Violence, Hunger and the Transformation of Broader Central Asia, 1930-1933
12:00 am – 1:30 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1219
Harriman Institute
Lecture with Sarah Cameron , Post-Doctoral Fellow, Yale University

Japan Circa 1959 – The High-Growth Economy and the Social Effects of Television
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 918
Weatherhead East Asian Institute
Brown Bag Lecture with Yoshikuni Igarashi, Associate Professor of History, Vanderbilt University

Kazakhstan’s Refugee Crisis: Violence, Hunger and the Transformation of Broader Central Asia, 1930-1933
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
International Affairs Building
Harriman Institute
Lecture with Sarah Cameron, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Yale

DevInfo Training
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 407
New Media Task Force
Workshop with Christina J. Irene, a representative from the joint UNICEF/DevInfo programme, along with the Fall 2010 DevInfo Interns, will present an introduction to the DevInfo data management system.

Brown Bag with Amb. Paul R. Seger, Permanent Repepresentative of Switzerland to the UN
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 802
International Organization Specialization
Brown Bag Lecture with Ambassador Paul R. Seger, Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the United Nations

How Not to Help
6:30 pm – 8:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 707
Institute for the Study of Human Rights
Discussion with Kate Cronin-Furman and Amanda Taub from “Wronging Rights”.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Lake Baikal, Siberia: Will Industrial Development Destroy the World’s Largest, Cleanest Lake?
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1219
Harriman Institute
Lecture

Czech Foreign Policy After the Fall of Communism
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1512
Harriman Institute
Lecture with Jiri Paroubek

Perspectives on Political and Economic Dynamism in Northeast Asia- Challenges of China and North Korea
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
Columbia Univerity Morningside Campus International Affairs Building, Room 918
Center for Korean Research
Lecture with Ambassador Young-Mok Kim,Consul General of Republic of Korea to New York. No registration is required.

Leaders in Global Energy: Dr. Fatih Birol: Critical Factors Shaping the Future Global Energy Landscape
2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1501
School of International and Public Affairs and Center for Energy, Marine Transportation and Public Policy
Lecture with Dr. Fatih Birol, Chief Economist, International Energy Agency
Register

Tolerance Without Liberalism: Conflict and Coexistence in Twentieth-Century Indonesia
4:00 pm – 6:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 801
Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion
Lecture with CDTR Visiting Fellow, Jeremy Menchik

My Perestroika
8:00 pm – 10:30 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 417
Harriman Institute
Film Screening and Discussion with Robin Hessman. To reserve tickets in advance please follow the link: www.ovationtix.com/trs/pe/8563295. Tickets will also be available at the box office in the Lerner Hall Lobby the day of the show.

Concert Series: Italian Harpsichord Music with Andrew Appel
8:00 pm – 9:30 pm
The Italian Academy at Columbia, 1161 Amsterdam Avenue
The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University
Concert Series with harpsichordist Andrew Appel, violinist Krista Bennion Feeney, and cellist Loretta O’Sullivan, performing the music of Boccherini, Cimarosa, and Clementi

Thursday, December 2, 2010

A Conversation with Adolfo Carrion, Regional Director of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
12:00 pm- 1:30 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1501
Urban and Social Policy Concentration
Conversation with Adolfo Carrion, Regional Director of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Register

Migrations of Jewish-Hungarian Professionals through Germany to the United States, 1919-1945
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1219
East Central European Center
Discussion with Professor Tibor Frank, Eötvös Loránd University, Columbia University, regarding the impulses influencing a uniquely gifted generation of mostly Jewish Hungarian emigrants.

Biological Measures of the Standard of Living North and South of the Border –
4:15 pm – 6:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 802
Institute of Latin American Studies
Lecture: with Prof. Richard Steckel, Distinguished University Professor of Economics, Anthropology and History at Ohio State University.

When China Met Africa and The Colony
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Studio X 180 Varick Street New York, NY 10014
Committee on Global Thought
Film screening / Discussion including two films that examine Chinese investment in Africa
Register

Stories of Stigma, Stories of Strength: Ethnographic Oral History with Sanitation Workers in New York City
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Schermerhorn, Room 754
Oral History Master of Arts Program
Lecture with Robin Nagle. She will present her ethnographic work for her forthcoming book Picking Up.

QMSS Seminar: Sexual Networks and HIV Transmission in a High-Prevalence Setting: Evidence from a Sociocentric Study
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Hamilton Hall, Room 503
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy
Seminar with Stephane Helleringer, Mailman School of Public Health

Friday, December 3, 2010

Afghanistan: Prospects for Peace
9:00 am – 5:30 pm
Kellogg Center, International Affairs Building, Room 1501
Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
Sixth Annual Arnold A. Saltzman Forum
Register

From a Raindrop to a Stream Pebble to a Delta: Recent Research on Predictive Modeling
3:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Seeley W. Mudd Building, Room 833
Earth Institute
Lecture with Efi Foufoula-Georgiou, Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Director of the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics, University of Minnesota
Register

Asia in Africa: New Connections in Historical Perspective
3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Davis Auditorium, Schapiro Center
Committee on Global Thought
Discussion Panel with Howard French, Deborah Brautigam, Abdoulie Janneh, and Wang Hongyi
Register

Saturday, December 4, 2010

The International Criminal Court in Motion – An Analysis of its Seven Years of Activities and Perspectives with Dr. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Prosecutor, International Criminal Court
4:00 pm – 5:30 pm
International Affairs Building Room 1501
Center for International Conflict Resolution
Lecture with Dr. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The talk will be followed by a discussion moderated by Mr. Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Director of the Center for International Conflict Resolution.
Register

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Toxica Simulation
9:30 am – 6:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1501
CRWG and LASA
Simulation allowing participants to engage in a negotiation, observed by negotiation practitioners. Space is limited, RSVP required. Please email [email protected].

UPCOMING EVENTS

Monday, December 6, 2010

From Three-Legged to Two-Legged Races – The Emergence of Women’s Competitive Sports in Japan (1910s-20s)
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 918
Weatherhead East Asian Institute
Brown Bag Lecture with Robin Kietlinski, Adjunct Assistant Professor of History, Baruch College; Visiting Researcher, Weatherhead East Asian Institute.

Monday, December 6 – Distinguished Lecturer Series “Southern Buddhism: Tracing Later Buddhist Art in South India”
4:00 pm – 5:30 pm
Knox Hall, Room 208
Southern Asian Institute
Distinguished Lecturer Series with John Guy, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Innovating for Development: A Thought Leadership Forum from the Journal of International Affairs
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1501
School of International and Public Affairs
Forum moderated by Steven Cohen, Executive Director, Earth Institute, about how innovation is driving the agenda for sustainable development, climate change, natural resource use and energy policy.
Register

Thursday, December 9, 2010

U.S. Rapprochement with Indonesia – From Problem State to Partner
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 918
Weatherhead East Asian Institute
Brown Bag Lecture with Ann Marie Murphy, Associate Professor, School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University; Adjunct Research Scholar, Weatherhead East Asian Institute.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Transforming Humiliation and Violent Conflict Workshop
5:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Columbia University, Teachers College Campus, 525 West 120th Street, Grace Dodge Hall, Room 179
Earth Institute
Lecture

Thursday, December 9, 2010

QMSS Seminar: Political Conditions for Diffusion? Anti-Corporate Movements and the Spread of Cooperatives in America Capitalism
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Hamilton Hall, Room 503
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy
Lecture with Marc Schneiberg, Queens College Department of Sociology

Monday, December 13, 2010

Post-Cancun Debriefing
12:00 pm – 2:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1512
The Columbia-Paris Alliance Program and the Sustainable Development Doctoral Society
Seminar on the climate change negotiations in Cancun, with Scott Barett, Lenfest-Earth Institute Professor of Natural Resource Economics and Laurence Tubiana, Alliance Visiting Professor at Columbia

From Wednesday, January 12, 2011 through Friday, January 14, 2011

SIPA Students Only: 35th Annual Washington, DC Career Conference
All Day Event
Washington, DC
Office of Career Services, School of International and Public Affairs
35th Annual Washington, DC Career Conference, a three-day event consisting of 20 panels, employer site visits, networking reception and a day of informational interviews. For further information regarding this event, please contact Joe Musso at [email protected].
Register

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Categories : Academics, Columbia University, News, SIPA
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Digital Media as a Means For Social Change

Posted by Matt Clemons 
· Wednesday, November 24th, 2010 
· No Comments

There are always events going on at SIPA each week featuring interesting speakers from all different fields.  A recent example focused on professionals representing digital media channels you are likely familiar with.  The following article was contributed by SIPA student Timothy Shenk.

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Two leaders in the evolving digital media landscape spoke with SIPA students about promoting social and political advocacy through online videos and other channels.

Steve Grove, head of news and politics at YouTube, and Noopur Agarwal, director of public affairs at MTV, discussed their organizations’ work in separate presentations.
Grove described the ways news and political videos have proliferated on YouTube in recent years, as everyone from federal bureaucrats to amateur pundits use the medium to speak directly to millions of viewers. In an innovative approach to journalism, YouTube has conducted virtual town hall meetings by soliciting questions from the public and submitting them directly to leaders such as President Obama, Grove said.

However, unlike the traditional news media, YouTube is unable to vet its content for accuracy or decency before it is posted online. Pornographic, copyrighted or hateful material must be flagged by users or identified by a computer algorithm, then reviewed by a YouTube employee, before it can be taken down, Grove said.

Agarwal described MTV‘s approach to social advocacy. Beginning with the Live Aid concerts in 1985, MTV has used its pop culture brand to advocate for issues of concern to young people. In 2004, MTV launched a campaign on its college network, mtvU, to press for an end to the genocide in Darfur.

MTV carries out its campaigns in partnership with public policy organizations. For example, MTV promotes testing for sexually transmitted diseases in partnership with a public health research and advocacy organization, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

MTV also partners with the social networking service Foursquare to encourage people to post an online badge showing that they have been tested. Surprisingly, it has become one of the most popular Foursquare badges, Agarwal said.

Most recently, MTV launched “A Thin Line,” a campaign to raise awareness about digital abuse. MTV runs advocacy videos on its main cable channel and promotes a website where young people share real stories of online bullying.

“This is the first generation that’s grown up this way and has relationships play out online,”Agarwal said. “It’s part of being a young person from now on.”

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Categories : Columbia University, News, SIPA
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10 Years of Women, Peace and Security

Posted by Matt Clemons 
· Thursday, November 18th, 2010 
· No Comments

The following post was submitted by Sawako Sonoyama.  Sawako is working in our office this year and she, along with several other students, will be contributing posts throughout the year.

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10 years ago, the UN Security Council passed resolution 1325 that focused on increased representation of women in the Security Council. The resolution reaffirms the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peace-building, peacekeeping, humanitarian response and in post-conflict reconstruction.

This resolution marks the first time the Security Council has recognized the link between the security of women and peace. This is a landmark because the Security Council finally understands the ability of women to take on two roles:  “victim” of Conflict and “change agents” of Peace.

10 years have passed. How have we done? Five speakers convened at SIPA today on a panel for the UN Studies Program and spoke on this issue from their various issues:

  • Atul Khare, Assistant Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations.
  • Judy Cheng-Hopkins, Assistant Secretary General for Peace Building Support to the Peace Building Commission, and SIPA Alumna.
  • Betty Achan Ogwaro, Chairperson of Sudanese Women Forum of Darfur, Southern Sudan
  • Barbara Crossette, former NYT Foreign Correspondent and journalist.
  • Juergen Heissel from the UN Security Council Peace Austrian Peace Keeping Mission

The panel started with an interesting debate surrounding the information gap in conflict zone. Mr. Heissel gave a brief history of the Security Council’s evolution in working with women in conflict zone. The problem that persists today is still the information gap. There is no consistent and comprehensive way to report on acts of violence against women in armed conflict. There is no way to measure how much we have made progress. There needs to be a more concrete data so evidence based policy making could be deployed to helping these women on the ground.

However, Ms. Ogwaro responded by saying that the Council will never have enough data. Too many times, there were women dishonored, hurt, and killed in front of the eyes of a Peace Keeping officer. The numbers are there, however, the mandates are not matching what needs to be done to help women in conflict. Furthermore, why will a Sudanese women be able to provide data when they are too busy protecting their lives and the lives of their children?

Finally, SIPA alumni Ms. Cheng-Hopkins provided a strict remark on the progress made.  After 10 years, 3% of negotiators and 0% of mediators in conflict zones are women. To improve these numbers, she recommended that at least 15% of post-conflict aid budgets should be endorsing women and peace building. There is much more work to be done in incorporating women into peace building.

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Categories : Columbia University, Meet Seeples, News
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SIPA Events – Interdisciplinary Talks

Posted by Matt Clemons 
· Sunday, November 14th, 2010 
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SIPA is a very busy place.  Each week there are 10-15 events that feature interesting speakers and panels on a variety of topics.  The following entry was contributed by Erisha Suwal, a second year student at SIPA.  Erisha is working in our office this year and she, along with several other students, will be contributing posts throughout the year.

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While having lunch over lamb and rice with hot and white sauce, my Pakistani friends encouraged me to join them for a talk titled “ Pakistan 2010: The most dangerous decade begins.” The talk was organized by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR). It is a Center that was founded after SIPA won a competitive grant and its main objective is to examine religion’s role in politics and international relations. The title was very intriguing and only the day before I had had a discussion   on how Pakistan seems to be in a constant state of turmoil. More than any other country. Perhaps even more than Afghanistan.  I joined them.

Christine Fair, Assistant Professor at the Center for Peace and Security Studies, Georgetown, was one of the panelists. She was speaking on ‘India and Pakistan in Afghanistan: Opportunities and Constraints.’  She argued that India had a strong interest in staying in Afghanistan especially to monitor Pakistan. She questioned why no one talks about India running intelligence operations in Afghanistan and why no one challenges India when it build schools very close to the Pakistani border. She claimed that the Pakistani Army personnel, particularly those in the lower ranks, want the U.S. out of Afghanistan because they believed that the American presence intensified Taliban presence in Afghanistan. Her talk led to a rich discussion on India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

At the talk, I found out that Terry Eagleton was coming to speak the same evening   on “The New Atheism and the War on Terror.” Eagleton is an influential literary theorist and Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster, who has written more than forty books. He gave an entertaining and insightful talk. The poster said, seating was on first come first serve basis. Usually I do not follow these warnings, but I’m glad I did this time. The room filled up very quickly and I ran into some SIPA professors. I saw Mahmood Mamdani, who teaches Political identities, State and Civil Wars in Africa and Theory, History, and Practice of Human Rightsand Professor S. Akbar Zaidi was also present. He teaches Political Economy of Pakistan: State, Society, and Economy.

Eagleton started off asking, “Why are atheists obsessed with religion as Puritans are obsessed with sex?”  He commented that Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, whom he dubbed Ditchkins, were engaged in anti-god diatribe with zero conception of faith and theology. He also argued that rise of Islamic fundamentalism was similar to “chickens coming home to roost.” Eagleton delivered provocative and controversial but witty statements and entertained his audience.

CDTR co-organized Terry Eagleton’s lecture with Heyman Center for the Humanities. I missed going to lectures outside of class. It is easy to immerse oneself in course-works and socializing, Wednesday’s two lectures reminded me of how being in Columbia exposes you to cutting edge discussions in whatever field it might be.

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Categories : Columbia University, Meet Seeples, News
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—Merit E. Janow, Dean, SIPA, Professor of Practice, International and Economic Law and International Affairs

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