Description

​Update: The keynote lecture will be given by Dr. Markian Dobczansky, Petro Jacyk Post-Doctoral Fellow in Ukrainian Politics, Culture, and Society.

About the lecture:

Frozen and unfrozen conflicts have been a persistent feature of the Eurasian political landscape since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Breakaway regions and civil wars have affected no fewer than seven former Soviet republics, calling into question the stability and durability of these independent states. Yet each of the conflicts has a particular historical background that can help illuminate the challenges faced by these states. The Ukraine crisis is no exception. This talk will focus on the history of Soviet state and nation building in Ukraine, arguing that the peculiarities of the Soviet legacy have contributed to the Ukrainian state’s strengths and weaknesses.

About Dr. Dobczansky:

Markian Dobczansky is a historian of the Soviet Union. His specializations include Russian-Ukrainian relations, Soviet nationalities policy, and the politics of culture. He is currently the Petro Jacyk Post-Doctoral Fellow in Ukrainian Politics, Culture, and Society at the University of Toronto, where he teaches a course on comparative nationalisms in Russia and Ukraine. He has conducted archival research in Moscow, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Washington, D.C., and at the Hoover Institution in California. Dr. Dobczansky is working on a book manuscript about the intersection between Soviet, Ukrainian, and local identity in Kharkiv in the twentieth century. He has presented his research at academic conferences in the United States, Ukraine, Russia, and Lithuania.

Dr. Dobczansky received a Ph.D. in history from Stanford University, where he focused on the Soviet Union, Russian Empire, and Eastern Europe. His dissertation, “From Soviet Heartland to Ukrainian Borderland: Searching for Identity in Kharkiv, 1943—2004,” utilized Soviet archival sources, published materials, and interviews to examine local identity in Ukraine’s second largest city over the second half of the twentieth century. While writing his dissertation, he received a Mellon pre-doctoral fellowship at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He received a B.A. in European History and German Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. He was born in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Description

This talk will be an account of my ongoing research project on the relationship between Ukrainian diaspora communities and their original homeland during and after the Cold War. It will focus on the reception of the Ukrainian dissent by the younger generations of the Ukrainian diaspora (especially in the US) and on the ways these younger Ukrainian-Americans tried to change the relationship with Soviet Ukraine. The analysis will address the question of the multiculturalism of these second-generation Ukrainian Americans aiming at a working definition of otherwise ambigous concepts such as “transnationalism” and “diaspora.”

Simone Attilio Bellezza completed two PhDs: the first one at the University Ca’ Foscari of Venice, where he defended a dissertation on the German civil administration of Dnipropetrovs’k region during World War II, and the second at the University of the Republic of San Marino, where he wrote a dissertation on the Ukrainian dissent during the 1950s and 1960s. He specialized in Soviet and particularly Ukrainian history, and the fil rouge of his work is the study of national identity and its relationship with other kinds of loyalty (social, political, cultural, and religious). He is now working on a new research project, whose aim is to verify to what extent the human rights activism of the 1970s and 1980s constituted the basis for the new-born foreign policy of post-Soviet Ukraine, by creating numerous networks of international relationships. His first objective will be to investigate the relationship between Ukrainian diaspora communities and their original homeland in the emergence of the human rights movement.

Description

Twenty-five years after independence, Central Asian societies are witnessing the emergence of new demographics, social and cultural changes that confirm the end of the “post-Soviet” period and the entry into another phase of history. In this presentation Professor Laruelle will analyze these changes and explore their possible meaning in terms of domestic and foreign policies for the region’s countries.

Marlene Laruelle is Research Professor of International Affairs andAssociate Director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. She explores contemporary political, social and cultural changes in Russia and Central Asia through the prism of ideologies and nationalism. She is the editor in chief of Central Asian Affairs and a member of the executive editorial board of Demokratizatsiya. The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization. As director of the Central Asia Program she oversees about 30 events a year, monthly publications, and works on several programs of visiting fellows from Central Asia.

Description

The events of winter 2013-2014 in Ukraine were special in many respects. Not only Euromaidan took many by surprise – neither the government nor the experts saw it coming. These also were the largest protests by far in the Independent Ukraine, bringing together a broad coalition of collective actors and spreading to all Ukrainian regions. But the eventual victory of the Revolution of Dignity came at a price. In two months of protest the camp in capital Kyiv abandoned its non-violent philosophy for Molotov cocktails. In few more weeks it ended with special police forces opening fire on protesters leaving more than a hundred dead. Unprecedented violence led to high level defections and dissolution of Viktor Yanukovych’s regime. Why did Ukrainian contentious repertoire, proudly non-violent starting from 1960-ies dissidents adopted the violent tactics? The presentation explores the gradual emergence of radical repertoire among Ukrainian protesters and the dynamics of violence taking up the central stage in Kyiv in January 2014. I use available data to illustrate these processes in the invert order – starting with the ‘Moment of Madness’ on Maidan on February 20th 2014 and going back in time, tracing some conditions which made it possible, but not inevitable.

Description

Venelin I. Ganev (Ph.D. University of Chicago, 2000) is a Professor in Political Science and a faculty associate of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University of Ohio. His main fields of interest are postcommunist politics, democratization studies, constitutionalism, and modern social theory. His publications have appeared in East European Constitutional Review, American Journal of Comparative Law, Journal of Democracy, East European Politics and Societies, Communist and Postcommunist Studies, Slavic Review, Europe-Asia Studies and Comparative Studies in Society and History. He has also contributed chapters to several volumes that explore various aspects of institution-building in contemporary Europe. His first book, Preying on the State: The Transformation of Postcommunist Bulgaria was published in 2007 by Cornell University Press.

Description

The story of the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus is one of courage and true grit – a vivid chronicle that celebrates the human spirit. This is the triumphant story of the original 17 members of the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus who survived World War II as a musical ensemble. The film brings out the deepest roots of a fragile tradition, celebrating the resiliency of a music culture that has survived centuries. Set against the backdrop of the war itself, the story reveals the ways that music and musicians are used and abused by political regimes.

It provides an educational, informative and compelling perspective – the personal stories of the last two survivors inter cut with the collective history of the bandura throughout the ages. Interwoven with contemporary musical performances, the film illustrates the bandurist as bard, as seer, as spiritual emissary for the soul of the Ukrainian people, then and now, in Ukraine and beyond.

Orest Sushko is a member of the Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus, following in the footsteps of his father Makar Sushko, the first Canadian member of the Chorus in 1949 – and grandfather Paul Stepowy, a bandura craftsman and honorary patron of the Chorus. As an Emmy award-winning Re-recording mixer in both film and television, Orest has worked with a broad range of directors from David Cronenberg to Barry Sonnenfeld to Guillermo del Toro – television series including Orphan Black and documentaries from David Suzuki, to The North Face, The Patagonia and Alan Doyle of Great Big Sea.

See http://musicofsurvival.com/ for more information about the film (includes the trailer)

Description

Bio: Thomas Gomart founded and was director of the Russia/NIS Centre of Ifri (Institut francais des relations internationals) from 2004 to 2013. He was Vice-President for Strategic Development of Ifri from September 2010 to March 2015, and was appointed Director of Ifri in April 2015. His academic and professional background has been closely related to post-Soviet space, as Lavoisier Fellow at the Moscow State Institute for International Relations (2001), Visiting Fellow at the EU Institute for Security Studies (2003) and Marie Curie Fellow at Department of War Studies at King’s College (2003-2004). He holds a PHD in History (Paris I – Panthéon La Sorbonne) and an EMBA from HEC Paris.

Description: The year 2014 was defined by the conflict in Ukraine, the emergence of Daesh, and tensions between China and Japan. The next year witnessed the spread of Daesh, the conflict in Yemen, the Greek crisis, revelations about the activity of the National Security Agency (NSA), the migrant crisis, and a ramping-up of terrorist attacks. This proliferation of crises has contributed to a “return” of geopolitics, or, in other words, to power rivalries that may sound the death-knell for the kind of globalization that ignores territorial boundaries.
The presentation focuses on China, Russia and the United States, which together form a strategic triangle of systemic importance for the global world order.

Description

EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström will set out the trade agenda of the EU, the world’s biggest trader, in the wake of an uncertain future for trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the proposed EU-US agreement known as TTIP. Pursuing an ambitious programme of trade deals, the EU will seek to work with major partners such as Canada to “shape globalisation”, with trade policy that is effective, transparent and based on values. The Commissioner will also highlight the benefits of the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) due to take effect soon, which she cites as the most progressive and ambitious ever concluded.

As EU Commissioner for Trade since 1 November 2014, Dr. Malmström is responsible for EU trade policy. She is representing the EU in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and other international trade for a. She is negotiating bilateral trade agreements with key countries around the globe.

As EU Commissioner for Home Affairs 2010-2014, she was responsible for the European Commission’s work within the fields of asylum and migration, police cooperation, border control and the fight against organised crime and human trafficking. Formerly a Member of the European Parliament and Minister for European Affairs of Sweden. As Minister for European Affairs, Malmström was responsible for issues such as the Lisbon Treaty, the EU strategy for growth and employment and the review of the EU budget and for the preparation and co-ordination of the Swedish EU Presidency.

Cecilia Malmström has a Ph.D. in political science and was a researcher at Göteborg University in Sweden for several years, teaching in European politics.

On Twitter: @MalmstromEU. Website: ec.europa.eu/malmstrom

Description

HUMANITARIAN AUTHORITARIANISM: WHY “CAPACITY BUILDING” CAN BACKFIRE

Professor Elizabeth Dunn, Anthropology, Indiana University

Over the last decade, many humanitarian agencies have moved away from the direct provision of services to needy population, and towards what they call “capacity building” for host governments. “Capacity building” involves not only installing bureaucratic routines and dictating policy changes, but also routing millions or even billions of dollars through host governments so that they, not the humanitarian
agencies, can provide services. But where, exactly, does that money
end up? In this paper, I look at what happened in the Republic of Georgia in 2008, when nearly a billion dollars was routed through the government of Mikheil Saakashvili, and trace the link between humanitarian funding and the rise of authoritarianism in the
Saakashvili administration. I compare this to other cases, including
the increasing authoritarianism of the Erdogan government in Turkey.

Description

In this talk, Kristin Ross examines some of the methodological and theoretical problems she confronted while writing Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune in her attempt to construct the seventy-two-day insurrection as a laboratory of political invention.

Kristin Ross is Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University. Her first book, The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune (1988; reissued, Verso, 2008) examined cultural movement during the 1871 insurrection. Her cultural history of the French 1950s, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (1995), won the Laurence Wylie award for French cultural studies and a Critic’s Choice award; it has been published in France under the title Rouler plus vite, laver plus blanc (Flammarion, 2006). May ’68 and Its Afterlives (Chicago, 2002), a study of French memory of the political upheavals of the 1960s, was published in France as Mai 68 et ses vies antérieures (2005; re-issued, Agones, 2010). Her most recent book, Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune (2015) appeared in France from La Fabrique as L’Imaginaire de la Commune.

Description

This presentation discusses the incorporation of Western films into Soviet cities and visual culture during the 1950s and 60s. In this talk, I will compare Soviet dubbing with various translation theories debated in the 1950s; describe how the process altered Western films to create what I call sensory forgery – the amalgam of foreign materiality and Russian language; and explore the implications of the incongruity between speech and image for audience reception.

I am a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union. The enduring concern of my research is how texts, images, objects, and people move across geopolitical and ideological borders. This interest has led me to focus on translation practices and cultural diplomacy in my first book, Western Culture in the Soviet Union, a history of the Soviet opening to the West during the 1950s and 1960s. I am beginning research for a second book, Weary Sun, a history of tango in Russia and the Soviet Union. I teach at the University of Chicago.

Description

Thanos Veremis is Professor Emeritus of Political history at the University of Athens, Department of European and International Studies and Founding Member of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP).

He has been Research Associate, at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London 1978-79; Visiting Scholar, Center for European Studies, Harvard Univ. 1983; Visiting Professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton Univ. 1987; Visiting Fellow, St. Antony’s College, Oxford 1993-94; Constantine Karamanlis Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Medford Massachusetts (2000-2003); and more recently President of the National Council of Education, 2004-2010 .

Description

Conference Program (Day I):

Panel 1: What Was the Revolution in Ukraine?
9:45–11:45 a.m.

“Ukrainians in 1917. Not so Rural and not so Russified”
Stephen Velychenko. Research Fellow, Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Toronto

“‘The Most Unconquerable Stronghold of Our Rightlessness will be Captured:’ Jews between Emancipation, Ukrainization, and Pogroms in 1917”
Mihaly Kalman. Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies, Central European University

“‘Kievlianin’: Cultural Life in Kyiv between the February and October Revolutions of 1917”
Roman Tashlitskyy, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Toronto

Panel 2: Building the Soviet Ukrainian State in the 1920s and 1930s
1:30–3:30 p.m.

“Reconciling the Irreconcilable? Left-Wing Ukrainian Nationalism and the Soviet Regime”
Christopher Gilley, independent scholar, Durham, U.K., and author of The “Change of Signposts” in the Ukrainian Emigration: A Contribution to the History of Sovietophilism in the 1920s

“Chronicling the Jewish Attitude Toward Ukrainian Statehood: Writing and Rewriting Bolshevik History in the 1920s”
Myroslav Shkandrij, Professor, Department of German and Slavic Studies, University of Manitob

THE CONFERENCE CONTINUES ON MARCH 25. PLEASE REGISTER FOR DAY 2 SEPARATELY IF YOU WISH TO ATTEND THE CONFERENCE ON BOTH DAYS

Description

Conference Program (Day II):

Panel 3: Soviet State-Building and Ukrainian Culture
10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.

“What was Soviet and Ukrainian about Soviet Ukrainian Culture?”
Mayhill C. Fowler, Assistant Professor of History, Stetson University

“In Search of Own “Self”: Anticolonial Discourse of Soviet Ukrainian Cinema in the 1920s”
Yana Prymachenko, Researcher, Institute of the History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences

“Rehabilitating a Mythology: The Ukrainian SSR’s Foundational Myth after Stalin”
Markian Dobczansky, Petro Jacyk Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of Toronto

Panel 4: Toward a Consolidated Statehood? The Ukrainian SSR in the 1960s–1980s
1:30–3:30 p.m.

“Corruption and Ideological Subversion: Soviet Ukrainian Political Elites in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the 1970s–80s”
Olga Bertelsen, Research Fellow, Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute

“Making Soviet Ukraine Ukrainian: Ideas of Ukrainian Statehood in the Ukrainian Diaspora of Canada and the USA (1960–80s)”
Simone Attilio Bellezza, Research Fellow, Department of Humanities, University of Trento, and Visiting Scholar, University of Toronto

“Building Socialism, Being a Professional: Everyday Life and Professional Identity in Late Soviet Ukraine”
Oleksandra Gaidai, Senior Research Fellow, Museum of History of Kyiv

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS DAY II OF A 2-DAY CONFERENCE. IF YOU WISH TO ATTEND THE CONFERENCE ON DAY I (MARCH 24) AS WELL, PLEASE REGISTER FOR IT SEPARATELY.

Description

Dr. Taras Kuzio will give a presentation based on his book that will be published in February 2017. The West has woken up to the uncomfortable fact that Russia has long believed it is at war with them the most egregious example of which is Vladimir Putin’s hacking of the US elections. For Western governments, used to believing in the post-Cold War peace dividend, it came as a shock to find the liberal international order is under threat from an aggressive Russia. The ‘End of History – loudly proclaimed in 1991 – has been replaced by the ‘Return of History.’ Putin’s war against Ukraine came three years earlier when he launched an unprovoked war in the Donbas and annexed the Crimea. Putin’s war against Ukraine has killed 20,000 civilians, Ukrainian and Russian soldiers and combatants, forced a third of the population of the Donbas to flee, illegally nationalised Ukrainian state and private entities in the Crimea, destroyed huge areas of the infrastructure and economy of the Donbas, and created a black hole of crime and soft security threats to Europe. Putin’s war against Ukraine is the first book length study of how Russian nationalism, chauvinism, anti-Semitism and crime are driving Putin’s belief that Russians and Ukrainians are ‘one people’ forever united in the Russian World. Written by Taras Kuzio, a leading authority on contemporary Ukraine, Putin’s War Against Ukraine is a product of his long-term expertise in Ukrainian politics, fieldwork in the Russian-speaking eastern and southern Ukraine and his visits to the front lines of the Donbas combat zone. The book debunks the myths surrounding Europe’s biggest crisis since World War II and provides an incisive analysis for policy makers, journalists and scholars as to why Putin is at war with the West and Ukraine.

Taras Kuzio has analysed crime, corruption, politics, and nationalism in the USSR, Ukraine, Russia and Eurasia for over three decades as a journalist, consultant and academic. Educated in the UK, he received a BA in Economics from the University of Sussex, MA in Soviet and Eastern European Studies from the University of London, and Phd in political science from University of Birmingham, UK. He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. Currently a Senior Research Associate at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University. Previously he has held positions as a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, Japan, Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Senior Fellow at the School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins University, Visiting Professor at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University and Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK. Taras Kuzio has been a consultant to different branches of the US government, including team leader on a USAID spring 2015 assessment of democracy, governance and human rights in Ukraine. He has prepared expert testimony in political asylum cases and consultancy on oligarchs, corporate raiding and due diligence for legal and business clients. As a public intellectual he has been a frequent guest on television, radio and print media, including during the Euromaidan, Russian invasion of the Crimea and the Donbas conflict. Over a 3-decade journalistic career he has authored 1, 400 articles on post-communist, Ukrainian and Russian politics and international affairs for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera, Financial Times, UPI (United Press International), New Eastern Europe, and specialist publications by Jane’s Information Group and Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty. His most recent book Ukraine: Democratization, Corruption and the New Russian Imperialism (June 2015) surveys modern Ukrainian political history from 1953 to the present. In 2013-2016, he undertook 15 visits to eastern Ukraine and the Donbas conflict zone to research the book Putin’s War Against Ukraine: Revolution, Nationalism, and Crime (2017). He is the author and editor of an additional 15 books, including Open Ukraine. Changing Course towards a European Future Democratic Revolution in Ukraine (2011), From Kuchmagate to Orange Revolution (2009), Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives on Nationalism (2007) and Ukraine-Crimea-Russia: Triangle of Conflict (2007). Dr. Kuzio has guest edited 12 special issues of academic journals Problems of Post-Communism, East European Politics and Society, Nationalities Papers, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics and Communist and Post-Communist Studies and authored over 100 think tank monographs, book chapters, and scholarly articles.

Description

Zoom to Canada is a film screening event which presents short movies that are made by canadian children and youth alongside with youth from other parts of the world (brought to us by our partner organization: Zoom to Europe and Asian Express). Some of the films were awarded at Berlinale or at the New York film festival

Description

On July 15, 2016, a group of Turkish soldiers, apparently initiating a coup attempt, flew attack helicopters; F16s fighter jets, bombed the parliament building, and drove tanks down the streets of Istanbul and the capital city of Ankara. The subsequent violence caused almost 300 people to lose their lives, and at least two thousand more to suffer physical harm. The upheaval, quickly crushed by governmental forces, granted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan an opportunity to squelch his critics, effectively bolstering his authority. He promptly accused Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen (b. 1941) and his followers of masterminding the plot, and launched a series of oppressive measures against those affiliated with the Gülen Movement, also known as Hizmet (Turkish for “service”). Individuals from a wide range of political allegiances perceived to be in opposition of the government were arrested. Most of those arrested or fired, however, were involved, or affiliated in some way, with Hizmet. In the aftermath, participants found themselves under siege, vulnerable to human rights abuses, in light of Erdoǧan’s three-month suspension of the European Convention of Human Rights. Termed “the purge,” or temizlik(Turkish for cleansing), his AKP government detained 94,889 people, arrested over 47,120, and closed or took over 149 media outlets, and over 2,000 educational institutions were shut down.[1] Erdoǧan also labeled Gülen a traitor, and the movement a terrorist organization, creating the conditions for ordinary participants to experience acute ostracism from those around them, creating rifts between friends and family members. Refugees of the purge spoke of loss of family, friends, occupations, and property, and also of their very identity as Turks or citizens of Turkey. These series of events reflect seismic fault lines in Turkey between sectarian, ethnic, and ideological groups, and ultimately a brutal struggle over the soul of Turkey. The resulting geopolitical outcomes will transform Turkey and the larger region, already destabilized by the war in Syria, PKK militancy, and Russian aggression.
________________________________________
[1] Turkey Purge, as of March 16, 2017,http://turkeypurge.com/.

Dr. Sophia Pandya specializes in women, religion, and globalization. She received her BA from UC Berkeley in Near Eastern Studies/Arabic, and her MA and PhD from UCSB in Religious Studies, with a focus on women and Islam. An Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California at Long Beach, she co-edited the book entitled The Gulen Hizmet Movement and its Transnational Activities: Case Studies of Altruistic Activism in Contemporary Islam.

Description

This year’s French presidential election will have a decisive influence on the future of France and Europe. The outcome could determine whether France remains in the European Union, which is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary. The political parties that have dominated French politics during that period may not make it into the runoff, leaving the final contest between a 39-year-old political newcomer and a right-wing populist. The repercussions of this election for Europe and the world are likely to be far more significant than the Brexit vote last June. The talk will explain how France reached this point, examine the positions of the five leading candidates, and consider the possible outcomes and consequences.

Arthur Goldhammer is a Senior Affiliate at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University. He writes widely on French culture and politics for publications such as The Nation, The American Prospect, Democracy Journal, Foreign Policy, and The Chronicle of Higher Education and serves on the editorial boards of French Politics, Culture and Society, and The Tocqueville Review. He is the author of a novel, Shooting War, and the translator of 125 books from the French, for which he has won numerous awards. He is an Officer of the French Order of Arts and Letters and holds a BS and Ph.D. in mathematics from MIT.

Description

Michal Mochťak, Ph.D. is a Research Fellow at the International Institute of Political Science, Masaryk University and a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at the Department of Political Science, Yale University. His research focuses on the challenges to democracy in Central and Eastern Europe with special emphasis on the conflict potential of elections, modern forms of authoritarian rule and deconsolidation processes. Results of his research on electoral violence and democratization have been published in a variety of international peer-reviewed political science journals (e.g. Terrorism and Political Violence, Democracy and Security, Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies or World Political Science). He has co-authored the publications ‚Challenges to Democracies in East Central Europe‘ and ‚Demokratizace a lidská práva. Středoevropské pohledy‘ (Democratization and Human Rights. The Central European Perspectives). His book ‘Electoral Violence in the Western Balkans. From Voting to Fighting and Back‘ is scheduled to be published in September 2017 by Routledge Press.

Description

An annual event, this conference examines the state of the union in Germany—Europe’s most consequential country—as well as the relationship between Germany and Canada.

The conference features expert panels that this year will examine the 2017 German federal elections, immigration in Germany and Canada, and populism in Europe and North America.

This event will be streamed live beginning at 9 a.m. at https://hosting2.desire2learncapture.com/MUNK/1/Live/403.aspx

Chair: Randall Hansen, University of Toronto

09:00 – 09:15
Welcome – Stephen J. Toope, Munk School of Global Affairs; Eugen Wollfarth, Minister of the Embassy of Germany, Ottawa; Michael Meier, Friedrich Ebert Foundation

09:15 – 10:00 Keynote Speech and Q&A
Dagmar Freitag, Member of the German Bundestag

10:00 – 11:30 Panel and Q&A: The 2017 German Federal Elections

Dagmar Freitag, Member of the German Bundestag
Prof. Eric Langenbacher, Georgetown University
Dr. Michael Petrou, Montreal Institute for Genocide & Human Rights Studies
Moderator: Veit Medick, Der Spiegel, Washington office

11:30 – 11:45 Coffee break

11:45 – 13:15 Panel and Q&A: Immigration in Canada and Germany

Nele Allenberg, Head of the Welcome Center for Immigrants Berlin
Birte Steller, Hamburg Agency for Labour, Social Issues, Family, and Integration
Prof. Jeffrey Reitz, Munk School of Global Affairs
Moderator: Marina Jimenez, Toronto Star

13:15 – 14:00 Lunch

14:00 – 15:30 Panel and Q&A: Populism in Europe and North America

Bob Rae, former Premier of Ontario and Interim Leader, Liberal Party
Prof. Dr. Frank Decker, University of Bonn
Ryan Lenz, Southern Poverty Law Center
Moderator: Joanna Slater, The Globe and Mail

15:30 – 15:45 Closing remarks – Randall Hansen, University of Toronto

This event is co-sponsored by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung; the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies; the Munk School for Global Affairs; the Embassy and Consulates of the Federal Republic of Germany in Canada; and the German Academic Exchange Service

Use #germanTO on Twitter to follow this event

Friedrich Ebert Stiftung @FES_DC

Munk School @CERESMunk @munkschool

German Embassy @GermanyInCanada

Description

Although comparative genocide as the second generation of genocide studies has developed over the past two decades, the Holodomor as a crime of genocide committed by Stalin’s regime has not been examined in comparative perspective. In her presentation, Dr. Myroslava Antonovych will trace the reasons for this situation and will offer a comparative analysis of the Holodomor with examples of genocide in the first half of the XX century–namely, the Armenian genocide of the Ottoman Empire and the Holocaust of Nazi Germany. The speaker will compare the three genocides as crimes under international law in terms of the mental (mens rea) and material (actus reus) elements of genocide that characterize each of them, noting the dissimilarities and similarities in intent, the perspectives of the victims and perpetrators, and the acts perpetrated. The key common element in the genocides perpetrated in the Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Third Reich is that state organization was substituted by hegemony of a ruling party: the Ittihadists, the Communists, and the Nazis. The importance of comparing cases of genocide is evident – if lessons from the past are not heeded and genocide is not punished, history will repeat itself as can be seen in the east and south (Crimea) of Ukraine, where the successor state to the Soviet Union – the Russian Federation – continues an attack on the Ukrainian nation.

Dr. Myroslava Antonovych is the Director of the Centre for International Human Rights and Associate Professor of the Faculty of Law, University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”, Kyiv, Ukraine. In 2010-2014 she was a Judge ad Hoc at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. She graduated from the Faculty of Law, Lviv National University (1995) and from the English Department, Dnipropetrovsk National University in Ukraine (1981) with honors. She has LL.M. degree from McGill University in Montreal, Canada (1999). Her Doctor of Law degree is from the Ukrainian Free University in Munich, Germany (2008) and Candidate of Philology degree is from Kyiv Linguistic University in Ukraine (1988). As a Fulbright scholar she conducted research on International Human Rights at the Urban and Morgan Institute for Human Rights, University of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA (1996). She is the author of about 100 books and articles in Ukraine and abroad. Her research focuses on International Human Rights and Genocide Studies. In April-May 2017, Dr. Antonovych will be the visiting professor at the Petro Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine and the Holodomor Education and Research Consortium