When: Monday, September 25 7:00-9:00 PM
Where: Butler University, Robertson Hall -- Edison Duckwell Recital Hall
Three of Indianapolis's brightest scholars of international relations and Middle East Politics were present in the Middle East as relations between Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon blew up in June and July. In June, Pierre Atlas of Marian College was one of 22 American academics invited to participate in a two-week workshop on the Arab-Israeli conflict sponsored by Tel Aviv University. The group met with Israeli and Palestinian scholars, journalists and activists and traveled throughout Israel, including up to the Lebanese border where they saw Hizbollah flags flying on the other side. Two weeks after his return to the US, the Lebanon conflict erupted.
Just as Pierre was returning, Siobhán McEvoy-Levy of Butler University departed for the region: she arrived in East Jerusalem July 1 and left July 12 ... the day Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and sparked the conflict that raged for weeks. Read about Siobhán's trip here.
Each year Edward Curtis of IUPUI takes a dozen students to Jordan for a five-week, two-course study-abroad program in which students meet government officials, journalists, activists, university professors, Iraqi refugees, Palestinian refugees, and falafel vendors, among others. This year, in addition, he delivered a lecture at the American University of Beirut’s American Studies Center, met with officials at a Roman Catholic university north of the capital, and toured the Lebanese mountains from which some of my relatives hail. He also spent time in Damascus and Aleppo in Syria.
Hear their very different perspectives, and perhaps what we in Indiana and the US can do to help reduce tensions in the region.
Regular readers of IndyBuzz are familiar with the biography of Pierre Atlas: professor of political science at Marian College, founder and director of the Franciscan Center for Global Studies, associate fellow at the Sagamore Institute, columnist for the Indianapolis Star and RealClearPolitics.com, etc.
Siobhán Mcevoy-Levy is (to my surprise) a newcomer to IndyBuzz. Siobhán is a native of Belfast. She received her master’s and PhD degrees from the University of Cambridge (UK) and a BA Honors degree from the Queen’s University, Belfast. She is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana where she teaches courses on Peace and Conflict Studies, US Foreign Policy, Political Communication, and Children and Youth, and where she coordinates an undergraduate minor program in Peace Studies. She is the author of American Exceptionalism and US Foreign Policy. Public Diplomacy at the end of the Cold War (Palgrave 2001). Since 2001 "Siobhán has been researching, writing, and teaching about war-affected children and youth, peace processes, and post-conflict peace building. She has written a number of articles and book chapters on youth and armed conflict; and she is the editor of new book: Troublemakers or Peacemakers? Youth and Post-Accord Peace building (University of Notre Dame Press, November 2005). The research for this book was commissioned by McEvoy-Levy when she was co-director of the Research Initiative on the Resolution of Ethnic Conflict (RIREC) at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, between 2000 and 2003. McEvoy-Levy’s current research projects focus on conflict and post-conflict education, and on the children born as a result of wartime rape and the challenges they present for post-war reconstruction and reconciliation.
Ed Curtis is another newcomer to IndyBuzz. He is Millennium Scholar of the Liberal Arts and Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). He is a scholar of religion, race, and ethnicity; African American religions and history; and Islamic studies. Curtis has authored several books and articles--most recently, Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960-1975.IndyBuzz and Provocate will have more about this event. You can read about a Provocate Inter/View with Pierre about trip to Israel and the Lebanese border. To hear more about Pierre's trip and his recent visit to Cuba, you should attend his talk to the Indiana Council on World Affairs Sept. 20th: “What I did on My Summer Vacation: Reflections on Cuba and Israel.”
Return to Navigating IndyBuzz in September
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