February 22: Listen to Taner Akçam, the Turk who believes in the Armenian Genocide

Taner Akçam, one of Turkey's most historians, comes to the Indianapolis Committee on Foreign Relations's dinner to discuss "The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility"

When: Thursday February 22, 5:45 refreshments; 6:30 dinner; 7:30 presentation
Where: Five Seasons Country Club, 1300 E. 96th St.

Here's the publisher's description of his book, From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide:

The murder of more than one million Armenians by the Ottoman Turkish government in 1915 has been acknowledged as genocide. Yet almost 100 years later, these crimes remain unrecognized by the Turkish state. This book is the first attempt by a Turk to understand the genocide from a perpetrator's, rather than victim's, perspective, and to contextualize the events of 1915 within Turkey's political history and western regional policies. Turkey today is in the midst of a tumultuous transition. It is emerging from its Ottoman legacy and on its way to recognition by the west as a normal nation state. But until it confronts its past and present violations of human rights, it will never be a truly democratic nation. This book explores the sources of the Armenian genocide, how Turks today view it, the meanings of Turkish and Armenian identity, and how the long legacy of western intervention in the region has suppressed reform, rather than promoted democracy.

For a taste of the controversy Akçam inspires, visit his book's page at amazon.com and read the reviews by readers.

To RSVP for this important event contact Courtenay Weldon at Courtenay@cweldon.net.

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January 30: Watch John McCormick and John Clark debate whose power is more super

The Indianapolis Committee on Foreign relations hosts a dinner and debate between IUPUI political scientist John McCormick and IndyBuzzer John Clark over the relative merits of US and European power in the 21st century

When: Tuesday January 30, Reception at 5:45 dinner at 6:30, speaker presentation shortly after 7:30 and ends at 9:00
Where: Woodstock Club 1301 W 38th St, Indianapolis, 46208

This will be an interesting and perhaps even important discussion. Much more will be written about it on IndyBuzz and Provocate.org.

John McCormick is professor and chair of political science at IUPUI, and a British national. He specializes on comparative politics, the EuropeanUnion, and transatlantic relations. He is the author of eleven books, the most recent The European Superpower, which argues that the EU is a new kind ofglobal powerhouse that relies on soft power (economic and diplomatic pressure, encouragement rather than coercion) rather than hard power (mainlymilitary force), giving it a significant advantage over the US in the new globalized international system.

John Clark believes that the US is the most powerful country today and will be into the foreseeable future. Part of this power must be hard. Meaningful solutions to the most urgent problems the world faces will require an America that is strong, self-confident, and wise. The current disasters in Iraq and elsewhere created by the Bush Administration have weakened the ability of DC to impose its will around the world (although there is no compelling reason to think this can't be reversed). More critical is to recognize that the nature of problems in the 21st century are changing in ways that diminish the importance of national (or supranational) governments in places like DC or Brussels.

For RSVPs and more details about this event, contact Courtenay Weldon at courtenay@cweldon.net. More details about the substance is the debate will kick off Provocate.org.

If this event sounds interesting, you should check out some others dealing with contemporary Europe. Prof. Didier Gondola discusses the explosive ethnic conflicts in France (and elsewhere in Europe). Stefan Halper looks at the "silence of the Rational Center" in US foreign policy from the Europe's eyes. In fact, many discussions this spring will examine the disoriented American "empire."

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January 19: Explore the roots of racial confrontation and discontent in France with Didier Gondola

Prof. Didier Gondola of IUPUI helps explain the roots of ethnic identity and conflict in Africa

When: Friday, January 19 4:30 PM
Where: IUPUI Cavanaugh Hall room 508

As part of IUPUI's School of Liberal Arts Sabbatical Speakers Series, Prof. Didier Gondola will give a talk on “Transient Citizenship: The Othering and Indigenization of Blacks and Beurs within the French Republique” Here's Prof. Gondola's description:

Riots in 2005 wreaked havoc in several French banlieues [French suburbs that feel more like inner city slums than US suburbs such as Carmel]. This led some black and beur [second and third generation French who roots are in North Africa and other parts of the former French Empire] civic organizations — including “les Indigènes de la République” — have attributed the anger fueling the riots to the persistence of colonial relations between France and its population of African descent, the so-called français issus de l’immigration (first- and second-generation French) as opposed to Français de souche (“native” French). Needless to say, most French pundits and scholars quickly dismissed such an explanation not only as flawed but dangerous as well, a cipher likely to drive a wedge into French society. Instead, these pundits have turned the table on the rioters by putting forth arguments that range from the breakdown of African families living in France, to polygamy, rap music, and more generally their unwillingness or inability to assimilate as more accurate explanations for their marginalization.

Prof. Didier Gondola is a highly
regarded professor of history at IUPUI. Born the Congo and raised in Paris, Prof. Gondola is the author of The History of the Congo. For more information, contact: Annette Hill, 317-278-1839.

If this event sounds interesting, you should check out a couple of films at the IMA about the African experience elsewhere: from Brazil see "Favela Rising" February 8; from Mexico see "African Blood" February 22. For a sense of why Algerians might not be happy with the French, see the classic film Battle of Algiers March 22.

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January 20: Watch high school brainiacs do battle at the Academic WorldQuest Tournament

Qualifying competition for an Indianapolis high school team of geniuses to represent the city in a national tournament of international knowledge and (let's be honest) trivia

When: Saturday January 20 1:00 PM
Where: Marian College Stokely Mansion 3200 Cold Spring Road

Academic WorldQuest is widely played at the adult and high school levels around the country. It is a team game testing competitors' knowledge of international affairs, geography, history, and culture. You can find out about it here. The World Affairs Councils of America holds a national competition for high schools in DC in April. Last year the Indiana Council on World Affairs sponsored a team from Lawrence North High School ... despite it being their first exposure to the compeition, they did very well. (LNHS: More than just basketball.) This year there will be a competition at Marian College to select the representative to the DC tournament. It will be grueling, check out last year's questions. IndyBuzz has a dream of staging a WorldQuest tournament for all comers in Indianapolis next year, let's check out the competition at Marian College on January 20.

Stretch your brain with questions from last year's Academic WorldQuest. If you plan to attend, please contact Janet Jegen by email or phone (849-2691) so that there will be enough chairs and refreshments for everyone.

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February 1: Join Alice Kaplan in exploring writers' responsibilities and accountability

Award-winning author Alice Kaplan will discuss writers and responsibility, engagement and justice.

When: Thursday February 1, 7:30 PM
Where: Butler University, Jordan Hall 304

Alice Kaplan comes to Butler University as part of the Vivian S. Delbrook Writers Studio. Kaplan is a professor of romance studies, literature and history at Duke University. Her books include The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach, which won The Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History. Most Americans don't know about Robert Brasillach, a writer who was executed after World War II for collaborating with the fascists. Executed for intellectual rather than political crimes, for not for what he did but for what he wrote. Kaplan calls him "the James Dean of French Fascism," although presumably not because of the way he looked.

What makes Kaplan's work on Brasillach as well as other aspects of French literary fascism is not (only) that her father was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II. It is that her time at Yale coincided with the height of fashionability of Yale French professor Paul de Man. After de Man's death in 1983, it was revealed that he had himself written extensively for anti-semitic and pro-fascist newspapers in Belgium during the war.

This should be a very interesting talk. For interviews with Prof. Kaplan, go here and here. The Collaborator is a nicely written piece of history, you can read a chapter here. Here's an article that places Prof. Kaplan's work in a bigger context.

If this event sounds interesting, you should check out some other events that are curiously connected. Kaplan could help more sense of Europe, the emerging superpower in John McCormick's vision of the world (January 30). She also could help illuminate the Great Decisions groups' questions of war crimes and international justice to be discussed February 28 and March 13.

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February 2: Find out what happened to the Balts who went back

IUPUI sociologist Ain Haas ponders the complexities of recently liberated Latvia and Estonia's returning diaspora

When: Friday February 2 4:30 PM
Where: IUPUI, Cavanaugh Hall 508

In this iteration of the IU School of Liberal Arts Sabbatical Speaker Series, “Return Migration to Post-Soviet Estonia and Latvia” IUPUI Professor of Sociology Ain Haas examines the experiences of first-, second-, and third-generation exiles/emigrants of Estonian and Latvian heritage (primarily political refugees and their descendants), who returned to their ancestral lands when the Soviet regime collapsed. The talk is based on personal interviews with some 130 returnees covered their reasons for moving, adjustment to life in the Baltic countries, and comparisons with their old life in the West. It is a topic close to Ain's heart since he himself is of Estonian descent.

It's topic I find fascinating ever since working in the three Baltic countries in the early 1990s. The 2nd and 3rd generation Latvians and Estonians resembled Jews emigrating to Israel in the 1940s more than émigrés returning to the other newly democratic East European countries. They had been born in the US or Canada or Sweden, had attended language classes every weekend, and Latvian camp in Michigan the summer (I don't know if the Estonians had a similar summar camp), and the annual song festivals around the world. They had been inculcated form the time they could talk with a mission: the Soviets are wiping out our people at home, you are the sole hope of preserving our language and culture. So when Latvia and Estonia became independent, it was almost instinctual for a lot of these kids to take their freshly minted BAs from Indiana University to Riga or Tallinn, and to offer generously to run the countries. The Latvians and Estoians who had remained in the homeland during the Soviet occupation received these kids -- filled with naive idealism I think more than opportunism -- with mixed feelings. (And the Russians who'd moved to the Baltic republics during the half century of incorporation in the USSR wanted nothing to do with these often nationalistic outsiders.) Fascinating to watch, very different from the situation at the same time in Lithuania.

Ain Haas is also a member of my favorite local band, "The Hedgehogs," which plays heartrendingly beautiful music from the Baltic countries.

More information can be obtained from: Annette Hill, 317-278-1839

If this event sounds interesting, you should check out others examining crossing of borders. Compare the experiences of returning Balts to the situation of global migration patterns on February 14 and February 27.

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February 21: Join Stefan Halper in searching for the "the Rational Center" in policy discussions

Stefan Halper, influential critic of neo-conservative foreign policy, turns his attention to the debasement of public discourse of media-hungry public intellectuals

When: Wednesday, March 21 Social hour 5:30-6:30; dinner 6:30-7:15; talk 7:15-8:45
Where: The Marten House 1801 West 86th Street Indianapolis 46260

A couple of years ago Stefan Halper came to public notice with America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (written with Jonathan Clarke), a conservative critique of the hijacking of US foreign policy by radical neo-conservatives. Today their argument is well on its way to becoming accepted wisdom among conservatives. In Silence of the Rational Center: Why American Foreign Policy Is Failing, Halper (and Clarke) turn from an ideology to the shrill and sterile DC-centered media and policymaking climate.

Stefan Halper is a Senior Fellow at the Centre of International Studies and a Senior Research Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He directs the Donner Atlantic Studies Programme at the Centre of International Studies and lectures on latter 20th Century US foreign policy, Anglo-American relations, and contemporary international security issues. Stefan Halper holds doctorates from both Oxford and Cambridge. He has served four American presidents in the White House and Department of State and is an expert on U.S. foreign policy, national security policy, the United Nations and Anglo-American relations. Dr. Halper's research interests remain centred on Anglo-American relations, US national security issues and international security matters. Recently he has focused on the nature of the political discourse of the right. and the left, the rise of extremist views and their prevalence in the national political discussion, the rise of anti-Americanism among European elites and the implications for US policy in the decades ahead.

Read this early review of The Silence of the Rational Center, and see this film of Halper and Clarke discussing America Alone.

Prof. Halper will participate in an informal discussion at Sagamore Institute the afternoon of February 21. For more information, contact John Clark at john@sipr.org.

If this event sounds interesting, you should check out other discussions of America's disoriented empire such as the debate over Europe vs US January 30, or Pierre Atlas's discussion of the Middle East on January 24.

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March 9: Learn from the Swedes how to integrate work and family

IUPUI sociologist Linda Haas reports on “Integrating work and family: Social policy, corporate culture, and fatherhood in Sweden” as part of IUPUI School of Liberal Arts Sabbatical Speaker Series

When: Friday March 9 4:30 PM
Where: IUPUI Cavanaugh Hall 508
Sweden is well-known for policies that promote work-family integration and gender equality. One example is government-mandated paid parental leave for fathers and mothers designed to promote a dual-breadwinner model and shared parenting. The purpose of this talk to discuss the extent to which Swedish companies are becoming more or less responsive to fathers’ interest in participation in parental leave and reasons for these trends.

Important topic, the US can surely learn something from the Swedes.

Linda Haas is Professor of Sociology at Indiana University in Indianapolis, where she teaches ourses on gender, family policy, and families and work. Her research interests focus on the links between gender, families, work, and social policy in post-industrialized societies. Her publications include several articles in various academic journals, chapters in 14 books, and the books Equal Parenthood and Social Policy and Organizational Change and Gender Equity (with P. Hwang and G. Russell). You should read one of the most touching tributes I have seen here.

For more information Contact: Annette Hill, 317-278-1839

If this event sounds interesting, you should check out a view of parenting in America on February 16. Prof. Haas's discussion ought to push toward a more concrete consideration of abstract issues of capitalism and the common good raised at Butler February 27.

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April 28: Watch three films that inspired María Magdalena Campos-Pons

Take in one or more of these gems of international cinema selected by artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons for their influence on her work.

When: April 28 11:00 AM;
The Body Films: A One-Day Series
DeBoest Lecture Hall
Free

11:00 am
L’Age d’or (dir. Luis Buňuel, 1930, 60 mins.)
L’Age d’Or was a follow up to Buňuel’s collaboration with Salvador Dali: Un Chien Andalou, a groundbreaking surrealist film that opens with a razor slicing the eyeball of a woman. L’Age d’Or details the sexual and social frustrations of a couple prevented from consummating their love by their families, the Church and society. According to Buňuel, Dali wrote that the film was about “the impossible force that thrusts two people together [and] the impossibility of their ever becoming one.” At the opening of the film in Paris in 1930, fascists led a violent protest of the film’s fetishism and blasphemy. Critic Michael Atkinson called L’Age d’Or “subversive culture's seminal anthem film.”

12:45 pm
Kaidan (dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1964, 125 mins.)
Nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film in 1965, Kaidan is a collection of four different ghost stories, drawn from Japanese folktales. These quasi-horror stories feature a snow witch, a blind musician and a lovelorn samurai. The Kobayashi, a student of Asian art, explores common ground between traditional Japanese visual arts and cinematic expression. The work is a “visually ravishing film that uses dazzling color palettes and carefully composed widescreen photography to bring the viewer into an entirely supernatural world,” writes critic James Kendrick.

3:00 pm
Blow-Up (dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966, 111 mins.)
A detached, aimless London fashion photographer wanders into a park where he photographs what may be a murder. Antonini’s classic thriller was the highest grossing art film of that date, gaining Oscar nominations for screenplay and direction. Blow-Up is a film about illusion, seduction and ennui—a zeitgeist of the swinging sixties—that also toys with the subjectivity of artist, object, and perception.

If this event sounds interesting, you really have to check out the spectacular Indianapolis International Film Festival ... in fact, it's going on during this screening at IMA.

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Visit IndyBuzz's sister site "Views-PRI" for an essay that connects many of the events related to Asian economy and culture: "China, Japan, Indiana: Eastern and Midwestern Cultures Mingle."

April 25- May 4: Make a priority to attend the marvelous Indianapolis International Film Festival

April 25- May 4
Indianapolis International Film Festival