Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
12 pm New York l 6 pm Vienna

The OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts presents a webinar with Coco Fusco, an interdisciplinary artist and writer and a Professor of Art at Cooper Union.

Fusco is the recipient of honors including the American Academy of Arts and Letters Art Award, Latinx Artist Fellowship, Rabkin Prize for Art Criticism, Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fulbright Fellowship. Her performances and videos have been presented in exhibitions including the 56th Venice Biennale, Frieze Special Projects, Basel Unlimited, and two Whitney Biennials. Her artworks are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Walker Art Center, the Centre Pompidou, The Imperial War Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona. Her most recent book is Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba (2015).

This is an online event.
Join via Zoom.

Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
12 PM New York l 6 PM Vienna

CEU's Democracy Institute invites all OSUN members to attend a virtual panel on the geopolitical issues surrounding the upcoming German elections.

Angela Merkel's 16 years as chancellor have come to an end. The chancellor, who will have ruled for 5,787 days on election day (September 26, 2021), is leaving the grand political stage. She is no longer standing for election. This is despite the fact that we can assume she would have led the CDU/CSU again to victory in the elections for a fifth time and herself into the chancellorship. There will be a new government and, in all likelihood, no continuation of the "grand coalition" that has become too small for even a minimal winning coalition.

It is relatively certain that seven parties will again enter the Bundestag. However, the coalition formula will be unclear. There is much to suggest that it will be a three-party coalition. This is a first for Germany and perhaps something like a catch-up normalization of German government formation in Europe. Except for the AFD and also the Left, all four bourgeois parties can form coalitions with each. The strategic game is on.

Our panel will discuss the following issues, among others:
There are big issues like climate, pandemic, migration, foreign policy: why does this not lead to an election campaign between ideological/programmatic camps?
How polarized is the party landscape in Germany?
Are the German people afraid of getting a governmental coalition led by the Greens?
Is the decline of the mainstream parties in Germany continuing?
Has the right-wing-oopulist wave stopped?
Will the political system become more unstable and what does it mean for Europe?
What would a green-left-liberal government mean for foreign relations with the United States, Russia, and China?

Discussants:
Sheri Berman is a professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University
Carsten Q. Schneider is Research Affiliate at CEU Democracy Institute, Professor of Political Science at Central European University (CEU) and MA Program Director of the Department of Political Science
Thomas Poguntke is Professor of Comparative Political Science and Director of the Institute for German and International Party Law and Party Research at the Heinrich Heine University of Dusseldorf, and Speaker of Council at the European Consortium for Political Research
Brigid Laffan is Professor Emeritus at European University Institute, Florence (EUI)

Chair:
Wolfgang Merkel is Senior Research Fellow at CEU Democracy Institute and Professor Emeritus at Berlin Social Science Center (WZB)

Join the Facebook event to follow the livestream on the Institute’s Facebook page. No registration is required.

Online Event  The OSUN Student Leadership Conference is a virtual international event taking place October 9 and 10, 2021, bringing together students who are interested in developing leadership skills and connecting to a global network of students. The conference is open to students from Open Society University Network member campuses. 

The Student Leadership Conference offers seminars, keynotes, workshops and trainings that teach leadership skills, connect students who share interests, explore the range of cultural contexts in which leaders operate, and encourages student-led cross-campus initiatives.Register here

Registration Deadline: September 19, 2021

Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
12 PM New York l 6 PM Vienna

Faculty from the "Propaganda, Disinformation, and Hate Speech" OSUN network collaborative course invite OSUN members to attend a class discussion with Catalina Botero-Marino, UNESCO Chair on Freedom of Expression, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia; former Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights; and current Member of the Facebook Oversight Board.

Botero-Marino will discuss "Social Media Content Moderation and Freedom of Expression."

This event will be simultaneously translated from Spanish to English.

This is an online event. Join via the Zoom link below.

Online Event  8:45 am – 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
8:45 AM – 5 PM Vienna

The Democracy Institute at OSUN partner Central European University invites all OSUN members to attend the inaugural Budapest Forum for Building Sustainable Democracies.

This conference is both in-person at Central European University and virtual.

The conference brings together domestic and foreign experts, journalists, activists, and policymakers, aiming to provide a forum for strategic thinking on the pivotal political, social, economic, and environmental transformations of our era affecting Hungary, the wider region, and the whole world.

The Forum aims to put Budapest squarely back on the region's progressive intellectual map. By bringing thinkers to Budapest formulating innovative, unusual, bold ideas and suggestions the Forum seeks solutions rather then just dwelling on the challenges. This year's edition of the Budapest Forum focuses on cities, local initiatives, and building sustainable democracies.

During the two-day conference, we will cover the following topics:

Democratic sustainability: rebuilding and consolidating democracy in the age of populism;
Social and economic sustainability: addressing inequalities during and after the coronavirus epidemic;
Environmental sustainability: the need for bold policies to accelerate the green transition; and
Technological sustainability: policy responses to rapid technological change and public health challenges.

Speakers include:

Anne Applebaum, Senior Fellow, John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies
Larry Diamond, Professor, Political Science, Stanford University
Vera Jourova, Vice-President of the European Commission for Values ​​and Transparency
Timothy Garton Ash, Professor, Oxford University
Charles Gati, Professor, John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies
Peter Pomerantsev, Senior Fellow, London School of Economics
Opening keynote: Gergely Karacsony, Mayor of Budapest

Mayors and deputy mayors attending the conference in person or virtually include: Amsterdam, Bratislava, Düsseldorf, Warsaw, Prague, Ankara, Košice, Mannheim, Milan, Florence, Barcelona, Podgorica, Strasbourg, Gdańsk, Paris, London, Vienna, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Taipei, Fort Worth, and Los Angeles.

Strategic partners: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Erste Stiftung, Open Society Foundation

Partners: Green European Foundation, National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute, Graphisoft Park

The language of the conference is English, but those who follow the event online will also have access to all panels with simultaneous interpretation in Hungarian.

The program for the Budapest Forum is available here.
Register for the forum here.

Online Event  5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
5 PM New York l 10 PM Vienna

A Virtual Panel and Discussion with Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Kathleen Blee

Although white supremacist movements have received renewed public attention since the 2017 violence in Charlottesville and the attack on the U.S. Capitol, they need to be placed in deeper historical context if they are to be understood and combatted. In particular, the rise of these movements must be linked to the global war on terror after 9/11, which blinded counter-extremism authorities to the increasing threat they posed.

In this panel, two prominent sociologists, Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Kathleen Blee, trace the growth of white supremacist extremism and its expanding reach into cultural and commercial spaces in the U.S. and beyond. They also examine these movements from the perspective of their members’ lived experience. How are people recruited into white supremacist extremism? How do they make sense of their active involvement? And how, in some instances, do they seek to leave? The answers to these questions, Miller-Idriss and Blee suggest, are shaped in part by the gendered and generational relationships that define these movements.
 
Cynthia Miller-Idriss is Professor in the School of Public Affairs and the School of Education at American University, where she directs the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL). 
 
Kathleen Blee is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh.

For more information: contact Jeff Jurgens.
  
This is an online event.Please register here. 

Online Event  8:00 am – 9:00 am EDT/GMT-4
 8 am New York l 2 pm Vienna

This series of monthly workshops on every last Sunday of each month brings student leaders together from across the Open Society University Network to learn from each other’s experiences, reflect on each other's work, gain insight and training, and work together on gathering material helpful for new project leaders. By bringing the effective work of student leaders to light, this series provides them with the necessary assessments, knowledge, abilities, and skills needed to ensure sustainable projects.

The workshop on August 29 covers how to find useful resources to implement your project.

The workshops involved innovative discussions related to project management, recruitment, leadership and sustainability, while strengthening the connection between universities in the network. We will work closely with current student leaders to help them grow their initiatives while assisting new student leaders to lead civic engagement projects. The goal is to offer a step forward for today’s leaders so they can contribute more productively and effectively to their societies.

Find out more about the OSUN Global Engagement Fellows here. Join the session via this Zoom link.

Online Event  11:00 am – 12:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. New York l 5 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. Vienna

OSUN members are invited to attend an event sponsored by Bard's Center for Civic Engagement: author and North Korean refugee Joseph Kim in discussion with Peter Rosenblum, Professor of International Law and Human Rights. The event will be live streamed to an online audience.

Kim is an assistant and expert in residence on the Human Freedom Initiative at the George W. Bush Institute. He was born and raised in North Korea. At the age of 12, his father died of starvation and he was separated from his mother and sister.

In 2006, Joseph escaped North Korea and went to China. In China, he connected with an international NGO called Liberty in North Korea. A year later, he left China for the United States and claimed refugee status under the North Korean Human Rights Act, signed by President George W. Bush in 2004.

In 2013, Joseph delivered a TED Talk on the importance of hope, and published a memoir, "Under the Same Sky". Joseph interned as a research assistant at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Korea Chair. He is a former America Needs You fellow and Council of Korean Americans PSI intern.

In 2019 he received his B.A. in political studies from Bard, and completed his Senior Project titled "Marketization in North Korea is Corrupting the Corrupted."

Link to livestream 

Online Event  1:00 pm – 2:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
A virtual reading group in collaboration between Richard Saltoun Gallery and the Hannah Arendt Center to accompany the gallery's year-long exhibition programme 'On Hannah Arendt'.

Led by Roger Berkowitz, Founder and Director of the Hannah Arendt Center, the next event in the series will discuss Arendt's essay 'The Crisis in Education' from her 1968 publication 'Between Past and Future'. The essay will be introduced by Griselda Pollock, acclaimed author, feminist art historian and academic.

The discussion is held on the occasion of a joint exhibition of the same name featuring work by Eleanor Antin and Siân Davey, on view in London from 3 August until 11 September.

Register Now

By registering for this event, you will be automatically added to our mailing list. Should you wish to opt out, please email [email protected]
 

Online Event  8:00 am – 9:00 am EDT/GMT-4
 8 am New York l 2 pm Vienna

This series of monthly workshops on every last Sunday of each month brings student leaders together from across the Open Society University Network to learn from each other’s experiences, reflect on each other's work, gain insight and training, and work together on gathering material helpful for new project leaders. By bringing the effective work of student leaders to light, this series provides them with the necessary assessments, knowledge, abilities, and skills needed to ensure sustainable projects.

The workshop on July 25 covers how to recruit project team members and volunteers.

The workshops involved innovative discussions related to project management, recruitment, leadership and sustainability, while strengthening the connection between universities in the network. We will work closely with current student leaders to help them grow their initiatives while assisting new student leaders to lead civic engagement projects. The goal is to offer a step forward for today’s leaders so they can contribute more productively and effectively to their societies.

Find out more about the OSUN Global Engagement Fellows here. Join the session via this Zoom link.

Online Event  9:50 am – 10:50 am EDT/GMT-4
9:50 am New York l 3:50 pm Vienna l 4:50 pm Minsk

On July 19, the 80th anniversary of the Minsk Ghetto Massacre, Leonid Levin History Workshop, in cooperation with “SEPT” Theatre and “3 Act” Podcast, will deliver a staged reading of the play Memoria Nominis Clara by Kseniya Shtalenkova, assistant lecturer of philosophy at European Humanities University (Vilnius).

The play takes place in Minsk, in the ravine of the Lower City, later to be known as the “Yama” or "the Pit," the place where 5,000 Jews from the Minsk Ghetto were killed by German soldiers on March 2, 1942. It encompasses memories and dreams of several characters.

The play was written in the “Ready-Made World” Laboratory of the “Art Corporation” Visual and Performing Arts Centre and presented for the first time during “Teart-10” International Theatre Forum in 2020.

The event will be delivered in Russian with a simultaneous translation into English. Audience: 16+

More information about the project by Leonid Levin History Workshop dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Minsk Ghetto and the full program of events can be found here.

This is an online event. Please register via this link.

Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
12 pm New York l 6 pm Vienna

The BardWrites Affinity Group invites all OSUN members to attend a virtual panel on international journalism on Friday, July 16th at 12 PM EST. 

Alumni/ae panelists Emily Schmall '05, South Asia correspondent for The New York Times, Lukas Alpert '99, financial crime reporter for Marketwatch, previously Moscow correspondent and media reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and Michael Deibert '96, author, journalist, and visiting scholar at the Instituto de Ciencias Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa, will discuss their careers in international journalism, moderated by author Maya Gottfried '95. 

The speakers are happy to help you to learn more about international journalism, so bring your questions! This event is sponsored by the BardWrites Affinity Group, the Bard College Alumni/ae Association, and the Career Development Office.

Join via Zoom
 

Online Event  10:30 am – 11:30 am EDT/GMT-4
This summer, OSUN's Economic Democracy Initiative is offering “Democratizing Work after the Pandemic,” an OSUN public speaker series that brings to the OSUN community prominent scholars from a variety of disciplines to interrogate the importance of democratizing work as an economic, geopolitical and civic project in a world that is still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

July 15, 10: 30 AM New York l 4:30 PM Vienna: 
Yeva Nersisyan, Research Associate at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity, Associate Professor of Economics, Franklin and Marshall College.
"Paying for the green new deal"

Please register via this Zoom link.

Online Event  10:30 am – 11:30 am EDT/GMT-4
This summer, OSUN's Economic Democracy Initiative is offering “Democratizing Work after the Pandemic,” an OSUN public speaker series that brings to the OSUN community prominent scholars from a variety of disciplines to interrogate the importance of democratizing work as an economic, geopolitical and civic project in a world that is still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

July 13, 10: 30 AM New York l 4:30 PM Vienna: 
Noel Healy, Associate Professor, Geography and Sustainability, Salem State University, IPCC contributing author, observer to the 2015 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks in Bonn and at the UNFCCC COP21 Paris talks.
"A just transition for whom? The contested politics of global decarbonization"

Please register via this Zoom link.

Online Event  10:30 am – 11:30 am EDT/GMT-4
This summer, OSUN's Economic Democracy Initiative is offering “Democratizing Work after the Pandemic,” an OSUN public speaker series that brings to the OSUN community prominent scholars from a variety of disciplines to interrogate the importance of democratizing work as an economic, geopolitical and civic project in a world that is still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

July 12, 10: 30 AM New York l 4:30 PM Vienna: 
Sonalde Desai, joint appointment at National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi, as Professor and Director of National Data Innovation Centre, a collaborative enterprise between NCAER, University of Maryland, and the University of Michigan, with support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 
"India's rural employment guarantee: household welfare and rural transformation"

Please register via this Zoom link.

Online Event  10:00 am – 11:30 am EDT/GMT-4
10 AM New York l 5 PM Nairobi l 4 PM Vienna

In a world where young people thrive through education, only 3% of refugee youth have access to higher education compared to 37% among non-refugee youth.

This webinar, presented by the OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives and the UNHCR, will highlight some of the unique barriers refugee youth face in accessing higher education, as well as ways in which global youth can mobilize in supporting refugee access to higher education opportunities.

OSUN co-chairs the UNHCR-founded Global Taskforce for Complementary Education Pathways.


Speakers include: 

Introduction
Rebecca Granato, Director, OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives and Associate Vice President for Global Initiatives, Bard College
 
Remarks
Arash Bordbar, Associate Education Officer, UNHCR

Representatives from the Tertiary Refugee Students Network

Miriam Cing and Olivia Issa, Co-chairs, Student Voices for Refugees

Speakers to be followed by discussion and Q&A.
 Join the webinar via Zoom.

Online Event  10:30 am – 11:30 am EDT/GMT-4
10: 30 AM New York l 4:30 PM Vienna

This summer, OSUN's Economic Democracy Initiative is offering “Democratizing Work after the Pandemic,” an OSUN public speaker series that brings to the OSUN community prominent scholars from a variety of disciplines to interrogate the importance of democratizing work as an economic, geopolitical and civic project in a world that is still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

On July 1, Lisa Herzog, Professor of Political Philosophy, University of Groningen, and author of Inventing the Market: Smith, Hegel, and Political Theory (Oxford University Press, 2013) will speak about "Workplace democracy and epistemic justice."

Please register via the Zoom link.

Online Event  5:00 am – 6:00 am EDT/GMT-4
5 am New York l 11 am Vienna l 12 pm Nairobi

Access to appropriate and relevant academic and skill-building resources for refugees has always been a challenge. The COVID19 pandemic only made the situation worse for refugees and refugee-focused organizations as it created barriers in their operations, rendering in-person workshops and trainings impossible.

Nonprofit organizations, program teams, and refugee-led organizations that focus on supporting refugees in their training, skill-development, and livelihoods are all invited to attend this expert talk with M-Shule, the Xavier Project and Open Society University Network, who will discuss their efforts to ensure that refugees access their basic human rights to education and to build their knowledge, skills, and livelihoods.


Panelists: 

Edmund Page, Founder and CEO, Xavier Project
Rebecca Granato, Associate Vice President for Global Initiatives, Bard College and Director, OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives 
Phoebe Khagame, Head of Operations, M-Shule
 Register for this event

Online Event  10:30 am – 11:30 am EDT/GMT-4
This summer, OSUN's Economic Democracy Initiative is offering “Democratizing Work after the Pandemic,” an OSUN public speaker series that brings to the OSUN community prominent scholars from a variety of disciplines to interrogate the importance of democratizing work as an economic, geopolitical and civic project in a world that is still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

June 29, 10: 30 AM New York l 4:30 PM Vienna
Daniel Kostzer, Former Director, Research and Macroeconomic Coordination, Ministry of Labor, Argentina; Advisor, National Lower Chamber, Argentina. Consultant to the ILO, World Bank, and UNDP, on:
"Reflecting on the minimum wage 120 years later and its role in democratizing work"

Please register via this Zoom link.

Online Event  8:00 am – 11:15 am EDT/GMT-4
Thursday, June 29th and Friday, June 30th
2 pm - 5:15 pm Vienna l 8 am - 11: 15 New York

The 1st EuroScience Policy Forum takes place online on June 29th and June 30th. OSUN members, faculty, students are warmly welcomed to register for free and take part in conference sessions. OSUN members are strongly encouraged to attend the session on Funding, Freedom, and Frameworks, featuring Liviu Matei, OSUN Vice Chancellor and CEU Provost, and co-organized by CEU, University of Vienna and the Vienna Science and Technology Fund.

To be sustainable, academia must adapt to changing societal demands, but without losing its heart and soul.  The 1st EuroScience Policy Forum on Sustainable Academia will examine whether the future can offer the necessary diversity of knowledge creation and dissemination, while continuing to provide a sufficiently stimulating work environment for its teachers and researchers and ensuring the resources required to respond to the challenges of tomorrow. Today’s modern societies largely benefit from the knowledge and innovation created decades ago in a context of more open funding, less tightly structured research environments and a less intense focus on immediate impact. 

The 1st EuroScience Policy Forum, with its four partners EuroScience, The Stockholm Trio University Alliance, The Wellcome Trust, and the University of Vienna together with the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF) will discuss the effects of changing societal expectations on academic institutions and identify potential new pathways to a more sustainable academia in the future. 

Participation is free but registration is required.

Online Event  10:30 am – 12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
This summer, OSUN's Economic Democracy Initiative (EDI) is offering “Democratizing Work after the Pandemic,” an OSUN Course and public speaker series that brings to the OSUN community prominent scholars from a variety of disciplines to interrogate the importance of democratizing work as an economic, geopolitical and civic project in a world that is still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“The pandemic exposed fundamental and deeply rooted inequities in the labor market and society at large” says Pavlina R. Tcherneva, OSUN-EDI Founding Director and Associate Professor of Economics at Bard College. “Workers who kept the world’s economies going and sustained our lives and livelihoods were hailed as ‘essential’ and ‘indispensable’ but lacked the very basic protections, decent wages, and minimum necessary benefits required to sustain their own lives and livelihoods” she added. 

This course and public series of talks rethinks and reimagines work as a democratic project in the post-pandemic world. Working people are not simply "resources"--that was a central lesson of the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. "Democratizing Work" examines why economic well-being and economic security cannot be governed by market forces alone. It evaluates how and why existing economic structures exacerbate rampant inequalities, erode the very foundations of economic stability, and threaten the lives of the most vulnerable.

Confirmed speakers include:

June 22, 9:30 AM New York l 3:30 PM Vienna
Isabelle Ferreras, Professor, University of Louvain; tenured fellow of the Belgian National Science Foundation (F.N.R.S., Brussels) Senior Research Associate, Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.
"Democratizing work. What, how, and why?"

June 24, 10:30 AM New York l 4:30 PM Vienna
Mario Seccareccia, Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa; 2021 Galbraith Prize in Economics.
"Reclaiming full employment policy"

June 28, 10: 30 AM New York l 4:30 PM Vienna: 
Maikel Lieuw-Kie-Song, Senior Employment Intensive Specialist, International Labor Organization (ILO). Former Chief Director, EPWP Unit, Department of Public Works, South Africa.
"Employment is too important to leave to markets alone. The Case of South Africa"

June 29, 10: 30 AM New York l 4:30 PM Vienna: 
Daniel Kostzer, Former Director, Research and Macroeconomic Coordination, Ministry of Labor, Argentina; Advisor, National Lower Chamber, Argentina. Consultant to the ILO, World Bank, and UNDP.
"Reflecting on the minimum wage 120 years later and its role in democratizing work"

July 1, 10: 30 AM New York l 4:30 PM Vienna: 
Lisa Herzog, Professor of Political Philosophy, University of Groningen. Author of Inventing the Market: Smith, Hegel, and Political Theory (Oxford University Press, 2013).
"Workplace democracy and epistemic justice"

July 12, 10: 30 AM New York l 4:30 PM Vienna: 
Sonalde Desai, joint appointment at National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi, as Professor and Director of National Data Innovation Centre, a collaborative enterprise between NCAER, University of Maryland, and the University of Michigan, with support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 
"India's rural employment guarantee: household welfare and rural transformation"

July 13, 10: 30 AM New York l 4:30 PM Vienna: 
Noel Healy, Associate Professor, Geography and Sustainability, Salem State University, IPCC contributing author, observer to the 2015 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks in Bonn and at the UNFCCC COP21 Paris talks.
"A just transition for whom? The contested politics of global decarbonization"

July 15, 10: 30 AM New York l 4:30 PM Vienna: 
Yeva Nersisyan, Research Associate at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity, Associate Professor of Economics, Franklin and Marshall College.
"Paying for the green new deal"


Please register for the public sessions via this Zoom link. 

Online Event  5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
5 PM New York l 11 PM Vienna

Bard College's Center for Civic Engagement, President's Office, and Alumni Affairs, along with the OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives present a talk with Bard Alum Phuc Tran in celebration of World Refugee Day.

Phuc Tran, who migrated with his family from Vietnam in 1975, has been a high school Latin teacher for more than twenty years while simultaneously establishing himself as a highly sought-after tattooer in the Northeast. Tran graduated Bard College in 1995 with a BA in Classics and received the Callanan Classics Prize. He taught Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit in New York at the Collegiate School and was an instructor at Brooklyn College’s Summer Latin Institute. Most recently, he taught Latin, Greek, and German at the Waynflete School in Portland, Maine.

Tran's 2012 TEDx talk “Grammar, Identity, and the Dark Side of the Subjunctive” was featured on NPR’s Ted Radio Hour. His acclaimed memoir, SIGH, GONE: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and The Fight To Fit In, received the 2020 New England Book Award for Nonfiction.  He tattoos and lives with his family in Portland, Maine.

This special event will be moderated by James Romm, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics; Director, Classical Studies Program

Join via Zoom link.
 

Online Event  11:00 am – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
11 AM New York l 5 PM Vienna

OSUN, CEU, the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, and the Institute for Human Sciences welcome network members to a Yehuda Elkana Memorial Event, part of the Yehuda Elkana Fellowship Lecture and Workshop 2021.




Welcome and introduction by Roger Berkowitz, Founder and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, Bard College

Excerpts from the film “Yehuda”

“Yiddish protest songs – past and present” performed by Isabel Frey

Reflections by Helga Nowotny, Professor Emerita of Science and Technology Studies, ETH Zurich and Liviu Matei, Vice Chancellor, OSUN and Director, Yehuda Elkana Center, CEU 

Lecture by Helga Nowotny
"In AI We Trust. Power, illusion and control of predictive algorithms"

Q&A

Helga Nowotny is one of the most prominent scholars in science studies worldwide, an area that counted Yehuda Elkana as one of its pioneers and promoters. For several decades she has been one of the most influential institution builders in European higher education and research. At times, she partnered with Yehuda Elkana in daring new academic and institutional endeavors.

Throughout her long and distinguished academic career at institutions in the US, Europe and Asia, Nowotny has embraced and helped establish an interdisciplinary and engaged approach to the study of science, combining perspectives from the humanities, social and natural sciences - in particular from law, sociology, anthropology, history, and philosophy of science, mathematics and cognitive science - in order to be able to better situate scientific expertise, practice and impact in context. Her highly consequential research and publications focus on matters such as dealing with technological risks, coping with uncertainty, time and social theory, organization of science, gender relations in science and “the place of people in our knowledge." She has launched or helped establish influential new concepts or theories, such as “Mode 2” of scientific research.

Register for the event here. 

A collaboration with the Richard Saltoun Gallery
Online Event  1:00 pm – 3:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
A virtual reading group in collaboration between Richard Saltoun Gallery and the Hannah Arendt Center to accompany the gallery's year-long exhibition programme 'On Hannah Arendt'.

Led by Roger Berkowitz, Founder and Director of the Hannah Arendt Center, the third event in the series will discuss Arendt's essay 'The Concept of History' from her 1968 publication 'Between Past and Future'.

Register Now

A special introduction to the chapter will be presented by Judith Butler, acclaimed philosopher, gender theorist, and Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Berkeley California.

The discussion is held on the occasion of Israeli artist BRACHA's solo exhibition inspired by the essay, on view in London from 15 June until 24 July 201.

For more information: https://www.richardsaltoun.com/exhibitions/89-on-hannah-arendt-what-is-freedom-bracha/overview/

*Please note: By registering to attend, you will automatically be added to the gallery's newsletter to receive news of upcoming exhibitions in the programme. Please contact [email protected] to opt out.

Online Event  1:00 pm – 2:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
OSUN and Central European University's Democracy Institute welcome members to attend an event co-organized by CEU and its journal, the Review of Democracy--a conversation on democracy, populism and polarization with Lieutenant Governor of California Eleni Kounalakis, Former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary, and Michael Ignatieff, President and Rector of CEU.

Ambassador Eleni Kounalakis (ret.) is Lieutenant Governor of California. She was sworn in as the 50th Lieutenant Governor of California by Governor Gavin Newsom on January 7th, 2019. She is the first woman elected Lt. Governor of California. From 2010 to 2013, Lt. Governor Kounalakis served as President Barack Obama’s Ambassador to the Republic of Hungary. Following her posting to Budapest, Governor Jerry Brown appointed her to chair the California Advisory Council for International Trade and Investment in 2014. She was a Virtual Fellow at the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence and Research between 2014 and 2017, specializing in international trade and immigration, and is currently a director of the Association of American Ambassadors and a National Democratic Institute “Ambassadors Circle” advisor.

Michael Ignatieff is President and Rector of CEU. He was elected President and Rector in 2016. Previously he served as Edward R. Murrow Chair of Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. An international commentator on contemporary issues of democracy, human rights, and governance and a Canadian citizen, Ignatieff is also an award-winning writer, teacher, former politician, and historian with a deep knowledge of Central and Eastern Europe.

The discussion will be streamed live on the Institute’s Facebook page; join the Facebook event page to follow.

Online Event  11:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
11 AM New York l 5 pm Vienna

CHRA  is proud to present a new digital commission featuring a Q&A with artist Sethembile Msezane and writer Dr. Portia Malatjie, moderated by Panashe Chigumadzi, and hosted by the Wits School of Arts.

Sethembile Msezane’s work is centred on commemorative practices. Motivated by African spiritual and Indigenous knowledge systems, Msezane engages with performance, photography, installation, and video to shine a light on invisibilized Black women throughout history. She is known to facilitate transgenerational conversations and gatherings with Black women to highlight their unacknowledged contributions in politics, revolutions, and quotidian Black life. Through artistic intervention, Msezane makes visible lost histories, illuminating the path for possible present and future engagement. 

In the newly commissioned Dwala Lam’ – which translates to “my rock” in Msezane’s native isiZulu – the artist continues many of the motifs introduced in her previous work. She focuses specifically on the notion of remembrance, not of forgotten people and histories, but of the propagative capacity for self-affirmation and self-healing. She deploys movement, song, vocalities and geology, to speak to an ever-present companionship (with one’s ancestors), to the things that ground us, to history and memory, and to the prominence of the ones after whom we have been named. 

Sethembile Msezane was born in 1991 in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. She has an MFA from the Michaelis School of Fine Art. Through performance, photography, film, sculpture and drawing, Msezane creates work heavy with spiritual and political symbolism, exploring issues around spirituality, commemoration, dreams, ancestry, and African knowledge systems. Her work also examines the mythmaking used to construct history, calling attention to the absence of the Black female body in both the narratives and physical spaces of historical commemoration. 

Dr. Portia Malatjie is a Senior Lecturer in Visual Cultures at the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Art. She is Adjunct Curator of Africa and African Diaspora at Tate Modern, London and Adjunct Curator at Norval Foundation, Cape Town. She holds a PhD in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths University of London. Her research investigates African conceptions of Blackness through Black Feminism, as well as African sonic and spiritual praxes. Malatjie has lectured at Goldsmiths University of London, Rhodes University and Stellenbosch University. 

Panashe Chigumadzi is the author These Bones Will Rise Again  (2018), a historical memoir reflecting on Robert Mugabe's military ouster through the spirits of anti-colonial heroine Mbuya Nehanda and her grandmother Mbuya Chigumadzi, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Alan Paton Prize for Non-fiction. A columnist for The New York Times, and contributing editor of the Johannesburg Review of Books, her work has been featured in The Guardian, Chimurenga, Africa is A Country, Boston Review, Transition, Washington Post and Die Ziet. Chigumadzi is a doctoral candidate in Harvard University’s Departments of African and African American Studies and History.

Join via Zoom.

Online Event  8:00 am – 9:30 am EDT/GMT-4
8 am New York l 2 pm Vienna

The European Court of Justice is behind a recent and genuine enhancement of European constitutionalism, placing the rule of law, a long-established value and principle of EU law, center stage. This rule of law-enhancing process of rearticulation of EU constitutionalism is ongoing and represents the Court of Justice’s incrementalist response to the process of rule of law backsliding which first emerged in Hungary before spreading to Poland.

OSUN and CEU's Democracy Institute welcome network members to a public seminar aiming to present and critically analyze this judicial response on a case-by-case basis,  taking the Court’s judgment in Case C-64/16, ASJP (Portuguese Judges) as a departure point and its judgment in Case C-896/19, Repubblika (Maltese Judges) as a provisional end point.

Coorganized with Re:consitution, the first public event of CEU Democracy Institute’s Rule of Law Working Group will allow key DI experts engaged with the case-law to outline the bigger picture, while focusing on crucial details.

Speakers: 
Barbara Grabowska-Moroz, Research Fellow, CEU Democracy Institute
Dimitry Vladimirovich Kochenov, Lead Researcher of the Rule of Law Workgroup, CEU Democracy Institute
Laurent Pech, Senior Research Fellow, CEU Democracy Institute

Moderator:
Petra Bárd, Researcher, CEU Legal Studies

The discussion will be streamed live on the Institute’s Facebook page. 

Online Event  11:30 am – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
11:30 AM New York l 5:30 PM Vienna

OSUN's Center for Human Rights and the Arts presents the world premiere of its third digital commission, featuring a Q&A with artist Emilio Rojas and writer Pamela Sneed, hosted by Dr. Sanjay Kumar (Central European University).

Hands to Hold is centered on two durational performances devised by Emilio Rojas. For a 6.5-hour performance, the artist drank a 1.5 gallons of sap from a 250-year-old sugar maple in the Hudson Valley. This action took place in the ancestral homelands of the Munsee and Muhheaconneok people where Rojas resides. 1.5 gallons is the amount of blood flowing through our bodies at all times. This durational performance embodies a transfusion of fluids, the blood of the tree, into the artist’s bloodstream. In the second performance, Rojas created casts of his hands, made soap molds, and performed the ritual of ablution for 8 hours.

In this collaboration between Rojas and poet Pamela Sneed, the artists recognize the labor of artists and Black and Brown people during this past year of pandemic. It is an attempt to send a blessing to all those hands that by holding on, have held us through. Hands to Hold is a journey of gratitude and acknowledgement, a litany to the pandemics (AIDS and COVID-19) and the waves of mourning around us. It is an attempt to memorialize the intersections of our relationships to this land and the systems of oppression that we’ve inherited.

Emilio Rojas is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily with the body in performance, using video, photography, installation, public interventions and sculpture. As a queer Latinx immigrant with indigenous heritage, he engages in the postcolonial ethical imperative to uncover, investigate, and make visible and audible undervalued or disparaged sites of knowledge, narratives, and individuals. He utilizes his body in a political and critical way, as an instrument to unearth removed traumas, embodied forms of decolonization, migration and poetics of space.
 
Pamela Sneed is a poet, writer, performer and visual artist, author of Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom than Slavery, KONG and Other Works, Sweet Dreams, and two chaplets, Gift by Belladonna and Black Panther. In 2020, she was the commencement speaker for the low-res MFA program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she has been faculty in the program teaching Human Rights and Writing Art for the past five years. Sneed also teaches new genres in Columbia University’s School of the Arts.

Join via Zoom.

Online Event  3:00 pm – 4:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
3 pm NY l 9 pm Vienna

Bard Center for the Study of Hate presents a virtual discussion with Rabbi Tamar Malino and human rights leader Tony Stewart on community responses to antisemitic attacks.

BCSH welcomes Rabbi Tamar Malino, who leads the largest synagogue in Spokane, Washington, whose building and a Holocaust memorial were recently defaced by swastikas. She will be interviewed about the attack and the community’s response (during a time of Covid restrictions) by Tony Stewart, a longtime leader of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations. The Task Force was founded 40 years ago in Idaho in response to the victimization of a Jewish restaurant owner and a biracial family in that state. 
  Register for the webinar here.

 

Online Event  8:00 am – 9:30 am EDT/GMT-4
8 am New York l 2 pm Vienna

The Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory at the University of Belgrade welcomes all OSUN members to attend a virtual talk with Siran Hovhannisyan of Yerevan State University, who will elaborate on the public mis/understanding of the concept of "diversity" in Armenia, which also has a strong impact on how "gender" came to be defined in gender studies and feminist research. Anti-gender movements portray gender researchers and activists as anti-national, thus restricting not only the scope of the research itself, but also disabling public discussions on these issues.  

This is an online event.
Join via Zoom.   

Online Event  8:00 am – 9:00 am EDT/GMT-4
8 am New York l 2 pm Vienna

OSUN is offering a new round of summer courses for students from across the network. Nineteen online courses will be offered during June and July of 2021, giving students the opportunity to receive credit and participate as if they were enrolled at the member institution where the course originates. Deadline to enroll is May 23. 

Enrollees are encouraged to attend the OSUN Summer Course Orientation Info Session on Tuesday,
June, at 8 am New York time l 1 pm Vienna. This Zoom session will be recorded.

Join via Zoom.

Learn all about Summer Courses here.

Online Event  8:00 am – 9:30 am EDT/GMT-4
8 am New York l 2 pm Vienna

The world’s attention must remain on Myanmar, where I’ve been appalled by heartbreaking violence against civilians and inspired by the nationwide movement that represents the voice of the people. The military’s illegitimate and brutal effort to impose its will after a decade of greater freedoms will clearly never be accepted by the people and should not be accepted by the wider world.  —Former U.S. President Barack Obama 

OSUN and CEU's Democracy Institute invite network members to a discussion considering whether there is still a chance to return to a democratic path in Myanmar after 75 years of turbulent civil wars. Will the newly formed National Unity Government gain international support and thus stop the bloodshed or is local grassroots activism the only key to a democratic turn?

Speakers:
Laura Faludi, International Peace Worker at KURVE Wustrow Bildungs
David Scott Mathieson, Independent Analyst
Wai Wai Nu, Executive Director, Women's Peace Network

Moderator:
Liviu Matei, Provost of Central European University and Vice Chancellor of the Open Society University Network

The discussion will be streamed live on the Institute’s Facebook page. Please join the Facebook event to attend.

Online Event  9:00 am – 10:00 am EDT/GMT-4
This workshop is designed to assist you in developing the needed skills as student leaders or students learning to lead civic engagement projects to ensure project progress and sustainability. We will also have different activities and fun energizers in this workshop!

Join via Zoom
ID: 938 1212 3289

Online Event  9:00 am – 11:00 am EDT/GMT-4
9 am New York l 3 pm Vienna

OSUN warmly welcomes all who are interested to a special roundtable discussion that brings together university leaders from four continents, representing our network of over forty teaching institutions dedicated to building a new model of global higher education and to improving student access.

Participants will discuss the need to rethink traditional approaches to higher education and expanded access in view of the lessons learned from the COVID-19 crisis. We will explore the emerging means of internationalization and access as experienced by OSUN network institutions and the possibilities of bringing the positive aspects of new experiences to bear on institutional strategies, addressing the following questions: Is there a new model of higher education emerging as a result of the COVID pandemic? How is this new model impacting international cooperation (student mobility, faculty exchange, research cooperation)? Will the residential model prevail, or will blended/hybrid teaching and learning become the “new normal”? Panelists:
Angela Owusu Ansah (Provost, Ashesi University, Ghana)   
Raquel Bernal (Academic Vice Chancellor, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia)
Erica Kaufman (Director, Institute for Writing and Thinking and Center for Liberal Arts and Sciences Pedagogy, Bard College, United States) 
Sabina Faiz Rashid (Dean, James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University, Bangladesh)  
Vanessa Scherrer (Vice President for International Affairs, Science Po, France) 

Moderators:
Jonathan Becker (Executive Vice President, Bard College) 
Liviu Matei (Provost, Central European University, Austria) 

The event is open to all OSUN members. To attend, please register here.
 

Online Event  9:30 am – 11:00 am EDT/GMT-4
9:30 am New York l 3:30 pm Vienna

Join via ZoomModerated by Danyah Jaber, Al-Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences
Panelists: Leen Hosh, Environmental Damage caused by Israeli Illegal Settlements: Case Study of Salfit, Al-Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences (Palestine) Mira Dzhakshylykova, Water Resource Management and Transboundary Water Risks in Central Asia: A Case Study of Uzbekistan in Dealing with Kyrgyzstan, American University of Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan) Cole Peterson, Marsh Ado About Nothing: Political Economy of Connecticut’s Salt Marshes from 1620-1770, Bard College at Simon's Rock (United States) Mikaela Martiros, Optimizing Green Infrastructure: Designing, Managing, and Evaluating Green Infrastructure to Receive Social, Economic, and Ecological Benefits, Bard College Annandale (United States)

Online Event  8:00 am – 9:30 am EDT/GMT-4
8:00 am New York l 2:00 pm Vienna

Join via ZoomModerated by Felix Diaz, American University of BulgariaPanelists: Jahin Kaiissar, The Intersection of Trauma and Queerness in Pajtim Statovci’s Crossing, BRAC University (Bangladesh) Dalia Alayassa, The Criminalization of Black Bodies in the U.S, Al-Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences (Palestine) Diana Taranova, Mental Health of LGBTQ Women in Heteronormative Societies, American University of Bulgaria Altynai Esenalieva, How do Kyrgyz Feminists Perceive their Cultural Identity?, American University of Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan) Rachel Braver, Speaking Silence: The Enactment of Politics in Refugee Protest, Bard College Annandale (United States)

Online Event  9:30 am – 11:00 am EDT/GMT-4
9:30 am New York l 3:30 pm Vienna

Join via ZoomModerated by Kerry Bystrom, Bard College Berlin
Panelists: James Kim, The Myth of Immigrant America and the Federalization of Immigration Control, Bard Prison Initiative (United States) Katsiaryna Pushkarova, Personal Data Protection under the EU law: Special Categories of Data, European Humanities University (Lithuania) Konashava Viktoryia, International Legal Standards for Combating Domestic Violence against Women and their Implementation in the Republic of Belarus and the Republic of Lithuania, European Humanities University (Lithuania) Shadin Nassar, The Geographical and Spatial Transition of Arab Palestinian Land to Jewish-Israeli National Land, Al-Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences (Palestine) Jijun Emily Chen, No One Cares: African Migrants Live in Cultural Discrimination. Misrepresentation of Blacks in China, American University of Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan) Oceanne Fry, Corrupted Credibility and Asylum on the Systematically Overwhelmed Aegean Hotspots, Bard College Berlin (Germany)

Online Event  8:00 am – 9:30 am EDT/GMT-4
8:00 am New York l 2:00 pm Vienna

Join via ZoomModerated by Daniel Terris, Al-Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences
Panelists: Shaheda Mujaddedi, The Threat of Islamic Extremism in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan from a Comparative Perspective, American University of Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan) Ramez Hayek, Terrorism as a Political Apparatus: A Case Study on the US Abuse of 9/11 Counter Terrorism Measures and Their Infringement on Human Rights, Al-Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences (Palestine) April Albano, Digging up Althusser: on Ideology and Institutions, Bard College at Simon's Rock (United States) Sadia Saba, Pleasure, Politics, and Patriarchy: Women’s Intimacy in an Authoritarian Egypt, Bard College Annandale (United States)

Online Event  11:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Monday, May 24th
11am NYC / 5pm Berlin / 6pm JerusalemThe OSUN Center for Human Rights & the Arts, the Human Rights Project, and Middle Eastern Studies at Bard College are pleased to co-present the following panel:

Featured Speakers: Ms. Rana Hajjaj, Program Manager for Al-Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences Professor Saida Hamad, Head of Media Studies Program, Al-Quds Bard College for Arts and Sciences Professor Munir Nusseibeh, Assistant Professor in Faculty of Law, Al-Quds UniversityModerated by Ziad Abu-Rish, Director of the MA Program in Human Rights and the Arts at Bard CollegeJoin via Zoom link

Online Event  9:30 am – 11:00 am EDT/GMT-4
9:30 am New York l 3:30 pm Vienna

Join via ZoomModerated by Dumaine Williams, Bard College
Panelists: Bagdad Ahmed, ART Therapy in Bangladesh Before, Amid, and Now through the Pandemic, BRAC University (Bangladesh) Zain Ateek, The Legal Paradox of Female Genital Cutting in Egypt, Al-Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences (Palestine) Asel Osmongazieva, The Excluded: Tuberculosis and All its Forms We Don’t Know About, American University of Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan) Kairo Baylor, pH Responsive Nanoparticles for Targeted Cancer Treatment, Bard College at Simon's Rock (United States) Pamela Anang, A Web-Based Remote Medical Assistant for the Mobility Impaired and Aged in Accra – Rhema Rapha Medical Center, Ashesi University (Ghana)

Online Event  8:00 am – 9:30 am EDT/GMT-4
8:00 am New York l 2:00 pm Vienna

Join via ZoomModerated by Dr. Mahruba Mowtushi, BRAC University

Panelists: Puja Sarkar, The Incongruities of Existence: An Exhibit' that incorporated painting, collage, fiction and critical analysis on the topic of 'Utopia/dystopia' in Art and Literature, BRAC University (Bangladesh) Tala Salem, Six passengers / ست ركاب, Al-Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences (Palestine) Hilary Anne Yarger, Emptiness: The Interpretation of Ma 間, Mu 無, and Ensō 円相 in Japanese Aesthetics, Bard College at Simon's Rock (United States) Maria Jose Sarmiento, Reclaiming the spectacle: A performance studies approach to feminist demonstrations in Mexico City, Bard College Berlin (Germany) Tarannum Mahmud, Of Spiritual and Natural: Revitalizing Natural and Religious Tourism through Architecture and Landscape, BRAC University (Bangladesh)

Online Event  Join us as students from across the Open Society University Network share their senior projects in a series of panels! For more details, including Zoom joining info, see below.

5/24 Arts and Society
5/24 Global Public Health
5/25 Democratic Practice
5/25 Human Rights
5/26 Inequalities
5/26 Sustainability and Climate

Online Event  11:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
11 am New York l 5 pm Vienna

As part of CEU’s Philanthropy Week, OSUN and CEU invite members to take part in an engaging discussion with the University’s leading alumni, who are now changemakers in philanthropic organizations across the globe. The session will offer insight into global trends in the philanthropic sector. Distinguished alumni will also share their inspirational career journeys and reflect on how their time at CEU prepared them for a career in philanthropy.

As the world faces an unprecedented set of challenges, many continue to look to global philanthropy for solutions. We will be asking questions such as:

What are the emerging opportunities and challenges for philanthropy in 2021? How do these differ across the globe?

How is the role of institutional philanthropy changing today and how can philanthropy better work with grassroots organizations to catalyze change?

How are fundraisers navigating the new normal and where do opportunities exist in the current climate?  

In what ways did CEU help prepare you for careers in philanthropy? What knowledge and skills are required to succeed today in philanthropy, as well as civil society and other sectors?  

Audience questions are invited in the final part of the session.  

Speakers
Frode Dal Fjeldavli (IRES '02), Head of Funds & Horizontal Concerns Unit, EEA & Norway Grants (Belgium)
Mladen Joksic (SPP '09), Director of Foundation and Development Strategy, Council on Foreign Relations (United States)
Marta Lejkowski (ENVS '99), Director of Philanthropy for Europe, The Nature Conservancy (United Kingdom) 
Elena Ryabova (POLS '02), Director of Development, Chess in the Schools (United States)
Eric Schmelling (POLS '95), Chief Philanthropy Officer and General Manager, Rotary International (United States)

Moderator
Jason Weedon, Director of Philanthropy and Strategic Partnerships, CEU 

Register here

Online Event  11:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
11 am New York l 5 pm Vienna

Bard College Berlin and OSUN welcome Hakim Abderrezak, who will discuss his scholarship and creative work, centered on the so-called “refugee crisis.” In his talk, he will ask, “How do modes of creative expression—such as fine art, literature and cinema—address misnomers, misunderstandings, and misconceptions and redress our biased visions of this global human migratory phenomenon? Are scholars and artists able to impact issues that affect real people? How can our work make a contribution and a difference?”

Abderrezak will share his experience and work as a Franco-American scholar of North African ancestry teaching in the United States, who has published and painted about the current implications of the criminalization of forced migration, the militarization of seas, the persecution of those fleeing wars, the prevention of maritime crossings, the fortification of borders, and the demonization of dreams of a better life for individuals hailing from the Global South.

Hakim Abderrezak is an associate professor of French and Francophone studies at the University of Minnesota. He is currently the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Humanities at the American Academy in Berlin. His research focuses on migration which he connects with artistic production.

The SHORE (Students Helping to Organize for the Refugees of Europe) project will contribute a student and activist perspective to the event.

This event is organized in cooperation with the American Academy in Berlin and the U.S. Embassy Berlin and moderated by Prof. Kerry Bystrom and Director of Civic Engagement Xenia Muth.

Register
Zoom link

Online Event  2:00 pm – 3:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED

2 pm Jerusalem l 7 am New York l 1 pm Vienna

Al-Quds Bard College Media Studies Program is thrilled to invite OSUN members to the upcoming virtual event "Open Conversation with Dr. Adila Laïdi-Hanieh, on Tuesday, May 18. 

In this virtual discussion, Dr. Laïdi-Hanieh, director general of the Palestinian Museum, will address the role of the Museum in preserving Palestinian history, society, culture, and art through its various programs and initiatives.  

Join this event via Zoom.
 

Online Event  10:00 am – 11:30 am EDT/GMT-4
10 am NY l 4 pm Vienna

World premiere of the Center for Human Rights and the Arts' second digital commission, featuring a Q&A with artist Malik Nashad Sharpe (Marikiscrycrycry) and writer Hélène Selam Kleih, hosted by Dr. Fintan Walsh (Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre).

Mise-en-Crise is a film that considers choreography as both the site and the scenography of hope, performatively carved from crisis and rebellion. Playing with the theatrical concept  of mise-en-scène, this work uses dance as a material tool and texture for elemental seduction and strategic unruliness.

Malik Nashad Sharpe (Marikiscrycrycry) is an artist working with choreography. They create performances that are formally experimental and engaged with the construction of atmosphere, affect, and dramaturgy. Their performances often utilise social themes and topics as portals to unveil and unearth ulterior and undercurrent perspectives. Often making underneath their alias and aesthetics project Marikiscrycrycry, they have been especially concerned with the affective and textural qualities of dance and how it can transform, disarm, and critically reflect upon mourning and melancholia.

Hélène Selam Kleih is a writer, publisher and model primarily concerned with the politics of language and its ability to elevate the voices of those marginalised, ultimately working towards the depoliticisation of language. Her work concentrates on inter-generational trauma as a result of displacement and the abolition of slavery, criminal justice system and data. She is the writer and founder of HIM + HIS, a charity and anthology on men and mental health, and currently works alongside psychotherapy practices offering resources to young Black men in the boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth in London.

Join via Zoom
 

Online Event  8:30 am – 9:30 am EDT/GMT-4
8:30 am New York l 2:30 Vienna

Are you currently involving community science in your classrooms? Or do you want to do more of this? Please join Eli Dueker and Emily White to share ideas and best practices around community-engaged science teaching and interdisciplinary learning.

We are also currently seeking partners for an air+water quality OSUN Network course in spring 2022 — if you are interested in working with us to develop syllabi specifically addressing the important issues of water and air quality both locally and globally, we'd love to collaborate!

Register via Zoom. 

Online Event  10:00 am – 3:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
10 am – 3 pm New York
4 pm – 9 pm Vienna

The OSUN Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network (EHCN) invites all network members, including students, to an "unconference" on COVID Exceptionalism, taking place on Saturday, May 15. Unlike a traditional conference, all attendees will have the opportunity to participate in interdisciplinary discussions and performances, in an open forum in which to reflect on the wider implications of the pandemic.

COVID Exceptionalism is an interdisciplinary, virtual unconference focused on the intersection of public health, technology, and the arts and humanities. This event and companion online archive aims to reflect critically on the present moment both as a mirror of systemic inequalities—race, gender, class—and as a means of radical transformations—educational and economic, scientific and medical, cultural and interpersonal.

This virtual unconference aims to interrogate the structural social underpinnings that the pandemic has exposed as well as the extraordinary social transformations that it has set in motion.

What is exceptional about COVID? And for whom? What has truly changed, and what is being revealed for what it always was? Which of the profound changes to our modes of life should be fought, and which should be accepted as a change for the better? What new technologies, living arrangements, modes of governance, and models of care have emerged, and will they outlast this critical moment in our history?

Alongside the forum, we will host an expansive digital archive of the detritus of the epidemic—the traces left in the form of medical bills, journal entries, memorials to the lost, poems, songs, records of hygienic obsessions, artworks, vaccine stickers, eviction notices, loan statements, protest banners, prescription bottles, denied visa applications, administrative emails mandating protocols, memes, and children’s drawings.

Registration Deadline: May 3, 2021
Register here.

The Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network rethinks how we engage with the humanities and seeks to redefine what they are in the light of changing technologies, an increasingly connected global landscape, and the ongoing ecological crisis. Through interdisciplinary and public-facing pedagogy, curricular design, and research, it strives to create more inclusive universities. The project is made possible through OSUN, EHCN, and the Inclusion Challenge funded by the Office of the Dean at Bard College.

Online Event  9:00 am – 10:00 am EDT/GMT-4
This Open Networking Session on Defining Civic Engagement is sponsored by the Civic Engagement Working Group and is open to all OSUN members. This session will pose the question of how to define civic engagement on your campus.

Please share this networking opportunity with interested colleagues at your institution.

This is an online event.
Join via Zoom.

Online Event  6:00 am – 7:00 am EDT/GMT-4
12 pm Vienna l 6 am New York

OSUN and the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory invite you to a panel discussion on Conversations about Populism. The discussion is inspired by the publication of two volumes edited by Professor Mirjana Nikolić and Professor Milena Dragićević Šešić from the University of Arts in Belgrade. Mediji, Kultura i Umetnost u Doba Populizma (published in 2018) focused on changes in politics, culture, and media in the era of populist politics and Situating Populist Politics: Arts and Media Nexus (published in 2019) dealt with art and media within cultural and public policies in response to populist and nationalist demands.

The discussion will cover the different ways that populist political communication is entering the public realm, but even more to what extent arts, culture, and media are influenced by political populism.

Participants:
Milena Dragićević Šešić, Professor Emeritus of the University of Arts in Belgrade
Mirjana Nikolić, Full Professor at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts and rector of the University of Arts in Belgrade
Monika Mokre, Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Culture Studies and Theatre History of the Austrian Academy of Sciences
Miikka Pyykkönen, Professor of Cultural Policy at the University of Jyväskylä and a docent of sociology at the University of Helsinki
Marjan Ivković, Research Associate at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade
Mark Losoncz, Research Associate at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade

Join via Zoom.
More information here.

 

Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
12 pm New York l 6 pm Vienna

The OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts presents a webinar with Hamed Sinno, part of the Artists and Activists lecture series.

An analysis of several musical and literary texts by the band Mashrou Leila, as sites for negotiating the discursive boundaries of gender construction in the public sphere, and an attempt to frame the work within ongoing conversations about the limits of representation as a mode of political engagement.

Hamed Sinno (they/he) is a New York based musician, poet, vocal instructor, and social justice advocate. They have been the writer and front-person for Mashrouʼ Leila since 2008. They write and lecture about the convergence of music and social justice, and teach singing from their studio in New York. They have a BFA from the American University of Beirut, and are pursuing an MA in Digital Musics at Dartmouth College.

This is an online event.
Join via Zoom.

Online Event  9:00 am – 10:00 am EDT/GMT-4
9 am New York l 3 pm Vienna

OSUN and the Val-Kill Partnership invite network members to attend a discussion with Joel Motley, financier, filmmaker, and Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Human Rights Watch, as part of the Tomorrow Is Now Virtual Discussion Series.

The series highlights the relevance of Eleanor Roosevelt's legacy in today's crises and is hosted by Manuela Roosevelt, chair of the Eleanor Roosevelt, Val-Kill Partnership.

Joel Motley will screen and discuss the award-winning film on his mother, The Trials of Constance Baker Motley, profiling one of the lesser-known, yet most influential players of the civil rights movement.

At the height of the civil rights movement, Constance Baker Motley joined the NAACP’s legal team. The only woman in the group, she left her husband and infant son in New York for weeks at a time to represent the NAACP in Southern courts. The first female Black lawyer Southern judges and juries had seen, she stunned them by winning case after case—gaining the right for Black students to enter Ole Miss, the University of Georgia, and Clemson College.

After the assassination of one of her closest friends, Motley returned to New York—and went on to become the first Black woman NY State Senator, the first Black Woman Manhattan Borough President, and, with the backing of Lyndon Johnson, the first Black woman named to a federal judgeship.

With archival footage and narration in Motley’s own voice, The Trials of Constance Baker Motley tells the story of a civil rights leader who met prejudice and danger with elegance and humor. 

The last book Eleanor Roosevelt authored, Tomorrow Is Now, published posthumously in 1962, encapsulates a message that is relevant to all of us today: "It is today that we must create the world of the future."

Join via Zoom.

Online Event  6:00 am – 7:15 am EDT/GMT-4
12 PM Vienna l 6 AM New York

The OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives are pleased to invite OSUN members to the "Trauma Informed Educators Workshop and Lecture Series," developed by Ariane Simard from Bard College Berlin.

Trauma Informed Education is an approach that recognizes the influence and impact of trauma on students and educators in the classroom and takes into account how factors including racism, sexism, poverty, community violence, migrant and refugee status, mental health issues, addiction, abuse and neglect can hinder academic achievement as well as personal growth and functioning.  

Drawing on studies on education, brain development and the lasting effects of trauma, as well as some nonviolent communication techniques, this workshop series aims to provide educators with a new understanding on how trauma can affect a student’s ability to function as well as offer up some tools for creating a more trauma informed classroom where educators can begin to model the kind of techniques that will help create new pathways of learning.

Looking for ways to examine how cultural trauma presents itself, even in the most high-minded institutions, Amber Rickert’s workshop drew on her experience as the director of Outpatient Services in South Los Angeles as well as the voice behind groundbreaking community conversations about race and privilege in the wake of Black Lives Matter.  

Exploring the boundaries of our own role in the classroom and our part in institutionalized and cultural trauma, in today's event, we will workshop ways to turn these tools into lesson plans and learning objectives.  Instructors should be prepared to discuss an assignment they regularly teach and should have either attended or viewed the recording of Amber Rickert’s May 4th workshop on Inter-generation, Cultural and Institutional Trauma.

Please register to receive the Zoom link to attend.

Online Event  3:00 pm – 4:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
3 pm New York l 9 pm Vienna

The Bard Center for the Study of Hate invites OSUN members on Thursday May 6, 2021, at 3 pm to join an event with Sheldon Solomon, Professor of Psychology at Skidmore College, who will speak on “The relationship between hate and the fear of death.”

Many white supremacists cite, with something akin to religious fervor, the “14 words” of convicted terrorist David Lane — “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.”

The fear that our group, our tribe, our identity, our way of life might be dying out, is part of many manifestations of, and justifications for, hate. Dr. Solomon’s article in the Guardian, entitled “The secret to Trump’s success? It’s sheer existential dread,” helps us realize that the connection between fear of death and hate is potentially much deeper and commonplace. The article explores how “authoritarian populist leaders thrive on the fear of death — as we’ve been able to show in carefully controlled experiments.”

Please join the event to learn the implications of this correlation from Dr. Solomon.

Register for the event here.
 

Online Event  4:10 pm – 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
4:10 pm New York l 10:10 pm Vienna

Following the Hyman P. Minsky conference, Open Society Climate Network — scholars from OSUN and civil society addressing climate change through shared ideas, a common mission, and local activism — and the Simon's Rock-Levy Economics Institute 3/2 BA/MS Program present a talk with Randy Wray, Professor of Economics, Bard College, and Senior Scholar, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, on "COVID Response and the Green New Deal: Lessons from the Levy Economic Institute."

For more information about the 3/2 program contact Tai Young-Taft.

For more information about OSCN contact Leanne Ussher.

Join via Zoom.
 

Online Event  11:00 am – 12:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
11 am New York l 5 pm Vienna

The CEU Democracy Institute and the Research Centre for the Study of Parties and Democracy (REPRESENT) of the University of Nottingham cordially invite to the next event of the REPRESENT Seminar Series, where Zsolt Enyedi will present his new book, Party System Closure — Party Alliances, Government Alternatives, and Democracy in Europe, coauthored with Fernando Casal Bertoa, published by Oxford University Press.

The book maps trends in interparty relations in Europe from 1848 until 2019. It investigates how the length of democratic experience, the institutionalization of individual parties, the fragmentation of parliaments, and the support for antiestablishment parties, shape the degree of institutionalization of party systems.

Join via Zoom.

Online Event  9:00 am – 3:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
9 am New York l 3 pm Vienna

OSUN members are welcome to join the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College's 29th Hyman Minsky conference as an online event, May 5–6, 2021.

Distinguished academics, members of the Federal Reserve, government officials, practitioners in the financial sectors of the economy, and Levy Institute scholars will discuss topics including prospects and policies for the US and Europe after the COVID-19 crisis, monetary and fiscal policy stances to ensure full employment and price stability, and changes in the regulatory structure regarding the evolving risks of financial innovation in payments systems and cryptocurrencies.

Scheduled presenters include Robert Kaplan, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas; Charles Evans, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago; Patricia McCoy, Boston College; Kathryn Judge, Columbia University School of Law; James Paulsen, The Leuthold Group; Bruce Greenwald, Columbia Business School; Charles Goodhart, London School of Economics; Jan Hatzius, Goldman Sachs; Jason Furman, Harvard University; Frank Veneroso, Veneroso Associates; Lakshman Achuthan, Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI); Robert Barbera, Johns Hopkins University; Paolo Savona, CONSOB; Michael Greenberger, University of Maryland Law School; Bruce Kasman, JP Morgan; Peter Coy, Bloomberg; and Binyamin Appelbaum, Deborah Solomon, and Jeanna Smialek, New York Times.

View the conference program. 
Register for the conference.
 

Online Event  9:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
9 am New York l 3 pm Vienna

The OSUN Engaged Research Fund is pleased to announce a spring online training series on Engaged Research being held in conjunction with SOAS. This workshop series, open to faculty and graduate students across OSUN, is an introduction to the basic tools of Training for Transformation and Participatory Methods for Engaged Research. Faculty and graduate students interested in applying to the Engaged Research Fund are invited and encouraged to sign up to participate.

Session 6 - Tuesday, May 4th, 9 am- 12 pm EST — Reflection: Building Consciousness; Engagement as Social Action. Facilitated by Dan Glass

This workshop is part of Phase 2 (April 26th - May 4th), which is open to current applicants of the 2021 Engaged Research Fund’s Engaged Scholar Award (for graduate students) and Engaged Faculty Scholar Award (for faculty members).Registration/Questions:Dan Glass: [email protected] and Caitlin O’Donnell: [email protected]

Register via Zoom.
 For information on the rest of the series, click here

For information on the Engaged Research Fund, click here

Online Event  9:00 am – 10:30 am EDT/GMT-4
9 am New York l 3 pm Vienna

Join the OSUN Climate Network presenting two speakers giving flash talks on their research and on climate change.

Ramona Mosse, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Bard College Berlin
Anna Street, Professor of English Studies, Le Mans University

Discussant:
John Morrell, Professor of Literature, Bard College at Simon’s Rock

The Open Society Climate Network is scholars from OSUN and civil society who are interested in addressing climate change through shared ideas, a common mission, and local activism. 

For more information contact the organizers: Leanne Ussher or Tai Young-Taft.

Future speakers include:

Randall Wray (Bard), Philippe Forêt (BRAC), Michael Brody (AUCA), Tai Young-Taft (Simon's Rock), Brendan Duprey (NarxozU), Ramona Mosse (Berlin), Harold Hastings (Simon's Rock).

Join via Zoom.

 

Online Event  2:00 am – 4:00 am EDT/GMT-4
8 AM Vienna l 2 AM New York

The OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives are pleased to invite OSUN members to the "Trauma Informed Educators Workshop and Lecture Series," developed by Ariane Simard from Bard College Berlin.

Trauma Informed Education is an approach that recognizes the influence and impact of trauma on students and educators in the classroom and takes into account how factors including racism, sexism, poverty, community violence, migrant and refugee status, mental health issues, addiction, abuse and neglect can hinder academic achievement as well as personal growth and functioning.  

If we recognize education, as bell hooks does, as “part of our real world experience, our real life,” (Democratic Education) then can we understand that trauma, in all its forms, is in the classroom and in the corporate university?  As we begin to expand our teaching to include admittedly traumatized populations–be it war veterans, refugees or people who are incarcerated–we need a set of skills that can both address their trauma as well as the trauma we ourselves carry into the classroom.

Drawing on studies on education, brain development and the lasting effects of trauma, as well as some nonviolent communication techniques, this workshop series aims to provide educators with a new understanding on how trauma can affect a student’s ability to function as well as offer up some tools for creating a more trauma informed classroom where educators can begin to model the kind of techniques that will help create new pathways of learning.

This session is led by Amber Wickert. Whether our students are dealing with a refugee status, addiction issues, childhood trauma or intergenerational trauma, the effect on our classroom and ourselves is the same: it wears us out.  Looking for ways to examine how cultural trauma presents itself, even in the most high-minded institutions, Amber Rickert’s workshop will draw on her experience as the director of Outpatient Services in South Los Angeles as well as the voice behind groundbreaking community conversations about race and privilege in the wake of Black Lives Matter.  This workshop will examine boundaries as a mode of compassion and offer up healing techniques to avoid burnout.  This workshop will be recorded.

Please register to receive the Zoom link to attend.

Online Event  8:00 am – 9:30 am EDT/GMT-4
The Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory at the University of Belgrade welcomes all OSUN members to attend a virtual talk with Ruzha Smilova of Sofia University, who will analyse how the Bulgarian Constitutional court produced a conceptual and ideological innovation when it declared in 2018 that the Istanbul Convention violates the Constitution of Bulgaria. This can be seen as a radical turn away from human rights protection and an important sign of post-accession democratic backsliding.  

This is an online event.
Join via Zoom.
 

Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
12 pm New York l 6 pm Vienna

The OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts presents a webinar with Mark Sealy, part of the Artists and Activists lecture series.

Dr Mark Sealy MBE is interested in the relationships between photography and social change, identity politics, race, and human rights. He has been director of London-based photographic arts institution Autograph ABP since 1991. He has produced numerous artist publications, curated exhibitions, and commissioned photographers and filmmakers worldwide, including the critically acclaimed exhibition Human Rights Human Wrongs at Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto in 2013 and at The Photographers’ Gallery, London in 2015.

Sealy has written for many international photography publications, including Foam Magazine, Aperture and the Independent Newspaper in London. He has written numerous essays for theoretical publications and artist monographs. In 2002, Sealy and professor Stuart Hall co-authored Different, which focused on photography and identity politics. His notable projects include the exhibition Self Evident Ikon Gallery Birmingham,  The Unfinished Conversation: Encoding / Decoding for the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto and seminal and celebrated projects on the works of James Van Der Zee, Gordon Parks, Carrie Mae Weems, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Mahtab Hussain, Maud Sulter and Sunil Gupta are just a few of the many artists exhibitions he has curated. He was also the guest curator for Houston Fotofest 2020 working under the title of African Cosmologies Photography Time and the Other.

His recent book, Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time, was published in 2019 by Lawrence and Wishart. His PhD was awarded by Durham University England and focused on Photography and Cultural Violence. Sealy is also currently Principal Fellow Decolonising Photography at University of the Arts London.

This is an online event.
Join via Zoom.
 

Online Event  6:00 am – 6:15 am EDT/GMT-4
12 PM Vienna l 6 AM New York

The OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives are pleased to invite OSUN members to the "Trauma Informed Educators Workshop and Lecture Series," developed by Ariane Simard from Bard College Berlin.

Trauma Informed Education is an approach that recognizes the influence and impact of trauma on students and educators in the classroom and takes into account how factors including racism, sexism, poverty, community violence, migrant and refugee status, mental health issues, addiction, abuse and neglect can hinder academic achievement as well as personal growth and functioning.  

Drawing on studies on education, brain development and the lasting effects of trauma, as well as some nonviolent communication techniques, this workshop series aims to provide educators with a new understanding on how trauma can affect a student’s ability to function as well as offer up some tools for creating a more trauma informed classroom where educators can begin to model the kind of techniques that will help create new pathways of learning.

In the third session, led by Louise Godblod of Echo, it was discussed that part of becoming trauma-informed means understanding how biochemistry and the traumatized brain functions and how fight/flight/freeze response translates into less than ideal student behavior.  We discussed what can we do as educators to make our classrooms places where students not only learn the subjects we are teaching, but actually learn resilience.  

Reviewing the information we learned about the brain, how trauma affects brain chemistry and the methods we learned about dealing with these effects, at this event we will workshop ways to turn these tools into lesson plans and learning objectives.  Instructors should be prepared to discuss an assignment they regularly teach and should have either attended or viewed the recording of Louse Godbold’s April 27th workshop on Brain Science and the Trauma Informed Classroom.

Register to receive the Zoom link and attend.

Online Event  1:30 pm – 2:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
1:30 pm New York | 7:30 pm Vienna

On Thursday, April 29, as part of a professional orientation event series for graduating and other students, Bard College Berlin' Career Services will host a session for students on using the OSUN global network for student career opportunities. 

Students from network campuses are invited to join the session and are encouraged to share the invitation. It is open to graduating and all other students who want to explore how the OSUN network can help their future professional or academic plans. 

Networking in a global network: Join Career Services professionals to identify unique ways to connect across the Bard and OSUN global networks.  Explore career and graduate school opportunities, student engagement initiatives and calls for proposals.

Join via Zoom

Online Event  9:30 am – 11:00 am EDT/GMT-4
9:30 am New York l 3:30 pm Vienna

On Thursday, April 29, OSUN and CEU invite members to an event based on a recent book by Lajos Bokros and in the tradition of the CEU University-Wide Seminars. "Socialism: Tragedy of an Idea" invites scholars from different academic disciplines across OSUN to discuss a topic of common interest from different intellectual, theoretical and methodological perspectives.

The seminar will address the questions: How was "socialism" understood, in particular from the perspective of political economy, by some of the most remarkable scholars who have studied it before and after the fall of communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe? How have scholars who have both studied and "lived" socialism, before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, understood it? What is socialism and what is freedom? What is the relationship between economic system and political regime? How has socialism worked outside the communist camp of Central and Eastern Europe.
PANELISTS:
Lajos Bokros / School of Public Policy
Roger Berkowitz / Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities, Bard College
Cristina Corduneanu-Huci / School of Public Policy / Doctoral School of Political Science, Public Policy, and International Relations
Julius Horvath / Department of Economics and Business
 
MODERATOR:
Liviu Matei / CEU Provost and OSUN Vice-Chancellor

This is an online event. Please join via the Zoom Link
 

In Collaboration with the Richard Saltoun Gallery
Online Event  1:00 pm – 2:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
A virtual reading group in collaboration between Richard Saltoun Gallery and the Hannah Arendt Center to accompany the gallery's year-long exhibition programme 'On Hannah Arendt'.

Led by Roger Berkowitz, Founder and Director of the Hannah Arendt Center, the fourth event in the series will discuss Arendt's essay 'What is Authority?' from her 1968 publication 'Between Past and Future'.

The essay will be introduced by Shai Lavi, Director of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and a Professor of Law at Tel Aviv University.

The discussion is held on the occasion of the group exhibition 'What is Authority?' at Richard Saltoun Gallery in London, featuring Lili Dujourie, Everlyn Nicodemus and Lerato Shadi (from 26 April until 22 May 2021).

Learn more

Online Event  9:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
9 am New York l 3 pm Vienna

The OSUN Engaged Research Fund is pleased to announce a spring online training series on Engaged Research being held in conjunction with SOAS. This workshop series, open to faculty and graduate students across OSUN, is an introduction to the basic tools of Training for Transformation and Participatory Methods for Engaged Research. Faculty and graduate students interested in applying to the Engaged Research Fund are invited and encouraged to sign up to participate.

Session 5 - Wednesday, April 28th, 9 am-12 pm EST — Freire in Practice: Engaged Research as Transformation. Facilitated by Maria Lahumatina

This workshop is part of Phase 2 (April 26th - May 4th), which is open to current applicants of the 2021 Engaged Research Fund’s Engaged Scholar Award (for graduate students) and Engaged Faculty Scholar Award (for faculty members).Register:Register via Zoom.Questions:Dan Glass: [email protected] and Caitlin O’Donnell: [email protected] For information on the rest of the series, click hereFor information on the Engaged Research Fund, click here

Online Event  8:30 am – 4:45 pm EDT/GMT-4
8:30 am - 4:45 pm New York l 2:30 - 10:45 pm Vienna

Arizona State University welcomes OSUN members to be a part of the 2021 Sedona Forum, held virtually from April 28-30, with the theme of Defending Democracy. The free event features panel discussions and one-on-one exchanges with high-level policymakers, thought leaders and industry experts, including Madeleine Albright, Bob Schieffer, James Mattis, Ben Affleck, Lindsey Graham, Jake Tapper, Dikembe Mutombo, Mary Callahan Erdoes, Mitch McConnell, Theresa May, Mitt Romney and Andrea Mitchell.

For the first time, the 2021 Sedona Forum will be virtual and open to friends of the McCain Institute. With the theme of “Defending Democracy,” this is an exciting opportunity to hear about the world’s most pressing issues from high-level panels featuring top experts and policymakers from around the world and on both sides of the aisle.

The 2021 Sedona Forum will feature topical and constructive conversations around the most critical issues of our time. Leading public figures from the world of business such as co-founder of Schmidt Futures and former CEO of Google Eric Schmidt and current CEO of YouTube Susan Wojcicki, public servants like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, global humanitarians such as Ben Affleck, Chef José Andrés and Angelina Jolie, and military leaders like Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley will discuss issues related to the rise of China, modern cyberwarfare, the Russia challenge, disinformation and the erosion of democracy, combatting human trafficking and much more.RSVP hereView the full agenda here and list of 2021 speakers here. For more information, visit thesedonaforum.org.

Online Event  12:15 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
The OSUN Economic Democracy Initiative (EDI) is pleased to launch the Economic Democracy Keynote Series. It features scholars, public intellectuals, and activists whose work on economic, social, and environmental justice is shaping the tenor of our time.

Professor Darrick Hamilton, Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy and Founding Director of the Institute for the Study of Race, Stratification, and Political Economy at the New School for Social Research, will deliver the inaugural address titled “Economic Rights and Racial Justice” on Tuesday, April 27, at 12:15 pm (EDT) via zoom.

Also sponsored by the Bard College Racial Justice Initiative and Economics Program.

This is an online event. Join via Zoom

Online Event  9:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
9 am New York l 3 pm Vienna

The OSUN Engaged Research Fund is pleased to announce a spring online training series on Engaged Research being held in conjunction with SOAS. This workshop series, open to faculty and graduate students across OSUN, is an introduction to the basic tools of Training for Transformation and Participatory Methods for Engaged Research. Faculty and graduate students interested in applying to the Engaged Research Fund are invited and encouraged to sign up to participate.
Session 4 – Introduction to Engaged Research Methods: Freire’s Listening Survey and Participatory Visualisation will be facilitated by Andrea Cornwall

This workshop is part of Phase 2 (April 27th, April 28th, May 4th), which is open to current applicants of the 2021 Engaged Research Fund’s Engaged Scholar Award (for graduate students) and Engaged Faculty Scholar Award (for faculty members).Registration/Questions:Dan Glass: [email protected] and Caitlin O’Donnell: [email protected]

Register via Zoom.
 For information on the rest of the series, click hereFor information on the Engaged Research Fund, click here

Online Event  9:00 am – 11:00 am EDT/GMT-4
9 am New York l 3 pm Vienna

On April 27, OSUN welcomes members and students to tune in as the European Humanities University, supported by the Open Lithuania Foundation, hosts a roundtable discussion with members of the post-1989 generation, as part of the Europe for Citizens conference on "Rethinking the Democratic Future: Lessons from the 20th-Century Project."

What is the legacy of 1989 in the eyes of the young generation? How do students, who are studying Humanities and Social Sciences perceive the nature of the societal change that has occurred after 1989 and how do students perceive the threat which democracy faces today?

This roundtable brings together a cohort of students, born after the year 2000 and studying at a range of liberal arts universities throughout Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Student panelists:

Anastasiya Halaburda, European Humanities University
Benedek Pál, Central European University
Christine van den Berg, Bard College Berlin
Daria Manzhura, Bard College
Daniiar Sadykov, American University in Central Asia

Moderator:

Maksimas Milta, European Humanities University

This event is organized as part of the Europe for Citizens project “Rethinking the democratic future: lessons from the 20th century,” being held on April 26-28, 2021. Find out about other conference events.Register for this event here 

Online Event  8:00 am – 8:30 am EDT/GMT-4
The Open Society University Network sponsors Community Action Awards that help cover costs associated with unpaid summer internships that support preprofessional experiences. Eligible internships address issue(s) related to the broad field of civic engagement, including education, government, social justice, human rights, media, public policy, the arts, and social entrepreneurship. 

Join us to learn more about the award and your potential summer opportunities! 

https://bard.zoom.us/j/4395717800 

Ready to apply? Click here for the application.

Online Event  2:00 am – 10:00 am EDT/GMT-4
8 AM Vienna l 2 AM New York

The OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives are pleased to invite OSUN members to the "Trauma Informed Educators Workshop and Lecture Series," developed by Ariane Simard from Bard College Berlin.

Trauma Informed Education is an approach that recognizes the influence and impact of trauma on students and educators in the classroom and takes into account how factors including racism, sexism, poverty, community violence, migrant and refugee status, mental health issues, addiction, abuse and neglect can hinder academic achievement as well as personal growth and functioning.  

If we recognize education, as bell hooks does, as “part of our real world experience, our real life,” (Democratic Education) then can we understand that trauma, in all its forms, is in the classroom and in the corporate university?  As we begin to expand our teaching to include admittedly traumatized populations–be it war veterans, refugees or people who are incarcerated–we need a set of skills that can both address their trauma as well as the trauma we ourselves carry into the classroom.

Drawing on studies on education, brain development and the lasting effects of trauma, as well as some nonviolent communication techniques, this workshop series aims to provide educators with a new understanding on how trauma can affect a student’s ability to function as well as offer up some tools for creating a more trauma informed classroom where educators can begin to model the kind of techniques that will help create new pathways of learning.

The third session will be led by Louise Godblod of Echo. Part of becoming trauma informed means understanding how biochemistry and the traumatized brain functions and how fight/flight/freeze response translates into less than ideal student behavior.  We will discuss what can we do as educators to make our classrooms places where students not only learn the subjects we are teaching, but actually learn resilience.  

As the executive director of the Los Angeles based nonprofit Echo Training, Louise Godbold has been working with community activists and educators for over 30 years on finding methods to educate about trauma and resilience in order to promote survivor empowerment.  In this workshop we will learn how trauma affects the brain and develop some methods to provide support for traumatized students in blended learning classrooms.  This workshop will be recorded.

Please register to receive the Zoom link to attend.

Online Event  9:00 am – 10:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
International rapper, human rights activist, and Bard student Sonita Alizada has been nominated for the 2021 Freedom Prize, an educational initiative in which young people from around the world honor an inspiring person or organization who is committed to an exemplary fight for freedom. 

OSUN and Bard College are pleased to support Alizada in her human rights work advocating against the practice of forced child marriage and urge OSUN members to consider submitting an online vote for her by April 25.

A native of Herat, Alizada fled with her family to Iran to escape the Taliban regime. She lived as an undocumented refugee street child in Teheran but was eventually able to secure a basic education through an NGO. Twice, at the ages of 9 and 16, she escaped being forced into marriages by her family.

Inspired by her plight and the shared experiences of friends, she wrote the moving rap song “Daughters for Sale,” which garnered worldwide attention and led to a collaboration with an Iranian filmmaker on a music video. Rohksareh Ghaemmaghemi also made an award-winning documentary about Alizada called Sonita.

After moving to the United States, Alizada secured a high school and college education and she is now taking courses in human rights and international studies in preparation to become a lawyer so she can return to her country to defend Afghan women and children. She has been named one of Foreign Policy Magazine’s Global Thinkers of 2015, BBC’s 100 Women of 2015, an Asia Societies Game Changer of 2017, a 2018 MTV Generation Change Award recipient, Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2019, and featured by CNN, NPR, BBC, Buzzfeed News and over 150 publications in 20 countries.

More than 12 million girls are forced to marry as children every year. OSUN encourages members to consider voting for Alizada for the Freedom Prize and to help uplift an important voice in the next generation of global human rights activists. 

Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
The OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts presents a webinar with Ashmina Ranjit, part of the Artists and Activists lecture series.

Just because we’re born with a vagina, why accept that our family, society, and state continue treating us as unequal "beings"? Why do sexual violence, unequal rights, and inequities persist? Why do we need to rethink and reimagine intersections of gender, caste, class, and religion?

I plan to reflect on insights from my journey of resisting and interrogating complex politics of Hindu patriarchy, especially the role of the nation-state in sustaining structures of dominance and exploitation. Using art as a tool for investigating and reclaiming my own position as a "Being," I am exploring my multiple identities as a human, citizen, Asian, and artist, amongst others.

Ashmina is Nepal’s leading conceptual artist and activist. She is at the forefront of artivism (art+activism) in South Asia. Her artworks challenge and confront the status quo. Subversion of stereotypes, politics of gender, and human rights are critical to her process. During insurgency, Ashmina's performances brought together armed forces, Maoists, civilians, and students to raise voices against violence, and for democracy. Ashmina performs, leads workshops, and connects communities. She creates an environment of collaboration and innovation for artists at her art hub LASANAA / NexUs. The Kathmandu Post featured her as one of 25 individuals who shaped Nepal.

This is an online event.
Join via Zoom.

Online Event  8:30 am – 9:50 am EDT/GMT-4
2:30 - 3:50 PM Vienna

OSUN's Global Observatory on Academic Freedom is proud to announce its first public event, gathering distinguished scholars to debate the key issues that have inspired us to create the Observatory.

Academic Freedom, as an empiric and an intellectual concept, is facing new challenges in all corners of the world and Europe, the West and the East, the Global North as much as the Global South.  What is our modern day understanding of academic freedom and how can we, as an academic community, respond?

PANELISTS

Sjur Bergan, Head, Education Department, Directorate of Democratic Participation / DG Democracy, Council of Europe
Liviu Matei, Provost, Central European University, Vienna and Budapest and Director, Yehuda Elkana Centre for Higher Education
Nandini Ramanujam, Professor, Executive Co-Director and Director of Programs of the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, Faculty of Law, McGill University
Michel Wieviorka, Professor, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, and Chair of the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris

MODERATOR

Milica Popovic, Visiting Researcher, OSUN Global Observatory on Academic Freedom, CEU Vienna
 
The Roundtable is part of the 6th Central European Higher Education Cooperation Conference, convening April 22–23. OSUN partners are welcome to attend all panels and events at this free conference. 
 This is an online event. Join via Zoom.
 

 

Online Event  6:00 am – 8:30 am EDT/GMT-4
12 PM Vienna l 6 AM New York

The OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives are pleased to invite OSUN members to the "Trauma Informed Educators Workshop and Lecture Series," developed by Ariane Simard from Bard College Berlin.

Trauma Informed Education is an approach that recognizes the influence and impact of trauma on students and educators in the classroom and takes into account how factors including racism, sexism, poverty, community violence, migrant and refugee status, mental health issues, addiction, abuse and neglect can hinder academic achievement as well as personal growth and functioning.  

Drawing on studies on education, brain development and the lasting effects of trauma, as well as some nonviolent communication techniques, this workshop series aims to provide educators with a new understanding on how trauma can affect a student’s ability to function as well as offer up some tools for creating a more trauma informed classroom where educators can begin to model the kind of techniques that will help create new pathways of learning.

In the second session with Kristin Masters of Nonviolent Communication Santa Cruz, the group discussed how listening to students and to ourselves is a key component of nonviolent communication, what some would call the first step in becoming trauma informed.

Using the key components and tools of nonviolent communication, we will workshop ways to turn these tools into lesson plans and learning objectives.  Instructors should be prepared to discuss an assignment they regularly teach and should have either attended or viewed the recording of Kristin Masters’ April 20th workshop on Nonviolent Communication.

Please register to receive the Zoom link to attend.

Online Event  5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
OSUN members and the public are invited to join filmmaker Wazhmah Osman and Professor Jeannette Estruth to discuss Osman's new book, Television and the Afghan Culture Wars: Brought to You by Foreigners, Warlords, and Activists at this Bard College event.

Prof. Osman is an Assistant Professor in Temple University’s Department of Media Studies and Production. Her book analyzes the impact of international funding and cross-border media flows on the national politics of Afghanistan. Her research is rooted in feminist media ethnographies that focus on the political economy of global media industries and the regimes of representation and visual culture they produce. Her critically acclaimed documentary, "Postcards from Tora Bora," has been shown in festivals around the world. 

This event is sponsored by the Office of the Dean of the College, the Bard Lifetime Learning Institute, and the Academic Program Inclusion Challenge. 

This is an online event. Join via Zoom. 

Online Event  8:30 am – 9:30 am EDT/GMT-4
The OSUN Community Science Coalition welcomes all members to the April Session of its Climate and Community Science Chat.

The first Climate and Community Science chat will focus on gathering a broad range of faculty members and researchers to start getting a sense of who is teaching on these topics and who is working on community-engaged efforts. Folks who are broadly interested in community science but who are not yet teaching/working in this area are also invited to join and learn about the work.

The OSUN Community Science Coalition bridges the widening gaps between climate-adapting communities, academic institutions, and the equitable management of shared natural resources, including drinkable water, fertile soils, and clean air. Through place-based, community-centric activities, CSC leverages OSUN’s global reach by creating a network of community-academic institutional partnerships to investigate and address the human and natural dimensions of resource sustainability in the face of climate change.

This is an online event. RSVP here. 

Online Event  2:00 am – 4:00 am EDT/GMT-4
8 AM Vienna l 2 AM New York

The OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives are pleased to invite OSUN members to the "Trauma Informed Educators Workshop and Lecture Series," developed by Ariane Simard from Bard College Berlin.

Trauma Informed Education is an approach that recognizes the influence and impact of trauma on students and educators in the classroom and takes into account how factors including racism, sexism, poverty, community violence, migrant and refugee status, mental health issues, addiction, abuse and neglect can hinder academic achievement as well as personal growth and functioning.  

If we recognize education, as bell hooks does, as “part of our real world experience, our real life,” (Democratic Education) then can we understand that trauma, in all its forms, is in the classroom and in the corporate university?  As we begin to expand our teaching to include admittedly traumatized populations–be it war veterans, refugees or people who are incarcerated–we need a set of skills that can both address their trauma as well as the trauma we ourselves carry into the classroom.

Drawing on studies on education, brain development and the lasting effects of trauma, as well as some nonviolent communication techniques, this workshop series aims to provide educators with a new understanding on how trauma can affect a student’s ability to function as well as offer up some tools for creating a more trauma informed classroom where educators can begin to model the kind of techniques that will help create new pathways of learning.

In the second session with Kristin Masters of Nonviolent Communication Santa Cruz, the group will discuss the fact that how we listen to our students and to ourselves is a key component of nonviolent communication, what some would call the first step in becoming trauma-informed.

Drawing on her work in Queer Communities and the California Penal System, Kristin Masters will take us through a workshop on the basics of nonviolent communication, offering tools that can help us negotiate the space to listen and teach.  This workshop will be recorded.

Please register to receive the Zoom link to attend.

Online Event  8:00 am – 9:00 am EDT/GMT-4
The OSUN Democracy Institute at Central European University is hosting a panel discussion on China's management of the COVID-19 crisis.

As discontent grows in many European states over governmental incompetence at Covid-19 pandemic management, the question arises whether it is a system failure in the face of crisis. China has managed to keep Covid-19 at a minimal level, life has returned to normal and the economy on the whole has recovered. Europe, however, is struggling with questions of freedom (freedom of movement, freedom of assembly) and also those of data protection – aspects that have largely been neglected in China. Does this comparison offer legitimacy to the autocratic Chinese system? This debate will try to elucidate the question from different perspectives.

PANELISTS

Joanna Klabisch is Program Manager of the China Program at Asienhaus Stiftung. 

Shi Ming is an award-winning freelance journalist, born and raised in Beijing. 

Richard Turcsanyi is Senior Researcher at Palacky University, Olomouc, Assistant Professor at Mendel University in Brno, and Program Director at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS). 

DISCUSSANTS

Katalin Cseh is Member of the European Parliament and Vice President of Renew Europe. 

Sandor Kusai is Honorary Associate Professor at Pazmany Peter Catholic University. 

MODERATOR

Agota Revesz is an academic staff member at the Center for Cultural Studies on Science and Technology in China and Technische Universität Berlin.

The discussion will be streamed live on the Institute’s Facebook page. If you are interested in following it, then please join the Facebook event.

Online Event  4:00 am – 6:00 am EDT/GMT-4
10 AM Vienna l 4 AM New York

The OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives are pleased to invite OSUN members to the Trauma Informed Educators Workshop and Lecture Series, developed by Ariane Simard from Bard College Berlin.

Trauma Informed Education is an approach that recognizes the influence and impact of trauma on students and educators in the classroom and takes into account how factors including racism, sexism, poverty, community violence, migrant and refugee status, mental health issues, addiction, abuse, and neglect can hinder academic achievement as well as personal growth and functioning.  

If we recognize education, as bell hooks does, as “part of our real world experience, our real life” (Democratic Education), then can we understand that trauma, in all its forms, is in the classroom and in the corporate university?  As we begin to expand our teaching to include admittedly traumatized populations—be it war veterans, refugees or people who are incarcerated—we need a set of skills that can both address their trauma as well as the trauma we ourselves carry into the classroom.

Drawing on studies on education, brain development and the lasting effects of trauma, as well as some nonviolent communication techniques, this workshop series aims to provide educators with a new understanding on how trauma can affect a student’s ability to function as well as offer up some tools for creating a more trauma informed classroom where educators can begin to model the kind of techniques that will help create new pathways of learning.

In the first session with Ariane Simard of Bard College Berlin, we will introduce ourselves and discuss how we understand definitions of trauma in the classroom as well as explore definitions of cultural trauma, intergenerational trauma and institutional trauma. Because these topics get heavy at times, we will use the methods of the workshop, practice, and humor to sketch out a better understanding of how trauma affects our work in blended learning classrooms. Participants should read the bell hooks essay “Democratic Education,” in her book Teaching Community, before attending the workshop.

Please register to receive the Zoom link to attend.

Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
The OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts presents a webinar with Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani, part of the Artists and Activists lecture series.

In this presentation, Heller and Pezzani will discuss the nature of contemporary borders and the ever-shifting modalities of border violence. Drawing on their work within the Forensic Oceanography project since 2011, which has focused on the Mediterranean frontier, they will discuss the strategies they have used to document traces of violent events and seek accountability for them. Reflecting on the effectiveness, but also the ambivalences, limits, and blindspots of this practice, they will point to the directions they are beginning to explore within their new project, Border Forensics.

Working together since 2011, Heller and Pezzani cofounded Forensic Oceanography, a collaborative project that critically investigates the militarized border regime and the politics of migration in the Mediterranean Sea. Their collaborative work has been used as evidence in courts of law, published across different media and academic outlets, as well as exhibited and screened internationally.

This is an online event.
Join via Zoom.

Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
When disability is placed at the center of events, where it belongs, it provides the lens through which much of our society's ills can be clearly seen and, thus, changed.

On Friday, April 16, the Bard College Speaker Series on Disability welcomes all OSUN members to join a presentation by writer Kenny Fries, who will read and talk about how societal views of disability, most importantly eugenics, have come to the surface once again as the COVID pandemic confronts us. Fries makes connections between his research on Aktion T4, the Nazi program that mass murdered disabled people, and how it resonates today, as well as the importance of understanding how disability representation affects all of us, disabled and non-disabled alike.

For over two decades, Kenny Fries has looked at how disability provides an understanding of the interconnectedness between individuals and also between different cultures, using the prism of his life as a writer who lives with a congenital physical disability to forge a new understanding of a wide range of values and ideas, from systems of interdependence to intersectionality to Darwinian evolution to disability and the Holocaust.

Fries' works include The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory, which received the Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights; In the Province of the Gods, recipient of the Creative Capital literature award; and his forthcoming Stumbling over History: Disability and the Holocaust, for which he received a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Arts and Literary Arts Fellowship.

This is a live webinar. Please join via Zoom.

Bard is committed to making every effort to provide reasonable accommodations for accessibility needs. There will be live captioning, as well as an ASL interpreter and transcription services offered for this webinar. For other accessibility needs or for more information about this event please contact Disability Speaker Series Coordinator Jaime Alves at [email protected] or 845-758-7112. Sponsored by the Dean of the College and Disability Services.

Online Event  9:00 am – 10:00 am EDT/GMT-4
This Open Networking Session on Defining Civic Engagement is sponsored by the Civic Engagement Working Group and is open to all OSUN members. This session will pose the question of how to define civic engagement on your campus.

Please share this networking opportunity with interested colleagues at your institution.

This is an online event.
Join via Zoom.

Online Event  9:30 am – 11:00 am EDT/GMT-4
OSUN, along with European Humanities University and Bard Translation and Translatability initiative, invites OSUN members to an online event with Tatsiana Zamirouskaya, a writer and journalist from Minsk, Belarus, currently living in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her recent collection of metaphysical sci-fi stories, The Land of Random Numbers (2019), was longlisted for the Russian Bestseller Award and NOS Literary Award. Her novel about digital immortality and memory, The Deadnet, will be published in April 2021 by the AST/Elena Shubina Imprint. She has an MFA from Bard College Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts and is a recipient of fellowships from the Macdowell Colony and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. 

This is an online event.
Join via Zoom link.

Online Event  12:15 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
OSUN's Economic Democracy Initiative Research-to-Action series brings scholars, policy makers, and activists into conversation with OSUN students to discuss pathways for meaningful social change. The sessions highlight the practical ways in which guests have helped to actively change how we approach social and economic problems. From direct action and organizing, to public writing and speaking, to drafting legislation and other policy documents, the discussions will showcase how small steps and bottom-up efforts could potentially lead to big changes.

On Friday, April 9, Rohan Grey, Founder and President, Modern Money Network and Assistant Professor, Willamette Law and Pavlina Tcherneva, Founding Director of the Economic Democracy Initiative and Associate Professor, Bard College will discuss their respective experiences working with legislators on various policy documents, including the Job Guarantee Resolution, the ABC Act, and the WPA Act. 


This is an online event. Join via Zoom.

 

Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
The OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts presents a webinar with Emily Johnson, part of the Artists and Activists lecture series. Emily Johnson is an artist who makes body-based work. She is a land and water protector and an activist for justice, sovereignty and well-being.

A Bessie Award-winning choreographer, Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award, she is based in Lenapehoking / New York City. Emily is of the Yup’ik Nation, and since 1998 has created work that considers the experience of sensing and seeing performance. Her dances function as portals and care processions, engaging audiences within and through space, time, and environment–interacting with a place's architecture, peoples, history and role in building futures.

Emily is trying to make a world where performance is part of life; where performance is an integral connection to each other, our environment, our stories, our past, present and future.
 
Emily hosts monthly ceremonial fires on Mannahatta in partnership with Abrons Arts Center and Karyn Recollet. She was a co-compiler of the document, Creating New Futures: Guidelines for Ethics and Equity in the Performing Arts, and is part of an advisory group, with Reuben Roqueni, Lori Pourier, Ronee Penoi, and Vallejo Gantner - developing a First Nations Performing Arts Network.

This is an online event.
Join via Zoom Link.

Online Event  1:00 pm – 2:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
World premiere of the first in the OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts' annual digital commissions, featuring a Q&A with artist Leil Zahra and Nubian Geographic hosted by Dr. Hanan Toukan (Bard College Berlin).
في بيتنا بابا

Parting from a personal narrative, and using references from both popular culture and key political events, artist Leil Zahra Mortada uses the performative aspect of nationalism, and its propaganda, to contribute to a much-needed debate around Pan-Arabism and its consequences, history and present.

In this political coming-of-age, the video highlights the blurred lines between the Father figure as both the patriarch of the family and the leader of the nation. The author holds their father’s bias accountable despite the latter’s unquestionable commitment to social justice.

Leil Zahra Mortada is a transfeminist queer activist, researcher, and artist born in Beirut. Their film work includes the archival project “Words of Women from the Egyptian Revolution” and the awarded experimental short Breakup in 9 Scenes. Leil is behind the collaborative project Sound Frontier, a music research project focusing on marginalized music and sound art from a decolonial and feminist perspectives. They are a researcher and trainer on digital security, online privacy and open-source investigations. Recently they concluded a fellowship at Mozilla Foundation on the impacts of content policing on social media platforms. Their work focuses on queer and feminist politics, archiving, migration, anti-racism and decolonialism.

Nubian Geographic was founded in 2015 to document Nubia and its geography, history, language, wildlife and more. As a Nubian initiative, it works to counter the systemic erosion of the Nubian culture through research, documentation, producing resources and raising awareness. Nubian Geographic aims to become the origin of a Nubian Scientific Society that would help to preserve and revive Nubia's rich culture and history.

This is an online event. Join via Zoom.

Online Event  10:00 am – 11:00 am EDT/GMT-4
Ashesi University, Bard College, and Central European University invite OSUN fundraising leaders and staff to join in the creation of a fundraising and philanthropy-focused working group that will facilitate knowledge sharing, mutual capacity building, and connections for joint initiatives.

The first meeting of the OSUN Advancement Network is on April 7, 10 AM New York | 4 PM Vienna.

Register via Zoom.

Online Event  8:00 am – 10:00 am EDT/GMT-4
The Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory at the University of Belgrade welcomes all OSUN members to attend a virtual talk with Marija Antić and Ivana Radačić, who will discuss the use of the term "gender" in international human rights law, with particular attention paid to the social constructionist definition of gender in the Istanbul Convention. It will be argued that anti-gender discourse has a strong potential to undermine the developments in the domain of gender equality, only 25 years after the Beijing Conference on Women. 

This is an online event.
Join via Zoom.
Find out more.

Online Event  3:00 pm – 4:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
What does psychology tell us about the human capacity for hate?
 
Please join the Bard Center for the Study of Hate on Tuesday, April 6 at 3 pm New York Time in welcoming Samantha Moore-Berg, Director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Peace and Conflict Neuroscience Lab. She will speak about her work studying conflict across the globe. The lab “aims to understand how the human mind drives intergroup conflict and to put research into action to heal those divisions.”

This is an online event.
Please register here.


 

 

Green Recovery / Climate Solutions / Just Transition
Online Event  9:00 am – 11:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
On Tuesday, April 6, OSUN's Solve Climate by 2030 project and the Center for Environmental Policy at Bard College are organizing simultaneous “global dialog” webinars to focus the world on regional and local solutions—in 50 different countries and in every US state.  

The webinars will present climate solutions from experts in Hungary, South Africa, and Kyrgyzstan, as well as Florida, New Mexico and Minnesota—100 sites worldwide—about ambitious but feasible actions that could spur a just, Green Recovery and get the world on track to solving climate by 2030. Colleges and universities and local faith, civic, and business groups will host viewings of the webinars and in-person discussions of how to get involved in climate solutions.

Faculty at all levels are being asked to assign viewing the webinars as homework, and then spend the following class discussing climate solutions. This opportunity is not just for environmental studies classes. The challenges posed by solving climate change range across history, science, business, culture, economics, psychology, religion, government, media, journalism, and the arts. Solve Climate has disciplinary guides for follow-up discussions about the state-level, solutions-focused webinars.

The project will engage 300+ climate experts around the world as panel speakers, such as state and national political leaders, including members of the US Congress, a US Senator, a US governor, and two ambassadors from Kazakhstan.

See the list of global dialogs
Follow the #MakeClimateAClass social media campaign
Sign up here to stay informed

Online Event  8:00 am – 11:00 am EDT/GMT-4
IWT CLASP and the Global Debate Network invite faculty from across the network to join us for a 3-hour hands-on, interactive workshop on facilitating classroom debates.

We will walk through the various steps of organizing classroom debates - setting a debate topic, choosing a debate format, assigning the debate, preparing students, and grading the debate - as well as the various pedagogical functions of debate - public speaking, critical thinking, research, close reading, argument construction, and analytic writing. We will also discuss specific strategies for hosting virtual/online debates.Click here to registerPlease note: Space is limited. Please only register if you are able to join us for the entire 3-hour session.

Online Event  7:00 am – 8:00 am EDT/GMT-4
The OSUN Engaged Research Fund invites applications for funding and research support for graduate students and faculty at OSUN partner institutions who are working to develop long-term, sustainable community partnerships as a central part of their research with a goal to develop shared knowledge about issues that align with OSUN priorities and themes. 

The Engaged Scholar Award (ESA) is for graduate students pursuing research that integrates community engagement into new or existing scholarship. Award: $6,000

The Engaged Faculty Scholar Award (EFSA) is for faculty whose scholarship incorporates community-based research into new or existing research and supports sustained community partners as long term collaborators. Award: $9,000

The deadline for applications is April 15, 2021. 

Join us for an information session to learn more about these opportunities.
7 AM NY/12 PM Vienna

See more details.

Registration Link

Online Event  11:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Join Bard Bookworms: International Edition as we discuss our favorite stories that are 100 pages or less! For some suggestions from around the world, click here.

To join via Zoom:
https://bard.zoom.us/j/86931622552?pwd=RXZQVUhERUpHdnBJbTdzS3Z2SThUQT09
Meeting ID: 869 3162 2552
Passcode: 942980

Students, faculty, staff, alumni/ae, and community members throughout the Open Society University Network and Bard International Network Partners are welcomed to join. To sign up for our email alerts: https://forms.gle/n3yaH2BAZjgAAfZH9

Want to keep in touch between meetings? Join our GoodReads group: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1135375-bard-abroad-bard-book-worms

Questions? Contact Emily Levine at [email protected] or Lauren Cooke at [email protected]

Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts presents a webinar with Cassils, the third speaker in the Artists and Activists lecture series.

In a time of lockdown and quarantines, of fascism and propaganda, we need reason and action to be supported by visions of change. Cassils discusses artistic and performative tactics uniquely suited for our time. Reflecting on ten years of practice where they carve out strategies for trans representation, they discuss tactics to educate, engage and agitate while attempting to balance and center love, community and relevant action.

Cassils is a transgender artist who makes their own body the material and protagonist of their performances. Cassils’s art contemplates the history(s) of LGBTQI+ violence, representation, struggle and survival. For Cassils, performance is a form of social sculpture: drawing from the idea that bodies are formed in relation to forces of power and social expectations, Cassils’ work investigates historical contexts to examine the present moment.

This event is a webinar.
Join via Zoom.
Find out more about the Talks by Artists and Activists series.

Online Event  8:00 am – 8:30 am EDT/GMT-4
The Open Society University Network sponsors Community Action Awards that help cover costs associated with unpaid summer internships that support preprofessional experiences. Eligible internships address issue(s) related to the broad field of civic engagement, including education, government, social justice, human rights, media, public policy, the arts, and social entrepreneurship. 

Join us to learn more about the award and your potential summer opportunities!

https://bard.zoom.us/j/4395717800 

Or, ready to apply? Click here for the application!

Online Event  11:00 am – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
OSUN and the Center for Civic Engagement invite students from across the OSUN international network for a screening of Moolaadé, a 2004 film by the Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène telling the story of a woman, Collé, who uses moolaadé (magical protection) to protect her daughter from female genital mutilation. This was Sembéne's last film before his death in 2007.

Discussion following led by Beryl and Dorothy, social workers from the Kakamega Care Center in Kenya. 

Contact [email protected] with any questions.

This is an online event. Join via Zoom.

Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Zarina Muhammad from the influential UK-based art criticism collective, The White Pube, is the guest in OSUN's Center for Human Rights and the Arts' second public talk.

The White Pube is a collaboration between Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente, born out of the need for art writing that goes beyond the “just bad chat by middle class white men.” They use social media, audio recording, unconventional punctuation, billboards in the public space, and a practice of embodied criticism.

The ~cultural sector~ has been resistant to change; it has held on to antiquated balances of power like no other area of society, and that rigidity has affected the way we distribute resources amongst ourselves within the creative industry. We have got to radically restructure the way we do things. If we had the chance to terraform the arts landscape we’ve got, and become more expansive in what we do, where would we start? How do you go about making an industry that’s sustainable, accessible, genuinely diverse, and fundamentally joyful?

You can find The White Pube at thewhitepube.com or on twitter and instagram at @thewhitepube.

This is an online event. Join via Zoom.

Online Event  10:00 am – 11:30 am EDT/GMT-4
March 24th, 10 am NY; 3 pm Vienna; 4 pm Vilnius

The Department of Social Sciences at the European Humanities University (EHU) together with Professor Panu Kalmi hosts a webinar on “Financial Literacy and the COVID-19 Outbreak” for students, prospective students and everyone who might be interested.

Financial literacy is a very important skill because it helps individuals to make effective and deliberate financial decisions. Nowadays, during the COVID-19 outbreak, the topic of financial literacy is even more relevant than ever before. The pandemic treats different people very differently, depending on their education, profession and financial literacy.

The webinar will cover: Financial literacy and how it is related to different economic outcomes, especially to preparation for adverse economic shocks; The empirical evidence of the importance of financial literacy in the COVID-19 shock; Changes in consumer behavior in the United States and Europe due to COVID-19 outbreak; Advice on how individuals can improve their financial preparedness for economic shocks.
Panu Kalmi is a Professor of economics at the University of Vaasa, Finland; the vice leader of the Digiconsumers research project and a council member of the European Association of Economics Education. He has a Ph.D. in economics at Copenhagen Business School. The main research interest of Professor Panu Kalmi is financial literacy and how it can be improved by financial education.

The event will be moderated by EHU MA student Viyaleta Volkavam, in English.
This is an online event. Join via Zoom.

Online Event  12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
As part of the CEU Speaker Series, Dr. Özge Yaka, Alexander von Humbolt PSI Fellow at the Centre for Citizenship, Social Pluralism and Religious Diversity, University of Potsdam, will speak on Frustration/Revelation – "Research as a Transformative Process: Methodology, Practice, and Positionality. 

Research can be characterized by long stretches of frustration and puzzlement, punctuated by occasional moments of revelation. This series focuses on exceptional scholars who will not deliver standard academic talks, but who will bring to life struggles faced when pursuing their research, how they came to study a specific topic, difficult choices made, failures, and then sometimes revelations - sudden or slowly accumulating - that have transformed how they view their research, their respective disciplines, and even the world at large.

In the process, we also learn about academic disciplines and the kind of work scholars do in crafting their research. Conventional academic talks are about sharing the outcomes of research. This talk, however, will focus on the research itself, not as a vehicle to produce outcomes, but as a transformative process – which transforms both the conceptual frameworks and disciplinary identities of the researcher, and the way she positions herself within the inter-subjective practice of knowledge production.

Monday, March 22, 2021 / 5:30 - 6:30 p.m. CET / 11:30 am to 12:30 pm EST   
This is an online event. Join via Zoom.

 

Online Event  10:00 am – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The OSUN Engaged Research Fund is pleased to announce a spring online training series on Engaged Research being held in conjunction with SOAS. This workshop series, open to faculty and graduate students across OSUN, is an introduction to the basic tools of Training for Transformation and Participatory Methods for Engaged Research. Faculty and graduate students interested in applying to the Engaged Research Fund are invited and encouraged to sign up to participate.

Session 3 – Building a Learning Community. Facilitated by Dan Glass

This workshop is part of Phase 1 (March 16th - March 22nd), which is open to all faculty and graduate students across OSUN who are interested in learning more about integrating engaged research into their scholarship. Register:Join via Zoom.Questions:Dan Glass: [email protected] and Caitlin O’Donnell: [email protected]For information on the rest of the series, click hereFor information on the Engaged Research Fund, click here

Online Event  10:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
On Monday, March 22, OSUN Chancellor Leon Botstein will participate in a panel titled "The Heart of the Matter: Inspiring Climate Action through Culture and Art," at the inaugural Global Summit of the Climate Governance Initiative.

In collaboration with the World Economic Forum, the Initiative convenes board members, regulators, experts, academics and corporate governance leaders to understand and act upon the risks and opportunities that the climate emergency poses to the long-term resilience and business success of their companies.

Panelists joining Chancellor Botstein include: 
Lera Auerbach - Composer, Artist, Poet; World Economic Forum Young Global Leader
Cristina Vollmer de Burelli - Founder, SOS Orinoco; Founding Co-Chair, The Global Leaders Program
Olafur Eliasson - Artist; UN Goodwill Ambassador on climate action; WEF Young Global Leader
Miranda Massie - Director, The Climate Museum

Moderator: Katya Gorbatiouk - Board Member, The Global Leaders Program; Advisory Council, London Symphony Orchestra

Learn more and register.

Online Event  9:30 am – 11:30 am EDT/GMT-4
Sunday, March 21; 9:30 am NY; 2:30 pm Vienna; 3:30 pm Jerusalem

OSUN and Al Quds Bard Social Science Division invites you to the event "Minorities' Bids For Political Representation in the US: A Conversation with Ahmed Mansour."

Ahmed Mansour, born and raised in the Gaza Strip, is an NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, News and Documentary Program graduate. His debut film "Brooklyn lnshallah," a feature documentary on the first Palestinian to ever run for the New York City Council, was released in 2019 and premiered at prestigious film festivals such as DOC NYC and TPFF. The film will be broadcasted on TRT and PBS this spring. 

At this virtual meeting, Mansour will be sharing insights on "Brooklyn lnshallah" as well as the political climate that was looming when he made the film. A short clip from the film will be screend before the conversation.

This is an online event. Join via Zoom.

Online Event  9:30 am – 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
OSUN and Bard present the Third Annual Difference and Justice Seminar. With over twenty panels on Historical Structures, Wellness, and Activism, the theme of this year's symposium is, "How Do We Create an Equitable Environment While Living In an Inequitable World?"

Keynote Address by Dr. Angel Love Miles, Scholar / Activist

View the full schedule here.

Free Registration Here

For more information, email [email protected]
 


Download: Third Annual D&J Symposium Poster.pdf

Online Event  10:00 am – 1:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The OSUN Engaged Research Fund is pleased to announce a spring online training series on Engaged Research being held in conjunction with SOAS. This workshop series, open to faculty and graduate students across OSUN, is an introduction to the basic tools of Training for Transformation and Participatory Methods for Engaged Research. Faculty and graduate students interested in applying to the Engaged Research Fund are invited and encouraged to sign up to participate.

Session 2 – Diversity, Culture and Transformation - All Injustices are Connected. Exploring economic, social, and political facets of poverty, will be facilitated by Vidya Venkat, a doctoral researcher in the Department of Anthropology at SOAS, University of London.

This workshop is part of Phase 1 (March 16th - March 22nd), which is open to all faculty and graduate students across OSUN who are interested in learning more about integrating engaged research into their scholarship.Register:Join via Zoom.
Questions:Dan Glass: [email protected] and Caitlin O’Donnell: [email protected]For information on the rest of the series, click here
For information on the Engaged Research Fund, click here

Online Event  3:00 pm – 4:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Join the Bard Center for the Study of Hate for a talk with award-winning and best-selling author Philippe Sands, who will speak about his new book, The Ratline: Love, Lies, and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive, described as a “historical detective story that sets out to uncover the truth behind what happened to leading Nazi Otto von Wächter.” Sands says it’s “a deep and long lesson on how hate begins.”

This is an online event. 
Join via Zoom.

Online Event  9:00 am – 10:30 am EDT/GMT-4
Open Society Climate Network presents a seminar on "Open Climate Coordination and Decision Making"

Speakers:

Martin Wainstein (Yale) on Open Climate: Digitally Integrated Global Climate Accounting for the Paris Agreement
Leanne Ussher  (Bard Annandale) on Tokens for Climate Coordination 
Manfred Laubichler (Arizona State University) on Decision Theaters and Civic Engagement

This is an online event. Join via Zoom.
For more information contact Leanne Ussher at [email protected] or Harold Hastings at [email protected].

Online Event  8:00 am – 9:00 am EDT/GMT-4
The OSUN Engaged Research Fund invites applications for funding and research support for graduate students and faculty at OSUN partner institutions who are working to develop long-term, sustainable community partnerships as a central part of their research with a goal to develop shared knowledge about issues that align with OSUN priorities and themes. 

The Engaged Scholar Award (ESA) is for graduate students pursuing research that integrates community engagement into new or existing scholarship. Award: $6,000

The Engaged Faculty Scholar Award (EFSA) is for faculty whose scholarship incorporates community-based research into new or existing research and supports sustained community partners as long term collaborators. Award: $9,000

The deadline for applications is April 15, 2021. The Engaged Research Application Portal will open on April 1, 2021. Join us for an information session to learn more about these opportunities.See more details.

Registration Link

Online Event  1:00 pm – 2:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
On Tuesdays and Thursdays during the Spring Semester, the Bard College Remote Student Ambassador Program will be hosting weekly Conversational English Groups; all interested students are welcome to attend. 

Please help spread the word!Join our Remote Student Ambassadors Wandi Liang, Yuchen Zhou, Ethan Gutman, Lizi Tabliashvili and practice your conversational English! 2021 SPRING SEMESTER
 TUESDAYS @ 1:00 pm NY; 5 pm London; 6 pm Vienna; 8 pm Moscow; 12 pm Bishkek; 1 am Beijing
Join via Zoom THURSDAYS @ 9:00am NY;  1 pm London; 2 pm Vienna; 4 pm Moscow; 8 pm Bishkek; 9 pm Beijing
Join via Zoom  
Click here for access to a Global Time Converter that can verify the time of these events for your time zone.Questions? Email [email protected]

Online Event  9:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
The OSUN Engaged Research Fund is pleased to announce a spring online training series on Engaged Research being held in conjunction with SOAS. This workshop series, open to faculty and graduate students across OSUN, is an introduction to the basic tools of Training for Transformation and Participatory Methods for Engaged Research. Faculty and graduate students interested in applying to the Engaged Research Fund are invited and encouraged to sign up to participate.

Session 1 – Introduction to Transformative Development and Engaged Research, will be facilitated by Lyndsay Burtonshaw, a facilitator-activist working with Quaker Peace and Social Witness, Navigate coop and Beautiful Trouble UK.

This workshop is part of Phase 1 (March 16th - March 22nd), which is open to all faculty and graduate students across OSUN who are interested in learning more about integrating engaged research into their scholarship. Registration/Questions:Dan Glass: [email protected] and Caitlin O’Donnell: [email protected]For information on the rest of the series, click hereFor information on the Engaged Research Fund, click here

Online Event  9:00 am – 11:00 am EDT/GMT-4
The Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory at the University of Belgrade welcomes all OSUN members to attend a virtual discussion with Slobodanka Boba Dekić on "Politics or Policies? Confronting the Effect of Anti-Gender Narratives of Family and Gender on LGBT Organizations in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia."

Dekić will speak on the dominant narratives around "traditional families," framed within the "anti-gender" understanding of the term, which rejects the sex and gender distinction. Dekić will also discuss the readiness of local LGBT organizations to substantially challenge such narratives. Dekić will put a particular stress on organizations from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.

This is an online event. Join via Zoom. 
Find out more about the event.
 

Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5
OSUN's Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College invites you to its inaugural public event, an online lecture by Faustin Linyekula entitled "Of Ruins and Responsibility." 

According to Linyekula, "This lecture will be (again) a dialogue with the ruins I inherited from my fathers, guided by the poet’s voice."

Linyekula is a multi-award-winning dancer, choreographer, and director living in Kisangani, DRC. He is the founder of Studios Kabako, a community-based space dedicated to dance, visual theater, music, and film, providing training programs, and supporting research and creation in the Lubunga district. His work is site-specific, politically driven, and multidisciplinary. It mixes movements, texts, video, and music.

This event is part of an eight-part international lecture series produced by CHRA.

This is an online event.
Join via Zoom.

 

Online Event  1:00 pm – 3:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Bard Prison Initiative invites all OSUN members to join a discussion and Q+A with panelists on "The Historic Return of Pell Funding for Incarcerated Students and What Comes Next" on March 10, 1 pm EST.

Panelists
Vivian Nixon, Executive Director, College & Community Fellowship
George Chochos '10, Senior Federal Policy Associate, Vera Institute Institute of Justice
Max Kenner '01, Executive Director, Bard Prison Initiative

With the passing and signing of the omnibus spending and COVID relief bill at the end of the year, the insidious provision of the ’94 Crime Bill—which revoked modest student aid from incarcerated people and eviscerated college-in-prison—has been reversed.

Since 1994, restoration of Pell eligibility in prison has been the North Star for our field. The new legislation restores the possibility of college-in-prison nationally. It is a victory decades in the making, creating new challenges and opportunities.

With college-in-prison at a crossroads, join us for a discussion of how we got here and what comes next.

Register for the webinar here.

Online Event  10:30 am – 12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
The Human Rights Project and Russian/Eurasian Studies Program present a panel discussion on "Fighting for Freedom 2020: Protest Across Asia."

Moderator: Thomas Keenan, Bard College
Thomas Keenan teaches human rights, media theory, and literature, and directs the Human Rights Project as well as Bard’s degree program in Human Rights. He has served on the boards of a number of human rights organizations and journals, including WITNESS, Scholars at Risk, The Crimes of War Project, The Journal of Human Rights, and Humanity. He is the author of Fables of Responsibility, 1997; and with Eyal Weizman, Mengele’s Skull, 2012. He is co-editor, with Wendy Chun, of New Media, Old Media, 2006, 2nd ed. 2015; with Tirdad Zolghadr, of The Human Snapshot, 2013. The Flood of Rights, co-edited with Suhail Malik and Tirdad Zolghadr, appeared in 2017.

Maksimas Milta on Belarus, European Humanities University
Maksimas Milta leads the Communication and Development Unit and is a part-time faculty member in the Department of Humanities and Arts at the European Humanities University, a Belarusian University-in-Exile. Starting from the outbreak of the revolt in Belarus, Maksimas has been a frequent commentator to Lithuanian, regional and international media (including BBC, Times Higher Education etc.), providing daily reports on the dynamics of the protest and analysis of the political movement in the country. Maksimas holds a Master's degree in Eastern European and Russian Studies from Vilnius University.

Alesia Rudnik on Belarus, Karlstad University
Lesia Rudnik is a Research Fellow at the Center for New Ideas, PhD Fellow at Karlstad University (Sweden). Lesia Rudnik is also involved in consulting ongoing projects of the Belarusian opposition. She is based in Sweden where she also chairs an organization of Belarusian diaspora. Alesia has published her analyses for media and analytical editions based in Belarus, Sweden, Poland, Germany, UK, the USA. Lesia holds the following degrees: MA pol sci (Stockholm University), MA Journalism (Sodertorn University), BA pol sci and European research (European Humanities University). Her academic research is digitalization of politics, protest mobilization via social media.

Medet Tiulegenov on Kyrgyzstan, America University of Central Asia
Medet Tiulegenov teaches political science at the Department of International and Comparative Politics of American University of Central Asia. His teaching and research interests include normative diffusion, civil society in transition countries, contentious politics, politics of identity and political participation.

This is an online event. Join via Zoom.

For more information, contact Olga Voronina at [email protected] or Danielle Riou at [email protected].

 

Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Please join OSUN member SOAS for a discussion with new Director Adam Habib and guests on "COVID-19: Addressing Vaccination Inequality in an Interconnected World."

Panelists:

Dr. Peter Singer, Special Advisor to the Director General, WHO
Dr. Segenet Kelemu, Director General and CEO, ICIPE
Martin Wolf CBE, Chief Economic Commentator, Financial Times

Find out more and access via Zoom.
 

Online Event  9:00 am – 10:00 am EST/GMT-5
This Open Networking Session on Defining Civic Engagement is sponsored by the Civic Engagement Working Group and is open to all OSUN members. This session will pose the question of how to define civic engagement on your campus.

Please share this networking opportunity with interested colleagues at your institution.

This is an online event.
Join via Zoom.

Online Event  9:00 am – 10:00 am EST/GMT-5
Graduate students who received mini-grants supporting their community engagement efforts adapting to the challenges presented by COVID-19 will share their projects and experiences with a global audience.



PANELISTS

Freddy Yanez Cerda, Universidad Austral de Chile (Chile) 
Sol Rodriguez, University of British Columbia (Canada)
Rose Macharia, Mount Kenya University (Kenya)
Decent Mutanho, Witwatersrand University (South Africa)  
Andy Saunders, Rutgers University-New Brunswick (United States)
Adnan Schubert, Central European University (Hungary) 

MODERATOR
TBD


The COV-AID webinar series Adapting to the New Reality: Civically Engaged Universities Offer Strategies and Hope collects and shares stories of institutions and individuals who are taking action to mitigate the crisis, and documents practical steps and strategies that may be of use elsewhere. The series is a collaboration between the Open Society University Network and the Talloires Network of Engaged Universities.


Join via Zoom

Image of the Pankow ist immer schön video workshop at Bard College Berlin, February 2019, by Vera Yung (Bard College Berlin '20).

Online Event  11:00 am – 12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
If some things are lost in translation, can things also be added? Join Bard Bookworms: International Edition to discuss any literature that you've read that has been translated from the original text as we try and figure out what has been lost (or gained) in translation!

To join via Zoom:
https://bard.zoom.us/j/86931622552?pwd=RXZQVUhERUpHdnBJbTdzS3Z2SThUQT09
Meeting ID: 869 3162 2552
Passcode: 942980

Students, faculty, staff, alumni/ae, and community members throughout the Open Society University Network and Bard International Network Partners are welcomed to join. To sign up for our email alerts: https://forms.gle/n3yaH2BAZjgAAfZH9

Want to keep in touch between meetings? Join our GoodReads group: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1135375-bard-abroad-bard-book-worms

Questions? Contact Emily Levine at [email protected] or Lauren Cooke at [email protected]

Online Event  6:00 am – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
OSUN is delighted to announce we have sponsored tickets for Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities' Dissent in Dark Times, a virtual event taking place on Saturday, March 6th and Sunday, 7th March 2021, in partnership with the London Review of Books. 

The full program for this weekend of critical thought about our current times can be viewed here, but speakers include Jeremy Harding, Aviah Sarah Day, Hazel V. Carby, Omid Tofighian and Behrouz Boochani, Costas Douzinas, and John Lanchester. 

Students and academics from anywhere in the world are invited to come together to listen, learn and contribute to a unique debate about the role of dissent in addressing the challenges of our contemporary world.

Speakers and Topics:

Saturday 6th March  (times are GMT)

11.00 Jeremy Harding on "Pillars of Salt: Distancing has consequences for mental health"
12.30 Aviah Sarah Day on "Survived and Punished: How Criminal Justice Programmes are Criminalising Survivors of Domestic Violence"
16.00 Hazel V. Carby on "Black Futurities: Shape-shifting beyond the Limits of the Human"

Sunday 7th March

10.00 Omid Tofighian and Behrouz Boochani on "Representing/translating/transforming carceral-border violence: knowledge-resistance-existence within Australia's border industrial complex"
11.00 Costas Douzinas on "Resistance in dark times: Biopolitics, the state of exception, rights"
15.00 John Lanchester  on "'Disruption' in the writer's life"OSUN-institution members can apply for an OSUN-sponsored ticket by emailing [email protected] and putting OSUN/DiDT in the subject of the email, and including the following information in the body of the email:First and last name
Email address
Ticket date 
Ticket type: student/non-student 
 

Online Event  9:00 am – 10:00 am EST/GMT-5
This Open Networking Session for Student-Led Initiative Coordinators is sponsored by the Civic Engagement Working Group and is open to all OSUN members. The session will cover cocurricular and student-led involvement in civic engagement.

Please share this networking opportunity with interested colleagues at your institution.

This is an online event.
Join via Zoom.
 

Online Event  9:00 am – 10:00 am EST/GMT-5
This Open Networking Session for Academic Civic Engagement Coordinators is sponosored by the Civic Engagement Working Group and is open to all OSUN members. The session will cover community-engaged courses, service learning, and certificate programs.

Please share this networking opportunity with interested colleagues at your institution.

This is an online event.
Join via Zoom.
 

Online Event  9:00 am – 5:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Want to experience what it's like to study at a global university in Vienna? Interested in applying to Central European University’s degree programs but have some questions? Join the CEU Virtual Open Week between March 1 and 5 from wherever you are!

Check out the online lectures and podcasts, sign up for open classes to get a sneak peek into the CEU learning experience, watch webinar recordings to meet current students and faculty and hear insider application tips, and book a one-on-one online consultation to get all your questions answered.Find more information here.

Sign up for open classes here.

Online Event  8:00 am – 9:30 am EST/GMT-5
The participants of the second edition of the Democracy Institute's Hotspots of Democracy debates will pose the questions: Can we, after thirty decades, still believe in the rise of a liberal type of democratic system in Russia? Is the Navalny case the beginning of a new chapter for the Russian democracy or it is just a prologue for another change of oligarchic elite? Is the actual Russian political elite discredited enough to sharpen the reactions of the EU and USA? How should Western Democracies react to the openly repressive and anti-democratic measures of the Russian 'hybrid regime'? How would a change in internal power relations affect the global geo-political context for the EU?

BBC-journalist Olga Ivshina, political scientist Ivan Krastev, MEP Sergey Lagodinsky and legal expert Olga Sidorovich will address these questions in a discussion moderated by CEU’s President and Rector, Michael Ignatieff.


Speakers:

Olga Ivshina
Ivan Krastev
Sergey Lagodinsky
Olga Sidorovich

Moderator:

Michael Ignatieff 

The discussion will be streamed live on the Institute’s Facebook page. If you are interested, then please join the Facebook event.

Honoring Professor Emeritus of History Frank L. Toland
Online Event  2:00 pm – 4:00 pm EST/GMT-5
A Deans' Panel. Join via Zoom.

Online Event  1:00 pm – 2:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Latin(x)Club of Bard College Berlin welcomes OSUN members to an open discussion with Luis Miguel Isava, Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (Emory University, Atlanta, USA), on the enigmatic short story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, considered by many the greatest Spanish-language writer of the twentieth century. In this conversation, we will explore the metaphysical complexities in the story with the help of Isava, whose fields of study are poetry and contemporary poetics, relationships between literature and philosophy, theory, aesthetics and film studies. 

The event will take place in Spanish, but all interested students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members throughout the Open Society University Network and Bard International Network Partners are welcomed to join. The conversation will stem from the principle that the attendants will already be familiar with the story, which means that reading it in advance is encouraged but feel free to join even if you haven’t had the time. 
 About Latin(x)Club:Latin(x)Club wants to create a safe and sustainable space for the Latin American community across the OSUN Network using Bard College Berlin as a basis. This collective originates from the need to bring together the growing Latin American student body. We want to create a safe space to share our passion for our cultures and our personal experience of relocation. To continue this conversation across geographies and disciplines, we will host events open to the entire network inviting guest speakers to help us broaden our understanding of the region using literature, performance art, politics, theater, mix-media, among other cultural manifestations. The following event is the first of our international events open to the entire OSUN community. 


Read the Borges story in Spanish
Read the Borges story in English   


Join via Zoom.

 

Honoring Professor Emeritus of History Frank L. Toland
Online Event  2:00 pm – 4:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Lula Joe Williams, Gladis Williams, Barbara Jean Williams Parker. Join via Zoom.

Online Event  2:00 pm – 4:00 pm EST/GMT-5
OSUN and network partner Tuskegee University invite you to attend an online discussion with Chester Higgins, staff photographer for the New York Times for more than four decades, on Unforgotten: Photography as Resistance.

This event is part of the Tuskegee University 2021 Black History Month Lecture Series, “Embracing Our Heritage and Continuing the Struggle.”

This and all events in the series are online, unless specified otherwise.
Join via Zoom.

Online Event  9:30 am – 10:30 am EST/GMT-5
The Open Society University Network and the CEU Democracy Institute cordially invite all OSUN members to an online event on "The Future of Democracy in EU Member States."

Debates on the state of democracy in EU Member States have been intensifying and attacks against the rule of law have regularly been occurring. Both authoritarian incumbents and their opponents try to use elements of the international legal and political framework for or against de-democratization.

In this debate Věra Jourová, Vice-President of the European Commission; Clément Beaune, Secretary of State for European affairs in the French government; and Michal Šimečka, MEP and Vice-Chair of the Renew Europe Group will address the question of how to strengthen democracy on the national level, integrating the political and legal aspects of the problem. The discussion will be moderated by R. Daniel Kelemen, Professor of Political Science and Law and Jean Monnet Chair in European Union Politics at Rutgers University. Opening remarks will be delivered by Dimitry Kochenov (CEU Democracy Institute).

Please note that registration is required to attend this online event. Please register here.
 

Online Event  3:00 pm – 4:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Please join the Bard Center for the Study of Hate on Tuesday February 23, 2021 at 3:00pm Eastern Time as we welcome Nadine Strossen, a professor at New York Law School, past president of the American Civil Liberties Union, and author of HATE: Why We Should Resist it with Free Speech, Not Censorship, and Richard Wilson, professor of law and anthropology at the University of Connecticut and the author of Incitement on Trial: Prosecuting International Speech Crimes. They will speak on “Law and hateful speech—what is to be done?”
 
Join via Zoom. Register here.

Online Event  2:00 pm – 4:00 pm EST/GMT-5
OSUN and network partner Tuskegee University invite you to attend an online discussion on COVID-19 and the African American Community with panelists: Deloris Alexander, Crystal James, Rueben Warren, and Frank Lee

This event is part of the Tuskegee University 2021 Black History Month Lecture Series, “Embracing Our Heritage and Continuing the Struggle.”

This and all events in the series are online, unless specified otherwise.
Join via Zoom.

Online Event  11:00 am – 12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
This event takes place at 11 am EST/10 am CST

OSUN and network partner Tuskegee University invite you to attend an online discussion with Benjamin Crump, nationally recognized trial lawyer for justice, on "The Color of Law."

This event is part of the Tuskegee University 2021 Black History Month Lecture Series, "Embracing Our Heritage and Continuing the Struggle."

This and all events in the series are online, unless specified otherwise.
Join via Zoom.

Online Event  8:30 am – 9:30 am EST/GMT-5
CLASP (Center for Liberal Arts and Sciences Pedagogy) and the Global Debate Network invite faculty from across the network to join us for an informal gathering to share experiences and expertise related to classroom debates. We welcome faculty who already use debates in their classes as well as those looking to learn more and/or give it a try for the first time.

We will discuss strategies for both in-person and virtual debates, ways to fit debate into the curriculum, as well as the various pedagogical functions of debate (public speaking, English as a second language, critical thinking, research, argument construction, analytic writing, etc.). The session will offer us the time to share pedagogical approaches as well as to learn more about the offerings of the OSUN Global Debate Network.

Join via Zoom.
Register here. 

Online Event  8:00 am – 10:00 am EST/GMT-5
The Open Society University Network and the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory of the University in Belgrade invite all OSUN members to attend an online lecture by Jo Shaw on "Horizons of Freedom: The Paradoxes of Citizenship in the Pandemic." 

Shaw, who holds the Salvesen Chair of European Institutions at the University of Edinburgh, will explore how the meaning of certain social acts has been shifting under pandemic conditions, allowing us to gain new insights into the character of constitutional citizenship and its relationship with political ideas such as populism and fundamental principles such as equality and dignity. The focal points of the lecture are face-coverings and masks, alongside public protests against restrictions on liberties imposed in the name of combating the spread of the virus.

These shifts in social acts illustrate the changing meaning of what constitutes the “good citizen," playing on what Jean Cohen terms “the paradoxical dialectic inherent in modern constitutionalism,” which “drives republican or liberal democratic conceptions of citizenship into the arms of thicker, more communitarian understandings of identity.” This, then, raises the question of whether it is feasible and reasonable to place a brake upon such trends, and to ask which types of norms and institutions, at the national and international levels, are suitable for that task.

The annual seminar 2020/21 “Horizons of Freedom” events at the Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, examine the intrinsic connection between freedom and engagement in order to expand the conceptual and political horizons of freedom as a central principle guiding action in democratic politics, and initiates a more intensive dialogue among antagonistic traditions of academic perception of freedom in the face of urgent challenges and threats to freedom and democracy.

Join via Zoom.
Link to the IFDT site.

Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5
The Jewish Studies Program and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research present an online event featuring Jan Grabowski, Professor of History at the University of Ottawa, who was convicted in a Polish court for his work documenting Polish collaboration during the Holocaust. Grabowski will be in conversation with Masha Gessen, Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College.

In 2018 Jan Grabowksi and Barbara Engelking published Dalej jest noc: losy Żydów w wybranych powiatach okupowanej Polski [Night Without End: The Fate of the Jews in Selected Counties of Occupied Poland], which documents the range of Polish behavior towards Jews during the Holocaust in a series of local case studies.  

The Polish League against Defamation, which has close ties to the right-wing ruling Law and Justice Party, brought a lawsuit against Grabowski and Engelking on behalf of the niece of a figure discussed in the book. This action is widely viewed as a continuation of the government’s campaign to stifle free inquiry into Poland’s wartime history and to punish those who question the narrative of Poles as exclusively the victims of Nazi atrocities who rescued Jews on a massive scale.

On February 9, 2021 a Warsaw court found Grabowski and Engelking guilty, declining to fine the scholars but demanding that they issue an apology. In his first public remarks since the trial Prof. Grabowski, in conversation with journalist Masha Gessen, will discuss his response to the verdict as well as its political and scholarly implications. 

Jan Grabowski is Professor of History at the University of Ottawa. His books include Polacy, nic się nie stało! Polemiki z Zagładą w tle [Poles, Nothing Happened! Polemics with the Holocaust in the Background] (2021); Na posterunku: Udział polskiej policji granatowej i kryminalnej w zagładzie Żydów [On Duty: Participation of Blue and Criminal Police in the Destruction of the Jews], (2020); Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland (2013), which won the Yad Vashem International Book Prize; and "Ja Tego Żyda Znam!": Szantażowanie Żydów w Warszawie, 1939-1943 [“I Know that Jew!”: The Blackmailing of Jews in Warsaw, 1939-1943] (2004). He is a member of the Royal Society of Canada and has held fellowships and guest professorships at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Munich), the University of Haifa, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Yad Vashem.

Masha Gessen is Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College. She is a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of 11 books of nonfiction, most recently Surviving Autocracy (2020); as well as The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, which won the 2017 National Book Award for Nonfiction; and The Man without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (2012). The Moscow-born Gessen is the recipient of Guggenheim, Andrew Carnegie, and Nieman Fellowships, Hitchens Prize, Overseas Press Club Award for Best Commentary, and an honorary doctorate from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.

For more information, contact Cecile Kuznitz at [email protected].

Join this event via Zoom.

 

Online Event  8:00 am – 9:00 am EST/GMT-5
Join us on Tuesday, February 16, 2021, 8 am EST for an Info Session on the Get Engaged Student Action and Youth Leadership Conference.

See more details about the Get Engaged Student Action and Youth Leadership Conference, April 10–11, 2021.

Join via Zoom.
Register here.

Online Event  11:30 am – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
CIVICA--The European University of Social Sciences--warmly invites all OSUN members to the launch of the Public Lecture Series Tours d'Europe with an event on "Democracy in the Time of Pandemic" hosted online by Central European University on 15 February 2021, 11:30 am EST/5:30 pm CET.

With the Public Lecture Series Tours d'Europe, experts from CIVICA universities present their research on timely topics to the general public. The series aims to strengthen citizens' knowledge base and to facilitate a direct dialogue between social science researchers and the wider society.

Speakers
Michael Ignatieff, Central European University
Catherine E. De Vries, Bocconi University
Martial Foucault, Sciences Po
Andrés Velasco, London School of Economics

Moderator
Krisztina Bombera, broadcast journalist

Registration for this online event is not required. Join the event here. 

Online Event  11:00 am – 12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Join Bard Abroad for a Valentine's themed Bard Bookworms: International Edition. We will be discussing books we love and books on love!

To join via Zoom:
https://bard.zoom.us/j/86931622552?pwd=RXZQVUhERUpHdnBJbTdzS3Z2SThUQT09
Meeting ID: 869 3162 2552
Passcode: 942980

Students, faculty, staff, alumni/ae, and community members throughout the Open Society University Network and Bard International Network Partners are welcomed to join. To sign up for our email alerts: https://forms.gle/n3yaH2BAZjgAAfZH9

Want to keep in touch between meetings? Join our GoodReads group: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1135375-bard-abroad-bard-book-worms

Questions? Contact Emily Levine at [email protected] or Lauren Cooke at [email protected]

Online Event  8:00 am – 9:00 am EST/GMT-5
Join us this Friday, February 12, 2021, 8am EST for an Info Session on the Get Engaged Student Action and Youth Leadership Conference.

See more details about the Get Engaged Student Action and Youth Leadership Conference, April 10–11, 2021.

Join via Zoom.
Register here.

A discussion with Thanassis Cambanis, Michael Hanna and Aya Ibrahim
Online Event  12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST/GMT-5
A decade has passed since hundreds of thousands poured into Cairo's Tahrir Square, igniting the Arab Spring. What has happened since? Join us on Thursday, February 11 (exactly 10 years to the day that Hosni Mubarak stepped down) at 12 pm EST/6 pm Vienna. We'll be joined by Century Foundation's Thanassis Cambanis, author of Once Upon a Revolution: An Egyptian Story, and Michael Hanna, author of Arab Politics Beyond the Uprisings, and Deutsche Welle correspondent and BGIA alumnus Aya Ibrahim. 

Join via Zoom. RSVP Required.

Online Event  9:00 am – 10:00 am EST/GMT-5
The OSUN Engaged Research Fund invites applications for funding and research support for graduate students and faculty at OSUN partner institutions who are working to develop long-term, sustainable community partnerships as a central part of their research with a goal to develop shared knowledge about issues that align with OSUN priorities and themes. 

The Engaged Scholar Award (ESA) is for graduate students pursuing research that integrates community engagement into new or existing scholarship. Award: $6,000

The Engaged Faculty Scholar Award (EFSA) is for faculty whose scholarship incorporates community-based research into new or existing research and supports sustained community partners as long term collaborators. Award: $9,000

The deadline for applications is April 15, 2021. The Engaged Research Application Portal will open on April 1, 2021. Join us for an information session to learn more about these opportunities.See more details.Registration Link

9:00 am – 10:00 am EST/GMT-5

PANELISTS

Adnan Z. Morshed, Professor, Catholic University of America and BRAC University
Judith Mossman, Pro Vice-Chancellor Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Coventry University
Kseniya Shtalenkova, MA in Sociology, PhD candidate at the joint doctoral programme of philosophy (EHU, VMU, LSRI); Assistant Lecturer in the Academic Department of Humanities and Arts, Academic Secretary to the Journal for Philosophy and Cultural Studies Topos, European Humanities University
Tania El Khoury, Distinguished Artist in Residence in Theater & Performance and the Director of the OSUN Center for Human Rights & the Arts at Bard College

MODERATOR

Lorlene Hoyt, Executive Director, Talloires Network of Engaged Universities, Research Professor, Tisch College of Civic Life, Research Professor, Department of Urban + Environmental Policy + Planning, Visiting Scholar, President’s Office, Albion College

The COV-AID webinar series Adapting to the New Reality: Civically Engaged Universities Offer Strategies and Hope collects and shares stories of institutions and individuals who are taking action to mitigate the crisis, and documents practical steps and strategies that may be of use elsewhere. The series is a collaboration between the Open Society University Network and the Talloires Network of Engaged Universities.

Join via Zoom
Passcode: 823030


Image of the Pankow ist immer schön video workshop at Bard College Berlin, February 2019, by Vera Yung (Bard College Berlin '20).

 

Online Event  8:00 am – 9:30 am EST/GMT-5
This Central European University Democracy Institute event is a roundtable exploring what kind of political stabilization or destabilization may be awaiting Belarus.

Please note this is an online event and registration is required. Registration link

PANELISTS

Kateryna Bornukova, Academic Director, BEROC Economic Research Center
Anaïs Marin, Associate Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme, Chatham House
Artyom Shraibman, Nonresident Scholar,Carnegie Moscow Center
Gábor Tóka, Senior Research Fellow, Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives, Central European University
Kenneth S. Yalowitz, Adjunct Lecturer, Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies 

Addressing one of her last election rallies in the summer, independent presidential candidate Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya prepared her followers for a patient wait until their apparent will to unseat their country’s long-serving and proudly authoritarian president Lukashenka will be honored. It will take more than just casting votes to get their will expressed in the outcome that matters, she suggested. But she will be there to fight for a fair acknowledgement of the true election results for many months if need be.

Nearly six months after the rigged August 9 elections, Tsikhanouskaya is in half-voluntary exile, and many of her supporters are in prison after a reported 30,000 were detained and often treated brutally by the security forces. Crucially, the latter remained, at least as an organization, loyal to the incumbent after he was (self-) declared the winner of the election while the massive, spirited and impressively enduring post-electoral protests of Tsikhanouskaya’s supporters slowly but inevitably diminished in size and determination. However, not only the pro-democracy movement and all foreign governments aspiring for influence in Belarus seem deprived of the outcome that they hoped for, but Lukashenka’s regime also remains severely deprived of domestic political authority and international respect.

Our roundtable shall explore what kind of political stabilization or destabilization may be awaiting Belarus, what the realistic options and constraints are for the regime, the opposition, Russia, and the international community concerned over the state of human rights in Belarus.

Please note this is an online event and registration is required. Registration link

Online Event  8:00 am – 9:00 am EST/GMT-5
Connect with OSUN researchers in this workshop series to learn about how to ethically incorporate community engagement into your research using inclusive practices designed to generate new scholarship that helps center community voices. Engaged research transforms traditional research methodology by integrating and centering community knowledge as part of the research process.  Engaged research works to enhance and develop sustained community partnerships between researchers and community partners. The core mission of the research aims to investigate, understand, and address an issue of interest or concern to communities and where community partners are actively involved throughout the research process. Engaged research fosters community partnerships with the goal of mobilizing research to influence systems and serve as catalysts for change within communities.

These workshops are by and for OSUN scholars. Registration is required to participate.

Registration Link

Online Event  11:00 am – 12:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Join Bard Abroad to discuss the books you've read over the break and all the places you "traveled to" through books. We will also be discussing our To Be Read lists for 2021!

To join via Zoom:
https://bard.zoom.us/j/86931622552?pwd=RXZQVUhERUpHdnBJbTdzS3Z2SThUQT09
Meeting ID: 869 3162 2552
Passcode: 942980

Students, faculty, staff, alumni/ae, and community members throughout the Open Society University Network and Bard International Network Partners are welcomed to join. To sign up for our email alerts: https://forms.gle/n3yaH2BAZjgAAfZH9

Want to keep in touch between meetings? Join our GoodReads group: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1135375-bard-abroad-bard-book-worms

Questions? Contact Emily Levine at [email protected] or Lauren Cooke at [email protected].

Online Event  2:00 pm – 3:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Panelists:  Mapendo Mindje, Graduate Student, University of Rwanda (Rwanda) Verity Firth, Executive Director, Social Justice, University of Technology Sydney (Australia) Leslie Van Rooi, Senior Director, Social Impact and Transformation, Stellenbosch University (South Africa) Joanne Curry, Vice President, External Relations, Simon Fraser University (Canada)
Moderated by Mathew Johnson, President, Albion College (US)

The COV-AID webinar series Adapting to the New Reality: Civically Engaged Universities Offer Strategies and Hope collects and shares stories of institutions and individuals who are taking action to mitigate the crisis, and documents practical steps and strategies that may be of use elsewhere. The series is a collaboration between the Open Society University Network and the Talloires Network of Engaged Universities.

Join via Zoom
Webinar ID: 825 9106 1534
Passcode: 431462
Or iPhone one-tap : 
    US: +16465588656,,82591061534#  or +13017158592,,82591061534# 
Or Telephone:
    Dial(for higher quality, dial a number based on your current location):
        US: +1 646 558 8656  or +1 301 715 8592  or +1 312 626 6799  or +1 346 248 7799  or +1 669 900 9128  or +1 253 215 8782 
    International numbers available: https://bard.zoom.us/u/kehAEihu0v

8:00 am – 8:45 am EST/GMT-5

The OSUN Engaged Research Fund invites applications for funding and research support for graduate students and faculty at OSUN partner institutions who are working to develop long-term, sustainable community partnerships as a central part of their research with a goal to develop shared knowledge about issues that align with OSUN priorities and themes. 

The Engaged Scholar Award (ESA) is for graduate students pursuing research that integrates community engagement into new or existing scholarship. Award: $6,000

The Engaged Faculty Scholar Award (EFSA) is for faculty whose scholarship incorporates community-based research into new or existing research and supports sustained community partners as long term collaborators. Award: $9,000

The deadline for applications is April 15, 2021. The Engaged Research Application Portal will open on April 1, 2021. Join us for an information session to learn more about these opportunities.See more detailsRegister Now