A vivid portrait of the Cold War era emerges through the personal reflections and academic insights in
A Liberal Education (TidePool Press 2010), a new memoir by Brown History Professor Emeritus Abbott (Tom) Gleason. The fall of the Soviet Union is just one of the many remarkable events that come into closer focus as Gleason recalls an academic life spanning the last half of the 20th century. With a historian’s attention to multiple perspectives, Gleason explores how interactions with family members and scholars alike shaped his liberal worldview in fields as diverse as civil rights and modern art.
February 08, 2010
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The Watson Institute seeks several recent PhDs for three year residential visiting fellowships, beginning July 1, 2010. Successful candidates will pursue their own research and also contribute to the development of collective and collaborative research at the Institute. They will also interact with students. The search committee will begin reviewing
applications on February 15.
February 08, 2010
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A screening of the new
Human Terrain documentary will take place during the International Studies Association’s annual convention this month in New Orleans, as Watson Institute researchers and their work are featured throughout the program.
February 04, 2010
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Brown faculty examined South Asia's might and fractures
– from thriving Bollywood to ethnic strife in Sri Lanka
– during a panel last semester on "South Asia Rising."
February 03, 2010
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The story of international law over the past century is being retold through the lens of its relationship to religion, by a new Religion and Internationalism Project launched last year by Nathaniel Berman, the Rahel Varnhagen Professor of International Affairs, Law, and Modern Culture.
February 02, 2010
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America will not take second place to its competitors in the global economy, President Obama said this week – a statement perhaps more patriotic than realistic, according to Institute Professor James Der Derian. Today, “nation-states aren’t as powerful in calling the shots, particularly in the global economy. No one nation-state can now determine these incredible spasms and tidal waves that ripple through the system … and to claim that we have control over the international arena has an illusionary component to it,” he said in an
NPR interview analyzing Obama’s State of the Union Address.
January 29, 2010
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The Watson community is remembering with fondness and gratitude the life and service of Sen. Charles McCurdy (Mac) Mathias Jr., a past board member who has died at the age of 87.
January 28, 2010
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"As war goes virtual and cultural in the name of justice, unintended and tragic consequences result," Professor James Der Derian said in a recent keynote address and
video presentation on "The Culture, Technology, and Ethics of Virtuous War." Drawing on research from his Human Terrain and Virtuous War projects, Der Derian critiqued US counter-insurgency and counter-terror strategies that use "military cultural awareness" and "high-tech warfare" to resolve the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. His address was given at the
Contemporary Dilemmas in Canadian Security Lecture Series hosted by York University in Ontario.
January 28, 2010
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How should development in the Global South be conducted in a “post-neoliberal” world where free-market economic policies have run their course? In a special issue of the Institute-based journal,
Studies in Comparative International Development (SCID), scholars address this question through critical and comparative lenses.
January 27, 2010
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Recipients of Watson Institute summer fellowships presented their research at the Institute last semester, sharing with audiences the challenges and successes of international engagement. Though their projects varied greatly in regional and thematic focus, students agreed that their research will shape their future endeavors at Brown and beyond.
January 27, 2010
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Brown’s Choices Program has developed an online lesson for high school students,
The Haitian Crisis: Thinking Historically. Through video, audio, and other media, it challenges students to think beyond Haiti's recent earthquake, consider the role of the country’s rich history in the current crisis, and think about global influences in long term reconstruction.
January 27, 2010
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Read the new
Development Studies Newsletter to learn about the concentration, spring semester courses, fellowship opportunities, and more.
January 26, 2010
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Find updates on the Brown community's response to disaster in Haiti.
January 20, 2010
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Brown faculty members are invited to apply for grants supporting summer undergraduate research assistantships to work on new media components of research on global issues. The application deadline is March 15 for this summer's AT&T New Media Research Assistantships.
January 19, 2010
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In a lecture last semester at the Watson Institute, director Noland Walker discussed his recent work in the documentary
Egalite for All: Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution and addressed the issues of reconstructing history for public consumption. Professor Barrymore Bogues of Brown University’s Africana Studies Department contributed to the discussion by putting the revolution in historical context.
January 15, 2010
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Francis J. Ricciardone Jr., US deputy ambassador to Afghanistan, described a continuing trend toward much more engaged public diplomacy during a visit to the Institute in November. Watch a video of the interview inside.
January 15, 2010
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In a lecture last semester, Rajmohan Gandhi, a leading public intellectual and the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, drew on the parallels between his grandfather and Martin Luther King, Jr., and also illustrated ways in which today's conflicts could be addressed by nonviolent means. Among these means are far wider and more serious dialogues among various cultures and countries, he said. Watch the video
here.
January 14, 2010
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The life and works of Aimé Césaire, “the foremost Black French intellectual-cum-politician of the 20th and 21st centuries,” are explored in a special new issue of
French Politics, Culture & Society, based on a symposium held at Brown last year on the anniversary of his death.
January 14, 2010
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International relations students can study gobal politics through various lenses this spring – with seminars including "Global Media: History/Theory/Production," "Political Psychology of International Relations," "Nationalism, Colonialism, Religion, and International Law," and others. There also is one IR lecture class for spring: "The Contemporary Transformation of the Modern State’s Security Apparatus. Critical Perspectives," by Philippe Bonditti. In Development Studies, Cornel Ban will again lead this semester's undergraduate seminar on "Methods in Development Research," and Richard Snyder will lead the graduate-level "Theory and Research in Development II." See the full listing inside.
January 13, 2010
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Watson Institute Senior Fellow Sergei Khrushchev, assessing US-Russia relations during Barack Obama’s first year as president, this week told the
Voice of America that the relationship is now much more pragmatic and based on common interests, such as the reduction of weapons of mass destruction. He predicted a peaceful coexistence between the two nations going forward.
January 11, 2010
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The
Human Terrain documentary co-produced at Watson is featured in a
Time article outlining the controversy about using social scientists in military operations. According to
Human Terrain co-director James Der Derian, “the center of gravity’’ in Iraq and Afghanistan has shifted from the battlefield “to a psychological territory,” prompting a heated debate over how cultural knowledge should be integrated in current and future US wars.
January 06, 2010
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The UN Security Council’s December reform of its policies and procedures for terrorist sanctions incorporated several provisions recommended in a report co-authored at the Watson Institute late last year. Mounting legal and parliamentary challenges to the use of targeted sanctions, which “play a central role in UN efforts to maintain peace and security,” posed serious threats to the Security Council’s ability to counter terrorism and prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, according to the October report,
Addressing Challenges to Targeted Sanctions. The report presented options – from changes to the current UN review procedure, to measures at the national and regional level, and finally to proposals for the creation of a review mechanism at the UN Security Council level.
January 06, 2010
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Read a blog from December's Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, by Brown's Center for Environmental Studies Director J. Timmons Roberts and his students.
January 04, 2010
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Read the
December newsletter from the Year of India program, based at the Watson Institute, for reports on lectures by major public figures, research by faculty, and more.
January 04, 2010
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Created during the Cold War to diminish the risk of nuclear confrontation between two superpowers, the Watson Institute is at work today in a world of far greater complexity. Indeed, in this time of global transformation, “one of the most pressing issues facing us is precisely the absence of a single problem defining threats to global well being,” according to Institute Director Michael D. Kennedy. “The Watson Institute should be the site in the world known for recognizing this global complexity – for addressing the relationships among critical international issues with innovation and consequence,” Kennedy says.
December 22, 2009
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Described in legal parlance as “non self governing” or an “unincorporated territory,” Guam remains engulfed in a post-colonial identity crisis. Civil rights activist Hope Cristobal and attorney Julian Aguon discussed this issue in the context of on-going American militarization during a lecture at the Institute in October.
(More recently, on the PBS newsmagazine "Now," Cristobal said in December that Guam simply cannot handle the US military buildup enivisioned for the island over the next five years – of as many as 30,000 servicemembers and their families.)
December 14, 2009
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The disappearance of breeding grounds, reduced habitat diversity, and increased temperature levels leading to higher rates of microbes are some of the ramifications of global warming, as anthropogenic activities continue to increase greenhouse gases, according to Jane Nagayi Kalule Yawe, a lecturer at Gulu University in Uganda. “In nature’s brutal irony, the gases that make life on Earth possible now threaten our very existence,” said Yawe, one of several Watson International Scholars of the Environment who spoke on a recent panel on “Climate Change and Food Security.”
December 11, 2009
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The novel phenomenon of massive migration from one developing country to another is fundamentally reshaping the concept of citizenship – as these new immigrants acquire illegal documents to participate in national elections
before gaining citizenship, according to University of California, Irivine Professor Kamal Sadiq.
December 10, 2009
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On 26/11, heroism was a contagious blessing across Mumbai, Vasundhara Prasad wrote on the recent anniversary of terrorist attacks there. Read her
Year of India blog on Watsonblogs.
December 10, 2009
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Joachim Ibeziako Ezeji was deeply involved in Nigeria’s Rural Africa Water Development Project when he found the announcement for the 2009 Watson International Scholars of the Environment Program on the internet. The program’s “academic flesh” immediately caught Ezeji’s attention, he said. The residency’s emphasis on land use seemed directly relevant to Nigerian aquaculture, and compelled him to “drop everything and go.” As the residency comes to an end, Ezeji is not disappointed. “I feel I will be a better professional after this program,” he said. Ezeji is one of nine environmental scholars and practitioners from seven African countries who are graduating from the program this week. Read about them inside.
December 10, 2009
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The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has launched the
Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative, a high-level commission whose goal is “to build the intellectual framework for an inclusive transatlantic security system for the 21st century.” Watson Institute Board Member Robert Legvold is director of the initiative and Adjunct Professor Catherine Kelleher has been named a commissioner.
December 10, 2009
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Brown economists are measuring a country’s prosperity by how many lights it burns – as seen from space.
December 10, 2009
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Students at Narragansett High School deliberated options for troop deployment in Afghanistan in the run-up to President Obama’s recently announced escalation – and then discussed their reaction to it – as the Watson Institute-affiliated
Choices Program catalyzed a “teachable moment” in their class. WRNI captured the moment in a recent
radio broadcast.
December 10, 2009
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