Geopolitics

On October 10 and 11, 2018, a workshop for the Urban Displacement Alliance was held at the Columbia Global Centers | Amman, bringing together strategic partners to discuss the vision of the Alliance and the best approach towards achieving its goals.

Through the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Program in Higher Education and Scholarship in the Humanities, Columbia Global Centers | Amman has established a fellowship program starting on January 1, 2019 that offers 12-month fellowships for emerging displaced scholars interested in the humanities to continue and further develop their scholarly pursuits.

The Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL) at Columbia University in collaboration with the Columbia Global Centers | Amman and co-sponsored by our partners in Europe, are organizing a conference entitled - Untangling Popular Power: Rhetoric, Faith, and Social Order in the Middle East.

The Institute for Religion, Culture & Public Life and Columbia Global Centers are organizing a conference entitled "Pluralism(s) in Emergencies: Movement, Space, and Religious Difference" in Tunis, Tunisia. The project is being organized with support from the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS) at the University of Oslo; and the Centre for Religion, Conflict, and Globalization at the University of Groningen. 

The Arab world today is marked by a sense of disillusionment felt by young Arabs and evidenced by record-low turnout during elections, explained Tarek Osman in his talk "The Two Futures of the Arab World".

The controversies sparked by US president Donald Trump to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the ensuing reactions by Palestinian leaders in Ramallah and Gaza was the theme of a talk “The Trump Administration and Jerusalem”, conducted last Saturday by Rashid Khalidi at the Columbia Global Centres in Amman.

This workshop brought together experts to critically examine the question of international mobility and theoretically and practically explore the MIMC. The meeting served as a platform for Professor Doyle to present and promote the MIMC, which proposes a framework for mobility with the goals of reaffirming the existing rights afforded to mobile people (and the corresponding rights and responsibilities of states), as well as expanding those basic rights where warranted.

“We all know aid is the beginning of a sustainable conflict, as aid is more of an apology than a problem solver,” Muslimi said at the event organised by the Columbia Global Centres in Amman.

The Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic and the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies held an interdisciplinary panel discussion at Columbia Global Centers | Amman on the consequences of the conflict in Yemen, and strategies to address mental health in humanitarian and conflict resolution efforts. 

The Institute for Religion, Culture & Public Life and Columbia Global Centers are organizing a conference entitled "Pluralism(s) in Emergencies: Movement, Space, and Religious Difference" in Tunis, Tunisia on July 11-12, 2018. The project is being organized with support from the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS) at the University of Oslo; and the Centre for Religion, Conflict, and Globalization at the University of Groningen. 

Columbia Global Centres in Amman on Friday organised a lecture titled “From Destruction to Documentation: a Talk by Sheila Canby”, which saw the attendance of a number of academics and experts in heritage preservation, in the presence of Tourism Minister Lina Annab.

AMMAN — France is willing to become one of the new honest brokers  in the Middle East especially after the wave of condemnation and regional tensions rooted from President Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, French Ambassador to Jordan David Bertolotti told the audience in a packed auditorium at the Columbia Global Centres on Sunday during a lecture titled “Does the Middle East need a new honest broker?”. 

Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut will be hosting a book talk event that will include a discussion between Maha Yahya, Director of the Carnegie Middle East Center, and Safwan M. Masri, Executive Vice President for Global Centers and Global Development at Columbia University, for the launch of his new book on January 9, 2018.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in partnership with Columbia University, will be holding the third regional cultural heritage workshop, The Future of the Past: Addressing the Cultural Heritage Crisis in Iraq and Syria.

To commemorate the one hundred year anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, Columbia Global Centers | Amman hosted a workshop in partnership with Dr. Ghada Karmi, Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, on October 28.

This project remains ongoing and aims to address the adverse effects of armed conflict on the mental health of individuals, families and communities in Yemen, to bring mental health concerns into Yemen’s peace and reconciliation processes, and to strengthen recognition of the human right to mental health in Yemen and internationally.

What role does religion—and particularly Islam—play in naming, framing, and governing violence against women (VAW) and gender-based violence (GBV)?

Thinking of pluralism as a technology of power that helps to organize people and their interactions, and often articulated with special attention to religious difference, this conference addressed how pluralism becomes activated in emergency situations and is utilized in different ways and towards different ends.

In his book explaining why Tunisia is an “Arab anomaly”, Safwan Masri says it was “predisposed to democracy because of ingredients that are uniquely indigenous to it”. This is a controversial proposition but Masri sustains it, in a hymn to Tunisia that is also an examination of Arab shortcomings elsewhere — above all in education.

On the occasion of the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, marked on November 2, a conference titled “One Hundred Years of the Balfour Declaration: An Ongoing Palestinian Tragedy” was held at the Columbia Global Centre Amman on Sunday. 

AMMAN — A young Arab engineer on Wednesday took his audience at the Columbia Global Centre Amman on a trip to Antarctica, bringing first-hand stories of his personal experience to the southernmost continent.

The Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life (IRCPL) at Columbia University is requesting paper proposals to present for its conference series “Pluralism in Emergenc(i)es: Movement, Space, and Religious Difference,” which will convene first in Amman and then in Tunis.

Provost John H. Coatsworth has announced the fifth round of grants from the President’s Global Innovation Fund (PGIF) on June 1, 2017. 11 projects received awards this year after being selected by a review committee of senior faculty drawn from both the Morningside and medical campuses.

The power of arts and culture to speak about the human condition is a primary motivation for director Iara Lee, who has recently finished her sixth film, tackling subjects as diverse as human rights, psychology, wildlife protection and education.

President Trump has said he wants “extreme vetting” and ideological testing of visa applicants. What will that look like, exactly? As American colleges wait to hear whether accepted applicants will take up their admission offers for the fall, what can they expect students who are coming from other countries to encounter when they apply for visas and when they show up at border security checkpoints at U.S. airports?

عمان - قدم الصحفي والكاتب في "الحياة" اللندنية حازم الأمين، مقاربة حول صلة علم التحليل النفسي بظاهرة منتسبي "داعش"، من خلال قراءة استكشافية ميدانية للعشرات منهم، أظهرت وجود دوافع غير منسجمة فيما بينهم للالتحاق بالتنظيم و"الانتحار والقتل" كظاهرة جماعية، فيما اعتبر ان "داعش" "ابن انقسام مذهبي وفشل سياسات المجتمع الدولي والأنظمة العربية". 

Ways of life long relied upon are being overturned.

We went into the vault for today’s episode, all the way back to a lecture that Professor Robert Young gave last year at the Columbia Global Center in Amman. We chose this particular lecture because Professor Young offers a historical perspective on an issue facing today’s society: migration.

University President Lee Bollinger denounced President Donald Trump's executive order banning immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim nations from entering the United States and advised community members and visitors from the designated countries to postpone international travel.

To understand the despondent state of affairs in the Arab world today, one need only look at the region's education systems and how they have evolved through decades of deliberate attempts to suppress the Arab mind. Hyper-nationalist propaganda, exclusionary rhetoric and dogmatic religious discourse have been their defining features. The result has been that generations of Arabs have not only been deprived of a good education, but they have been taught to be narrow-minded, intolerant and ill-equipped for participation in a globalised world. 

 Is water a human right or a commodity? This is the question British filmmaker Laila Khan set out to answer in her latest documentary, “Stolen Water”. Khan’s short documentary sheds light on water theft in Jordan and the measures that authorities are taking to curb violations on the water network. 

Historic waves of migration, unprecedented digital activism, challenges to religious pluralism: amid all of these developments in the Middle East, Columbia Global Centers – Columbia University’s network of eight education and learning centers around the world – are exploring the implications of these changes on culture, health and safety, and politics in the region.

We, 20 leading academics and influencers from across the world, have joined forces today in an open letter to world leaders - asking that they do more to ensure refugees obtain an education. 

NEW YORK, Sept. 13, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- "With civil conflict, terrorist threats, and major health crises causing unprecedented disruption in communities all over the world, universities must step up to a new level of globalism in our outlook and in our activities," says Professor Safwan M. Masri, Executive Vice President for Global Centers and Global Development at Columbia University. 

Columbia University has created the Sakıp Sabancı Chair and Center for Turkish Studies, the first such center in the United States. Established with a $10 million gift and named for its benefactor, a Turkish businessman and philanthropist, the goal of the center and the professorship is to increase knowledge and awareness about Turkey.

In this talk, Ghada Karmi reviewed the history and importance of the Palestinian right of return and why no refugee has ever given up on it. She linked this with her latest book, Return: A Palestinian Memoir, and pointed to some future directions for how a solution to the conflict with Israel might include the right of return.

The Amman Center hosts regular public talks for members of the local community to engage with scholars and learn more about a wide range of topics, from current affairs, to history, to the arts.

Results for the fourth President’s Global Innovation Fund (PGIF) round this year were announced on May 6, 2016.

Every culture is a unique answer to a fundamental question: What does it mean to be human and alive? Wade Davis led us on a thrilling journey to celebrate the wisdom of the world’s indigenous cultures.

During the most tumultuous period the region has experienced in decades, the U.S. relationship with the Middle East has been the subject of intense interest and debate. Ambassador Wells made the case for why U.S. interests in the Middle East transcend the profound current challenges, and discussed how America’s national interests demand continued and deepened engagement with the region.

On April 11, 2016, Columbia Global Reports hosted a discussion about the book Holy Lands: Reviving Pluralism in the Middle East, published by Columbia Global Reports in 2016. The speakers included author of the book, Nicolas Pelham, Middle East correspondent for The Economist and Professor Safwan M.

For more than a century, the United States has been the world's most powerful state. Now, some analysts predict that China will soon take its place. Does this mean that the American Century is over? Will China's rapid rise spark a new Cold War between the two titans?

The Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University's Middle East Institute is pleased to announce the 2016-17 Ibrahim Abu-Lughod  (IAL) Award in Palestine Studies.

The Columbia Global Centers | Middle East, Columbia Law School, and the American Society of International Law are holding a conference on the theme “International Legal Dialogue—Middle East North Africa” on December 14 - 15, 2015.

Middle East and North African religious leaders have developed a regional strategy to counter incitement to violence and agreed on steps for its implementation, according to a UN official.

In March 2011, pro-democracy protests erupted in Syria. Violent conflict between demonstrators and government forces spiraled into what is now, four and a half years later, a civil war that has killed more than 200,000 people and forced more than 4 million people to flee the country, with millions more families displaced inside Syria’s borders.

Columbia and New York University may both lead the pack when it comes to developing a presence abroad, but they have markedly distinct ideologies that have informed their global campus footprints.

Nearly 4 million refugees have fled the war in Syria to date, and most are being hosted by neighboring states, in areas which already face significant economic and social challenges. 

Ari Goldman, Professor of Journalism at Columbia University and Director of the Scripps Howard Program in Religion, Journalism, and the Spiritual Life, visited Jordan on 28-30 July, 2015 to prepare for his “Covering Religion” course at Columbia University.

Professor Safwan Masri visited Tunisia on July 27 - August 1 in follow up to his week-long exploratory visit in January 2015 with Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger and Jean Magnano Bollinger.

Announcing the fifth recipient of the Ibrahim Abu Lughod Award in Palestine Studies, Areej Sabbagh-Khoury

High school students from Jordan and the region are invited to register for the Columbia GlobeMUN conference to be held in Istanbul on November 5 to 8, 2015. 

Columbia University offered a new intensive three-week summer program in May-June 2015 focused on democracy and constitutional engineering in the Middle East. The program is organized by Columbia Global Centers | Middle East, Columbia Global Centers | Turkey, and the Office of Global Programs.

The Columbia Global Centers | Middle East hosted the Global Think-In on Time and Trauma: Memory in Global Perspective on April 18. The event included a film screening of "Letter to a Refusing Pilot" by filmmaker Akram Zaatari. 

The Columbia Global Centers | Middle East organized a thematic speaker series entitled “Looking at Tunisia” that ran at the Center from March-June 2015.

In a lecture Wednesday at Columbia University Middle East Research Centre about America’s policy in the region, Ignatius said Iraq is the most obvious example of the “limits of American power to solve the region’s problems”.