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IES Migrations Series (up to 2021)

Launched in AY 2017-2018, the IES Migrations Series conceptualizes the migration of not only people, but also images, words, ideas, technologies, objects, information, and food. 

Continuing into AY 2020-2021, the series aimed to unpack the historical and contemporary relevance of migration in writing global histories and understanding the present, as well as to put Europe in its global context. It critically acknowledges European countries’ role in the history of modernization and colonization of other countries within and outside Europe and disclosed the region’s character as an immigrant continent and diaspora of various peoples.

Cornell made a commitment to the study of migrations by identifying it as a research priority in AY 2019-2020. Find out more about Migrations: A Global Grand Challenge and the Einaudi Center's contributions: Funding faculty research and establishing an undergraduate Migrations Studies minor are two vital components. 

Recordings of this series are available below.

EU to Bosnia: Refuge, Reparations, and Global Apartheid | April 19, 2021

Description
The foreclosure of asylum in the European Union and the militarization of the EU borders have resulted in EU pushbacks of refugees and migrants from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia to European countries that do not belong to the EU, such as Bosnia. This panel critically examines the foreclosure of asylum at the EU/Bosnia border as a case study of the global apartheid regime that produces humanitarian crises while denying refugees mobility and safety. What might accountability for the damages wrought by global apartheid look like? And what kinds of futures can we imagine and fight for?

Panelists
Nidžara Ahmetašević, Independent scholar, journalist, activist, and author
Catherine L. Besteman, Colby College
Azra Hromadžić, Syracuse University

Moderator

This event was sponsored by the Migrations Forum, and cosponsored by the American Studies Program; Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Near Eastern Studies; the Society for the Humanities; and the South Asia Program.


North to South: Repair and Reparations for Climate Refugees? | April 2, 2021

Description
The displacement of populations due to climate change forecasts an unprecedented phenomenon in human history. Neither international law nor nations are prepared to face up to this challenge in a way that would secure refugee’s human rights or their appropriate resettlement. This panel brings together different academic disciplines to bear on the question of rehabilitation and resettlement as a form of reparation to current and future climate refugees. How is it possible to think of restitutions to climate refugees by acknowledging the accountability of the first industrializing countries of the Global North in imposing this displacement on the peoples of the Global South? The intention is to start a conversation with scholars working in the areas of migration, transitional justice, art, architecture, and environmental humanities on the possibility of a just response to the displacement of climate refugees.

Panelists
Ashley Dawson, City University of New York
Anne McClintock, Princeton University
Bronwyn Leebaw, University of California, Riverside
Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, Barnard College, Columbia University
Billy Fleming, University of Pennsylvania

Moderator
Esra Akcan, Cornell University


USSR to Post-Soviet Russia: Reparations or Repression for Stalin's Victims | March 29, 2021

Description
This panel will explore proposals in the early post-Soviet period to honor the memory of, and perhaps provide reparations to, the victims of Stalinist repression. They were replaced by official government efforts to rehabilitate Stalin’s reputation and even rewrite the history of World War II. Organizations such as Memorial, formed to maintain the memory of Stalin’s crimes, have been declared “foreign agents” and obliged to curb their activities. This event brings together an interdisciplinary panel of experts to discuss the initiatives and missed opportunities in post-Soviet reparations.

Panelists
Nikolay Epplee, independent researcher
Ivan Kurilla, European University at St. Petersburg
Egle Rindzevičiūtė, Kingston University London
Nina Tumarkin, Wellesley College

Moderator
Matthew Evangelista, Cornell University


Germany to Germany: New Perspectives on Post-War, Post-Unification and Post-Colonial Reparations | March 15, 2021

Description 
This panel will bring together scholars who provide new perspectives on the material and moral reparations of the postcolonial, post-Nazi and post-communist eras in Germany, as well as the significance of these restitutions in serving as models for transitional justice and international law. It will explore both material and moral reparations, such as return and restitution of property that had been confiscated, monetary payments as compensation, and educational steps to take accountability for the past. The panel will not only acknowledge these reparations to ex-citizens and refugees, but also question the limits of established formulas and the lack or inequality of restitutions throughout the history of today’s Germany.

Panelists
Ruti Teitel, New York Law School
Rebecca Boehling, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, University of Maryland
Nicholas Mulder, Cornell University
Tiffany Florvil, The University of New Mexico

Moderator
Esra Akcan, Cornell University


Belgium to Congo: Colonialism Reparation and Truth & Reconciliation Commissions | February 24, 2021

Description 
This panel explores the theme of reparations and restitutions to bring justice to the residual inequalities caused by slavery and colonization. It focuses on the recent developments to institute a sort of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Belgium, which was approved in Summer 2020 in the form of a parliamentary Special Commission to scrutinize the country’s colonial past. The multidisciplinary panel puts into conversation scholars who will comment on the history of Belgium colonization in Congo, on the recent movements in conjunction with Black Lives Matter including the toppling of the King Leopard II Monument that sparked the demand for accountability, and on the current debate around truth and reconciliation in Belgium, as well as its place in other transitional justice processes around the world.

Panelists
Pablo de Greiff, New York University
Amah Edoh, Massachusetts Institute of Technoloy
Pedro Monaville, New York University Abu Dhabi
Liliane Umubyeyi, Avocats Sans Frontières

Moderator
Esra Akcan, Cornell University


Reparation of Museum Objects | October 19, 2020

Description 
This panel is organized to bring together museum curators and scholars to comment on the recent discussions on repatriation and restitution as a form of reparation to colonized and looted lands. While museums in Europe and North America have occasionally returned objects to their native communities or lands of arrival, the issue of repatriation gained an accelerated epistemological and ethical momentum at the end of 2018. What is the responsibility of museums to objects taken into their collections by violence or deceit during the colonial times or wars? What is the role of museum-object-repatriation in the recognition of colonial and military violence? What are the legal structures that prohibit or allow deaccession in the museums of different countries? Once the objects are parted from their communities and no longer serve their original sacred functions, where are they to be returned? What determines how far back museums consider repatriation claims legitimate and why? What is the future of “universal museums” around the world?

Panelists
Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Columbia University
Jonathan Fine, Humboldt Forum
Cécile Fromont, Yale University

Moderator
Esra Akcan, Cornell University


Beirut Reconstructions | October 7, 2020

Description 
This panel was organized to bring together architects and planners to comment on the ongoing reconstructions in Beirut after the deadly explosion of August 4, 2020, by contextualizing it in the city’s urban development and the relatively recent urban reconstruction of its center after the civil war. How, when, and by whom should the reconstruction projects be designed and implemented? What are lessons learned from the reconstruction of the city center after the civil war? With the looming danger of opportunistic gentrification, how might the reconstruction process alter the area’s use and the lives and livelihoods of its residents? How may it affect Beirut’s place in the world cultural heritage and global imagination? How can international organizations and academic institutions partner with local organizations for the redesign/rebuilding of the destroyed neighborhoods? How should the different affected neighborhoods be approached when it comes to redesign/rebuilding?

Panelists
Elie Haddad, Lebanese American University
Mona Harb, American University of Beirut

Moderator
Mostafa Minawi, Cornell University


Hagia Sophia: Perspectives from Cultural Heritage | September 19, 2020

Description 
This panel was organized to bring together scholars and analysts to comment on the recent conversion of the Hagia Sophia from a museum into a mosque from the perspective of architectural history in geopolitical context. What is the building’s significance for Byzantine, early and late Ottoman, Republican and contemporary Turkish architecture? How will the Hagia Sophia’s conversion into a mosque in 2020 impact its use, global and local public meaning, place in the city and nearby monuments, physical attributes, Byzantine mosaics, Christian and Muslim symbols, marble floor, and acoustics, among other things? What effects did the building’s recent conversion make in different areas of historical studies? Are there comparable examples elsewhere in the world?Speakers made 8-minute presentations in the rough chronological order of their historical field of expertise and comment on the contemporary decision from the perspectives of their own scholarly work and study area. After a discussion where speakers responded to each other, the panel concluded with a Q and A session.

Panelists (listed in speaking order)
Namık Erkal, TED University in Ankara
Christina Maranci, Tufts University
Maria Georgopoulou, American School of Classical Studies at Athens
Sevil Enginsoy, Istanbul Bilgi University
Çiğdem Kafesçioğlu, Boğaziçi University
Bissera Pentcheva, Stanford University
Belgin Turan, Middle East Technical University
Peter Christensen, Co-Moderator, University of Rochester
Nikos Magouliotis, ETH Zurich 
Esra Akcan, Cornell University
Mesut Dinler, Politecnico di Torino
Mücahit Bilici, City University of New York
Bülent Batuman, Bilkent University


Ethics and Rights of Immigration | April 23, 2019

Description 
All the countries in the world operate under the assumption that they have a right to control immigration within their jurisdictions. Most states take this right to be very robust, giving the state almost absolute discretion in determining who to let in and under what conditions. But is this right to control immigration morally justified? Should states have almost absolute control over their borders, keeping out anyone they wish? How does immigration control affect the moral standing of minorities within the country? Should borders be much more open and allow a free, or almost free, flow of immigrants? Do individuals living in distressed or war-torn parts of the world have a human right to immigrate to more affluent and peaceful countries? Or is the right to immigration confined to cases of asylum?

Panelists
Patti Tamara Lenard, University of Ottawa
Jeremy Waldron, New York University School of Law
Christopher Heath Wellman, Washington University in St. Louis

Moderator
Andrei Marmor, Cornell University


The Future of EU? Immigration and the Rise of Populism | March 7, 2019

Description 
Freedom House reports that its global index of civil rights and political liberties has been declining for 13 consecutive years from 2005 till 2018, with 68 countries experiencing a net decline in 2018 alone. Many of these countries are associated with Europe, including Hungary, Poland, Turkey and Russia. The recent threats to democracy, the rise of populism in Europe and elsewhere, UK’s vote on Brexit, and similar trends drive scholars to rethink the strength and future of the European Union. The anxieties about immigration shape both the populist and the protectionist discourses in these countries in different ways.

Panelists
Donatella Di Cesare, Sapienza University of Rome
Virag Molnar, The New School for Social Research
Cas Mudde, University of Georgia

Moderator
Kenneth Roberts, Cornell University


Family Separation: Lessons from Europe's Past | September 28, 2018

Description 
Europe has a long history of family separation, which includes both violent immigration control and advocacy against these discriminatory practices. In this panel, scholars who have researched abusive procedures in gendered immigration control in Britain, Germany, Netherlands, and the lands of the Ottoman Empire presented their studies.

Panelists
Jacqueline Bhabha, Harvard University
Lerna Ekmekçioğlu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Diane L. Wolf, University of California, Davis


Exiles in the 21st Century: The New 'Population Law' of Absolute Capitalism | September 24, 2018

Description 
Clearly, the 21st century will be marked by the increasingly large number of exiles, i.e. uprooted and displaced people who find themselves “erring” within or between states and continents, suffering extreme hardship or facing elimination, and creating imminent “pressure” on states and societies, with moral, economic and political dimensions. This can be addressed from totally antithetic standpoints, leading to a polarization of attitudes with unpredictable results, on which the future of our institutions may well depend. While the origins of the exilic process are complex, and the statutes under which the errands themselves are categorized for administrative and ideological reasons are multiple, a neo-Marxist perspective may try and bring some clarification through the investigation of the “population law” that characterizes contemporary neo-liberal or “absolute” capitalism. The talk wanted to describe and assess the value of this possibility. 

Speaker
Étienne Balibar, Kingston University London, Columbia University


Blackout: The Necropolitics of Extraction | September 19, 2018

No recording is available at this time.

Description 
This presentation addressed extraction, as well as the politics and aesthetics of emergent forms of resistance today. In view of spreading sacrifice zones given over to resource mining, abetted by exploitative international trade agreements and the finance of debt servitude, intensifying the causes of involuntary migration, what forms do the cultural politics of resistance take, and how are artist-activists materializing the images and sounds of emancipation and decolonization? With reference to the diverse artwork of Angela Melitopoulos, Allora & Calzadilla, and Ursula Biemann, which considers geographies of conflict in such regions as Greece, Puerto Rico, and Canada and Bangladesh, this analysis considered a range of leading artistic approaches that adopt an aesthetics of intersectionality that reveals complex causalities and effects, offered a modeling of politico-ecological interpretation, and proposed forms of solidarity with those on the frontlines of opposition. 

Speaker
T.J. Demos, University of California at Santa Cruz


Global 1968: Panel with Cornell Faculty | September 5, 2018

Description 
This presentation addressed extraction, as well as the politics and aesthetics of emergent forms of resistance today. In view of spreading sacrifice zones given over to resource mining, abetted by exploitative international trade agreements and the finance of debt servitude, intensifying the causes of involuntary migration, what forms do the cultural politics of resistance take, and how are artist-activists materializing the images and sounds of emancipation and decolonization? With reference to the diverse artwork of Angela Melitopoulos, Allora & Calzadilla, and Ursula Biemann, which considers geographies of conflict in such regions as Greece, Puerto Rico, and Canada and Bangladesh, this analysis considered a range of leading artistic approaches that adopt an aesthetics of intersectionality that reveals complex causalities and effects, offered a modeling of politico-ecological interpretation, and proposed forms of solidarity with those on the frontlines of opposition. 

Panelists
Sidney Tarrow, Government, Law
Elke Siegel, German Studies
Raymond Craib, History, Latin American Studies
Larry Glickman, History, American Studies
Simten Coşar, IES/Einaudi
Iftikhar Dadi, History of Art, SAP/Einaudi
Enzo Traverso, Romance Studies

Moderator 
Esra Akcan, Architecture, IES/Einaudi


Exhibiting Yugoslavia | April 26, 2018

No recording is available at this time.

Description 
The Balkans region has long been seen as only peripherally associated with the project of modernity, and the lands of the former Yugoslavia have been construed in Western art, literature, and culture as Europe’s internal “other”. However, in carefully considering Yugoslav architects’ production and networks of exchange between the years 1948 and 1980, a very different picture of the region emerges.

Panelists
Martino Stierli, The Museum of Modern Art
Saša Begović, 3LHD Architects 

Moderator 
Esra Akcan, Cornell University


The Arts of the Immigrant Continent | April 12, 2018

Description 
A panel discussion which addressed Europe as an immigrant continent, and especially concentrated on the relation between immigration and art, by bringing together artists ​and scholars who work on diasporas and migrant art in major European cities. 

Panelists
Leslie A. Adelson, Cornell University
Martin Rein-Cano, TOPOTEK 1
Pamela Corey, University of London

Moderator 
Esra Akcan, Cornell University


Crossing the Mediterranean: Migration, Death, and Culture | February 27, 2018

Description 
The International Organization of Migration reported that approximately 4000 migrants had died while trying to cross the ​Mediterranean Sea in the year of 2016, and approximately 3000 by the tenth month of 2017. This panel brought together an international group of scholars and journalists who spoke about the historical and contemporary traumatic experiences, such as deaths, accidents, colonization, and forced migrations, suffered by those crossing the Mediterranean. Panelists exposed the extent of looted archeological objects across seas; discussed the violence of France’s spatial practices during the Algerian Revolution on both sides of the Mediterranean; ­reflected on the main causes of people's drowning in recent years; and focused on the maritime arena as a mobile border that envelops migrants seeking to navigate structural injustices as well as ideological and violent conflicts. 

Panelists
Annetta Alexandridis, Cornell University
Samia Henni, Princeton University
John Psaropoulos, independent journalist
Maurizio Albahari, University of Notre Dame

Moderator 
Esra Akcan, Cornell University


Migration of Images | October 24, 2017

Description 
While our age is often named as the visual century, the historical relevance of image migration is relatively under-studied. The “Migration of Images” panel brought together scholars who spoke to the visualization of Muhammad in art books throughout Europe across centuries, geopolitics of exhibiting paintings and objects, and Bauhaus in India. 

Panelists
Avinoam Shalem, Columbia University
Saloni Mathur, University of California at Los Angeles


Will This Robot Take My Job? | October 18, 2017

Description 
Anxieties over the issue of migration and hostility towards immigrants seem partly related to automation and fears of unemployment. The panel addressed the relationship between migration and technology.

Panelists
Guy Hoffman, Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Ronald R. Kline, Department of Science and Technology Studies
Ross A. Knepper, Department of Computer Science
Adam Seth Litwin, Labor Relations, Law, and History
Kirstin Hagelskjær Petersen, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Sasa Zivkovic, Department of Architecture



Outlawing Dissent: The Flight Scholars of Europe | October 3, 2017

Description 
Author of a seminal book on exiled scholars (Auerbach in particular) from Germany during National Socialism, and currently active with exiled scholars in Germany, as well as the founder of the Exile Academy, Kader Konuk addressed the historical and contemporary dimensions of violations of academic freedom.

Speaker
Kader Konuk, Universität Duisburg-Essen