Co-sponsored by "The Baha'i Association of Columbia Law School"

1) "U.S. Policy and its Implications for Human Rights in Iran"
Gary Sick, Columbia University

Gary Sick served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan. He was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis and is the author of two books on U.S.-Iranian relations. He is a member (emeritus) of the board of Human Rights Watch in New York and chairman of its Middle East and North Africa advisory committee.

2) "Women's Rights in Iran"
Elahe Sharifpour-Hicks, Director Human Rights and Policy Group

Elahe Sharifpour-Hicks is one of the leading commentators and advocates on human rights issues in Iran. She is the current Program Director of the "Human Rights and Policy Group" in New York. Prior to that, she worked at the "United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights" focusing on Iraq. She has also worked for "Human Rights Watch, Middle East and North Africa Division" where she conducted five unique human rights fact-finding missions to Iran.

3) "The Patterns of Human Rights Violations in Iran: The Implications for a New Human Rights Strategy"
Ramin Ahmadi, Yale University

Ramin Ahmadi is a Professor at Yale University and is one of the founders of the "Iran Human Rights Documentation Center". He has also founded the "Griffin Center for Health and Human Rights" and has developed numerous curriculum on Health and Human Rights at Yale University.

4) "Religious persecution as a crime against humanity"
Payam Akhavan, Yale University

Payam Akhavan is a Senior Fellow at Yale Law School and the Yale University Genocide Studies Program. He is President and Co-Founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre, and was previously Legal Advisor to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda at the Hague. He has advised the UN and Governments on transitional justice and human rights in Cambodia, East Timor, Eritrea, Guatemala, Peru, and Uganda.

For more info: Contact Nima Yousefian (Ny2120@columbia.edu)

By Fawwaz Traboulsi

Fawwaz Traboulsi is a writer, translator and academic. He teaches History and Political Science at the Lebanese American University in Beirut. In addition to his fields of specialization, Traboulsi has written extensively on criticism, foklore, memory and culture. His most recent translations are Edward Said’s Out of Place and his posthumous Humanism and Democratic Critique. Traboulsi is presently working on a History of Modern Lebanon.

The Middle East Institute invites you to its End of Year Party. Please join us for Middle Eastern food and wine.

Co-sponsored by the Turkish Initiative

Panel speakers:
Ms. Zeyno Baran, the Nixon Center
Mr. Robert Pollock, the Wall Street Journal
Mr. Egemen Bagis, Turkish Parliamentary and consultant to Turkish PM on US Foreign Policy

By Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop teaches nineteenth- and twentieth-century Arab history at the University of Texas at Austin. Her work emphasizes public and private spheres and the region's nation-states. She is currently completing a monograph on gendered modernities.

Elizabeth Bishop will discuss women’s oppression of other women. Her observations might profitably be extended to imperialism so as to consider Gertrude Bell’s body and its mobile signification among flows of bodies, credit, and weapons.

By Gal Levy

Gal Levy is a lecturer in the MA program in Democracy Studies at the Open University in Israel. His research focuses on the relationship between education, ethnicity and citizenship, and most recently, on the education of labor-migrant children and Arab education.

Seeking an explanation to the becoming of the Arab minority in Israel 'bearers of liberal citizenship rights', Gal Levy will explore the role of the state in delineating the boundaries of citizenship and ethnicity which allow and delimit their political and social incorporation.

On the 90th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide

Speaker: Vahakn N. Dadrian
Director of Genocide Research, Zoryan Institute

Chair: Mark Mazower
(Columbia University, History Department)

By Amira Hass

Amira Hass was born in Jerusalem in 1957, the daughter of Yugoslavian-Jewish refugees. A journalist for the Hebrew daily Ha'aretz, she covers Gaza and the West Bank. She received the UPI's International Award and the Sokolow Prize, Israel's highest honor for journalists, and received UNESCO's Guillermo Camo World Press Freedom Prize in 2003. Hass is the only Jewish Israeli correspondent on Palestinian affairs to live among the people about whom she reports. She is the author of Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege (Metropolitan/Owl, 2000) and Reporting from Ramallah: An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land (Semiotext(e), 2003).

By Marvine Howe

Marvine Howe takes us behind Morocco's exotic facade to discover the largely tolerant Muslim country, struggling to catch up with modern times and cope with the penetration of political Islam, sweeping the world. Marvine Howe, a former reporter for The New York Times, began her career as a free-lance journalist in North Africa. She will be talking about her latest book: "Morocco: The Islamist Awakening and Other Challenges".

Co-sponsored by the Columbia CIBER and the Center For Energy, Marine Transportation And Public Policy

By Fareed Mohamedi

Fareed Mohamedi is Senior Director, Country Strategies and Analysis, PFC Energy, a Washington based energy consultancy. He will review the latest developments in the geopolitics of energy security and how the large producer and consuming countries are adapting to perceptions of future constraints in oil production worldwide.

By Prof. Sabri Sayari

Co-sponsored by the Turkish Initiative

Professor Sabri Sayari is the Executive Director of the Institute of Turkish Studies and a Research Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Prior to his current position, he was a Senior Staff Member at the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council (1992-94), a Resident Consultant at the RAND Corporation (1985-93), and a Professor of Political Science at Bogazici University in Istanbul (1974-84). Dr. Sayari holds B.A and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University. He has also taught at Rutgers University, and served as a Visiting Professor at Columbia, University of California, Irvine, and Aarhus University in Denmark. Dr. Sayari has published extensively on Turkey's domestic politics and foreign policy, and on issues concerning political development, democratization, and international political economy. His most recent publications include "Turkey and the Middle East in the 1990s" Journal of Palestine Studies (1997), "Between Allies and Neighbors: Turkey's Burden Sharing Policy in the Gulf Conflict" in Andrew Bennett et al (eds), Friends in Need: Burden Sharing in the Gulf War (St. Martin's Press, 1997), and "Parties, Party Systems, and Economic Reforms: The Turkish Case," Studies in Comparative International Development (1997).

A film by Anat Halachmi

Subliminal is described in the local rap scene as the "reinventor of Hebrew language". He presents himself as the first proud Zionist rapper. Similarly, Tamer (TN) an Arab rapper from Lod who became a cultural icon for Israeli Arab youth, is no less proud of his Palestinian identity. Just like Siamese twins, Subliminal and Tamer are the two inseparable parts of the same unsolved conflict, which defines our lives. A patriotic Zionist rapper and a nationalist Arab rapper use the power of words and music to state as loud as they can what politicians in Israel can’t seem to put into words. Channels of Rage won an award for 'Best Documentary' at the Jerusalem International Film Festival.

By Jean-François Seznec

Co-sponsored by the Center for Energy, Marine Transportation and Public Policy

The talk will center on the meaning of the booming economic relations between Saudi Arabia and China. It will show that China is shortly going to overcome the US as the Saudi's main trading partner, and that Saudi Arabia has a key role in the Chinese's ability to dominate the trade deficit with the US.

Dr. Seznec has been an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University's Middle East Institute for 18 years and at Georgetown University for three years. His research centers on the influence of the Arab-Persian Gulf political and social variables on the financial and oil markets in the region.

Co-sponsored by The Turkish Initiative

The epic adventures of the legendary Baran the Bandit following his release from prison. After serving 35 years, it is no surprise that the world has changed dramatically. Still, Baran can't help but be shocked to discover that his home village is now underwater thanks to the construction of a new dam. He then heads for Istanbul to get revenge upon his former best friend, the man who snitched on him and stole his lover Keje. Along the way, Baran teams up with Cumali, a tough young punk who finds the thief's old-fashioned ways rather quaint. When Cumali gets into deep trouble with a crime boss, Baran adds another vengeful task to his roster.

By Nobutaka Miyahara

Co-sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and Harriman Institute

Mr. Miyahara will describe present threats to the stability and peace and suggest what President Karzai and his government should do and how the international community could support them for winning Afghan people’s support, by quoting Japanese experiences.

Mr. Miyahara has served as Minister-Counselor and Deputy Chief of Mission in the Embassy of Japan in Afghanistan since 2002. He is conducting research on Japan’s role in facilitating the Bonn Process and its contributions to consolidating peace and stability in Afghanistan.

By Fahrad Khosrokhavr
Co-sponsored by the Alliance Program

Dr. Fahrad Khosrokhavr is a professor at the EHESS in Paris. His research interests include sociology of religion, contemporary Islam and Iran.

Dr. Fahrad Khosrokhavr will address the question of the subjectivity of the jihadist people within activist or terrorist organizations referring to Islam as their source of vindication. The brown bag will focus on the way radicalization occurs mainly in Europe, among the people, be they converts or second and third generation Europeans of North African or Asian origin.

By Olivier Roy

Co-sponsored by the Alliance Program

Olivier Roy, PhD in political sciences from Sciences Po is a research director at the CNRS in the "Iranian World" research unit and Associate Scholar at the CERI. Olivier Roy will address the question of the efforts of westernized Muslims to assert their identity in a non-Muslim context and how the revival of Islam among Muslims populations is often wrongly seen as a backlash against westernization rather than as one of its consequences.

A documentary by Danae Elon

Director Danae Elon, daughter of Israeli intellectual Amos Elon, grew up in Jerusalem and was taken care of by an Arab housekeeper, whom her parents hired after the 6 Day War. Years later Danae goes in search of Moussa Mahmoud Obeidallah, the man who cared for her from the time she was a baby until she went into the army. Danae’s journey takes her to Paterson, New Jersey, to visit with six of Moussa’s eight sons, now settled in America’s largest Palestinian community and tending to families and businesses of their own. Over the course of the documentary Danae allows distances to come into focus: the distance between the Obeidallah family and the left-leaning, well-intentioned Elons and the distance between herself and her own father.

By Stuart J. Borsch

Dr. Borsch will explore the socioeconomic impact of the Black Death on Egypt and Western Europe. Starting with an analysis of the disease and its transmission, the presentation will cover the "classic" Western European economic response to the Black Death.

Dr. Borsch received his Ph.D. in History from Columbia University in 2002. He currently teaches World History and Middle Eastern History at Assumption College. He is the author of numerous articles.

By Craig Unger

Craig Unger is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties", which was featured in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. He appears frequently as an analyst on terrorism and Saudi-American relations on CNN, the ABC Radio Network and many other broadcast outlets.

Craig Unger will discuss the Bush-Saudi relationship and how the Bush administration turned a blind eye towards the Saudi role in terror. He will also discuss Big Oil, the neoconservative-evangelical alliance, and the roots of the Iraq war.

The Middle East Institute, MEALAC and the East Central European Center invite you to an evening with film director Roni Aboulafia

We will screen two of her films, both of which premiered at the 2004 Jerusalem Film Festival. Discussion will follow.

Ida Fink-Traces (Israel 2004, 50 minutes)

A film by Roni Aboulafia and Uri Cohen (Hebrew/Polish with English subtitles)

The writer Ida Fink was born in Zbaraz, (now in Ukraine), to a Jewish family. On the eve of World War II she began to study music at the Lvov Conservatory. In 1941, under the Nazi occupation, Ida Fink survived 4 selections and worked as a forced laborer. With the liquidation of the ghetto, she and her sister disguised themselves as Polish peasants and fled to Germany where they survived until the end of the war in constant danger of being identified. In 1957, she immigrated to Israel with her sister, father and husband Brunek, a survivor of four camps. She has written one novel Podroz (THE JOURNEY) (1990) and two collections of stories Skrawek Czasu (A SCRAP OF TIME) (1987), and Slady (TRACES) (1996) and was honored with the Anne Frank Prize in 1985.

The film follows Ida on a vacation trip to the Galilee, accompanied by Uri, a young writer who wants to understand her past. The film moves between the hills of the Galilee, the kitchen and the porch and between Hebrew, Israeli, and Polish literature focusing on Ida and the history that she embodies in her life and writing. Above all this is an attempt to touch the coattails of a great artist.

Followed by a short:

Meet Michael Oppenheim
Michael Shlomo Oppenheim is one year old. Through a series of family portraits we get a picture of the people, the exploits and the genes that brought Michael to the world and the world, as it is, to Michael. Faces that together tell the story of the Jews in the twentieth century and the story of the State of Israel. The face of us all: fighters, victims, human beings.

Roni Aboulafia is a graduate of Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem, Israel. She regularly directs for TV magazine shows and entertainment programs in Israel.

Uri Cohen is an Israeli writer and teaches Israeli literature and culture at Columbia