Haifa, the so-called "mixed city" of Jews and Arabs during the British Mandate period, also called the city of "co-existence" in the minds of its Jewish residents today, this city real and imagined will be the focus of this lecture, which suggests an archeology of memory of a conflict which is over and a conflict which still lingers.

Yfaat Weiss is professor in the department of the History of the Jewish People and Head of the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the author of various studies on German and Central European History, as well as on Jewish and Israeli History.

The United States spends hundreds of billions of dollars on transforming the international landscape through military force in order to enhance America’s national security. But is there any other way? This lecture explores America`s Cold War experience in dealing with the communist states of Eastern Europe in an effort to make them less tyrannical and less hostile to the Western world. The focus will be on economic and psychological warfare, cultural and economic border penetration, and diplomacy as a tool of coercion in particular. The presentation also analyzes these policies in the light of the ideology, goals, strategies and tactics employed by the other side, while also considering the difficulties U.S. policy faces in adequately responding to external challenges. The discussion touches on the changing goals and strategies of U.S. foreign policy in Eastern Europe within the national independence/stability paradigm.

Co-sponsored by the History Department

This event celebrating Sweden's diverse cultures began with a reception at 5pm, followed by the showing of the award winning film Harbour of Hope (2011, Sweden / Poland / Germany / Norway / Denmark; Dir. Magnus Gertten; 76 min) with filmmaker Magnus Gertten. Ozan Sunar, the artistic director of Moriska Paviljongen (also known as "Moriskan"), rounded out the evening with a multi-media presentation on bridging communities through culture.

In our current societies, the media are backbone institutions of social life, a tool through which we can strength or deteriorate our democracy. Each society decides if it works exclusively for the market or if it conditions business goals to preserve collective responsibility. The media are nuclear tools to accomplish the right balance between the two.  Unfortunately, nowadays such balance is neither a priority of public media sector nor a private one. The speech of the media has shifted, with consent and complicity of all the stakeholders, and has diminished responsibility criteria and installed partisanship and special interest and business. Reversing this process is an emergency, but the absence of imminent danger, unlike what it happens with the economic crisis, has not forced us to assume our obligations. Consequently, without being aware of it, we are marginalizing media content that can contribute to public service. The dependence between politicians and journalists makes them forget that they must serve the public interest. They are too involved in their own fight to survive and as a result subject the law, subsidies and news to their own interests. This lecture will analyze the mechanisms and trends through which the mass media stabilize irresponsibility and encourage a sensationalist discourse that, in turn, distance the citizen from public affairs.


Mònica Terribas was born in Barcelona (1968). She is a journalist and has been teaching at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra since 1993. She obtained her degree of Journalism at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (1991) and a doctoral fellowship by the British Council and La Caixa to study the links between the concept of public sphere and national identity in the media (Ph.D,  University of Stirling, Scotland, 1994). She combined her studies with her professional career as a journalist in the radio news services in 1986 and continued in 1988 in TV3 - Televisió de Catalunya- as a screenwriter, coordinator, editor and presenter of several television programs, among which the late night news program, La Nit al Dia (2002-2008).  In May 2008 she was appointed General Manager of TV3, responsible for the six public channels of the Catalan media corporation up to April 2012.  Since August 2012, she is the editor and CEO of ARA, which includes a newspaper and the net news leader platform. Among other awards, she received the National Award of Journalism and National Award of Culture.

This event is part of The Europe Center's Iberian Studies Program lecture series and the Journalism and Literature series presented by the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, the Stanford Humanities Center and The Europe Center.