Stanford University

Education

"The Other Town" (2011; dirs. Nefin Dinç and Hercules Millas; 45 min.)

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Why do neighbors fight? Why do the world’s ethnic and religious groups experience mutual hatred and suspicion? The Other Town (2011, 45 minutes, in Turkish & Greek with English subtitles) explores how the inhabitants in Dimitsana (Greece) and Birgi (Turkey) are caught in a web of stereotypes that impede bilateral relations between Turkey and Greece. Interviewing the inhabitants during the span of a year, directors Nefin Dinç and Hercules Millas illustrate the turbulent relations between the two countries exist not so much due to their contentious past, but also due to the influence of nationalist ideology on higher education system and everyday life.

Nefin Dinç is Associate Professor at State University of New York at Fredonia. She studied Economics at Ankara University. She holds a Masters degree in Media and Culture from Strathclyde University, Scotland as well as a MFA degree in Documentary Filmmaking from the University of North Texas. She has produced four documentaries on Turkey and its surrounding countries, specifically The Republic Train, Rebetiko: The Song of Two Cities, I Named Her Angel, and Violette Verdy: The Artist Teacher. She is also Director of Youth Filmmaking Project in Turkey, a project sponsored by the U.S. Department of State to teach young Turkish students how to make short films. Currently, she is working on a documentary film about this project.

Annenberg Auditorium
Cummings Art Building
435 Lasuen Mall

Nefin Dinç Film director and Associate Professor Speaker State University of New York at Fredonia
Seminars

The Euro-Crisis, Its Impact on the US, and Prospects for Solutions

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This event is a round table discussion on the current economic crisis in Europe and the transatlantic world, and prospects for positive outcomes.

Co-sponsored by the Europe Center and the Hoover Institution

Oksenberg Conference Room

Gerhard Casper

FSI
Stanford University
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6060

(650) 723-2482
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR)
Peter and Helen Bing Professor in Undergraduate Education, Emeritus
Professor of Law, Emeritus
gerhard_headshot.jpg PhD

Gerhard Casper was Stanford University’s ninth president. He is the Peter and Helen Bing Professor, emeritus, a professor of law, emeritus, and a professor of political science (by courtesy), emeritus, and a senior fellow at both FSI and SIEPR. From July 2015 to July 2016, he served as president (ad interim) of the American Academy in Berlin. He has written and taught primarily in the fields of constitutional law, constitutional history, comparative law, and jurisprudence.  From 1977 to 1991, he was an editor of The Supreme Court Review.

Casper was the president of Stanford University from 1992 to 2000 and served as director of FSI from September 2012 through June 2013. Before coming to Stanford, he was on the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School (starting in 1966), served as dean of the law school from 1979 to 1987, and served as provost of the University of Chicago from 1989 to 1992. From 1964 to 1966, he was an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley.

His books include a monograph on legal realism (Berlin, 1967), an empirical study of the workload of the U.S. Supreme Court (Chicago, 1976, with Richard A. Posner), as well as Separating Power (Cambridge, MA, 1997) about practices concerning the separation of powers at the end of the 18th century in the United States. From his experiences as the president of Stanford, he wrote Cares of the University (1997). His most recent book, The Winds of Freedom—Addressing Challenges to the University, was published by Yale University Press in February 2014. He is also the author of numerous scholarly articles and occasional papers.

He has been elected to membership in the American Law Institute (1977), the International Academy of Comparative Law, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1980), the Order pour le mérite for the Sciences and Arts (1993), and the American Philosophical Society (1996). From 2000-2008, he served as a successor trustee of Yale University; from 2007-2014, as a trustee of the Committee for Economic Development; and from 2008-2016, as a trustee of the Terra Foundation for American Art. He is a member of international advisory councils at the Israel Democracy Institute (chairman since 2014), the European University at St. Petersburg, and Koç University, Istanbul.

Born in Germany in 1937, he studied law at the universities of Freiburg and Hamburg; in 1961, he earned his first law degree. He attended Yale Law School, obtaining his Master of Laws degree in 1962, and then returned to Freiburg, where he received his doctorate in 1964. He immigrated to the United States in 1964. He has been awarded honorary doctorates, most recently in law from both Yale University and Bard College, and in philosophy from both Uppsala University and the Central European University.

President Emeritus of Stanford University
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Gerhard Casper President Emeritus of Stanford University; Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; Peter and Helen Bing Professor in Undergraduate Education, Emeritus; Professor of Law, Emeritus Panelist
Ronald I. McKinnon William D. Eberle Professor of International Economics, Emeritus Panelist Stanford University
Michael Bordo W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow 2011-12 at the Hoover Institution and Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Monetary and Financial History at Rutgers University Panelist
David Brady Morris M. Doyle Centennial Professor in Public Policy, Bowen H. & Janice Arthur McCoy Professor in Leadership Values, Professor of Political Science and FSI Senior Fellow by Courtesy Panelist
Jonathan Rodden Associate Professor of Political Science Panelist

Christophe Crombez

Encina Hall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 723-0249 (650) 723-0089
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Senior Research Scholar at The Europe Center
cc3.jpg PhD

Christophe Crombez is a political economist who specializes in European Union (EU) politics and business-government relations in Europe. His research focuses on EU institutions and their impact on policies, EU institutional reform, lobbying, party politics, and parliamentary government.

Crombez is Senior Research Scholar at The Europe Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University (since 1999). He teaches Introduction to European Studies and The Future of the EU in Stanford’s International Relations Program, and is responsible for the Minor in European Studies and the Undergraduate Internship Program in Europe.

Furthermore, Crombez is Professor of Political Economy at the Faculty of Economics and Business at KU Leuven in Belgium (since 1994). His teaching responsibilities in Leuven include Political Business Strategy and Applied Game Theory. He is Vice-Chair for Research at the Department for Managerial Economics, Strategy and Innovation.

Crombez has also held visiting positions at the following universities and research institutes: the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, in Florence, Italy, in Spring 2008; the Department of Political Science at the University of Florence, Italy, in Spring 2004; the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan, in Winter 2003; the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, Illinois, in Spring 1998; the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Summer 1998; the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, in Spring 1997; the University of Antwerp, Belgium, in Spring 1996; and Leti University in St. Petersburg, Russia, in Fall 1995.

Crombez obtained a B.A. in Applied Economics, Finance, from KU Leuven in 1989, and a Ph.D. in Business, Political Economics, from Stanford University in 1994.

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Christophe Crombez Visiting Professor at the Europe Center, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Division of International and Comparative Area Studies; Professor of Political Economy at the University of Leuven, Belgium Moderator Stanford University
Panel Discussions

Stanford Interdisciplinary Conference on Conscience

Conference organizer: Nancy Ruttenburg

What is conscience, what was conscience, and what is its future?

The purpose of the conference is to examine the authority of conscience as it is presently invoked in various arenas of contemporary life—including law, medicine, journalism, and politics—and as its meaning is inflected by scholarly debates in the fields of history, literature, religious studies, psychology, and philosophy. From their various fields of expertise and interest, participants will address the central question the conference raises: in our post-Freudian and post-Nietzschean age, to what degree does conscience possess the kind of authority that an earlier and less secular age reserved for first things? This question entails a host of others.  Do our invocations of conscience reveal it to be the still-vital residue of a kind of certainty linked to infallible authority from which we cannot alienate ourselves even when we’d like to? If so, is the enduring vitality of conscience a sign that the process of secularization remains incomplete, even in secular rationalists, those who might consider themselves to be exempt from the religiosity that distinguishes United States culture from those of other modern Western democracies? Do we regard conscience as a type of knowledge? Or is it possible to understand conscience ontologically, as a category of self or mind that—insofar as it speaks to all humanity by means of a "small, still voice" issuing from each human heart—bridges the gap between individual and corporate being? Whether or not underwritten by a discipline or a tradition, conscience is commonly invoked to justify a range of acts and behaviors: what relation do these invocations of moral law, even when unexamined, bear to the burgeoning interest in ethics we see across the humanities disciplines and into the legal, medical, and journalistic fields? Between the extremes of authoritarianism and anarchy, where do we place conscience in American political life and how do we understand its peculiar agency?


CONFERENCE VIDEO AND AUDIO RECORDINGS:

Please click on the panel titles and the keynote speaker's name below to view videos and listen to audios of each:

November 8, 2012
Panel 1:  The Pre-Revolutionary Conscience: From Religious Burden to Natural Right (video)
Panel 2:  MIA: Conscience and the First Amendment (video)
Panel 3:  Roundtable: The Religious Conscience in Modernity (audio only)
Panel 4:  Conscience/Ethics: The Secular Conscience (audio only)

November 9, 2012
Panel 5:  Conscience and Reportage (video)
Panel 6:  Roundtable: Embodied Conscience (video)
Panel 7:  Roundtable: Conscientious Objection (video)
Keynote:  Anne Aghion, award-winning documentary filmmaker (video)

 

PROGRAM AND PARTICIPANTS:

Opening Event: Wednesday, November 7, 6:00-8:30 p.m.
Screening of  keynote speaker Anne Aghion’s documentary film, My Neighbor, My Killer, to be introduced by the filmmaker.  Will be held in the Oksenberg Conference Room, Encina Hall Central, 3rd floor.

  • 6:00 p.m.  Reception
  • 6:30 p.m.  Screening

For more information on the film, please visit this event listing on our website by clicking <here>.

 

Thursday, November 8, 9:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m:
Conscience and its Conceptual Evolution: Religion/Rights/Ethics

  • 9:00 – 9:30  Opening Remarks:  Nancy Ruttenburg, Organizer

Thursday Morning Panels:  What Was Conscience?  The American Context

  • 9:30 – 11:30:  The Pre-Revolutionary Conscience: From Religious Burden to Natural Right

1) Andrew Murphy, Associate Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Walt Whitman Center for the Culture and Politics of Democracy, Rutgers University, author of Conscience and Community: Revisiting Toleration and Religious Dissent in Early Modern England and America and Prodigal Nation: Moral Decline and Divine Punishment from New England to 9/11.

2) Mark Valeri, E. T. Thompson Professor of Church History, Union Presbyterian Seminary. Among the editors of the multi-volume Works of Jonathan Edwards, he is the author most recently of Heavenly Merchandize: How Religion Shaped Commerce in Puritan America.

Stanford Respondent:  Caroline Winterer, Professor of History, Professor by courtesy of Classics

  • 11:45 – 1:45:  MIA: Conscience and the First Amendment

1) Jack Rakove, William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies and Professor of Political Science at Stanford, where has taught since 1980. He is the author of six books, including Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (1996), which received the Pulitzer Prize in History, and Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America (2010), which was a finalist for the George Washington Prize. He is currently at work on Beyond Belief, Beyond Conscience: The Radical Significance of the Free Exercise of Religion, which will be part of the Oxford University Press series on Inalienable Rights.

2) Michael J. Perry, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law, and Senior Fellow for the Center for the Study of Law and Religion, Emory University School of Law.  Author most recently of The Political Morality of Liberal Democracy; Constitutional Rights, Moral Controversy, and the Supreme Court; Toward a Theory of Human Rights: Religion, Law, Courts; and Under God?: Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy.

Stanford Respondent:  Derek Webb, Fellow, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford

 


 Thursday Afternoon Panels:  What Is Conscience:  The Secular/Religious Divide

  • 2:45 – 4:45: Roundtable: The Religious Conscience in Modernity: 

1) Nathan Chapman, Executive Director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center who joined the Law School as a Fellow in 2010.  After clerking for the Honorable Judge Gerald Bard Tjoflat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Court, he practiced with WilmerHale in Washington, D.C. He graduated from Duke University School of Law and Duke Divinity School in 2007.  His most recent publications include Disentangling Conscience and Religion, 2013 U. Ill. L. Rev. (forthcoming) and Due Process As Separation of Powers, 121 Yale L. J. 1672 (2012) (with Michael W. McConnell).

2) Steven Knapp, President of the George Washington University since August 2007, former Dean of Arts and Sciences and subsequently Provost at Johns Hopkins University, and Professor of English at UC Berkeley.  Author most recently with Philip Clayton of The Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy, Faith.  A specialist in Romanticism, literary theory, and the relation of literature to philosophy and religion, Dr. Knapp earned his doctorate and masters degrees from Cornell University and his Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University.

3) Arnold Eisen, Chancellor, Jewish Theological Seminary, NYC.  Author most recently of Rethinking Modern Judaism: Ritual, Commandment, Community and Taking Hold of Torah: Jewish Commitment and Community in America.

Stanford Moderator: Nancy Ruttenburg, William Robertson Coe Professor of American Literature, Professor by Courtesy of Comparative Literature and Slavic, Director, Stanford Center for the Study of the Novel

  • 5:00 – 7:00: Conscience/Ethics: The Secular Conscience 

1) Jay M. Bernstein, University Distinguished Professor, New School for Social Research.  Author most recently of Against Voluptuous Bodies: Adorno’s Late Modernism and the Meaning of Painting; Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics; and a co-authored volume published through UC Berkeley’s Townsend Center entitled Art and Aesthetics After Adorno.

2) Kent Greenawalt, University Professor, former Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia Law Review, Columbia Law School.  Author, among many other works, of Religion and the Constitution: Vol. I: Free Exercise and Fairness and Vol. II: Establishment and Fairness, as well as Does God Belong in Public Schools? and Private Consciences and Public Reasons.

Stanford Respondent:  Nancy Ruttenburg, William Robertson Coe Professor of American Literature, Professor by Courtesy of Comparative Literature and Slavic, Director of Stanford Center for the Study of the Novel

 

Friday, November 9, 9:00 a.m. - 6:45 p.m.
Contemporary Casuistry: Cases of Conscience in Action

Friday Morning Panels: Narrating Conscience: Modes of Witnessing

  • 9:00 – 11:00: Conscience and Reportage

1) Dr. Sheri Fink, M.D., Ph.D., 2010 Pulitzer Prize- and National Magazine Award-winner in investigative journalism for “The Deadly Choices at Memorial” about difficult choices made at a New Orleans hospital during the aftermath of Katrina; contributor to ProPublica who has reported globally on health, medicine, and science; senior fellow with the New America Foundation and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative; author of War Hospital: A True Story of Surgery and Survival (2003) during the Balkan crisis, winner of the American Medical Writer’s Association special book award and finalist for PEN Martha Albrand awards.

2) Colin Dayan, Robert Penn Warren Professor in the Humanities, Vanderbilt, and expert in literary, legal, and religious studies of the Americas; books include Haiti, History, and the Gods (1998); The Story of Cruel and Unusual (2007); and, most recently, The Law is a White Dog: How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons, selected as a Choice top-25 "outstanding academic book of 2011."

Stanford Respondent: David Palumbo-Liu, Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, Professor of Comparative Literature, Professor by courtesy of English 

  • 11:15 – 1:15:  Roundtable: Embodied Conscience 

1) Dr. Abraham Verghese, author of the novel Cutting for Stone (2010)as well as the non-fiction works, My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story (1995)about his experience as a physician working in rural Tennessee at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, and The Tennis Partner: A Story of Friendship and Loss (1998).  Currently Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine and Senior Associate Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine, Stanford.

2) Mark Johnson, Philip H. Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Department of Philosophy, University of Oregon.  Author most recently of The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought (co-authored with George Lakoff); Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics; and a second edition of Metaphors We Live By (co-authored with George Lakoff).

3) Dr. Fady Joudah, Internal Medicine and Palestinian-American poet; former practitioner with Doctors Without Borders in Darfur, Sudan and Zambia; translator of the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish and Ghassan Zaqtan, and 2007 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition for The Earth in the Attic (2008).

Stanford Moderator:  Blakey Vermeule, Professor of English

 

Friday Afternoon Panels:  Conscience in the World: Problems of Toleration and Intervention

  • 2:30 – 4:30:  Roundtable: Conscientious Objection 

1) Air Force Reserve Col. Steven Kleinman, Senior Intelligence Officer, U.S. Air Force; a widely recognized subject matter expert with extensive experience in human intelligence operations, special operations, strategic interrogation, and resistance to interrogation; Senior Advisor to the Intelligence Science Board’s study “Educing Information” which issued guidelines for improving the government’s interrogation techniques. Publicly opposed “enhanced interrogation” techniques for battling the war on terror in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the House Judiciary Committee.  Authored numerous articles laying out his argument against torture published in several peer-reviewed professional journals, the law review of the City University of New York and Valparaiso University law schools, and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

2) Eyal Press, author of Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times and Absolute Convictions; contributor to several journals, including The Nation, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, The Atlantic Monthly, and others. 

3) Yusef Komunyakaa: Global Distinguished Professor of English, NYU, Vietnam veteran and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose collections include The Chameleon Couch, Taboo: The Wishbone Trilogy, Pleasure Dome and many others.

Stanford Moderator:  Debra Satz, Associate Dean of Humanities, Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society; Professor of Philosophy and by courtesy Political Science; Research Affiliate, Program on Global Justice

 

4:45 – 6:45: KEYNOTE ADDRESS:  ANNE AGHION

For her work on the gacaca trials in post-genocide Rwanda, documentary filmmaker Anne Aghion won the UNESCO Fellini Prize, an Emmy Award, the Human Rights Watch 2009 Nestor Almendros Prize, and she was a nominee for the 2009 Gotham Award. Her feature-length documentary, My Neighbor, My Killer, was one of the few documentaries to be an Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival.

 
Co-sponsored by The Europe Center, Stanford Arts Institute (formerly Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts), Stanford Law School, School of Humanities and Sciences, Office of the Dean of Humanities, Creative Writing Program, Stanford Humanities Center, Department of English, Taube Center for Jewish Studies, Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, Center for Ethics in Society, Department of Art & Art History, the Department of Philosophy, and the Department of History.
 
Please visit the conference website at: https://conscienceconference2012.wordpress.com/
 
 

Bechtel Conference Center

Conferences

History and Memory: Global and Local Dimensions

The second conference in the multi-year TEC-Van Leer Jerusalem Institute project on the reconciliation of divided regions and societies.

 

Conference Summary
By Roland Hsu, Associate Director, the Europe Center, and Kathryn Ciancia, (Ph.D., Stanford).

The Europe Center, with project partner the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, hosted the major international conference at Stanford University (May 17-18, 2012), dedicated to “History and Memory: Global and Local Dimensions”.  This conference was aimed to deepen our understanding of disputes over history, and to find ways towards resolving conflictual memory.  Participants – all leaders in their field, and representing voices from U.S., European, Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab worlds – were challenged to answer:

  • What are the historians’ responsibilities in developing shared narratives about war, civil conflict, occupation, and genocide?
  • How do we understand the relation between the work of professional historians and that of civic society organizations?
  • How should one think about the relative importance of historical commissions and truth commissions in “coming to terms with the past”?
  • How do efforts in post-conflict situations to reach accurate assessments (“truth”) of the events meet the needs of healing social, ethnic, and/or religious wounds (“reconciliation”)?
  • What are the consequences and meaning of actions of forgiveness, including the formal granting of amnesty? Do these actions conflict with the writing of history?

Participants included:
Khalil, Gregory (Telos Group)
Göçek, Müge (Univ. of Michigan)
Milani, Abbas (Stanford)
Bashir, Bashir (The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute)
Barkan, Elazar (Columbia)
Karayanni, Michael (The Hebrew University)
Confino, Alon (University of Virginia)
Bartov, Omer (Brown)
Cohen, Mitchell (Baruch)
Eshel, Amir (Stanford)
Glendinning, Simon (LSE)
Motzkin, Gabriel (The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute)
Naimark, Norman (Stanford)
Penslar, Derek (Toronto)
Rouhana, Nadim (Tufts)
Uhl, Heidemarie (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Zerubavel, Yael (Rutgers)
Zipperstein, Steven (Stanford)


Notes and Highlights
In his opening remarks, Amir Eshel, Director of The Europe Center, situated the conference within its wider context—a series under the title “Debating History, Democracy, Development, and Education in Conflicted Societies,” which began with a conference on “Democracy in Adversity and Diversity” in Jerusalem in May 2011.  Eshel posed the question of why Stanford’s Europe Center should focus on issues relating to the wider Middle East, particularly the historic and ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.  In answering his own question, Eshel argued that the European Union had begun to look closely at its own neighborhood, with a particular emphasis on the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EUROMED), which explores questions of migration, religion, and civil society in the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa.  As such questions are important in both Europe and the EUROMED region, scholars who work on Europe need to think within a broader geographical context that stretches beyond Old Europe or even the European Union.

Amir Eshel also introduced some of the key ideas that informed the conference. Questions of memory and history have been central to academic discourse over the past three decades.  Indeed, memory and history have taken on a crucial, even obsessive, dynamic.  Where are we today in this global interdisciplinary conversation?  Can the study of memory help us to understand the conflicted societies of the greater Middle East?  Can the huge scholarly interest in such subjects help us to think in new ways about the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians?  Can the European experience of dealing with difficult memories aid us as we try to understand Israeli and Palestinian memories of the 1948 Nakba?  What is the role of historical research, on the one hand, and cultural remembrance, on the other, in promoting reconciliation and cohabitation? Since the conference aimed to focus less on the peace process in the Middle East and more on attempts at reconciliation and cohabitation, he urged participants to consider how Israelis and Palestinians might live together

In order to highlight work that had recently been undertaken, Eshel then focused on the fields of historical research and cultural discourse.  Over the past few decades, he argued, narratives have become increasingly crucial in the historiography, much of the impetus coming from so-called critical historiography.  For instance, the last decade has witnessed the publication of Motti Golani and Adel Manna’s Two Sides of the Coin, which presents two narratives of the Nakba of 1948.  In this multi-perspective narrative, the conflict is presented as one of both territory and historical memory.  Similarly, Mahmoud Yazbak and Yfaat Weiss’s Haifa Before and After 1948 was co-authored by Israelis and Palestinians and features fourteen different narratives.  A further collection, entitled Zoom In: Palestinian Refugees of 1948, Remembrances, deals with contemporary memories of the Nakba.  All three books were published by the Institute For Historical Justice and Reconciliation and the Republic of Letters, while the Van Leer Institute and Al-Quds University in Palestinian East Jerusalem have also published a series of schoolbooks that present similar multi-perspective narratives.

In addition to the changes in the historiography, there has been a shift in the cultural discourse, exemplified by the Israeli novelist Alon Hilu’s The House of Rajani (2012), which details the experiences of one Palestinian family and includes a map of Jaffa-Tel Aviv featuring Palestinian sites that vanished in 1948. The fact that Hilu’s novel received critical acclaim and was commercially successful indicates a new willingness on the part of Israelis to learn about the Palestinian experience.  Eshel has himself just completed a book comparing post-Second World War German and Austrian cultural memory with Israeli cultural memory of 1948. Since Palestinians and Israelis are bound to live together, Eshel argued that the solutions depend on narratives of the past, with history at the center of the discussion.  Throughout the conference, participants were urged to ask themselves two questions: Can we do more? Can we do better?   

 

Video casts of select sessions of the conference are available on Stanford YouTube.

Titles of the sessions are:

  • History and Memory Welcome and Introduction (Amir Eshel and Gabriel Motzkin)
  • Session 1:  "Memory and the Philosophy of History" (Gabriel Motzkin) and “From Rational Historiography to Delusional Conspiracies: Travails of History in Iran” (Abbas Milani)
  • Session 2:“The Public and Private Erasure of History and Memory: Ottoman Empire, Turkish Republic and the Case of the Collective Violence against the Armenians (1789-2009)” (Fatma Müge Göçek)  and “The Shoah and the Logics of Comparison: The place of the Jewish Holocaust in Contemporary European Memory” (Heidemarie Uhl)
  • Session 4:  America, Prolepsis and the 'Holy Land' (Gregory Khalil) and “Neutralizing History and Memory in Divided Societies” (Bashir Bashir)
  • Session 5:  "Role of Historical Memory in Conflict Resolution" (Elazar Barkan) and “I Forgive You” (Simon Glendinning)
  • Session 6: "Historicizing Atrocity as a Path to Reconciliation" (Omer Bartov) and “A Memory of One’s Own: History, Political Change and the Meaning of 1977” (Mitchell Cohen)


Plans for the Next Conference
The final session involved a Round Table discussion in which participants had the opportunity to reflect on the larger themes of the conference and to suggest ways in which the dialogue could be fruitfully continued.  Three of the conference organizers began with their own reflections on the conference before the discussion was opened up to all participants.  Norman Naimark pointed to three key ideas that he had learned from the proceedings.  The first was the concept that history and memory should not necessarily be seen as distinct entities.  Second, Naimark pointed to the importance of comparative approaches, citing Derek Penslar’s presentation as a good example.  While the conference did not deal with the fields of Eastern European, Russian, and German history, external scholarly interjections into these fields have made them places of stimulating debate. Finally, since there is much that we do not know about 1948, Naimark urged the creation of a history that would place those events within a much broader chronological context, just as Omer Bartov is doing for the town of Buczacz.  In his remarks, Gabriel Motzkin focused on the relationship between memory and the ongoing political process in Israel.  He expressed agreement with Nadim Rouhana that Jewish Israelis need to recognize Palestinian memories, but added that Palestinians have to acknowledge the Jewish religious project in which the land of Israel occupies the same place that salvation does for Christians.  Finally, Amir Eshel urged participants to consider the role of the “practical past”—how do we use the past in order to engage the present and imagine the future? He suggested that there are a variety of possible political solutions, but that there is also a long list of actions that the present Israeli government could take in order to aid reconciliation, including acts of apology and acknowledgment.

The organizers express their deep appreciation to the conference participants.  They also support the keen interest in continuing the work on this subject and the larger project, with follow-up programming.  The next conference in this series, from the Europe Center-Van Leer Jerusalem Institute partnership, will be announced at The Europe Center website.

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Landau Economics Building
Lucas Room 134(A)

Conferences
Date Label

Emergence of Nationalism in Greece and Turkey: A Comparative Historical Account

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Greek Nationalism had an early start in late 18th century because of the preponderance of the Greek language in Balkan institutions of learning. The early enlightenment was transmitted by learned prelates before the French Revolution launched its anti-clerical onslaught. Whereas 19th-century exponents of nationalism were children of the secular enlightenment, the second half of the century was dominated by the romantic and irredentist nationalism of Konstantine Paparrigopoulos that believed in the cultural, not racial, continuity of the Greeks. Turkish Nationalism was a late comer in the Balkans. The views of the Young Ottomans constituted at first ambiguous attempt before the Young Turks and Ziya Gökalp made their nationalist mark. Ataturk evicted religion from the Gökalp blueprint and kept the other two pillars, secular nationalism and modernization. Both Greek and Turkish 20th century nationalisms were influenced by the French post-1870 prototype.

Thanos Veremis is Professor Emeritus of Political History in Department of European and International Studies at the University of Athens and Founding Member of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP). He has held teaching and research positions at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (London), Harvard University’s Center for European Studies, Princeton University’s the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, St. Antony’s College (Oxford), the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and the Hellenic Observatory of the LSE. From 2004 to 2010, he served as President of Greece’s National Council for Education. His publications include Modern Greece: A History since 1821 (with J. Koliopoulos, 2010); The Balkans: Construction and Deconstruction of States (2005), Greece: The Modern Sequel (with J. Koliopoulos, 2002), Greece (with M. Dragoumis, 1998) and The Military in Greek Politics (1997).

 

Mediterranean Studies Forum, 2011-12 Greece & Turkey Lecture Series. 
Co-sponsored by The Europe Center

Encina Hall West, Room 208
616 Serra Street

Thanos Veremis Speaker University of Athens
Lectures

Thomas Jonter

Department of Economic History
Stockholm University
SE-106 91 Stockholm
Sweden

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Professor of International Relations, Department of History, Stockholm University
Thomas2.jpg PhD

Thomas Jonter is Professor in International Relations at the Department of Economic History, Stockholm University. His research is focused on nuclear non-proliferation and energy security. He is also project leader for different educational and research programs in Russia with the aim to initiate academic courses and programs in nuclear non-proliferation at different universities in the regions of Tomsk and Jekaterinburg. These projects are carried out in a cooperation between Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), Monterey, United States, and  Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).  Professor Jonter is also chair of the ESARDA (European Safeguards and Research Development Association) working group for Training and Knowledge Management. Currently he is a visiting scholar at The Europe Center at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University.

Anna Lindh Fellow, The Europe Center

Gender Relations in Transition: Austria and Europe in Comparative Perspective

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This seminar will sketch the transition of Austria's gender relations between the 1960s and the firts decade of the 20th century. Departing from a "(Strong) Male Breadwinner/ Female Home Carer Model," the gender relations in Austria have changed significantly, yet Austria has not adopted a more egalitarien system such as the "Dual Breadwinner/ Marketized Female Carer Model" established in the USA, or the "Dual Breadwinner/ State Carer Model" established in Scandinavian Countries. Instead, Austria has (like Germany and the Netherlands) converted into a "(Weak) Male Breadwinner/ Female Parttime Carer Model".

The seminar will track the significant changes of gender relations - the "emancipatory" processes of rising female partipation in education and wage labor, and the loosening of ties of traditional marriage and family, but also the processes of reproduction of gender inequality in education, work and family. Finally, the seminar will address how social, family and gender policies have contributed to these contradictory developments.

Professor Max Preglau (Sociology, University of Innsbruck) is the 2010-11 Visiting Austrian Chair at The Europe Center.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Max Preglau

The Europe Center
Encina Hall E103
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-8020 (650) 725-2592
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Professor of Sociology at University of Innsbruck, Austria
Distinguished Austrian Visiting Chair Professor, 2011
max_preglau.jpg PhD

Max Preglau is a professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology, School of Political Science and Sociology of the University of Innsbruck in Austria. His work focuses on Critical Social Theory and on the comparative Study of Contemporary Societies, Social Inequalities, Welfare Regimes and Social Policies (Austria and EU-Memberstates).

In 2006-07 Preglau was a Joseph Schumpeter Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. Until 1991 he was associate professor, until 1986 assistant professor at the Department of Sociology at the School of Economic and Social Sciences of the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Preglau received his doctoral degree in the Social and Economic Sciences from the Vienna Business School, a post-graduate Diploma in Sociology from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna and his qualification for university teaching (Habilitation) of Sociology from the University of Innsbruck.

Professor Preglau's current research projects include "Comparative Analysis of Social Structures: Austria, Europe and the USA," and "Comparative Analysis of Welfare States and Social Policies: Austria, Europe and the USA."

Courses:
SOC 252: Current Social Change: Austria, Europe and the US
Term: Winter, 3-5 units
Tue/Thur 3:15 - 5:05 PM, 160-127

SOC 253: Rise, Current Challenges and Transformations of the Welfare State
Term: Spring, 3-5 units
Tue/Thur: 3:15 - 5:05 PM, 160-127

Max Preglau Speaker
Seminars

Social Banking and Social Finance: Answers to the Economic Crisis

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For over 2,000 years, banks have served to facilitate the exchange of money and to provide a variety of economic and financial services. During the most recent financial collapse and subsequent recession, beginning in 2008, banks have been vilified as perpetrators of the crisis, the public distrust compounded by massive public bailouts. Nevertheless, another form of banking has also emerged, with a focus on promoting economic sustainability, investing in community, providing opportunity for the disadvantaged, and supporting social, environmental, and ethical agendas. Social Banking and Social Finance traces the emergence of the “bank with a conscience” and proposes a new approach to banking in the wake of the economic crisis. Featuring innovations and initiatives in banking from Europe, Canada, and the United States, Roland Benedikter presents an alternative to traditional banking practices that are focused exclusively on profit maximization. He argues that social banking is not about changing the system, but about improving some of its core features by putting into use the "triple bottom line" principle of profit-people-planet. Important lessons can be learned by the success of social banks that may be useful for the greater task of improving the global financial system and avoiding economic crises in the future.

 

 

Critical Acclaim for This Publication

 “This volume provides a description of social banking and social finance, their background in the history of ideas and their importance within the current globalized economy. It is not only an excellent didactical introduction, but also an entertaining and at the same time scientifically sound and differentiated explanation, which to my knowledge is so far unparalleled in English-speaking academia. I believe that the insights of this volume can have a progressive impact on the thinking about money and finance of the new generations, as well as the broader public in theUnited States and inEurope. I therefore consider this volume to be one step (among the many necessary) toward a realistic and sober rethinking of capitalism. Even if it is just a brief text and thus a small step, it is an important one. Because, as German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said, every long voyage starts with a brief first step. And this step, as compressed, simple and surprising as it may sometimes seem, may prove to be inspiring for those which come afterwards. I think that Benedikter’s volume is a valid response to the profound challenges arisen with the economic and financial crisis of 2007–2010. The solutions and perspectives it proposes are useful tools to help us to avoid further crises.”

-Professor Dr. Hans Christoph Binswanger, Chair Emeritus of National Economics, University St. Gallen, Switzerland, and former director of the Swiss Research Association on National Economics, Zürich 

 

“The recent crisis has shown that the time for more differentiated and just approaches to money and finance is ripe. I hope that with this outstanding didactical introduction oriented not primarily toward specialists, but to students and teachers, as well as to the broad public, the discussion about how we can move forward in making better use of money and finance will gain further momentum. This volume is an important contribution to broadening the financial literacy of our time.”

-Professor Dr. Udo Reifner, Department for Economics and Social Science, Hamburg University

 

“This is a clear and intense text. It has the advantage of summoning up some of the most important questions of current economics and finance in a short, easily  understandable and well-structured way. The reader is on the one hand provided insight into the main issues of today’s debate about the future of capitalism. On the other hand, she and he are informed about the ongoing (r)evolution in the banking and finance sector. The present change goes beyond the traditional reductionisms of the mainstream banking and finance sector. It starts to demonstrate how the creation of economic value on the one hand and a sustainable social and environmental development on the other hand can be integrated into one and the same approach. The international educational sector has to be grateful for this volume.”

-Professor Dr. Leonardo Becchetti, Department of Economics, Università Roma II “Tor Vergata, ”Italy 

 

“One of the first soundly scientific publications of its kind in English, this volume provides a complete overview over the contemporary field of social banking and social finance. Written in a short and easily understandable manner, it explains the history, the philosophy, the current state, and the perspectives of social banking and social finance in theUnited Statesand inEurope. This volume is an indispensable first entry for everybody who wants to know how we can deal with money in a better, sustainable way.” 

-Professor Dr. Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, dean emeritus, Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California at Santa Barbara, former policy director of the United Nations, Centre for Science and Technology for Development New York City, member of the Club of Rome, ordinary commissioner of the World Commission on the Social Dimensions of Globalization  

 

“Without need of prior knowledge, this volume is the ideal introduction to social banking and social finance for students and teachers. As a result of the economic crisis of 2007–2010, the request for a better handling of money and finance has increased on a global level. Social banking and social finance are answers that while not everybody must agree with them, they are worth to be known by everybody who wants to join the discussion on a well founded basis.”

-Professor Hanns-Fred Rathenow, director of the Institute of Social Sciences and Education in History and Politics, head of the Center for Global Education and International Cooperation, The Technical University of Berlin

 

“Social banking is a field of civil society engagement that has surfaced to international attention during the most recent financial crisis. This volume is an excellent introduction from a contemporary viewpoint. It departs from outlining the main traits of the economic crisis of 2007–2010, but its insights and teachings are not limited to it. This volume uses the crisis just as a starting point to explain how the financial system can move forward toward a more rational constellation of balance and inclusion. It is as unique as it is valuable.”

-Professor Dr. James Giordano, The Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Oxford University, director of Academic Programs of The Potomac Institute for Policy Studies Arlington, Virginia

 

“I appreciate particularly the interdisciplinary and multilayered approach of this volume. It is one of the first English publications that transcends the limits of reducing social banking and social finance to ‘developmental aid’ for the so-called ‘developing world,’ or to simply identify it with approaches like ‘helping the poor’, like it has been done too often in the past. Instead, as this volume shows, social banking and social finance are more: They are about rationally and soberly innovating the system of capitalism, but without revolutionizing it. That is because social banks consider capitalism as a basic social good of modernity, that in the aftermath of the crisis has to be transformed into a ‘better’ capitalism which serves the greater society instead of benefiting just a few. The whole argumentation of this volume is about creating a broader range of options for the average bank customer in theUnited Statesand Europeand to make the use of capital more ‘humane,’ by serving the specific needs of the ‘real economy’ instead of abstract speculation. This volume, although short and concise, gives a quite realistic picture of the situation and its perspectives. The author finds the right balance between simplification, precision, and vision.”

-Professor Dr. Michael Opielka, Department of Social Welfare and Social Politics, The University of Applied Sciences Jena, Germany

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