Stanford University

Culture

Catalonia: Cultural Policy and Global Nation

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Joan Manuel Tresserras i Gaju was born in Rubí in 1955.

He holds a PhD in Information Sciences. He is a professor at the Department of Journalism and Communication Sciences of the UAB, specialising in the history of communication, analysis of the information society, the study of cultural industries and mass culture. He has also taught about cultural management, political communication, communication policies and media analysis.

He received a summa cum laude Doctorate in Information Sciences (1988-89), the award for research into Mass Communication of the Generalitat de Catalunya (1989), and the Joan Fuster essay award (1994). Among others publications, he has written 'El Regne del Subjecte' (1987) and 'Cultura de masses i postmodernitat' (1994) which he co-wrote with Enric Marín, 'D'Ací i D'Allà, aparador de la modernitat' (1993) and 'La gènesi de la societat de masses a Catalunya' 1888-1939 (1999) which he co-wrote with Francesc Espinet. He has written some fifty academic articles and texts on social communication and has co-written the reports on 'Seguiment de L'impacte social de les noves tecnologies de la informació i la comunicació', sponsored by the Fundació Bofill, and has written 'Un segle de recerca sobre comunicació a Catalunya'. He coordinated the "Cultura" blog of the Informe per a la Catalunya del 2000 (1999).

He was the director of the Department of Journalism and Communication Sciences of the UAB (1991-1993) and coordinator of the degree in Journalism at the UAB (1997-1999). He was a member of the Institutional Advertising Advisory Committee of the Generalitat (1998-1999), a director of the Catalan Radio and Television Corporation (2000), director of the Catalan Audiovisual Council in charge of research, studies and publications (2000-2006), chairman of the Board for Diversity in the Audiovisual Media (2005-2006) and member of the Mixed Commission for State-Generalitat Transfers (2004-2006). He is vice-president of the Catalan Communication Society, a subsidiary of the Catalan Studies Institute.

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Joan Manuel Tresserras i Gaju Counselor of Culture and the Media, Government of Catalonia Speaker
Seminars

Perverse Prosperos and Cruel Calibans: The (Con)text of Portuguese Postcolonial Positionality

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Phillip Rothwell is associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He received a BA (Honors) in Math/Spanish and Portuguese/Phonetics, a MA (2000) and a PhD (2000), all from the University of Cambridge, UK. His areas of specialization are literatures and cultures of Lusophone Africa and Portugal.

Dr. Rothwell is the author and editor of numerous books, reviews, translations, and articles, including “A Postmodern Nationalist: Truth, Orality, and Gender in the Work of Mia Couto”. Bucknell & U.P. (2004); “Fuzzy Frontiers - Mozambique: False Borders, Mia Cuoto: False Margins” Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies. Fall (1998); “A Tale of Two Tensions: Synthesis and Separation in Portuguese National Identity” Forum for Modern Language Studies. April (2000); “Shit, Shrimps, and Shifting Soubriquets: Iracema and the Lesson in Lost Authority” Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies. May (2001); “The Phylomorphic Linguistic Tradition: Or, The Siege of (the) Portuguese in Mozambique” Hispanic Research Journal. June (2001). His most recent book is A Canon of Empty Fathers: Paternity in Portuguese Narrative (Bucknell University Press, 2007).
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Phillip Rothwell Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Speaker Rutgers University
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The Laws of Others: Three Constitutionalist Responses to Interdependence

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Jan-Werner Mueller's research interests include the history of modern political thought, liberalism and its critics, nationalism, and the normative dimensions of European integration.

He is the author of A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought (Yale University Press, 2003; German, French, Japanese, and Chinese translations) and Another Country: German Intellectuals, Unification and National Identity (Yale University Press, 2000). In addition, he has edited German Ideologies since 1945: Studies in the Political Thought and Culture of the Bonn Republic (Palgrave, 2003) and Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past (Cambridge UP, 2002). His book Constitutional Patriotism is published by Princeton UP in 2007.

He has been a fellow at the Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, the Remarque Institute, NYU. and the Robert Schuman Centre, European University Institute, Florence; he has also taught as a visiting professor at the EHESS, Paris.  He serves on the editorial boards of the European Journal of Political Theory, the Journal of Contemporary History, and Raison Publique: Revue Internationale de Philosophie Pratique et Appliquée.

Co-sponsored with the Linda Randall Meier Research Workshop in Global Justice and the Forum on Contemporary Europe at Stanford

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Jan-Werner Mueller Speaker Dept of Politics, Princeton University
Workshops

Islamist Terrorism and Antisemitism: The Mission against Modernity

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Matthias Küntzel, born in 1955, is a political scientist in Hamburg, Germany. He has served as senior advisor for the German Green Party caucus in the the Bundestag and is currently a Research Associate at the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as well as a member of the Board of Directors of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. Küntzel's essays have been published in The New Republic, Policy Review, The Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal and Telos. His most recent book, Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11, published by Telos Press,won the 2007 London Book Festival Grand Prize.

In this lecture, Dr. Kuentzel examines an understudied legacy of the Nazi past, the transfer of the ideology of European antisemitism into the Arab world and its role in the formation of contemporary terrorism.

 

Event Synopsis:

Dr. Kuentzel begins his talk by recounting widespread celebrations within some Palestinian communities after the March 2008 killing of 15 young Jewish students by a Palestinian. He shows a video of a sermon from a mosque in Gaza in 2005 which praises the murders. Kuentzel rejects common arguments that the celebrations represent a desire for revenge on Israel for Palestinian deaths since 1948. Instead, he asserts that the incident shows that Islamists are obsessed by genocidal anti-Semitism, which has been influenced by and can be compared to European and Nazi anti-Semitism, both of which he sees as attempts to answer the success of liberal capitalism.

His talk follows the outline of his recent book, and covers four topics:

  1. The birth of Islamism

When the Muslim Brotherhood was established as a mass movement in 1928, it aimed to replace a parliamentary system with a caliphate, emphasizing a return to the roots of Islam. By 1948, the group had 1 million members in Egypt alone. A form of populist Islam, it invoked jihad as a means of establishing Sharia law, and focused its efforts almost entirely against Jews, drawing on both early Islamic thought and Nazism.

  1. Jew hatred as related to the hatred of modernity

Kuentzel sees Islamist anti-Semitism as closely tied to a fear of modernity. In this sense Jews are seen as representing the most threatening aspects of modernity including gender equality, freedom of thought, and individualism.

  1. Islamism and national socialism

Kuentzel draws ties between Islamism and the ideology of national socialism embodied by the Nazi party. He describes a Nazi radio station which broadcast Arabic language programming between 1945 and 1949. The programs emphasized religious identity of Muslims, utilized popular broadcasters, and were professionally produced with strong transmission signals, making them popular and widely accessible.

  1. Present day Islamism and anti-Semitism

Dr. Kuentzel asserts that Nazi ideology persisted in parts of Europe after 1945, and that when the Cold War emerged as the prominent political and economic feature of the era, it obscured/overshadowed the continuation of national socialist thought.

Finally, Dr. Kuentzel offers his views of both Islamism and anti-Semitism today, and concludes that the incidents like the one described at the beginning of his talk represent a revival of Nazi ideology "in new garb." He credits Muslims such as scholar Bassam Tibi who urge tolerance and speak out against anti-Semitism.

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Matthias Kuentzel Author and political scientist Speaker
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Science, Technology, and Modernity

Paragraphs

This first volume of the Cambridge History of Russia covers the period from early ('Kievan') Rus' to the start of Peter the Great's reign in 1689. It surveys the development of Russia through the Mongol invasions to the expansion of the Muscovite state in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and deals with political, social, economic and cultural issues under the Riurikid and early Romanov rulers. The volume is organised on a primarily chronological basis, but a number of general themes are also addressed, including the bases of political legitimacy; law and society; the interactions of Russians and non-Russians; and the relationship of the state with the Orthodox Church. The international team of authors incorporates the latest Russian and Western scholarship and offers an authoritative new account of the formative 'pre-Petrine' period of Russian history, before the process of Europeanisation had made a significant impact on society and culture.

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Cambridge University Press in "Cambridge History of Russia"
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David Holloway

A Proposal to Transform the Basque Conflict

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The President of the Basque Autonomous Community will discuss his "Road Map to bring an end to the Basque Conflict," including his offer of a political agreement already made to Madrid, based on a rejection of violence and an embrace of democratic principles and a Basque society plebiscite.

Synopsis

In a visit marked by controversy and protesting, President Ibarretxe clearly delivers his view on how the Basque country can establish sustainable human development. President Ibarretxe quickly stresses, however, that two challenges stand in the way of this goal. The first is securing peace from the violence of ETA, and the second is attaining political normalization through agreement with Spain. Citing dialogue as key, he explains that this conflict, lasting since the 19th century, must be resolved through political and democratic means based on the principle of self-determination. President Ibarretxe sets out the history of the Basque people, possibly the oldest in Europe, while revealing its openness to universal art and culture, as well as the Basque region’s top level social welfare. The Basque country, which has been ranked third in the UN’s Human Development Index, places emphasis on identity and innovation in striving forward. President Ibarretxe explains that 30 years after the 1979 Basque statute of autonomy, a clear majority demand a new framework for relations with Spain.

Therefore, President Ibarretxe reveals the “roadmap” he has formulated for the Basque country to achieve political normalization, as he puts it. His approach begins with four preliminary considerations. The first consideration is that the problems of the violence of ETA should not be confused with the political conflict between the Basque government and Spain. Secondly, President Ibarretxe argues that a key prerequisite to any solution is that the violence of ETA ceases immediately regardless of the state of the political conflict. Thirdly, stressing the importance of a necessary maxim to be used as a point of reference in the struggle for justice, President Ibarretxe emphasizes the defense of human rights without exception as fundamental to success. The fourth consideration that President Ibarretxe puts forward is that the right to self-determination is central to adopting a solution.

However, President Ibarretxe’s “roadmap” also offers concrete action through five specific steps. The five-step process begins with an offer of a political agreement based on ethics and democracy to Spain, something which President Ibarretxe has already extended to the Spanish government. Subsequently, President Ibarretxe offers a plenary session of the Basque parliament to either ratify any agreement reached with the Spanish government and call for a popular vote for Basque society to ratify the agreement as well or call for a popular vote to break a deadlock in the negotiation process. After the popular vote, President Ibarretxe reveals further negotiations will follow to end the violence of ETA and establish a new framework for Basque political parties to work under. Finally, President Ibarretxe offers a referendum in 2010 for the Basque people to vote on the result of this process. In concluding his talk, President Ibarretxe calls for any steps forward to be centered around “dialogue, democratic respect, and the liberty to decide.”

President Ibarretxe kindly takes the time to answer numerous questions on a variety of challenging issues. This question-and-answer session, where the questions are asked in English and President Ibarretxe replies in Spanish, is included in the recording. Unfortunately however, the translation of President Ibarretxe's responses cannot really be heard.

Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center

Juan Jose Ibarretxe President of the Basque Government Speaker
Seminars

How Can We Live After This? Women's Memories of Srebrenica

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Selma Leydesdorff will speak on the results of her interviews with the women who survived the worst massacre in Europe since World War II. She will discuss these women as individuals and as a group, explain why they are today labelled 'difficult' and what such a label means, and will take a closer look at the memory of the trauma of the genocide and the years of the violent siege of Srebrenica.

 

Professor Leydesdorff received a MA (1972) and Ph.D. (1987) in modern history from the University of Amsterdam. She has served as a member of the Women’s Studies Research Council at the University of Amsterdam (1985-88), a member of the National Science Committee (1985-91), Chair of the National Oral History Association (1986-96), Secretary of the International Oral History Association (1990-96), Secretary of l’Association de Development de l’Approche Biographique (1990-97), and she currently chairs the Commission on the History of Culture of Jews of the Dutch Royal Academy. She is also the principle editor of Memory and Narrative (Transaction Publishers Inc, 2005). She has been a visiting scholar at European University in Florence and at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and has held visiting professorships at Dickinson College, Anton de Kom University in Suriname, Sabanci University in Istanbul, Xiamen University in China, and most recently at New York University. Professor Leydesdorff is currently a fellow at the Remarque Institute at NYU.

 

Event Synopsis:

Dr. Leydesdorff recounts the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica in which 7,749 Muslims were killed by Bosnian Serb troops as Dutch peacekeeping forces stood by. Leydesdorff asserts that official inquiries ignored voices of the survivors - many of them women who had lost sons and husbands. Today, the survivors continue their campaign to have their stories heard, to find out what happened and why, to uncover information on victims yet to be identified, and to improve their economic conditions. They also believe the Dutch should apologize for failing to prevent the genocide.

Dr. Leydesdorff describes her own research project in which she interviewed women survivors. She conveys the chaos and despair resulting not just from the genocide of men and boys but of the simultaneous rape of women and girls by the Serbian soldiers. She explains why so many survivors have remained silent, and discusses the complexity of relationships between neighbors who once lived in peaceful coexistence but who now live with memories of betrayal and grief. 

Finally, Leydesdorff described ongoing efforts of the group, including monthly marches on Sarajevo and a funeral for hundreds of newly identified victims that was attended by 60,000 people.

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Selma Leydesdorff Professor of Oral History and Culture; Faculty of Humanities, Department of Arts, Religion and Cultural Sciences Speaker University of Amsterdam
Seminars
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