Nov 302012
 
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The International Comparative Studies program is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a conference on international migration. The three-day schedule includes panel discussions, a film, a performance, and a keynote address. For full details and registration information, please visit the conference page at the ICS website.

Conference sponsors include: Department of African and African American Studies, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Department of Cultural Anthropology, Department of History, Department of Sociology, Duke Islamic Studies Center, Duke University Center for International Studies, Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke Human Rights Center @ FHI, Kenan Institute for Ethics, Office of Dean of Academic Affairs – Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, Office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences, Office of the Dean of the Humanities, Office of the Dean of Social Sciences, Office of the Provost, Program in Arts of the Moving Image, Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South, Program in Literature, Women’s Studies.

Nov 272012
 
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Duke Amnesty International and Vision for North Korea present a talk with two student refugees from North Korea Friday, February 15 at 6:30 pm in the Fitzpatrick Center’s Schiciano Auditorium.

The people of North Korea face great difficulties in human rights, food attainment, and basic freedoms. Two students, ages 19 and 21, will be speaking about their experiences living in and escaping North Korea.

This event is a recipient of a KIE Campus Grant, and has additional sponsorship from the Duke Korea Forum, the Department of Religion, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Sanford School for Public Policy, the Student Organization Finance Committee, the Asian and Pacific Studies Institute, International Comparitive Studies, and the Duke Human Rights Center at the FHI.

Nov 202012
 
 November 20, 2012  Comments Off

Conflict, Migration and Humanitarianism: The Ethics and Politics of Intervention 

On Friday, January 25th, the Kenan Institute for Ethics will be sponsoring a workshop on the ethics and politics of humanitarian intervention in contexts of migration and conflict. The program will bring together scholars whose work engages theoretical perspectives on medical, psychosocial and legal humanitarianism. Particular attention will be paid to the ways humanitarian intervention intersects with diverse forms of migration and displacement, particularly in post-conflict settings. Participants will present work based on ethnographic research in a wide range of global and institutional contexts.

Panel themes will address the complex ethical commitments and dilemmas faced by aid workers; tensions between security and humanitarianism in contexts of asylum; humanitarianism and temporality; the experiential implications of intervention for humanitarians and recipients; the challenges of humanitarianism in contexts of protracted displacement; and humanitarian interventions as sites of governance and care.

Participants include:

Heath Cabot (College of the Atlantic)
Nadia El-Shaarawi (Duke)
Ilana Feldman (George Washington University)
Bridget Haas (UC San Diego)
Erica Caple James (MIT)
Sara Lewis (Columbia)
Pierre Minn (UC SF/UC Berkeley)
Peter Redfield (UNC Chapel Hill)
Charles Watters (Rutgers)
Saiba Varma (Duke)

This workshop is invitation only. For more information, please contact Nadia El-Shaarawi, nadia.el-shaarawi@duke.edu.

Nov 172012
 
 November 17, 2012  Comments Off

This January, the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Public Policy, and the Law School’s Program in Public Law will be sponsoring a symposium on legal issues of global migration. This one-day program will bring together scholars from law, political theory, and history to discuss the theoretical and historical underpinnings of contemporary immigration law, pre-emption and federalism in the United States, and comparative approaches to policy.

Thursday, January 10
There will be a small session on State and Local Immigration Enforcement in the Goodson Law Library beginning at 4:30 pm.

Friday, January 11
The symposium panels will be held in Law School room 3043, and the lunch and keynote address in the Burdman Lounge, room 3000.

8:30 am: Introductory remarks

8:45-10:15 am: The Political Theory of Immigration Policy

10:30 am-12:00 pm: Separation of Powers and Federalism in the Immigration Context

12:00 – 1:00 pm: Lunch and Keynote Address, “The Forgotten Equality Norm in Immigration Preemption”

1:15-2:45 pm: International Approaches Compared: Central-Level Control over Immigration in the European Union

3:00 pm: Closing remarks

Oct 302012
 
 October 30, 2012  Comments Off

Guitars, Lemurs, Families & Forests: Rights to Madagascar’s Resources

KIE, the Duke Lemur Center, and the Duke Africa Initiative are sponsoring a one-day symposium to address the ethical dimensions of conservation and development in Madagascar, specifically the illegal harvesting of precious woods from the island’s rain forests. Following the symposium Malagasy musician and political activist Razia Said will perform. Bringing together scholarship, activism, and entertainment, the symposium and concert aim to draw public attention to political, economic, social, and ecological crises in Madagascar; connect the particular crises in Madagascar to broader global challenges, especially in other poor regions of the globe; and educate members of the Duke and Durham communities about opportunities for action to alleviate such crises and ethical challenges that can potentially accompany those actions.

Symposium: 11:00 am – 5:30 pm, 101 West Duke Building
Concert with Razia Said: 7 pm, Duke Coffee House

Oct 052012
 
 October 5, 2012  Comments Off

Aid Agencies, Bureaucracy, and the New Legalism in South Sudan: From Civil War to Spreadsheets

Mark Massoud, Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and Legal Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, will be speaking November 5th as part of the Monday Seminar Series from 12:00-1:30 in room 101, West Duke Building.

Legal scholars and policymakers studying the development of law in post-conflict settings have focused largely on the role of state institutions, particularly courts. This emphasis on state-produced law has detracted from an examination of the variety of non-state actors and institutions that contribute to the development of legal order in post-conflict settings and weak states. Based on literature in public law and organizational behavior, as well as field research in South Sudan, Massoud argues that international aid groups impose legal norms related to corporate behavior on the local organizations they fund and local people they hire. Civil society actors in South Sudan experience the power of law, not through the courts, but through their tangible and daily contact with aid agencies. These actors are subject to contracts and other rules of employment, work under management and finance teams, document routine activity, and abide by organizational constitutions. In analyzing how South Sudanese activists confront, understand, conform to, and resist these externally imposed legal rules, Massoud exposes how aid organizations themselves become significant sites of legal and political struggle in post-conflict settings.

Massoud’s research focuses on law in authoritarian and war-torn states. He is currently completing a book tentatively titled, Fragile State of Law: Colonial, Authoritarian, and Humanitarian Legal Politics in Sudan (under contract, Cambridge University Press), and his work on rights in authoritarian regimes appeared in Law & Society Review (2011). Previously, he taught law at McGill University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.

Sep 302012
 
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A traveling exhibition of photography capturing the plight of stateless people will be on view in the halls of the Kenan Institute for Ethics in the West Duke Building November 1 – March 31.

Over the past five years, photographer Greg Constantine has been working to bring to light the stories of stateless people around the world and give a human face to this global issue. Nowhere People reveals the impact of statelessness on people and communities who find themselves excluded from society by forces beyond their control. The project serves as a reminder of the existence of the millions of stateless people who are hidden and forgotten around the world. Constantine received three grants from the United Nations High Council on Refugees in order to complete this important project.

Photographs from the Nowhere People series have received the Society of Publishers in Asia Award, Days Japan Special Jury Prize, the Human Rights Press Award, and were shortlisted for the Amnesty International Media Award
for Photojournalism. His first book, Kenya’s Nubians: Then & Now was published in 2011 and his second book, Exiled To Nowhere: Burma’s Rohingya was released in June 2012. Both are part of a series of books from his project Nowhere People that aim to highlight the issue of global statelessness.

 

Opening Events

Panel discussion with Greg Constantine
November 1, 5:30 – 7:00 pm
101 West Duke Building

Free and open to the public, featuring:
GREG CONSTANTINE | Photographer
TOM RANKIN | Center for Documentary Studies
JOHN MOSES | Pediatrics/Center for Documentary Studies
CHARITY TOOZE | UNHCR

Reception to follow

For more information, call 660-3033 or email Christine Delp: christine.delp@duke.edu

 

Sep 282012
 
 September 28, 2012  Comments Off

There will be an information session for DukeEngage Dublin on Monday, Oct. 22 at 6:00 pm at the Smith Warehouse, Classroom B252 (Bay 7).

During their two months in Dublin students will work in organizations either directed by migrants to Ireland, focused on the needs of refugee and migrant communities, or involved in developing innovative community based educational and cultural programs that bring migrants and native born Irish together in meaningful ways. DukeEngage students will be placed with one of more than seven different NGOs engaged in this work. The objective in each placement is not just to serve but to undertake something that could not have happened without the Duke students’ leadership and participation.

Applications for the DukeEngage Dublin program need to be submitted by noon on Tuesday, November 6 at noon.

Sep 272012
 
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Author, filmmaker, humanitarian, and Duke alumna Tori Hogan returns to campus to discuss Beyond Good Intentions: A Journey Into the Realities of International Aid, a book based on her National Geographic Explorer film series of the same name.

Hogan, who went to work in international development after graduating from Duke in 2004, soon became uncomfortable with some of the challenges and failures she saw in refugee camps in Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda. She first started Beyond Good Intentions as an educational organization in 2006, and has since gone on to direct her film series and write.

Hogan was most recently at Duke as a panelist in the KIE-sponsored 2012 Winter Forum, entitled Refugees, Rights, Resettlement. This book launch is being hosted by the Duke Human Rights Center at the Kenan Institute for Ethics.

Thursday, October 18, 7pm
101 West Duke Building
Reception to follow – refreshments will be served
Books will be available for purchase

Aug 072012
 
 August 7, 2012  Comments Off

The Institute welcomes students to campus with an open house from 3pm to 5pm on Friday, August 31st. Come join us for cupcakes and conversation as we gear up for the new year! The event will be held in Room 101 in the West Duke Building, across the hall from the main office of the Kenan Institute for Ethics.