Williamson Murray is adjunct professor at the Marine Corps University, having just completed a two-year stint as a Minerva Fellow at the Naval War College. He taught military and diplomatic history at Ohio State for many years. In 2012, he edited with Peter Mansoor Hybrid Warfare, Fighting Complex Opponents from the Ancient World to the Present (Cambridge University Press), based on a conference at the Mershon Center. In 2014, Murray published Successful Strategies, Triumphing in War and Peace from Antiquity to the Present, co-edited with Richard Sinnreich. He is currently completing an edited manuscript with Peter Mansoor for Cambridge on grand strategy and alliances, based on another Mershon Center conference. Read more and register at go.osu.edu/murrayw

Nick Cullather is professor of history at the University of Indiana-Bloomington and a historian of U.S. foreign relations, specializing in the history of intelligence, development, and nation-building. The United States uses aid, covert operations, diet, statistics, and technology to reconstruct the social reality of countries around the world, and Cullather is interested in these subtle mechanisms of power. His most recent book, The Hungry World (2010), explores the use of food as a tool of psychological warfare and regime change during the Cold War. Currently, Cullather is investigating the early history of the CIA, and asking why a country so committed to pluralism and the marketplace of ideas staked its security on the novel notion of central intelligence. Read more and register at go.osu.edu/cullathern

Richard Zeckhauser is the Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University. He pioneered the field of policy analysis and currently addresses an array of policy areas where uncertainty plays a major role. His seminal contributions to decision theory and behavioral economics include the concepts of status quo bias, quality-adjusted life years, and the analytics of ignorance. Zeckhauser has written or coauthored a dozen books - most recently Collaborative Governance: Private Roles for Public Goals, and The Patron's Payoff: Conspicuous Commissions in Renaissance Italy -- and 280 articles. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Econometric Society, and Institute of Medicine. Read more and register at go.osu.edu/zeckhauserr

Barbara Koremenos is associate professor of political science at University of Michigan. She focuses on how international law can be structured to make international cooperation most successful. Koremenos has published in both political science and law journals, including the American Political Science Review, International Organization, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Legal Studies, and Law and Contemporary Problems. Koremenos received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for her research -- the first such winner to study international relations and law. Her book, The Continent of International Law, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. Read more and register at go.osu.edu/koremenosb

The Midwest Slavic Association and Center for Slavic and East European Studies cordially invite you to the keynote address and opening reception for the 2015 Midwest Slavic Conference. Karen Dawisha will speak about the rise in politics of current Russian president Vladimir Putin and his kleptocratic regime based on work conducted for her recently published book, Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? After her talk, the opening reception for the conference will take place. Both the keynote and reception are free and open to the public. To attend the keynote and reception, an RSVP is required by Tuesday, March 3, 2015. Those who RSVP by March will receive one drink ticket. The reception will feature a cash bar. Full details on the 2015 Midwest Slavic Conference, including registration information, can be found on the conference webpage.

Alexander Wendt speaks on "Quantum Mind and Social Science" during a workshop at the Mershon Center on April 23, 2013.

 

A small Andean country of only 15 million, migration patterns within, from, and back to Ecuador are unusually dynamic and complex. Our panelists will discuss migration histories, the networks and cosmopolitanism characterizing contemporary flows within Ecuador and in the Ecuadorian diaspora, and the emerging social spaces created by return migrants and amenity migrants. We will also consider the experiences and challenges of Ecuadorian immigrants in central Ohio. 

 Panel members include:

• Brad Jokisch, Geography, Ohio University, "Extending the Sierra: How International Migration from Ecuador's Oriente Reflects Trans-Local Networks"
• Michelle Wibbelsman, Spanish and Portuguese, Ohio State, "Otavalan Transitional Migrants: Indigenous Global Mobility"
• Patricia Lombeyda, Founder and Principal, Villelomby Consultants and Cuatorianos Together, "The Challenges of Ecuadorians in Columbus, Ohio"
• Anisa Kline, PhD Candidate, Spanish and Portuguese, Ohio State, "The Amenity Migrants of Cotacachi, Ecuador."

Read more

Everyone knows that glaciers have become icons of global climate change-that ice cores and glacier measurements have provided critical baseline data for understanding climate history going back 800,000 years, as well as yielding clearly-visible evidence of climate change in the present as glaciers shrink. But what does gender have to do with any of this? It turns out a lot, as his presentation will show. From the heroic men studying Antarctic ice to the manly mountaineers measuring glaciers, and the dedicated Coast Guard experts bombing icebergs in the North Atlantic, glaciological knowledge and human-glacier interactions have been influenced by gender, historically and right up to the present. Men and women are also affected differently by glacier retreat, whether their vulnerability to glacial lake outburst floods or through their representations of ice through art and literature. The "feminist glaciology" approach proposed in this talk by Mark Carey, associate professor of history at University of Oregon, offers new ways to think about ice, a fresh understanding of the history of glaciology and cryospheric sciences, and a framework for approaching social research on climate and global environmental change.

The pivotal texts of radical anti-caste thinker, B.R. Ambedkar (The Annihilation of Caste, 1936), and W.E.B. Du Bois (Black Reconstruction, 1935) -- and the supplementarity of caste, class, and race in their writings --marks the interwar as a productive moment for new forms of comparison and critique. Indeed interwar globality -- and the forms of internationalism it made possible -- enabled Ambedkar and Du Bois to explore caste and race as structuring deep histories of dehumanization and dispossession. This paper takes these texts -- and interwar comparatism more generally -- as a pivotal if under-acknowledged moment that shaped policy debates that later occurred against the backdrop of global human rights discourse and decolonization, and which struggled to address complex practices of exclusion through bureaucratic means. The agenda of the paper is twofold. The first is to explore how the affirmative action state in India and the United States has produced a distinctive association between identity, and inequality. That is, I will argue that the affirmative action state is a historical-theoretical response to the problem of political "indifference." Second, I will examine how this structure of redress encourages strategies of equalization and new practices of claims-making that repoliticize personhood. In brief my aim is to explore the relationship between history, (postcolonial) constitution, and the "affirmative action" state.  The paper will be posted at http://chr.osu.edu/papers.

Fifty years have passed since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 - a key piece of legislation that prohibits racial discrimination in voting - was signed into law. Yet, voting rights remains a hot topic today, as the hit film Selma, which describes protests in Selma, Alabama leading up to the passage of the act, makes its mark throughout the Hollywood awards season - and as politicians in Ohio work on legislative redistricting reform. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, and debates still rage on the subject.

 

On March 4, two experts will address the history, legacy, and future of the Voting Rights Act in events presented by The Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Ohio, and the Kirwan Institute.

 

The Voting Rights Act at 50 with Pam Karlan, deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, will take place in Saxbe Auditorium from noon-1:30 p.m. Karlan, one of the nation's leading experts on voting and the political process, served as co-director of Stanford Law School's Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, and is co-author of leading casebooks on constitutional law, constitutional litigation, and the law of democracy. Karlan has served as a commissioner on the California Fair Political Practices Commission, and an assistant counsel and former cooperating attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

 

The Voting Rights Act at 50 with Secretary Thomas E. Perez will take place from 4:45 - 7 p.m. in the Union Performance Hall. Secretary Perez was nominated by President Obama and sworn in as the nation's 26th secretary of labor in 2013. Before that, he served as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the U. S. Department of Justice, where his responsibilities included the enforcement of voting rights laws. Secretary Perez formerly served as the secretary of Maryland's Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation. This event will include a reception and hors d'oeuvres. Guest should arrive at this event between 4:30 and 4:45 p.m. as the presentation by the secretary will begin promptly at 5 p.m.

 

Lunch will be provided at the noon event to those who register. Reception and hors d'oeuvres will follow the evening event. Read more and register

State constitutional law has historically been under-studied in comparison to federal constitutionalism and yet, it is an extremely important source of American law. this symposium will explore the various structural aspects of state constitutional law.

 

Panelists will examine where state constitutions fit in to our federal system and how they are to be interpreted, amended, and utilized by advocates amidst the backdrop of its federal counterpart. They will also debate topics including popular constitutionalism, state constitutional independence, individual rights' protections, state administrative agencies, and more.

 

Featured guests will include:

• James Gardner - Professor of Law at SUNY Buffalo.
• Sanford Levinson - Professor of Law, Professor of Government, University of Texas at Austin.
• The Honorable Goodwin Liu - Associate Justice, California Supreme Court.
• Ann Lousin - Professor of Law, John Marshall Law School.
• Jim Rossi - Professor of Law, Vanderbilt Law School.
• Aaron Saiger - Professor of Law, Fordham University.
• Miriam Seifter - Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin.
• Virginia Seitz - Former United States Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel and current Partner at Sidley Austin LLP.
• Steven Steinglass - Professor Emeritus, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.
• The Honorable Jeffrey Sutton - Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and Adjunct Professor at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.
• Alan Tarr - Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University at Camden.
• Robert Williams - Professor of Law, Rutgers School of Law.

Registration is required. Reserve your spot today.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is in the midst of an "open networks" rule making process. So far, it has drawn more than 1.1 million public comments. Why? Because the Internet is the central communications medium of our time. It presents unprecedented opportunities and challenges in virtually every domain of social, economic, political, and cultural life. How governments respond to this issue will have enormous impacts.

 

Tom Wheeler, Chairman of the FCC, will present the opening policy keynote at "The Future of Internet Regulation," a public symposium hosted by I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society. Following Chairman Wheeler's speech, panels of distinguished academics will discuss such critical issues as net neutrality, Internet freedom, and the future of Internet governance. The day will conclude with a lecture by William Dutton, formerly the founding director of the Oxford Internet Institute. 

 

Admission is free, and lunch will be provided to advance registrants. Read more and register

 

Origins has published its new article: "The West without Water: What Can Past Droughts Tell Us About Tomorrow?," by B. Lynn Ingram.

 

Almost as soon as European settlers arrived in California, they began advertising the place as the American Garden of Eden. And just as quickly people realized it was a garden with a very precarious water supply. Currently, California is in the middle of a years-long drought and the water crisis is threatening the region's vital agricultural economy, not to mention the quality of life of its people, plants, and animals. 

  This month B. Lynn Ingram, professor of geography and earth & planetary science, examines how a deep historical account of California's water patterns can help us plan for the future.The whole article can be found at http://origins.osu.edu.

 

About Origins: Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective is a monthly ad-free magazine that features top scholars on today's most pressing topics. Published by The Ohio State History Department, its authors include National Book Award winners and world-renowned scholars. You can also explore reviews of popular history books on the Origins website as well as the new monthly feature Milestones.