In This Issue

Chair, Department of History

Hahn is co-investigator with a team that won a Battelle Engineering, Technology and Human Affairs (BETHA) Endowment grant to develop an Institute for the Study of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics as an intellectual hub for scholars who study the social, ethical, legal and educational challenges presented by science and technology. Joan Herbers, professor of evolution, ecology and organismal biology, is the principal investigator.

Chair, Department of Geography

Sui was selected by the Association of American Geographers (AAG) for its Distinguished Scholar Award in Regional Development and Planning. The award recognizes his more than two decades of contributions to the applied or theoretical understanding of development, planning and/or policy issues, as well as his contributions to mentoring/teaching and leadership/service roles at local, national, and international levels.

Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Sociology and Communication

March 21, 2014

Humanities Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History

March 14, 2014

Chair of Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution

March 20, 2014

Andreas Dorpalen Professor of History

March 21, 2014

March 22, 2014

Mershon Memo is a weekly e-mail newsletter distributed by the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, a unit of the Office of International Affairs

   

Eitan Alimi is senior lecturer in political sociology at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His book Israeli Politics and the First Palestinian Intifada (Routledge, 2007) was awarded the 2008 best English book on Israeli Politics by the Israeli Political Science Association. A book on radicalization and de-radicalization in the case of the Jewish settler movement has recently come out (Resling, 2013), and a co-authored book on processes of radicalization in comparative perspective is under contract with Oxford University Press. He will discuss why some social movements experience radicalization while others do not, comparing two episodes of Jewish settler contention. Read more and register at go.osu.edu/alimie

T.V. Paul is James McGill Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at McGill University. Paul specializes in international relations, especially international security, regional security and South Asia. He is the author or editor of 15 books (all published through major university presses) and nearly 55 journal articles or book chapters. He will be speaking on his most recent book, The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World (Oxford, 2014). In this book Paul argues that Pakistan's "geo-strategic curse" -- putting the country at the center of major geopolitical struggles -- has kept it from progressing politically and economically. Read more and register at go.osu.edu/paultv

Lance Bennett is Ruddick C. Lawrence Professor of Communication at University of Washington-Seattle, where he directs the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement, which studies how communication processes and technologies can enhance citizen engagement.  His most recent book is The Logic of Connective Action: Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics, with Alexandra Segerberg (Cambridge, 2013).  Bennett will explain the rise of personalized, large-scale publics in which diverse populations address the common problems of our times such as economic fairness and climate change. Read more and register at go.osu.edu/bennettl

Stephan Haggard is Krause Distinguished Professor at University of California San Diego. His publications include Pathways from the Periphery: The Newly Industrializing Countries in the International System (1990); The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (with Robert Kaufman, 1995); The Political Economy of the Asian Financial Crisis (2000); and Democracy, Development and Welfare States: Latin America, East Asia, Eastern Europe (with Robert Kaufman, 2008). He will discuss recent research on the relationship between inequality and democratic rule, arguing that inequality does not appear to be associated with regime change.  Read more and register at go.osu.edu/haggards

Charles Hermann is founding director of the George H. W. Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, where he is now Brent Scowcroft Chair in International Policy Studies and International Affairs. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Mershon Center, where he served as associate director beginning in 1970 and then as director from 1980 to 1995.  In this presentation, Hermann will use four case studies to examine how government leaders who have invested heavily in a particular foreign or security policy respond to signals that the policy is failing. Read more and register at go.osu.edu/hermannc

Mary Habeck is a professorial lecturer in strategic studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where she teaches courses on military history and strategic thought. Her publications include three forthcoming sequels, Attacking America: Al-Qaida's Grand Strategy (Basic Books, 2014), Managing Savagery: Al-Qaida's Military and Political Strategies (2015), and Fighting the Enemy: The U.S. and its War against al-Qaida (2016). She will discuss how al-Qaida has managed not only to survive but thrive despite being under constant pressure from almost every country on the globe. Read more and register at go.osu.edu/habeckm

This event serves as an exploration of non-violent approaches to resolving international conflict. Panelists and guests will discuss the sources of military conflict and explore non-violent strategies to promote peace. The event will examine the impact of democracy, human rights, and trade on international peace-building, explore the impact of U.N. peacekeeping, and talk about grassroots peace and anti-intervention movements, exploring the intersections of activism and peace. The conversation will be informal and audience members will be encouraged to ask questions. Panelists include Craig Jenkins, director of the Mershon Center; Christopher Gelpi, Chair of Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution; Katherine Borland, associate professor of comparative studies; and John Carlarne, peace studies coordinator at the Mershon Center. It will be moderated by Fred Andrle (pictured) of the Humanities Institute. Read more

 

John Mueller, Ralph D. Mershon Senior Research Scientist, spoke on January 13 about his latest research on "Chasing Ghosts: The FBI and Counter-Terrorism." After September 11, 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigation greatly increased its efforts at, and changed its approach to, counter-terrorism. Mueller explored the abrupt rise and continuing persistence of official fears of terrorism. Important in this is the effect of the "threat matrix" that coordinates and drives the quest to follow up 5,000 almost entirely fruitless "threats" each day, a process some in the FBI call "ghost-chasing." Read more and view video 

 

Mary Louise Roberts is professor of history at University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author most recently of What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France, which will be the focus of her talk. This event is co-sponsored with the Modern U.S. History Seminar, Department of French and Italian, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality History Workshop.  Read more

Marc Kielburder is the co-founder of Free The Children, an international charity that empowers youth to achieve their fullest potential as agents of change. With his brother Craig Kielburger, he also co-founded Me to We, a social enterprise that offers socially conscious and environmentally friendly products, as well as the youth empowerment event, We Day. Every year We Day engages 160,000 students from 4,000 schools in person and reaches more than 5.7 million viewers through televised broadcasts. These events have been held in Seattle, Oakland, Toronto, London, along with several other major cities. Past speakers have included Kofi Annan, Jane Goodall, Shaquille O'Neal, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the cast of Degrassi. Read more and register

This event will explore what fracking is, why it is so controversial, and its effects -- economic, social, and environmental. The event will feature perspectives from three experts: Timothy Kelsey, professor of agricultural economics at Pennsylvania State University, and co-director of the Center for Economic and Community Development; Joseph Campbell, research associate and lecturer in environment and natural resources at The Ohio State University; and Michael Farren, Ph.D. candidate in energy economics, policy analysis, and civil engineering at The Ohio State University. Free Cane's chicken and Coke products will be served beginning at 5:50 p.m. Read more

Monica Araya, founder and executive director of Costa Rica Limpia and former lead climate negotiator for Costa Rica, will speak about the silence on environment and climate issues in recent elections in her country and in other parts of Latin America. She will discuss the pivotal role that citizen action plays in forcing politicians and the media to address environmental and climate issues as part of a broader agenda that challenges the notion of politics as usual.  Until June 2013, she was a lead negotiator for Costa Rica in the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.  Read more and register

 

On Friday, April 4, the Center for Ethics and Human Values at The Ohio State University will present the spring COMPAS conference. With a theme of Public/Private, the conference takes place 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in 165 Thompson Library, 1858 Neil Avenue Mall, and Mershon Auditorium, 1871 N. High St. 

 

Keynoting the event will be Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and professor of health policy and management at Columbia University. He is special advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the Millennium Development Goals, having held the same position under former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

 

He is director of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He is co-founder and Chief Strategist of Millennium Promise Alliance, and director of the Millennium Villages Project. Sachs is also one of the Secretary-General's MDG Advocates, and a Commissioner of the ITU/UNESCO Broadband Commission for Development.  

 

He has authored three New York Times bestsellers in the past seven years: The End of Poverty (2005), Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (2008), and The Price of Civilization (2011).

 

For more information about the conference, including the full program, see the conference web page.  No registration is required.

 

The protests that began in Kiev last November in response to President Viktor Yanukovych's rejection of a trade agreement with the EU in favor of a deal with Russia triggered a domino effect of events that have left the future of Ukraine in question.

 

Yanukovych was forced to flee and has been replaced by pro-Western Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk. With permission from its parliament, Russia bloodlessly seized Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, which has long hosted a base for the Russian Black Sea Fleet and offered the enormous land-rich country a coveted warm water port. Russian forces have conducted war games along the Ukrainian border with 150,000 troops, prompting Ukraine to mobilize its military in response.

 

Faced with simultaneous political, economic, and military crises, Ukraine has appealed for help to NATO, and directly to Britain and the United States as co-signatories with Moscow to a 1994 accord guaranteeing Ukraine's security. Events that will ultimately decide Ukraine's fate, and future relations between Russia and the West develop day to day.

 

Olexander Motsyk has served as ambassador of Ukraine to the United States since 2010, serving previously as Ukraine's ambassador to Poland. Before becoming an ambassador, Motsyk headed a number of Ukrainian delegations on bilateral and multilateral negotiations, including a delegation on readmission to the European Commission and several delegations to the Russian Federation, negotiating state borders and temporary deployment and operation of Russia's Black Sea Fleet in the territory of Ukraine.

 

Motsyk will speak Tuesday, April 15, on "Ukraine, Russia, and the West" at two events in Columbus:

 

Columbus Council on World Affairs

Noon, WOSU@COSI, 333 W. Broad St.

Register here

 

John Glenn School of Public Affairs

3 p.m., Page Hall Policy Forum, 1810 College Road

Register here

 

 

Origins has published its new article: "A Fresh Start for Pakistan?," by Eric A. Strahorn.

 

Elections brought new hope that the country -- a longstanding, if fraught, ally of the U.S. -- was making a break from its long tradition of political instability and military control. Historian Eric A. Strahorn explores the origins of Pakistan's political troubles from independence through the war on terror. The whole article can be found at http://origins.osu.edu.

 

About Origins: More than seven years old, 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.