Dr. Maura Finkelstein
Monday, October 29
4:30pm, Science Center 101
“Rumors, Strikes, and Industrial Debris in Mumbai, India”

This talk addresses the decline of Mumbai’s textile industry, once covering 600 acres of the central city’s geography. Now most mills have been closed and are being redeveloped into sites of middle class consumption (popularly framed as “mills to malls”). Lingering industrial spaces disappear beneath this emergent vertical city. One can now drive along overpasses, from downtown to the suburbs, without actually seeing these older and declining regions of the city. Such invisibility contributes to city-wide narratives of closed mills and dispersed workers. However the mill lands are still lively spaces, inhabited by resilient working class communities. This talk focuses on my ethnographic field site of Dhanraj Spinning and Weaving, Ltd, a textile mill still operating in Central Mumbai. Through worker engagements with labor strikes and rumors, I show the persistent life and labor of the remaining mill workers and unregulated industries inside the mill gates: the place in which formal and informal economies collide and life continues despite conflict, expected trends, and future projections.

Organized by Peace and Conflict Studies and Co- Sponsored by Asian Studies, Political Science, Sociology and Anthropology, and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility.

Check out this lecture today with Rami Khouri, a Senior Fellow from the Middle East Initiative at Harvard University!

“Dynamism and Dangers in President Trump’s Mideast Policies: An Analysis from the Region” will be presented today at 4:30pm in the Scheuer Room at Swarthmore College.

Shamil Idriss (class of ’94) is President & CEO of Search for Common Ground, the world’s largest dedicated peace-building organization which was nominated by the Quakers for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize.  He will share lessons learned from the organization’s 35+ years of frontline peace-building experience and what they portend for the future of peace and conflict.

Come check out this amazing opportunity to hear him speak!

Friday, October 5
4:30pm, Scheuer Room

shamil idriss flyer (1)

The event will discuss anti-Semitism and its successful opposition, both past and present.

From News and Events: https://www.swarthmore.edu/news-events/swarthmore-to-host-symposium-resisting-anti-semitism

On Sunday, Sept. 16, Swarthmore College will host a landmark symposium, “Resisting Anti-Semitism: Past and Present, Local and Global,” which will seriously engage with the topic of anti-Semitism—the forms it has taken and the ways it has been successfully opposed, past and present. The event, which begins at 9 a.m. at Lang Performing Arts Center and is free and open to the public, will feature moderated discussions among scholars from around the world and a keynote address by Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum.

“The goal of the symposium is to give participants a deeper understanding of this form of prejudice and violence, an enhanced commitment to opposing it, and a strengthened ability to do so,” says Assistant Professor of Peace & Conflict Studies Sa’ed Atshan ’06, co-organizer of the event. “We will face head-on the disturbing history and present-day reality of anti-Semitism in the United States, Europe, and the broader Middle East/North Africa region, and will also highlight the hope embodied in the struggle against anti-Semitism, which has existed as long as anti-Semitism itself.“

Also co-organized by Rabbi Michael Ramberg of the Interfaith Center and the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, the daylong symposium will bring together academics, rabbis, activists, and artists, among others, with expertise in three regions—North America, Europe, and the Middle East/North Africa—to engage in conversation with one another and the Swarthmore community. Enriched by diverse perspectives from the distinguished panelists, symposium participants will gain a deeper understanding of the form of prejudice and violence, an enhanced commitment to opposing it, and a strengthened ability to do so.

“As so many forces are trying to drive a wedge between Jewish and Palestinian communities, we hope that by co-organizing this conference, we—a Jewish American and a Palestinian Quaker—can further demonstrate the beauty and power of collegiality, friendship, community-building, and solidarity,” says Ramberg.

The 10 panelists include academics from institutions in the U.S. and Israel; rabbis from North America and Europe; activists from around the U.S.; and André Aciman, author of Call Me By Your Name, who will discuss his experience growing up Jewish in Egypt. Keynote speaker Kleinbaum has played a pivotal role in efforts to combat both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia as the lead rabbi of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York, the largest LGBTQ synagogue community in the world.

This event is sponsored by the Swarthmore College Peace and Conflict Studies Program, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, and Swarthmore’s Office for Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Development.

For more information, visit the event website.

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The Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility along with Casey Lu Simon-Plumb ’18 present:

Renate Writes: Stories from a Holocaust Survivor
Thursday April 21 4:30 PM
Keith Room, Lang Center

Ronnie Brewslow is a current PA resident who escaped from Nazi Germany in 1939. She was on the St. Louis headed for Cuba, but when the ship was denied dockage went to Rotterdam West, a detention camp in Holland. Thanks to the tenacity of her mother they were able to find a boat leaving for the USA from Belgium and reunited with her father in the United States. Ronnie is coming to share her story with us and do a question and answer session following her presentation. Good and refreshments will be provided.

This event is part of Swarthmore’s Human Rights Awareness Week Organized by Prof. Krista Thomason’s PHIL 051 class.

Please join us for the lecture: The Perils of Marriage Equality

Katherine Franke
Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law
Director, Center for Gender and Sexuality Law
Columbia University

Thursday, April 21, 2016
4:30pm Kohlberg 115

Professor Franke will discuss her new book, Wedlocked: The Perils of Marriage Equality: How African Americans and Gays Mistakenly Thought the Right to Marry Would Set Them Free.

Sponsored by Peace and Conflict Studies, Philosophy, Sociology & Anthropology, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Lang Center for Civic & Social Responsibility

Wednesday April 13
7:00 PM
Scheuer Room, Kohlberg Hall

Quaker Indian Boarding Schools: Facing our History and Ourselves a public lecture by Moore Fellowship recipient Paula Palmer. Native American organizations are asking churches to join in a Truth and Reconciliation process to bring about healing for Native families that continue to suffer the consequences of the Indian boarding schools. With fellowships from Pendle Hill and Friends Historical Library, Paula Palmer researched the role that Friends played in implementing the federal government’s policy of forced assimilation of Native children. She will give an overview of the Quaker Indian boarding schools in New York, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Indian Territory (Oklahoma), and pose the query: Knowing what we know now about the impacts of forced assimilation, what does this history mean for Friends today?

Sponsored by the Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College. Open to the public.

Join us for a panel discussion April 14 from 7-9 PM Sci Center 101!