Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs

A Beneficiary Showcase of Ukrainian Resilience through Art

This third annual event celebrates the culture and resilience of the nation of Ukraine with music, poetry, film, and more.  Featuring the New York Crimean Tatar Ensemble, with a parade of performances by the Middlebury College Choir, the student band Chapel Hill, Middlebury College’s Ukrainian students, and other special guests. Admission is free, and information about donating to Ukrainian relief organizations will be provided.

The opening of the first McDonald’s in Moscow on January 31, 1990, was widely seen as proof of the Soviet Union opening up to the outside world after years of Cold War isolation. McDonald’s decision to pull out of Russia within months of its full-scale attack on Ukraine in early 2022 was thus naturally seen as the end of an era. This talk will look at how we got from Point A to Point B. Why did Soviet leaders agree to allow McDonald’s in, first as a joint venture with the Moscow city soviet, and what did they hope to get out of it?

The Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs Program in Global Political Economy presents “How Equality Helped Italy Fight Corruption” with Lucia Manzi, SUNY Plattsburgh. Organized by Gary WInslett, Assistant Professor of Political Science.

In 1992, the “Clean Hands” anti-corruption operation resulted in hundreds of convictions and permanently changed the Italian political landscape. How was this breakthrough possible? Prof. Manzi shows how egalitarian changes in prosecutorial institutions helped the Italian government more effectively fight the Mafia as well as terrorist organizations.

The Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs program on Global and International History presents Aparna Kapadia, associate professor of history at Williams College and ” Walking with the Mahatma: Kasturba Gandhi’s Political Life.”

Fritz Bartel is a diplomatic historian at Texas A&M University. His book on the end of the Cold War (Harvard University Press, 2022), The Triumph of Broken Promises, has been widely praised for its political-economic interpretation of the demise of the Soviet Union and the rise of neo-liberalism in the United States.

Co-sponsored by the International Politics & Economics program

“Israel’s Strategic Position in a Volatile Middle East” by Daniel Kurtzer, professor in Middle Eastern Policy Studies at Princeton University, former Ambassador of the United States to Israel (2001-2005) and Egypt (1997-2001). Sponsored by Rohatyn Center for International Affairs, Department of Political Science, Scott Center for Spiritual, Religious Life, Jewish Studies Program and Hillel.

Screening and discussion with Toby Perl Freilich, director of the documentary Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment, which opened in New York in April 2012. Set against the backdrop of the glorious 100-year history of the Kibbutz, the film reveals the heartbreak and hope of Israel’s modern kibbutz movement as a new generation struggles to ensure its survival. Can a radically socialist institution survive a new capitalist reality? How will painful reforms affect those who still believe in the kibbutz experiment, and continue to call it home?

The Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs program on Autocracy and Democracy presents Fuat Keyman and Atila Eralp and “Turkey at 100: Democratic Politics and Foreign Policy under Erdogan Rule.”

Yevgenia Albats, Yevgenia Albats, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government

— a Russian investigative journalist, political scientist, writer, and radio host — will talk about Russian society and politics in the context of Russia’s invasion of, and ongoing war in, Ukraine.

The Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs presents Matt Connelly, professor of international and global history at Columbia University, and co-director of its social science research center, the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy. Connelly is also the principal investigator of History Lab, a project that uses data science to analyze state secrecy, with a focus on intelligence, surveillance, and weapons of mass destruction.