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Thursday, January 29, 2015, MG 2001. 7.p.m. Tracking Crises in the Middle East: Is Peace Possible?

This is a panel of nine students – Ingrid Roettgen, Caitlyn Bess, Sean Lynn, Trent Hoover, Molly Turner, Lauren Hennenfent, Erin Nyquist, Lillianna Burrow, Aaron Gershman – who studied in the Middle East in the Summer of 2014.

Dr. Mark Appold, a Biblical scholar who has lived and taught on most of Earth’s continents, has taken Truman students to the Middle East every summer for over a decade, encouraging them to immerse themselves in ancient cultures by visiting heritage sites, and helping them to see Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, and other countries as they are today. Nine of his students from the 2014 trip will each present a brief, tightly focused account of an area researched and explored –accounts of checkpoints, healthcare, media coverage, the Knesset, college life, natural resource distribution, attitudes toward the peace process, US aid, and ISIS. The students will take questions from one another and the audience.

 

Thursday, Jan. 30, 2014 • MG 2001 • 7 p.m.
Student Perspectives on The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
As one of the longest ongoing international conflicts in the world, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has generated much controversy. The Global Issues Colloquium and Students for Middle East Peace bring together a student panel covering various dimensions of the conflict. Six students will share perspectives based on research and personal experiences traveling through the region. Topics include the Separation Wall, U.S. involvement, Israel’s Settlers Movement, U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 348, the Gaza Strip and Iran-Israeli relations. There will be a short Q and A following the presentations.

Thursday, Feb. 13 • MG 2001 • 7 p.m.
War: What’s It Good For? Absolutely Something
Michael Rudy, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Truman State University
A quantitative database documents over 700 cases of violent force used from 1970-2000. Cases which illustrate the data points about the uses of warfare include the Gulf War, the Cod Wars, the Iran-Iraq war (and the Tanker Wars), US/Libya conflicts, and/or various Cold War ideological conflicts in Africa and Latin America. The research has applications for the more recent Iraq War and Afghanistan conflicts as well.

Thursday, March 27 • SUB 3200 • 7 p.m.
Culture Against Life: Ayoreo in the Gran Chaco
Lucas Bessire, Documentary Maker, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Oklahoma
In 2004, one of the world’s last bands of hunter-gatherers left the forest in Northern Paraguay, fleeing rancher’s bulldozers. In their new home, they were subjugated by already-acculturated relatives and tormented by a host of moral, social, and physical challenges: deforestation, tradition-seeking anthropologists, soul-collecting missionaries, neoliberal economists, new forms of addiction and madness. To survive, the Ayoreo resisted imposed notions of indigenous culture and instead followed their principles of “becoming-through-negation.” Their effort to find a path between the politics of life and the politics of culture suggests ways to reimagine the political anthropology of indigeneity. Co-sponsored by the History Department and Global Issues.

Thursday, April 3 • Baldwin Hall Little Theater (BH 176) • 7 p.m.
U.S. foreign drug policy
Sanho Tree, Director of the Drug Policy project, Institute of Policy Studies in Washington, DC.
Sanho Tree will talk about how to change U.S. foreign drug policy to end the “War on Drugs” and replace it with policy that promotes health, safety and economic growth.

Thursday, April 24 • MG 2001 • 7 p.m.
People, Parks, and Power: The Global Implications of Wildlife Conservation and Development in Southern Africa
Robert Hitchcock, Department of Society and Environment, Truman State University
Global Issues
Southern African countries have been world leaders in community-based approaches to wildlife conservation and development. Since the 1980s, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and South Africa have focused on community-based natural resource management in and around national parks, game reserves. There have been changes in these approaches recently, including removing local people from parks and game reserves, allowing the private sector to dominate tourism, and increasing anti-poaching activities. Data compiled during 35 years of research supports insights about the impact of state policies related to resource access of local people, subsistence and commercial hunting, ecotourism, and human rights of local people. The presentation explores global questions about the ethics of wildlife conservation and development, and about who has the power to determine policies and practices in and around conservation areas.

Thursday Sept. 19, 2013  MG 2001  7 p.m.
The Commons Abundance Network: Towards a Global Network of Local Initiatives for Abundant Life.
Wolfgang Hoeschele, Professor of Geography, Truman State University

Creating a better world is difficult, but it is necessary, and so it is vital that we learn how to do it and get to work. When faced with a task that seems overwhelming, it is important to divide it into manageable bits, but at the same time to facilitate information exchange and an awareness of what other people and groups are doing so that actions can be integrated with a view to the larger whole. The Commons Abundance Network, co-founded by the speaker, aims to promote such information exchange and awareness of the larger whole. The talk will focus on work done so far, including contributions by Truman students, and plans for the future.

Monday Oct. 28, 2013  VH 1000  7 p.m.
The U.S., Drugs, and Guns in Mexico:  Lessons from a Mexican Human Rights Organization
Francisco Cerezo, Witness for Peace,  Comite’ Cerezo

Militarization, fueled by over 1.1 billion in military aid from the US and justified by the War on Drugs, has led to increased violence, political repression, and human rights violations in Mexico.  The 2001 arrest of three Cerezo brothers for student activism provides one powerful example; they were incarcerated in federal prison for over seven years where they were physically and psychologically tortured. Family members and allies, including brother Francisco, formed Comite’ Cerezo to fight for their liberation. Since the Cerezo brothers’ 2008 release, the Comite’ has continued to promote and defend human rights of victims of political repression and is active in a national campaign to protect human rights defenders.  Francisco Cerezo is currently touring the Midwest as part of the Witness for Peace program.

Thursday Nov. 21, 2013  MG 2001 7 p.m.
Women’s Voices from the Zimbabwean Diaspora: Migration and Change
Elaine McDuff, Prof. of Sociology;  Chair, Dept. of  Society & Environment, Truman State University

The increasing feminization of Zimbabwean migration is part of an overall increase in international migration from Zimbabwe since 1990 – primarily to destinations in South Africa and the UK, though Zimbabweans are now present in many countries throughout the world.  There are currently 3-4 million Zimbabwean migrants, or between 25% and 30% of the country’s total population of 12 million. Most Zimbabweans leaving the country in the last two decades have been forced to do so because of economic and political problems, and it is women who have experienced the most dramatic change in level of migration. Based on interviews with 23 Zimbabwean women migrants, this study seeks to explain the dramatic increase in the number and diversity of women who have migrated to work outside of Zimbabwe over the last two decades, as well as the shift to a transnational family structure with redefined gender roles.

Thursday, January 24, 2013
MG 2001
7:00 pm
Speaker: Jason Luscier, Assistant Professor of Biology, Truman State University
Title: The Feralization of Domestic House Cats: A Global Ecological CATastrophe!

Abstract: Free-roaming domestic house cats (Felis sylvestris catus) negatively impact native wildlife populations and human health around the globe. Several bird and mammal species have been driven to extinction solely from house cat predation. Many other species are experiencing population sinks in urban settings from cat predation. Cats also represent abundant vectors for mammalian diseases, and consequently many mammal species are exhibiting increased disease rates. This effect can even be seen in aquatic mammals where cat fecal run-off is contaminating waterways. All of these problems are more pronounced where populations of cats have gone feral and have congregated in large colonies in urban areas around the globe. Ecosystems cannot sustain over-inflated predator populations and thus effects on native wildlife can be drastic. Several techniques have been implemented to attempt to reduce urban feral cat populations, but none of them have been successful. Mostly, this is not a cat problem but a human problem. Ultimately, existence of feral cat populations and conservation of native wildlife are two things that cannot coexist.

Thursday, February 14, 2013
MG 2001
7:00 pm
Speaker: Dennis Quinn, Professor, McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University
Title: Does Economic Globalization Influence the U.S. Policy Mood? A Study of U.S. Public Sentiment, 1956-2009

Abstract: The U.S. economy has become increasingly integrated with the world economy. Does this increasing economic globalization influence policy mood and voter sentiment? Previous international political economy (IPE) research has shown that voters enjoy the benefits of globalization but demand compensation for the associated risks. A hypothesis is that voters adopt a “compensatory” model whereby higher levels of imports (or exports) lead to a liberal (or conservative) shift in policy preferences over the size of government. The effects of rising import shares will be most pronounced under conditions of high unemployment. Using Stimson’s “Mood” as the dependent variable and estimating Error Correction models leads to the conclusion that the forces of economic globalization strongly influence policy mood. Rising imports lead to a leftward shift in Mood, both directly and interactively with unemployment. The results are consistent with a ‘real economy’ effect of trade on Mood. The results are robust to the inclusion of standard determinants of Mood.

Thursday, March 21, 2013
MG 2001
7:00 pm
Speaker: Meg Edwards, Visiting Professor of Political Science, Truman State University
Title: Presidential Instability in South America

Abstract: The issue of democratic stability is a central concern in the globalized world. Since the last wave of democratization, most countries in Latin America have transitioned to stable democratic governments. These changes, however, have corresponded with the emergence of a new form of presidential instability. Since the return to democracy, more than a quarter of elected presidents in South America have failed to complete their terms in office. These presidents face insurmountable opposition and leave office early via impeachment, resignation, or various other forms of removal, usually in the face of widespread protest and intense congressional proceedings. This phenomenon of presidential failure leads to new questions about democracy and the process of democratic consolidation. This presentation will provide in-depth information about some of the most notable instances of failure. It will also analyze the causes and consequences of presidential failure in South America.

Thursday, April 18, 2013
MG 2001
7:00 pm
Speaker: Anton Daughters, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Truman State University
Title: Globalization at the Ends of the Earth: Rural Livelihoods and Wage Labor in Southern Chile’s Archipelago of Chiloé

Abstract: For the past four decades, policy-makers in Santiago, Chile, have pushed laissez-faire free-market reforms on most sectors of the Chilean economy. On the Archipelago of Chiloé in southern Chile, these reforms have had the effect of introducing wage labor, on a massive scale, to communities that once relied primarily on collective practices of unpaid, reciprocal labor (mingas). This presentation will examine the role of these changing labor practices in the shaping of local identities. I will trace the modern history of Chiloé, the longstanding dependence of islanders on networks of reciprocity, and the erosion of those networks in the latter half of the twentieth century with the rapid growth of export-oriented fishing and aquaculture industries. I will connect that history to the identity dynamics of islanders today: the bemoaning among older generations of a loss of solidarity and the explicit criticism by younger generations of the isolation and material poverty of the past.

Thursday, September 20, 2012
MG 2001
7:00 pm
Co-Sponsor: Department of English and Linguistics
Speaker: Philip Lutgendorf, Professor of Hindi and Modern Indian Studies, University of Iowa
Title: Chai Why? The Making of the Indian “National Drink”

Abstract: This presentation examines the promotion and popularization of tea drinking in 20th-century India. It is inspired in part by recent ethno-historical work on everyday culinary commodities, by anthropological interest in the “social life of things,” and by recognition of the remarkable role that tea, modified to Indian taste, has come to play in diet, social intercourse, and public culture in a relatively short span of time. This research focuses on the mass popularization of indigenized “chai” through changes in manufacturing, marketing, and consumption, and in eating habits, urban space, and social networks, and involves both archival and field research. The talk emphasizes the role that advertising images played in transmitting the “tea habit” to Indians, both prior to and following Independence in 1947.

Thursday, October 18, 2012
MG 2001
7:00 pm
Speaker: Huping Ling, Professor of History, Truman State University
Title: The Rise of China and Its Repositioning under Globalization

Abstract: This lecture analyzes popular concerns over “Asian Ascendance vs. US Decline.” Professor Ling notes that rise of China is real but not as threatening as prescribed by the media and extremists. China’s rapid economic growth presents a new and complex model—its gross GDP is the second largest in the world, yet its per capita GDP is at the level of developing countries. The decline of the US is true but it is not as appalling as fanned by the demagogues; the fall of any great power is a historical, biological, and natural process. The talk will look at the positive and negative sides of globalization and the need for global economic and political stability and various prescriptions such as “Chimerica” by Niall Ferguson that emphasizes the collaboration of the two economic powers. Globalization makes different countries’ economies interconnecting, interactive, and entangled. Finally, this lecture makes suggestions on how we reposition ourselves under globalization.

Thursday, November 15, 2012
MG 2001
7:00 pm
Co-Sponsor: President’s Sustainability Action Committee
Speaker: Jay Walljasper, author of All That We Share and editor of www.OnTheCommons.org.
Title: All That We Share: The Rediscovery of the Commons as a New Tool for Creating a Greener, More Equitable and Happier World

Abstract: One of the most promising new currents for creating a better society is the emerging commons movement. The commons refers to all the things we share together and the many ways we share them. This encompasses wilderness and water, the Internet and public space, human knowledge and collaborative work. The spirit and practice of the commons is taking hold among many people (especially students who grew up sharing on the Internet) as an answer to the growing economic inequity, environmental destruction and social alienation that confront us today. Everyone from tech workers to artists to Occupy activists to peasants in the developing world is applying the principles of the commons to forge innovative solutions to entrenched problems. College communities offer many opportunities to explore the possibilities of the commons, including the academic tradition of freely exchanging knowledge as well to the students who have grown up in an online world where sharing seems only natural.

Thursday, January 26, 2012
MG 2001
7:00 pm
Speakers: Dr. Mark Appold and students from Middle East Study Abroad, Truman State University
Title: Israelis and Palestinians in Deadlock or Transition? Global implications for the result
Abstract: Professor of Religion Mark Appold will moderate a panel of student participants from a Summer 2011 Truman State University Middle East Study Abroad Course that visited Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Jerusalem, and the West Bank. The presentations will discuss the Balfour document, the Oslo Accords, United Nations resolutions, Gaza, water rights, and Biblical Israel and modern Israel. Professor of Religion Dereck Daschke will talk about the reasons for contentious debate on the status of Jerusalem.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012
VH 1000
7:00 pm
Co-Sponsors: School of Social and Cultural Studies; History Department; Hillel; Students for a Middle East Peace
Speaker: Gershon Baskin, Founder and Chair of the Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI)
Title: Is Israeli-Palestinian peace still possible?
Abstract: After 20 years of failed peace processes, Israelis and Palestinians once again are not even talking to each other. The Palestinian house is divided into two separate regimes. A right wing-religious government leads Israel. The US President is campaigning for re-election, Europe is trying to relieve itself from financial collapse, Russia is not interested, neither is China, the UN is incapable of assisting, can the two parties (Israel and Palestine) do it by themselves? Baskin will also tell of the secret direct back channel of negotiations that he initiated and conducted between the Government of Israel and Hamas for the release of the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilead Schalit who was held in captivity in the Gaza strip for five years and four months.

Thursday, February 23, 2012
VH 1000
7:00 pm
Speaker: Axel Fuentes, Field Organizer, Center for New Community
Title: Y ahora aquí en el Norte (“And now here in the North”)
Abstract: Immigrant workers will share their personal stories, their journey to the U.S., and how their lives have improved or worsened.

Thursday, April 5, 2012
SUB Activities Room
7:00pm
Speaker: Aaron Fine, Professor of Art and Gallery Director, Truman State University
Title: Unworking Asia: The demise of hand painted political graphics in the digital age
Abstract: A recent investigation of hand painted political graphics in Mumbai revealed very little painting but a great deal about the rapidly advancing digitalization of visual space in India. As mass produced digital printing replaces idiosyncratic and individual creative efforts, in what ways are India’s political networks enhanced and in what ways are India’s creative networks destroyed? This presentation draws upon excerpts from visual artist and professor of art Aaron Fine’s creative non-fiction to explore recent changes in Indian visual culture.

The Truman chapter of the Spanish Honorary Society (Sigma Delta Pi) and the Colombia Support Network of Kansas City together with the Global Issues Colloquium will present “Indigenous Survival in the 21st Century: A Look at the Embera-Chami Community” on Tuesday, November 1, at 7pm in the SUB Georgian Room B.

Ancizar Gutiérrez and Reynelio Yagari, leaders of the Indigenous Colombian community, the Embera-Chami, will speak about the state of Indigenous rights and the efforts to preserve their traditional way of life in the South American country of Colombia. Their presentation will include traditional music of the Embera-Chami. Gutiérrez and Yagari will discuss how their community has sought to survive amidst an ongoing civil war, widespread drug trafficking, and the pressures of industrial development on their lands.

Following their presentation, there will be a Q/A with the audience. They will be accompanied by Truman alumna Rachel Hogan (’09) of the Colombia Support Network. While at Truman, Rachel worked with Dr. Carol Marshall and Dr. Sergio Escobar to translate the cultural myths of this Indigenous group.

A special Global Issues lecture will be given by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Alusio on Thursday, November 10 at 7:30 pm in Violette Hall 1000. Menzel is a photojournalist known for his coverage of international feature stories on science and the environment, and D’Alusio is a former award-winning television news producer. Since 1996 they have been collaborating on a series of documentary books, beginning with Material World: A Global Family Portrait, and Women in the Material World. Two of their most recent books are Hungry Planet: What the World Eats (2005), and What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets (2010). In Hungry Planet, the authors detail one family’s weekly food purchases and total costs in 24 countries, and use thought-provoking interviews. The centerpiece of each chapter is a portrait of the entire family surrounded by a week’s worth of groceries. Hungry Planet won the coveted James Beard Best Book Award in 2006, and in 2005 received Book of the Year from the Harry Chapin World Hunger Media Foundation. What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets is a photographic journey across 30 different countries that shows us what 80 people eat in a typical day. Through Menzel and D’Aluisio’s evocative narrative style and exceptional photojournalism, What I Eat shines a far reaching beam of light into the pantries of ordinary individuals, revealing a lot about their culture, economy and way of life. Their lecture at Truman is entitled “Calories and Culture: A Worldwide Photographic Journey.” It will feature images from their award winning books Hungry Planet: What the World Eats and Man Eating Bugs: The Art and Science of Eating Insects. More information about their work can be found at www.menzelphoto.com, and in a recent NY Times article.

The following are our scheduled presentations for the Fall 2011 Global Issues Colloquium:

Thursday, September 1, 2011, 7pm, MG2001
Jason Wiles, Assistant Professor, Biology, Syracuse University
Evolution Education in the Muslim World and Why it Matters in the West
Abstract: Evolution, the explanation of the unity and diversity of life via descent with modification from a common ancestry, is accepted by the global scientific community and considered to be of central importance to understanding the biological sciences. Yet, social controversies over the teaching of evolution are common in North America and other Western settings, especially with regard to creationism rooted in particular Judeo-Christian doctrines. Little is known in the West, however, about how Muslims have reacted to evolutionary science, and perhaps even less is known about how evolution is taught in Islamic societies. This talk will summarize findings derived from data collected in several Muslim nations via questionnaires and interviews administered to students, teachers and university scientists as well as from reviews of official curriculum documents during a four-year study of Islamic understandings of and attitudes toward evolution and the teaching thereof. The discussion will also include my own perspective as a biology professor, having been raised in a creationist Christian community in Middle America. From Arkansas to Ankara, from Kirksville to Karachi, we will talk about why evolution education is such a pressing issue.
Sponsored with the Department of Science and Mathematics

Thursday, October 20, 2011, 7pm, MG2001
Stephanie A. Malin, PhD Candidate, Environmental Sociology; Sociology of Globalization/Development, Utah State University
Uranium Communities and Nuclear Renaissance: Energy and Environmental Justice on the Colorado Plateau
Abstract: Global renewal of nuclear energy – a nuclear renaissance – has been proposed as one viable solution to reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change impacts. For example, in 2010 the Obama Administration approved $50 billion in loans for new nuclear reactor construction, and China has been rapidly adding to their cadre of such facilities. I contend such assertions and actions must be examined sociologically; we must avoid framing nuclear power as a socially sustainable ‘renewable energy’ without first empirically examining emergent social impacts, especially in rural communities embedded within global systems such as uranium markets. In this presentation, I focus on the first phase of the nuclear fuel cycle – namely, uranium mining and milling – tracing the emergence of competing discourses and patterns of political mobilization in response to renewed uranium processing on the Colorado Plateau in the western US. Specifically, I examine the regulatory and social movement contexts surrounding Energy Fuels, Inc.’s acquisition of both a special use permit and radioactive materials license to build Piñon Ridge Uranium Mill in Colorado’s Paradox Valley. As the first uranium mill permitted in the US since the Cold War’s end, the Piñon Ridge Uranium Mill provides a natural laboratory to study energy policy formation, land use conflict, and potential spaces for conflict resolution that are globally relevant, given nuclear power’s global use and controversy, and given that China will be a buyer of the yellowcake from PR Mill. I draw from mixed data sources, including in-depth interviews, regulatory and historical-archival analyses, and a household survey instrument distributed to residents in four communities closest to the proposed mill site. As such, this presentation helps illuminate local, rural effects of energy policy in our increasingly globalized economy.
Sponsored with the Department of Society and Environment

Thursday, November 17, 7pm, MG2001
Dr. Marc Rice, Department of Music, Truman State University
The Revolution will be You Tubed: Global Protest, the New Media, and Music
Abstract: Recent political uprisings, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, have been accompanied by the use of Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube. Protests that would have been shielded from the outside world a decade ago are now witnessed by the entire Global community, thanks to the opportunities afforded by the New Media. This presentation will examine how music videos uploaded via the New Media are being used to communicate, organize, and give voice to the issues and protests now occurring in Iran, Libya, Egypt, and elsewhere.

Thursday, February 24, 7pm, BH 176 (Baldwin Little Theater)
TSU International Students
Cultural Perspectives on Plagiarism and Academic Dishonesty in Higher Education
Plagiarism, citing sources and group work are not viewed uniformly across all cultures. Depending upon where you are in the world, different ideologies persist, transforming classroom environments and student-professor relationships. In some cultures, sharing notes and answers, even on tests, is acceptable to both professors and students alike in order to improve the class as a whole. In other cultures, citing a well-known source in a paper can be insulting to a professor, indicating that he or she is not educated enough to know the source. Concepts of intellectual property in the United States can therefore be a huge cultural stumbling block to international students. A diverse panel of Truman international students will discuss their own cultures’ perspectives on plagiarism and academic dishonesty, how they differ from views in the United States, as well as how they have adjusted to expectations in this country.