YCISS Afternoon Seminar Series
Distinguished Critical Thinkers in World Politics Seminar Series
Post-Communist Studies Programme (PCSP) Seminar Series
Arms Control for the 21st Century: An International Workshop
22-23 January 2010
York Research Tower
York University
This major workshop brought together over twenty scholars and practitioners from Canada, the US, the UK and Europe to ask how practitioners and researchers can work on re-conceptualizing arms control frameworks and processes, previously one of the pillars of global security in the Cold War, to meet the challenges of contemporary international security.
Papers were presented across a diverse range of arms control issues, including areas such as missile and space defence, the development of biological and nanotechnology, and the revolution in military affairs. The participants also considered President Obama’s call for ‘a world without nuclear weapons’ and examined progress by his administration on multilateral arms control measures.
On Friday 22nd January, Ted Whiteside, a Canadian working at NATO and the Secretary of the North Atlantic Council, presented a public key note address on the subject of Arms Control, International Security and the Atlantic Alliance in the 21st Century exploring both wider arms Control issues and NATO’s response to the challenges of weapons proliferation.
For the conference agenda Read more. A recording of the final round table event is also available Click here
For more details on this workshop, please email yciss@yorku.ca. Please also visit the project webpage Read more
This workshop was kindly sponsored by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Public Diplomacy programme; the Security and Defence Forum of the Canadian Department of National Defence; and a York University Internationalization Grant.
New Directions: The Future of Canadian (in)Security Studies
YCISS 17th Annual Conference
04 - 05 February 2010
YRT Conference Centre (Room 519)
York Research Tower
York University
Canadian security and defense in theory and practice has undergone significant changes since Canada’s increased participation in Afghanistan in 2006 and with the election of the Harper Conservatives. Against this backdrop, the concept and study of security/insecurity has been challenged, re-defined and re-imagined in a changing political and theoretical global environment. These shifts require a dialogue on recent turns in the field and innovative and multidisciplinary approaches that call into question traditional understandings. These challenges have been taken up by growing numbers of scholars within as well as outside of Canada. We may have reached the point at
which a distinctive Canadian voice in security study may be emerging.
This conference brought scholars together to engage questions of security, both Canadian and global, from a variety of perspectives and
approaches that emphasized both new developments as well as critiques of existing approaches. Recognizing that Canadian security studies can only be thought about in a global context, the conference presented papers that look empirically at Canada as well as those that theorize security studies within a global theoretical context.
Engagements with security from outside the traditional fields are offering unique perspectives on the problematique of security and challenging our understandings in important ways. From interrogating traditional theorizing and security practices to recognizing how recent shifts in areas such as new and interactive media and technology are impacting security, this conference will critically engage with the past in order to contribute to new and creative ways of thinking about the future. Additionally, we want to challenge the misconception that security is the purview of select disciplinary fields and thus we hope to open what has tended to be an intellectually (and physically!)securitized space of security studies to alternative engagements through film, pictorial, digital, and multimedia art, spoken word, and movement.
The program for the conference is available in PDF format Click here. An electronic and published version of the conference proceedings is currently being prepared.
YCISS thanks the following York University sponsors for their kind support for this conference:
The Office of the Vice President, Research and Innovation;
The Office of the Vice-President Academic and Provost;
The Faculty of Graduate Studies;
The Nathanson Centre for Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security;
The Division of Social Science;
The York University Conference Fund;
The Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.
The New Directions Conference has also been kindly sponsored by the Security and Defence Forum of the Department of National Defence.
York Centre for International and Security Studies (YCISS)
Sixteenth Annual Conference
Security Beyond the Discipline: Emerging Dialogues on Global Politics
York University, Toronto
19-20 March 2009
Changing security and defence environments have recently challenged the capacities for traditional security studies and practices to assess and respond to contemporary issues such as: environmental insecurity; terrorism; failed and/or failing states; transnational crime; the intersections of personal safety and security; the privatisation of security and defence; and the emergence of other non-state actors (NGOs, IOs, TNCs). These emerging issue-areas cannot be easily separated, and their interdependence demands deeper cross-disciplinary discussion. For instance, Canadian Arctic security and defence necessarily involves considerations of the environment, indigenous communities, political economy, infrastructure, as well as the traditional concerns of security studies such as sovereignty, geopolitics, and the allocation of state resources. In response to these challenges, vibrant discussions about security and defence issues have proliferated across the social sciences and humanities, but unfortunately it is rare that those involved in these discussions speak to one another. Examples such as the spatial turn in the social sciences broadly, and the aesthetic turn in International Relations have contributed to the theory and practice of security and defence, yet often remain confined to intra-disciplinary dialogue. A consequence is the production of ever more divisive academic and non-academic camps rather than a move towards conceptualising broader frames through which security can be explained, understood, and practiced.
”Security Beyond the discipline” will take cross-disciplinarity as a starting point from which to consider the recent theoretical and methodological contributions made to the study of security and defence. More than simply a stock taking, however, a primary goal is to create linkages between emerging approaches to the study of security and defence. Achieving this goal will involve a renewed engagement with the spaces of security (shifting regional foci, the internet/cyberspace, diasporas, the neighbourhood, the postcolony), the subjects of security (networks, ecosystems, states, citizens, refugees, transnational subjects), the objects of security (safety, prosperity, hegemony), the frames of security (beyond/beneath the war on terror, reconceptualizing the “west,” etc.), and changes in the practices of defence (cybersecurity, revolutions in military affairs, surveillance).
York Centre for International and Security Studies (YCISS)
Fifteenth Annual Conference
Violent Interventions
York University, Toronto
7-8 February 2008
Against the backdrop of recent and prospective interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Lebanon, and Darfur as well as past interventions in places such as India, Congo, Zimbabwe, and Guatemala, the 15th Annual YCISS Conference seeks to interrogate practices, processes, and perspectives of violent interventions. For the purpose of exploring the logic(s), breadth, and scope of violent interventions, the conference will investigate the methods, sites, and justifications of and for violent interventions on a global, transnational, local, and personal level.
Please click here for the program and click here for the poster.
CFC-YCISS Working Group Meeting: End of Intervention
York University, Toronto
30 March 2007
York Centre for International and Security Studies (YCISS)
Fourteenth Annual Conference
Bodies, Desires, Violence: Feminist Interventions in Un/Doing Empire
York University, Toronto
1-2 February 2007
The current US-led “war on terror” has revived an interest within International Relations and International Political Economy in the study of imperialism. Informed by a range of orthodox and critical theoretical perspectives, new analyses have much to contribute to an understanding of the various challenges to security posed by the current “war on terror,” and how they are linked to historical legacies of imperialism and colonialism. However, most of the ongoing discussions frame the problematic in terms of a “return to imperialism” vs. “deterritorialization,” and around a limited conceptualization of “Empire” as a militarized quest for national security and/or capital accumulation. As such, these analyses tend to reify borders and obscure how international power operates on various levels — levels that are not only intimately connected, but interdependent. Missing from the debate, specifically, is a systematic examination of the role of the social reproduction of racialized, heterosexed, and classed social relations of inequality which are necessary for the re-production of “Empire.” Interestingly, feminist social science has produced challenging insights in the last two decades around issues of social re-production of inequality, militarization, and academia’s investment in the production of subjugating and subordinating discourses and practices. However, much of the critical as well as orthodox theorizing in International Relations has proven largely resistant to feminist interventions. This conference invites papers that investigate this resistance to feminism(s) in the context of imperialism, and also engage with the contributions of feminist scholarship in un/doing Empire. Of particular interest are papers that consider the ways in which Empire-building plays on the production and deployment of not only militaries and capital, but also of raced, sexed, and classed bodies. How is the production of knowledge, especially feminist knowledge, complicit in the re-production of Empire? What are the roles of the academic industry in the social re-production of inequality, both inside and outside its walls? How can feminism(s) participate in (de)colonizing knowledge production, both its own and that of others? What have feminist analyses to say about the current “war on terror” in the context of imperialism? How can feminist scholarship contribute to our understanding of militaries and militarization? What are the ways in which feminist analyses of militaries and militarized masculinity complicate our understanding of Empire-building? How do these analyses challenge dominant understandings and practices of national vs. human security?
Please click here for the agenda.
CFC-YCISS Working Group Meeting: Military Power and Nation-Building in 21st-Century International Intervention
York University, Toronto
5 December 2006
Canada in the Asia Pacific: Balancing Economics and Diplomacy
Fourteenth Annual CANCAPS Conference
York University, Toronto
1-3 December 2006
Please click here for the agenda.
CERI-YCISS Roundtable
The EU and Canada: Security, Foreign Policy, Intervention
York University, Toronto
20 April 2006
YCISS Afternoon Seminar Series
YCISS Afternoon Seminar Series: Palestinian Insecurity: Integration and Emancipation Logics
Dr Joni Aasi (Bir Zeit University)
Thursday 27 May, 2 - 3.30pm
Room 519, Fifth Floor, York Research Tower (YRT)
In this seminar, Dr Aasi will discuss the new perspectives raised by the immigration of certain concepts dominant in the security studies of the post Cold War to Palestine. In other words, what is the epistemic position of Palestine in these studies? Dr Aasi will argue that the broader concept of security adopted by critical security studies in the post-Cold War draws our attention to economic and ecological dimensions of the Palestinian insecurity, but that as an issue of human insecurity, Palestinian insecurity is also essentially characterized by the “fear of violent death” in the traditional sense.
The seminar will further consider the points of convergence of several theoretical currents under the umbrella of critical security studies, including utopian realism. Utopian thinking associates the thinkable and the possible and reflects a desire of transformation simultaneously of the reality and of the self. The utopian (critical) approach is useful to provoke questions about the reality and its knowledge; about the “structural bias” of the discourse on security in general and on security sector reform in particular (external legitimacy\internal legitimacy); and about the risk of ‘reification’ (the risk that an emancipator discourse become a new structure of domination).
Dr Joni Aasi is a visiting scholar at the York Centre for International and Security Studies (YCISS) from April – September 2010. Dr Aasi is an Assistant Professor at Bir Zeit University. Since September 2008, Dr Aasi has been the Dean of Scientific Research at the Palestinian Academy of Security Sciences, Jericho where he is involved in training Palestinian military and civilian officials on issues of security sector reform, as well as theories of security and international law. Dr Aasi is also the author of several texts and papers in these areas.
YCISS Afternoon Seminar Series: OP SAIPH: Canadian counter piracy and counter terrorism naval operations in East Africa and the Indian Ocean
Commander Steve Waddell (HMCS Fredericton)
Wednesday, 26 May 2010, 2-3:30pm
Room 626, Sixth Floor York Research Tower
Since 1991, Canada has deployed ships almost three dozen times to the neighbourhood of the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea to carry out counter-terrorism and counter-piracy operations. HMCS Fredericton has spent the last six months “on-station” with NATO’s multinational maritime force off the east coast of Africa under Operation SAIPH, where HMCS Fredericton’s captain (Commander Steven Waddell) and crew prevented and deterred piracy and terrorism to improve the region’s security and provide a safer maritime environment.
Commander (Cdr) Steven Waddell will discuss Canada’s leading role in maritime security as part of its continuing commitment to international security. Cdr Waddell’s presentation will provide audiences with a rare opportunity to interact with the ship’s captain, hear his first-hand accounts and view operational images from this fascinating deployment.
Raised in Temagami, Northern Ontario, Cdr Waddell joined the Canadian Navy in 1990 as a Maritime Surface and Sub-Surface Officer. Cdr Waddell has served in several theatres of operation, including the Arabian Gulf and South West Asia, as well as representing Canada at the Joint Services Command and Staff College in the United Kingdom, where he earned his Master’s Degree in Defence Studies through King’s College London. Cdr Waddell assumed his current position in command of HMCS Fredericton in January 2009.
YCISS Afternoon Seminar Series
Developing, Selling, and Implementing the New Technologies of the Global War on Terror: How and Why Canada’s Military-Security-Development Complex Supports the Empire of Capital.
Mike Skinner
Wednesday March 31st 2010
12.45-2.45pm
Room 749,
York Research Tower
Canadian military historian Allan English (2005) observes: “war has been more or less a functional institution in human society because it provided benefits for societies that were good at it, although the cost of the benefits could be high”. Who in Canadian society benefits from the Global War on Terror considering the high cost of lives and resources?
One significant group that does benefit are the “over 800 member companies” of the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI) “who are essential contributors to Canada’s national defence and security and generate over 10 billion dollars to the Canadian economy every year”. The owners of defence and security industries and the workers they employ clearly benefit, but their profits and the tax dollars they generate are not the only benefits accrued during this war.
Leaders of what Ellen Meiksins Wood (2005) describes as an Empire of Capital share two existential fears that underlie the abstract threat of “terror”: how to contain popular unrest and how to contain emerging imperial-state competitors. Many of the weapons and tactics developed and field-tested during the Global War on Terror focus on solving these two “problems”.
Michael Skinner explores how and why Canada’s Military-Security-Development Complex supports the emerging Empire of Capital, despite the high cost in lives and resources not only for Afghans and Canadians but for the countless people around the world affected by the Global War on Terror.
Michael Skinner is a Researcher at the York Centre for International and Security Studies (YCISS), and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at York University. In 2007, he travelled throughout Afghanistan where he listened to Afghans from all walks of life who do not have a voice in the Western media.
YCISS Afternoon Seminar Series/Post Communist Studies Programme
Energy Security and the New Geopolitics of the Caspian Sea Basin
Mr. Farid Shafiyev
(Ambassador of the Republic of Azerbaijan to Canada)
Wednesday 17 March
11.30–1 pm
Room 524, Fifth Floor
York Research Tower
York University (Keele Campus)
Mr. Farid Shafiyev, will focus on the key political and economic issues in the Caspian Sea Basin and the wider international security implications of developments in the region. He will outline the main characteristics of this increasingly important region, review problems of post-Soviet transition of the region’s countries and existing international conflicts in the Caucasus.
Ambassador Shafiyev will also review a number of interrelated themes including:
- Post Soviet transition
- International security - the Caspian geopolitical environment
- Post Soviet conflict and conflict resolution in the context of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan
- Energy security and foreign economic relations - Azerbaijan as a new energy hub
Mr. Shafiyev’s lecture will be followed by open discussion. Do not miss this opportunity for a unique insight into developments in the region which links the Caucasus and Central Asia and their relevance to global security.
Ambassador Farid Shafiyev has a BA in History from Baku State University, Azerbaijan, a Masters Degree in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and a Law Degree from Baku State University. In 1996, Mr. Shafiyev joined the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry. His assignments have included a posting to the Permanent Mission of Azerbaijan to the United Nations in New York in 1998-2001. In 2005 he was posted as Counselor at the Embassy of Azerbaijan in Canada. In 2007-2009 he served as Chargé d’Affaires and was promoted to Ambassador in May 2009. Mr. Shafiyev is the author of several academic publications and has lectured on international security at Western University in Baku.
YCISS Afternoon Seminar Series/ Post Communist Studies Programme
Russia, Europe, and the Politics of Energy Security: The New Agenda
Dr. Vyacheslav Inozemtsev
Thursday 04 March 2010
1–3:30 pm
Room 519, Fifth Floor
Dr. Vyacheslav Inozemtsev, is an influential Russian academic who is a consultant to President Dmitry Medvedev. Dr. Inozemtsev is Director of the Center for Globalization Studies in Moscow, has a PhD in Economics, and works on a range of issues relevant to the modernization program adopted by the Russian government as the key national strategy for this decade.
Dr. Inozemtsev is visiting Washington and Ottawa in late February 2010. As part of this visit, he is kindly able to provide a lecture at York examining the modernization of Russia and its implications for international security. This is a rare and valuable opportunity for an inside look into the development of major new Russian policy approaches.
YCISS Contentious Conflicts and Canadian Society Series:
Haiti: The Mobilization of Aid, Public Discourses and Political Action within CanadaThursday 11 February 2010
2pm- 3.45pm
Room 519, 5th Floor
York Research Tower (YRT)
York University
The earthquake in Haiti and the subsequent human suffering calls for a critical analysis of the hegemonic representations of Haiti’s history, poverty and political disempowerment. It is in this context that we need to examine how mobilization of aid is occurring through the media, diasporas, NGOs, the military - particularly the Canadian Forces - and other government institutions, and to what effect.
Of crucial importance is the question concerning the politically and ideologically motivated agendas of the international community, one that appears now to be coming to the aid of the Haitians.
This forum invites the following speakers to engage in a roundtable discussion on the current situation in Haiti and its future, for the purposes of generating much needed debate at all levels:
Dr Manuel Rozental, University of Toronto
Dr Melanie Newton, University of Toronto
Dr Nalini Persram (Chair), York University
This discussion will be followed by a meeting of the York-Haiti Solidarity Committee in room 280N, York Lanes at 4pm. Please contact CERLAC for further details (mbeck@yorku.ca) or the York Haiti Solidarity Committee Listserv (Fwd: YORK-HAITI@yorku.ca)
Please note that due to space restrictions, participation for this forum is by pre-registration Click here
Round-Table Discussion: The Future of Critical Security Studies in Canada
Thursday 04 February 2010
1.30-3pm
Room 519
York Research Tower
York University, Keele Campus
(Free Admission)
On Thursday 04 February 2010, YCISS brought distinguished scholars and practitioners working in the area of Critical Security Studies together for a round-table discussion on new approaches, critiques of existing approaches and future directions for the field, both theoretically and regarding the practical development of this area of research.
The panel featured:
David Mutimer, Deputy Director, York Centre for International and Security Studies
Barbara Falk, Department of Defence Studies, Canadian Forces College
Mark Salter, School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa
Mark Neufeld, Deputy Director, Centre for the Study of Global Power and Politics, Trent University
Miguel Larrinaga, School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa
Peter Nyers, Associate Professor, McMaster University
Elizabeth Dauphinee, Department of Political Science, York University
A downloadable MP3/podcast recording of the above discussion is available Click here. A recording of the discussion can be accessed directly from this website Click here.
The YCISS Afternoon Seminar Series:
From the Front Line: Canadian Forces in Afghanistan
Brigadier General Jonathan Vance (former Commander Joint Task Force Afghanistan)
Monday 25th January 2010
11.30-1pm
Lecture Room 305
York Lanes
Brigadier-General Jonathan Vance recently returned from Afghanistan where he served as Commander of Canadian and NATO Forces in Kandahar Province from February to November 2009. Brigadier-General Vance will discuss combat operations and his first-hand insights into the counter-insurgency struggle taking place in this conflict-stricken region.
The presentation will be followed by a session where Brigadier-General Vance will answer questions from the audience.
Don’t miss this unique opportunity to hear and engage with the former commander of Canadian Forces in Afghanistan and one of Canada’s most senior military officers.
The YCISS Afternoon Seminar Series:
Arms Control, International Security and the Atlantic Alliance in the 21st Century
Mr Ted Whiteside,
Secretary of the North Atlantic Council, and Director of the NATO Ministerial and Summit Task Force in Brussels
Friday 22 January 2010
5.30-6.30pm
Lecture Room 106
Accolade West Building
York University (Keele Campus )
The theory and practice of Arms Control was one of the central pillars of the global security apparatus in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Since the end of the Cold War, policymakers at the international and national level involved with Arms Control issues have faced the challenges of adapting to a multi-polar international stage and the emergence of new patterns of proliferation and weapons development both at the strategic level, in terms of nuclear weapons, and the tactical level of small arms. This discussion will examine the response from policy-makers, both civilian and military, to the new realities of Arms Control and examine these issues in the context of the broader international security environment facing the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
There will be an opportunity for the audience to exchange views and ask questions of the speaker, both in terms of Arms Control issues and NATO’s response to the challenges of weapons proliferation and other NATO issues.
Ted Whiteside, a graduate of York University and the Université de Montréal, is currently Secretary of the North Atlantic Council, and Director of the NATO Ministerial and Summit Task Force in Brussels. Before taking up his current duties as Secretary of the Council, he was Director of the NATO WMD Centre.
YCISS Afternoon Seminar Series
Developing a Peace System from within a War System: Citizen Diplomacy in Conflict-Ridden Societies
Farid Omar
Wednesday 13th January 2010
1-2.30pm
Room 749 (YCISS)
7th Floor
York Research Tower
The field of citizen diplomacy, also known as Track-II talks, can potentially play an important role in conflict resolution mechanisms around the world. In the Middle East and elsewhere, Track-II Talks have helped build bridges among communities and nations torn by war and factionalism. Due to failure or shortcomings of key Track-I (official diplomacy) talks, peace activists, conflict resolution experts, peace-builders and communities in general may increasingly rely on Track-II Talks in attempts to resolve protracted conflicts around the world.
With peace processes stalled or heading for imminent failures in a multitude of conflicts around the world, citizen diplomacy, more than ever before, holds the key to unlocking a new formula for fostering peace through the direct involvement of citizen diplomats and peace delegates in fragile and failing peace processes. This calls for increased and effective representation of delegates representing private citizens, trade unions, voluntary and professional associations, women’s movements, faith groups and other non-state entities, in the realm of conflict resolution and conflict prevention and all other matters pertaining to improving national, regional and global security on the path to building sustainable peace in war-torn countries.
Farid Omar is a Peace Researcher and Conflict Analyst and a Research Fellow in residence at YCISS, York University.
YCISS Contentious Conflicts and Canadian Society Series:
The Sri Lankan Civil War and the Politics of Conflict in Canada
On 02 December 2009, YCISS hosted a panel discussion to explore how diasporas affected by the Sri Lankan civil war mobilize to shape public opinion and influence official views and policy.
The panel included the following:
Dr R. Cheran, University of Windsor
Ken Kandeepan, Canadian Tamil Congress
Stewart Bell, National Post
John Argue, Amnesty International
Clem Marshall, Moderator
For a downloaded MP4 podcast of this event please Click here
To view the event on this website please Click here
The YCISS Afternoon Seminar Series:
YCISS Post-Communist Studies Seminar Series and the Security and Defence Forum (SDF):
Islam and Ideas of Nation in Central Eurasia
Dr. John Schoeberlein
Thursday October 8 2009 2:30 – 4:00 pm
International Conference Room
5th Floor York Research Tower
Dr John Schoeberlein is the Director, Program on Central Asia and the Caucasus, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University.
The York Centre for International and Security Studies (YCISS) Afternoon Seminar Series:
The Political Economy of Security: States, Crisis and War
Dr Bryan Mabee
Wednesday 7 October 2009
12:30-2pm
Room 280N, York Lanes
In this seminar Dr Bryan Mabee will chart the development of a ‘national security state’ in the United States after World War II and examine how this state was premised on the resolution of several post-war crises in the political economy of security, including the political economy of postwar production, the relationship between labour and business, and the changing character of war. Drawing on contemporary approaches to state theory and historical sociology, Dr Mabee will explore the development of divergent approaches to national security through a political economy approach that emphasizes both the importance of ideas and the impact of overall crises on historical patterns of state building. The seminar will also focus on the relationship between state crisis, crisis narratives, state building and the role of war in political development.
Dr Bryan Mabee is a Senior Lecturer in International Politics at Queen Mary, University of London, UK. Dr Mabee specializes in and has published on globalization, security, US foreign policy and the historical sociology of international relations. His most recent publications are the monograph The Globalization of Security (Palgrave, 2009), and “Pirates, Privateers and the Political Economy of Private Violence” in Global Change, Peace and Security. Dr Mabee was a visiting scholar at YCISS.
The YCISS Post-Communist Studies Seminar Series and the Security and Defence Forum (SDF):
20 Years since the wall came tumbling down: Observations of Post-Communist Europe
A Conversation with Ambassador John Morrison
(Canada’s Ambassador to Republic of Serbia, Republic of Macedonia and Montenegro)
Tuesday 6th October 2009
12 -2pm
International Conference Centre
5th floor, York Research Tower
John Morrison (BA, McGill University; MA,Cambridge University) is one of Canada’s most experienced diplomats. He joined the Department of External Affairs in 1985 and served abroad as third secretary at the High Commission for Canada in Kuala Lumpur; second secretary (political affairs) in Beijing; program manager (political, economic and public affairs), at the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei; counsellor (economic) in Tokyo; and minister counsellor and deputy head of mission in Moscow. In Ottawa, he has occupied a number of positions, notably director of the Eastern Europe and Balkans Division, and of the China and Mongolia Division. From 1999 to 2000, he was a foreign policy advisor in the Privy Council Office’s Foreign and Defence Policy Secretariat.
In 2008, he was named Ambassador to the Republic of Serbia, with concurrent accreditation to the Republic of Montenegro and to the Republic of Macedonia.
Canada on the World Stage: Force for Good or Bad Actor?
Yves Engler
Friday 25th September 2009
12-1.30pm
Room 305 York Lanes
Yves Engler is a Montreal based writer. His works have included Playing Left Wing: From Rink Rat to Student Radical and Canada in Haiti: Waging War on the Poor Majority. As part of a book tour to promote his recent work The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy, Yves will present a seminar and audiovisual presentation at York University examining Canada’s foreign policy. This presentation will challenge the purported myth of an altruistic Canadian foreign policy by exposing how this country has been part of the command and control apparatus of the world economic system from its beginning. At first, Canada served as an arm of the British Empire, but, given the country's location and economic and racial makeup, quickly became intertwined with the USA.
Comments about The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy have included:
“[Engler shows] how ‘peaceful, benevolent, altruistic Canada’ has, on numerous occasions, served as an integral part of Western Imperialism...helping to keep the Third World down.”
—William Blum
“Yves Engler’s penetrating inquiry yields a rich trove of valuable evidence about Canada’s role in the world.”
—Noam Chomsky
Is Anyone Watching? War, Cinema and Bearing Witness
Simon Philpott
Thursday, 11 June 2009
1.00-2:30pm
Room 372, York Lanes
There is a long history of demonising Muslims, Arabs, and Islam in a variety of western cultural and media forms including imaginative fiction, news media and in Hollywood film. Arabs and Muslims have routinely been presented as unprincipled, inherently violent and beyond psychological interpretation. Since ‘Islamic extremism’ became a focal point of Americans fears and anxieties in the early 1980s, these cartoonish characters have been routinely slaughtered in Hollywood films. More recently, a number of terror themed war films have presented critical accounts of American actions and policies and have also attempted to provide character development of Muslims and Arabs in ways not seen of the Vietnamese in the films that emerged after that war was concluded. This presentation explores the question of whether films critical of the war on terror bear witness to conflicts the mainstream media has avoided interrogating. Simon argues that the directors of war on terror films may consciously be taking on the role of chroniclers of war and be making films sharply influenced in content and style by a digital media environment producing and circulating vast numbers of images that dull the critical faculties of consumers.
Simon Philpott is Senior Lecturer in International Politics, Newcastle University.
The Critical Role of Pre-Negotiation in Ethno-National Conflicts: An Analysis of the Annapolis Process (2007) and the Cyprus Negotiations (2004)
Amira Schiff
Tuesday, 12 May 2009
2:30-4:30pm
Room 305 York Lanes
This seminar will focus on the process of pre-negotiation during the 2004 peace negotiations on the future of Cyprus and the Israel/Palestine negotiations in November 2007 under the Annapolis Process. Amira will investigate the relationship between the pre-negotiation process and review the crucial question of whether an effective execution of this stage is critical for successful negotiations.
Conflict Resolution (CR) theory on pre-negotiation stage regards it as the processes intended to constitute the beginning of a problem–solving process, in which the parties jointly confront the problem, based on recognition of the other and empathy to its needs. However, Amira will argue that the pre-negotiation that took place in the Cyprus case and to some extent in the Annapolis process should not be considered as more than an adaptive conflict management tactic. Amira will present a detailed analysis of how the issue of pre-negotiation can provide a useful contribution to understanding the factors that enhance or undermine de-escalation initiatives. Ultimately, these factors may prove to be applicable not only in the case of the Cypriot and Annapolis Processes but also in other intractable conflicts across the globe.
Amira Schiff, PhD. is a research associate at the YCISS, York University, Toronto. She is also a faculty member in the Political Science Department and the Program on Conflict Management and Negotiation in Bar- Ilan University. Her research interests include pre-negotiation processes and unofficial diplomacy. Her current research topic is on the "readiness theory" and the resolution of intractable conflicts. Her article “Pre-negotiation and its Limits in Ethno-National Conflicts: A Systematic Analysis of Process and Outcomes in the Cyprus Negotiations” was published in International Negotiation 13, 2008.
Bare Life and the Body: Disrupting Sovereign Power and Its (re) Productions Through a Reading of Afghan Detainees
Jessica Foran
Thursday, 23 April 2009
12:30-2:30pm
Room 280 York Lanes
In this presentation Jessica Foran considers how practices of detention, through their appropriation of and operation upon the body, shape and become shaped by shifts and redefinitions of Canadian sovereign power in the current moment. Focusing on Canada’s response to allegations of detainee mistreatment in Afghanistan, it will trace how mobilization of the ‘Support Our Troops’ discourses was used to mediate inquiry into the status of detainees.
The seminar examines how engaging both detainee and soldier bodies has become used by the Canadian state to “productively” (re)constitute sovereign power. It will then explore how dominant theorizations of sovereignty problematically assume definitive inclusions and exclusions and rely on the body as an abstracted site of analysis. Jessica will also examine how the repositioning of the materiality of the body is connected to ongoing practices of colonial and imperial violence.
Jessica Foran is a YCISS graduate researcher and an MA student in the Department of Political Science at York University
NATO - Celebrating 60 Years of Accomplishments
Ted Whiteside
Monday, 20 April 2009
11am-12:30pm
Room 280 York Lanes
As we look into the future, it is clear that issues of peace, security, and development will be more interconnected than ever. Given this situation,
what is the NATO Alliance doing to manage the multiple challenges of Afghanistan and other security problems? This presentation will explore NATO's current work in Afghanistan, its relations with Russia and other international Partners, as well as Alliance perspectives on the future. The seminar will provide a opportunity to exchange views and ask questions on these issues, both in terms of global security implications and Canada's transatlantic role.
The speaker, a graduate of York University and the Université de Montréal, is currently Secretary of the North Atlantic Council, and Director of the NATO Ministerial and Summit Task Force in Brussels
‘But, I Don’t Wanna Play Nice’: An Anti-Social Queer Encounter With Private Military Corporations
Christopher Hendershot
Thursday, 9 April 2009
12:30-2pm, Room 280 York Lanes
This presentation will proceed through an anti-social queer analysis of how sex and death are performed by and through private military corporations (PMCs). Of particular concern will be where and how (hegemonic) hetero-national discourses permeate the interactions of PMCs with sex and death, thereby containing and transforming sex and death into stable and non-threatening performances.
By focusing on the brutal and perverse interactions of PMCs with sex and death this presentation seeks to “turn away from the comfort zone of polite exchange in order to embrace a truly political negativity” (Halberstam 2008). In this way, this presentation will not play nicely with PMCs (or sex and death for that matter) in order to turn PMCs against the institutions and ideologies that most regularly trade in hetero-national discourses – e.g. state militaries.
The Evolution of the UN's Constitutional Assistance: A Historical and Post-Colonial Perspective
Vijayashri Sripati
Thursday, 26 March 2009
1:30-3pm, Room 372 York Lanes
This presentation analyses the evolution of the United Nation’s constitutional assistance role from a historical and post-colonial perspective. It argues that the UN’s constitutional support has evolved into a “policy institution,” or established practice. Constitution-making involves a profound reorientation of a state’s political and socio-economic order. Seen in this light, the UN’s constitutional assistance, far from being mere technical assistance is hugely significant. Therefore, the very idea of the internationalization of constitution-making, - essentially a domestic process - needs to be questioned.
Through examples drawn from recent case-studies, it shows how the UN’s support of constitution-making, has influenced its structuring of the post-Cold War constitution-making processes and even the constitutional outcome. The presentation argues that it is only by asking why the UN has been empowered to provide constitutional assistance can the broader historical and ideological aspects fundamentally significant to understanding its role be uncovered.
Ethnography of a “Policy-in-the-Making”: Responsibility to Protect Under Anthropological Scrutiny
Ariane Bélanger-Vincent
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
11:00am-12:30pm, Room 305 York Lanes
Ariane Bélanger-Vincent is a PhD candidate in anthropology at Laval University (Quebec City) and is a YCISS visitor for 2008-2009.
The idea of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) was originally suggested by an international commission launched by the Canadian government in 2000. It was formulated in order to bridge the gap between sovereignty and the international protection of populations threatened by the actions or passivity of their own government. R2P has now become a familiar humanitarian intervention policy within the United Nations. My presentation will focus on the main aspects of a research project in progress about R2P. More specifically, the project seeks to show how anthropological tools such as ethnography can shed light on international relations. Furthermore, I will show how the ethnography of a “policy-in-the-making”, that is the social processes of formulation and institutionalization of R2P, can provide a better understanding of the ways international politics is performed.
Academic Boycotts and Contemporary Conflict Seminar Series
Boycotts have emerged in recent decades as a favoured means of grassroots opposition to certain politics and practices. Often these boycotts are directed at firms or industries in the name of environmental or humanitarian goals. In the past few months, framed as an attempt to build on the successes of a similarly structured campaign against historic South African apartheid, calls for boycotts have been raised in response to Israeli action in Gaza. These calls have included a request for the boycotting of Israeli academic institutions. Boycotts raise fundamental issues for universities and other academic institutions: how do boycotts affect the university's commitments to free speech and inquiry, which are central to our functions? To what degree are public universities state institutions, and so appropriate targets for boycotts which oppose state policy? Are boycotts sustainable and peaceful ways for intellectuals to intervene in conflicts, or are they counter-productive?
With this series, YCISS invites the community to explore these and other issues by presenting a range of perspectives for consideration and discussion. The spirit with which we offer this seminar series was articulately expressed by the president of Georgetown University
http://president.georgetown.edu/sections/speeches/35089.html.
Academic Boycotts as the Creation of Counterproductive Efforts for Peace and Antithetical Constructs to Academic Freedom
Edward S. Beck
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
3:30-5:30pm, Room 305 York Lanes
Dr. Edward S. Beck, Co-Founder and now President Emeritus of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), is currently Professor in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Walden University. He has served on the faculties and administrative staff of Penn State University, New York University, and Rutgers universities among several others. He enjoys affiliate appointments at Haifa University and Bar-Ilan Universities. He received his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania and Bachelors and Masters Degrees from New York University. He has served as the President of the American Mental Health Counselors Association, on the Board of the Council for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs, and as founding editor of the Practice Section of the Journal of Mental Health Counseling. He is the author of numerous articles and chapters and specialized in professional standards and ethics. Currently he is working on a multiculturally oriented book whose working title is: Counseling Jews as a Diverse, But Distinct Multicultural Minority.
He has been a past Community Relations Council Chair for his local Harrisburg Jewish Federation and has been active in AIPAC, ADL and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.
Ed has watched SPME grow from a Yahoo groups listserv of just a few like-minded individuals in 2002 to an organization that has had the participation of 44,000 college professors, including nearly 40 Nobel Laureates and 60 University Presidents, taking important stands on issues of academic freedom and raising the level of the narrative of the Arab-Israeli conflict from polemics to scholarship across the disciplines.
Boycotts as Civil Resistance: The Moral Responsibility of Intellectuals
Omar Barghouti
Monday, 2 March 2009
1-3pm, Room 305 York Lanes
Omar Barghouti is an independent Palestinian researcher, commentator and human rights activist living in the occupied West Bank. He is a founding member of the Palestinian civil society Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Campaign as well as a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). He contributed to the philosophical volume, "Controversies and Subjectivity" (John Benjamins, 2005) and to "The New Intifada: Resisting Israel's Apartheid" (Verso Books, 2001). He advocates an ethical vision for a unitary, secular democratic state in historic Palestine.
A growing debate around the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement has reached North American shores, with prominent unions, civil society organizations and public figures joining the movement to sanction the Israeli state and related institutions for systemic violations of fundamental Palestinian human rights. Since the recent assault on the Gaza Strip, this movement has made important advancements, including endorsements from the President of the UN General Assembly, Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu, intellectuals like Slavoj Zizek, Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak, John Berger, and Etienne Balibar (among others), as well as the Congress of South African Trade Unions, a number of student unions and social movements worldwide.
The BDS movement poses an important challenge to intellectuals. In contexts of colonial oppression, intellectuals who advocate and work for justice cannot be just intellectuals. They cannot but be immersed in some form or another of activism and to organically engage in collective emancipatory processes. In short, they are challenged to be *just*intellectuals.
The questions remain: Is there a role for intellectuals and ordinary citizens to play in solidarity with the oppressed or is peace in the region dependent on allowing the diplomats and negotiators of The Middle East Quartet negotiate a peace between chosen actors in the region? Is this a sustainable movement that can build on the successes of the similarly inspired movement against South African apartheid or is it engaging in counter-productive actions that threaten to undermine delicate peace efforts in the region as its critics claim? Furthermore, how are those who reside in Canada, seemingly removed from this conflict, most constructively able contribute to the establishment of a lasting peace in the region?
The York Centre for Asian Research, the York Centre for International and Security Studies, and the Centre for Study of Korea at the University of Toronto present:
Roundtable with Ted Lipman, Canadian Ambassador to the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
Thursday, 30 October 2008
3-4:30pm, Room 280 York Lanes
Participation in this roundtable is limited to university faculty and students.
Ted Lipman joined the Canadian Department of External Affairs in 1976 and his first assignment in Asia was to the Canadian Embassy in Beijing, 1977-80. Since then he has had a variety of assignments in China, including serving as Canada's first Trade Commissioner in South China (1982-85), Canadian Consul General in Shanghai (1995-99) and Minister, Canadian Embassy, Beijing (1999-2001). He has also served in the United States on three occasions; UN General Assembly, Consul and Trade Commissioner, New York City and Canadian Consul in Pittsburgh. Ted Lipman's most recent assignment abroad was as Executive Director of the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei (2001-2004).
Canadian Policy Towards Bangladesh: How Does the North Look at the South?
Zaglul Haider
Thursday, 16 October 2008
2:30-4pm, Room 280 York Lanes
Zaglul Haider is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh and a Research Fellow at the York Centre for International and Security Studies. His most recent published book is The Changing Pattern of Bangladesh Foreign Policy: A Comparative Study of the Mujib and Zia Regimes.
This seminar will investigate the ways that Canada, one of the key partners of the industrial north and a key commercial power of the world, looks at Bangladesh, one of the least developed countries of the world. The central argument of the presentation will be that Canadian approach towards Bangladesh has been different during different phases of recent history. Professor Haider will further discuss the Canadian/Bangladeshi relationship with respect to issues of immigration, human rights, governance, and military and non-military bilateralism. Professor Haider will conclude by providing potential solutions to improve relations between the two countries.
The Centre for Refugee Studies and the Centre for International and Security Studies present:
The Challenges of Decommissioning 90,000 Ex-combatants in Southern Sudan
William Deng Deng
Tuesday, 14 October 2008
12:30-2pm, Room 305 York Lanes
William Deng Deng, a Sudanese refugee to Canada, is a long time CRS friend and a graduate of York's African Studies program. He graduated with degrees in political science and environmental studies. He began working with the UN in Rwanda to initiate environmental rehabilitation with returning refugees and now works to negotiate with and re-integrate rebel fighters into society. He has recently been appointed Chairperson of the South Sudan Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) Commission.
Friends are invited to a welcome reception at CRS (3rd Floor York Lanes) after the talk, at 2:00pm.
The Old and New Practices of Humanitarianism, Arms Control, and Disarmament
Ritu Mathur
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
2:30-4pm, Room 280 York Lanes
Ritu Mathur is a Ph.D candidate in the Department of Political Science at York University. She is a Researcher with the York Centre for International & Security Studies. The title of her Ph.D dissertation is The International Committee of the Red Cross and Humanitarian Practices of Arms Control and Disarmament. She is engaged with both traditional and critical security studies literature in addressing the problems of arms control and disarmament, humanitarianism and peace.
The dichotomy between the old and new practices of humanitarianism, arms control, and disarmament (ACD) respectively opens a space for exploring the historical relationship between the fields of humanitarianism, arms control, and disarmament. This relationship is articulated in discourses constituting actors with particular identities, expertise, and security practices. A study of the effects of these practices explicates the ethical and political tensions involved in humanitarian practices of arms control and disarmament.
McLaughlin College & the Centre for International and Security Studies present:
Current Challenges of the Canadian Forces
Lieutenant-General (Retired) George E.C. Macdonald, CMM, MVO, CD
Monday, 6 October 2008
12-1:30pm, Room 140 McLaughlin College
Lieutenant-General (Retired) George E.C. Macdonald, served for 38 years in the Canadian Forces, and following his retirement he joined CFN Consultants, focusing on defence and security. His final position in the Forces was Vice Chief of the Defence Staff from 2001 to 2004, following three years as the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of NORAD. Initially, LGen Macdonald spent several years as an operational fighter pilot. He has commanded at the squadron, base/wing, and air division level. Throughout his career, he held many leadership positions in Ottawa, and has served with NATO forces in Germany and Norway, and with North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) in both Winnipeg and Colorado Springs, Colorado. He also held the position of Director of Operations in the Foreign and Defence Policy Secretariat in the Privy Council Office. In his last position as Vice Chief of the Defence Staff, LGen Macdonald was the senior resource manager for the Department of National Defence and was responsible for strategic planning. Because of this experience, he realizes the challenges faced by Canadian Forces in attempting to meet their objectives in Afghanistan and other parts of the world.
Private Security Companies and Stability Operations: Presence, Prospects, and Problems
Christopher Spearin
Thursday, 24 April 2008
12:30-2pm, Room 280 York Lanes
Dr. Christopher Spearin is Chair of the Department of Security and International Affairs at the Canadian Forces College. Dr. Spearin's research concerns change in militaries, global security governance, non-state actors, mercenaries, the privatization of security, and Canadian foreign and defence policy.
Stability operations cover a number of areas including humanitarian and development assistance, security sector reform, and humanitarian demining. Many different types of actors are involved in these areas, the most recent newcomer being the international private security company (PSC). In recognizing the PSC presence in stability operations, the talk will strive to investigate a number of questions: What are the characteristics and composition of these companies? What sort of tasks do they perform in stability operations? Why are PSCs interested in these tasks and why do clients wish PSCs to conduct them? What problems exist in handing over these important tasks to the private sector? What might the future bring in terms of PSC involvement in stability operations? Exploring these questions will place into sharp focus the potential impact and controversial nature of these companies and how, in a related manner, the dynamics of and the relationships forged in contemporary stability operations are changing.
The York Centre for International and Security Studies and the York Centre for Asian Research present:
Current Situation in Sri Lanka and Getting a Peace Process Back on Track
Angela Bogdan, High Commissioner to Sri Lanka and Maldives
Tuesday, 15 April 2008
2:30-4pm, Room 390 York Lanes
High Commissioner Angela Bogdan, a York alumnus, has been a member of Foreign Affairs Canada since 1984 and has served in different postings around Europe, including the Canadian delegation to NATO. She has been serving as High Commissioner to Sri Lanka since 2006. She will be discussing the current situation in Sri Lanka focusing on how to get the peace process back on track. She will be outlining the situation, why it collapsed, and the prospects for peace in the near future. She will also provide insights on Canada’s approach and strategic interests in Sri Lanka. This will be followed by a discussion where High Commission Bogdan will solicit ideas and views from the faculty and graduate students in attendance.
"Quasi-Track Two" Diplomacy: A Realistic Analysis of the Geneva Process in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Amira Schiff, Faculty at the Conflict Management and Negotiation Program, Political Studies Department, Bar-Ilan University
Tuesday, 8 April 2008
2:30-4pm, Room 305 York Lanes
Amira Schiff specializes in International Relations; Conflict Management and Conflict Resolution theories; the Israeli Palestinian peace process and the peace process in Cyprus. She is faculty in the program on Conflict Management and Negotiation and in the Political Science department in Bar- Ilan University and is a visiting scholar at the YCISS. Her recently published PhD. dissertation focused on prenegotiation processes in the Israeli Palestinian peace process and in the Cyprus Conflict. Her recent article: "Pre-negotiation and its Limits in Ethno-National Conflicts: A Systematic Analysis of Process and Outcomes in the Cyprus Negotiations" is forthcoming in International Negotiation, 2008. Her current research focuses on Track Two theory. Another work which is currently under process concerns a comparative research of the Readiness theory.
This article seeks to contribute to the theoretical development of the unofficial diplomacy theory, through an examination of the assumptions underlying models and concepts relating to unofficial diplomacy as applied to the process leading to the drafting of the Geneva Accords. This process, was represented to the public in October 2003 as an act of unofficial diplomacy, and is defined in the literature as an act of track two, or specifically, hard track two diplomacy. This study examines whether the process is consistent with current definitions of unofficial diplomacy, and suggests that the Geneva process constitutes a distinct type of unofficial activity which its unique features may have significant implications on the peace process.
Subalternity
Nalini Persram
Tuesday, 1 April 2008
2:30-4pm, Room 305 York Lanes
Nalini Persram is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Social Science at York University. She teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in the Social and Political Thought program. Her current courses focus on postcolonial thought. She is hoping to offer courses in the future relating to empire and political thought, and modernity and the postcolonial. She has acquired degrees in music, political science, international relations, and international politics. She has also recently released an edited collection titled Postcolonialism and Political Theory.
This paper examines some of the most influential ways the concepts of "subalternity" and "the subaltern" have been worked through the literature in the field of postcolonial studies.
A Prison Within a Prison: Security Certificates and Entrenchment of the Exception
Mike Larsen
Thursday, 13 March 2008
12:30-2pm, Room 305 York Lanes
Mike Larsen is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at York University, and a researcher at the York Centre for International and Security Studies. He has previously published “Incarcerating the Inadmissible: KIHC as an Exceptional Moment in Canadian Federal Imprisonment”, Number 45 in the YCISS Working Paper Series. His doctoral research deals with the governance of security through the fostering of vigilance in a post-September 11 context.
This paper explores the processes through which a state of exception can become embedded within the framework of established institutions, and discusses the implications of such normalization. The paper is based on an ongoing study of the Kingston Immigration Holding Centre (KIHC) - a unique facility constructed on the grounds of Millhaven Federal Institution in 2006 to detain individuals subject to security certificates. I begin by briefly introducing the KIHC facility and current security certificate laws, and outlining several theories on states of exception, with an emphasis on Ericson’s concept of counter-law. Building on this material, and using KIHC as a case study, I explore the tension that exists between a state of general exception and the continued presence of legal checks on state power. I argue that the result of this tension is the increasing emergence of exceptional policies and spaces alongside or within ‘normal’ institutions and legal regimes - a development that simultaneously entrenches the exception and blurs the boundaries of the ‘normal’.
Iran’s Foreign Policy
Panel
Wednesday, 12 March 2008
3-4:30pm, Room 390 York Lanes
Dr. Bahador Aminian, Dean, School of International Relations, Tehran
Dr. Seyed Kazem Sajjadpour, Associate Professor, School of International Relations, Tehran
Dr. Hossein Pourahmadi, Associate Professor, Economics and Political Science, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran
Mr. Mohammad T. Hosseini, Senior Expert in Nuclear Issues
Terror, Deterritorialization, and the Unmaking of State Power: Producing Landscapes of Violence in the Mozambican “Civil” War
Libby Lunstrum, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, York University
Thursday, 6 March 2008
12:30-2pm, Room 280 York Lanes
In this talk, I use the apartheid South African-backed Mozambican “civil” war as a window through which to investigate the relation between violence, terror, and deterritorialization, focusing in particular on the territorial underpinnings of the dissolution of state power. During the height of the Mozambican war in the 1980s, countless rural residents were terrorized out of their villages. Drawing on interviews with survivors and witnesses of the conflict, I show how the South African-backed rebel organization Renamo (Mozambican National Resistance) attempted to bring down the Mozambican state largely through strategies of deterritorialization. Through this investigation, I work to expand theories of deterritorialization, first, by showing how the link between territory and terror offers a cautionary tale to be read against more celebratory accounts of deterritorialization. Second, as Renamo’s goal was to disarticulate state, territory, and citizenry—rather than rearticulate them in any positive sense—this case calls into question the (seemingly necessary) relation between deterritorialization and reterritorialization.
What are the Real Reasons for Canada's War in Afghanistan?
Mike Skinner
Thursday, 21 February 2008
12:30-2:30pm, Room 280 York Lanes
Michael Skinner is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science, York University, and a Researcher at the York Centre for International and Security Studies (YCISS). His doctoral research compares the international missions in Guatemala and Afghanistan.
In the summer of 2007, YCISS researcher Michael Skinner joined Afghan-Canadian Hamayon Rastgar on a tour of Afghanistan. During Skinner's five week visit, they travelled through five provinces - Kabul, Parwan, Bamiyan, Wardak, and Ghazni. Rastgar travelled further, during his three
month stay - north to the cities of Kunduz and Mazar-i Sharif, and south to Kandahar City. Skinner and Rastgar listened to the stories of working class Afghans, students, academics, and opposition political leaders.
Canadian political, military, and business leaders tell Canadians there are at least four reasons why Canada is at war in Afghanistan: retaliation for the 9/11 attacks; Canadian security; Afghan development and security; and the liberation of Afghan women. Many Afghans argue these are hollow excuses. Skinner examines these arguments in comparison to the geopolitical and economic reasons many Afghans believe Canada is really at war in their home.
‘In-and-Out’: The Paradox of Political Violence
Mark Ayyash
Thursday, 24 January 2008
12:30-2pm, Room 305 York Lanes
Mark Ayyash is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at York University, and a researcher at the York Centre for International and Security Studies. He has previously published “The Appearance of War in Discourse”, which appears this month in Constellations. He is currently writing a dissertation on the relationship between political violence and social relations.
This paper outlines a paradox underpinning the American neoconservative ‘in-and-out’ plan for the Iraq War. I first discuss the manner in which the paradox unraveled the neoconservative discourse from within by means of its Clausewitzian conception of war. This will serve to launch an exploration of the paradoxical relationship between politics and violence in the concept of political violence itself. By examining some of the works of contemporary political and social theorists, the paper highlights (1) the difficulty of separating politics from violence or violence from politics, and (2) the improbability of formulating a harmonious relationship between them. The paper concludes with some preliminary thoughts on how we can theorize political violence by drawing on some insights from Jacques Derrida’s “Force of Law”, and proposing a concept of ‘forceful legitimacy’.
Contemporary Issues in Arms Control and Disarmament
Ambassador Marius Grinius, Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament and Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
10-11:30am, Room 390 York Lanes
Policy Officer Recruitment Programme
Monday, 3 December 2007
11am, Room 372 York Lanes (YCISS Library)
The Directorate of Public Policy at the Department of National Defence is currently conducting its 2007-2008 recruitment campaign for the Policy Officer Recruitment Programme. We plan to visit your University in the coming weeks to discuss both this Recruitment Programme, and the other opportunities that the Department of National Defence provides for young scholars though the Security and Defence Forum (SDF).
The Policy Officer Recruitment Programme is a five-year programme designed to recruit and develop talented Policy Officers to meet the unique demands of the defence policy environment. Policy Officers work in areas such as policy development, strategic analysis, international security policy and parliamentary affairs, and may also be assigned to other organizations within National Defence Headquarters, such as public affairs or strategic intelligence. They research a broad range of issues, deliver oral briefings, and prepare reports, analyses, speeches and other types of written material.
Candidates must have a Master's degree in history, political science, international affairs, public administration (with a clear focus on public policy, governmental affairs or international relations) or a related discipline. They must also have experience in researching and writing on subjects related to defence, security and/or government policy at the graduate level, and be proficient in English or French.
The SDF is mandated to develop a domestic competence and national interest in defence issues of current and future relevance to Canadian security. Through this forum, the Department of National Defence funds a series of awards, both scholarships (M.A., Aboriginal, Ph.D, Post-Doctoral), and internships, to foster interest in and knowledge of security and defence issues among young Canadian scholars.
The Directorate of Public Policy will send a representative to your institution on Monday, 3 December 2007 at 11am to discuss these opportunities with any potential applicants, and field any questions that interested students might have. We look forward to seeing you there!
Haunting Military Masculinities: The Challenge of the Gendered, Ethnic, and Sexual Stranger
Victoria Basham, Research Associate, York Centre for International and Security Studies
ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Bristol
Thursday, 8 November 2007
12:30-2:30pm, Room 305 York Lanes
Victoria’s doctoral research focused on how military personnel negotiate social diversity issues and policies within the British armed forces. In this seminar, she argues that despite the Ministry of Defence’s overt attempts to attract more women, ethnic minorities and lesbian, gay, and bisexual citizens to the forces, a closer examination of military diversity policies reveals the salience of normative (mis)understandings of social identity that facilitate stereotypes and mythologies about non-white/non-heterosexual/non-male corporealities. Drawing on qualitative research with members of the British military, she demonstrates how women, ethnic minorities, and gay personnel can become simultaneously hypervisible as members of these specific social groups yet invisible as individuals, undermining their ability to have their contributions recognised and making them vulnerable to harassment and discrimination. Whilst this can lead to an ambivalent existence for many personnel, she concludes that their presence also troubles the military’s fragile hegemonic identity as one shaped by white, heterosexual notions of masculinity.
Covering the Story: The Challenges Facing an Arab Reporter in Israel and the Palestinian Areas – an Insider’s Perspective
Khaled Abu Toameh
Wednesday, 17 October 2007
12-2:30pm, Room 372 York Lanes (YCISS Library)
Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning Israeli- Arab journalist specializing in Palestinian affairs. He writes for The Jerusalem Post, U.S. News & World Report, and occasionally for The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Abu Toameh also works as a producer for Swedish and Danish TV and has made a number of documentaries for the BBC. In addition, he serves as a consultant on Palestinian affairs to several media outlets. Over the years his articles have appeared in The Sunday Times, The Daily Express, The Jerusalem Report, The New Republic, and Al-Fajr.
Khaled has an exceptional ability and the right contacts to uncover breaking stories. He was one of the very few journalists to predict Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 PA elections. This is a unique opportunity to hear in-depth, behind-the-scenes analysis by a highly respected and well-connected journalist reporting on one of the world’s most contested regions. A question-and-answer period will follow his remarks.
The Trend of U.S. Policy toward Southeast Asia in the Context of Current East Asia Cooperation and its Implications for China
Hui Li , Research Associate, York Centre for International and Security Studies, B.A. (Beijing Institute of Business), M.A. (University of International Relations, Beijing)
Tuesday, 2 October 2007
2:30-4:30pm, Room 390 York Lanes
His research interests include: Southeast Asia; Australia; East Asia cooperation; Asia-Pacific security; China’s foreign policy. He is an assistant professor at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) and has made short-term work visits to Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Pakistan. Currently he is a visiting scholar at YCISS sponsored by the China Scholarship Council.
Human Security for an Urban Century: Local Challenges, Global Perspectives
Dr. Robert Lawson, Senior Policy Advisor, Human Security Policy Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canada
Tuesday, 18 September 2007
10am-12pm, Room 280 York Lanes
The Ottawa Convention: Reflections on Ten Years of Mine Action
in conjunction with, V. Tony Hauser's photography display:
Living with Landmines
Monday, 17 September 2007
2:30-4pm, Room 280 York Lanes
Living with Landmines Photography Exhibit on Display:
Monday, 17 September 2007, Vari Hall Rotunda
Tuesday, 18 September 2007 - Friday, 21 September 2007, Scott Library Reading Room
The York Centre for International and Security Studies in cooperation with V. Tony Hauser, one of Canada’s most prominent portrait photographers, will be hosting a photography exhibit at York in September. The exhibition is titled “Living with Landmines” and is to be presented in recognition of the 10th anniversary of the International Landmines Agreement and will be touring universities across the country. The exhibit is composed of 17 nearly life-size portraits of children who have suffered the consequences of landmines, each accompanied by a statement describing the child. To complement this exhibit YCISS has invited two landmines experts to present on the landmines ban.
Leon (Lee) Sigal - Dr. Sigal is Director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the SSRC in New York, and has also served in the US State Department. He recently published Negotiating Minefields: The Landmines Ban in American Politics, and we are asking him to speak on that theme at the seminar.
Robert (Bob) Lawson - Dr. Lawson is Senior Policy Advisor, Human Security Policy Division at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canada. He was a member of the Canadian team negotiating the Ottawa Convention, and then spent several years in the office of the Landmines Ambassador working on its implementation and universalisation. Dr. Lawson also co-edited To Walk Without Fear: The Global Movement to Ban Landmines. We are asking him to reflect on those experiences at the seminar.
Guerilla Diplomacy
Daryl Copeland
Friday, 13 April 2007
2:30-4pm, Room 390 York Lanes
Daryl Copeland is a Canadian diplomat who has held postings abroad in Thailand, Ethiopia, New Zealand, and Malaysia. Among his assignments in Ottawa he has worked as deputy director for international communications, director for southeast Asia, senior advisor, public diplomacy, and director of communications services. From 1996-99 he was national program director of the CIIA in Toronto and editor of Behind the Headlines. In 2000, he received the Canadian foreign service officer award.
The York Centre for International and Security Studies and the Department of Political Science, York University present:
Iran and the Politics of Crisis
Thursday, 29 March 2007
2:30-4pm, Room 280 York Lanes
A roundtable discussion on the transformation of Iran’s nuclear program into an international crisis as it bears on US-Iranian relations, politics inside Iran and the US, global military policy, and the regional dynamics of the Middle East.
Sabah Alnasseri, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, York University
Khashayar Hooshiyar, Ph.D Candidate, Contract Faculty, Department of Political Science, York University
Robert Latham, Director, Centre for International and Security Studies, York University and Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, York University
Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, Professor, History and Near Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto and Chair, Department of Historical Studies, University of Toronto-Mississauga
Sources of Conflict in South Asia
Zaglul Haider, Research Associate, York Centre for International and Security Studies
Wednesday, 28 March 2007
1-2:30pm, Room 372 York Lanes (YCISS Library)
Zaglul Haider completed his Ph.D in Political Science at Clark Atlanta University, USA. His research interests focus on: Foreign policy, security, conflict resolution, regional cooperation, foreign aid, governance, development, and military politics. He is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh. His most recent published book is: The Changing Pattern of Bangladesh Foreign Policy: A Comparative Study of the Mujib and Zia Regimes.
Haider argues that South Asia is a fragmented zone that historically failed to develop a sense of regional identity. Bilateral relations between most of the countries are defined by mistrust, misunderstanding, and antagonism. The primary issues of conflict in South Asia are political, economic, and security issues. Politically the Kashmir issue between India and Pakistan, the Ganges water dispute between India and Bangladesh, and the Tamil issue between India and Srilanka stranded inter-state relations in the region. Economically Indian domination over the South Asian economies created suspicion of Indian hegemony among the small states of the subcontinent. Finally nuclearization of India and Pakistan unleashed a nuclear Cold War in South Asia.
The YCISS Afternoon Seminar Series and the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security present:
The G8 as a Forum for Canadian Foreign Policy of Organized Crime
Amandine Sherrer, Haute Ecole de Sciences Politiques, Paris
Monday, 26 March 2007
12:30-2pm, Room 207, Osgoode Hall Law School
Amadine Scherrer is a candidate for the Ph.D in International Relations of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) in Paris and an External Research Associate of the Nathanson Centre. She is in Canada in the winter and spring of 2007 to expand her existing research on the G8 as a forum for member states to elaborate and coordinate law and policy on transnational organized crime. The specific focus of her seminar is whether and why Canada does or does not use the G8 as a context or process for foreign policy and for general juridical policy around organized crime. She will also comment on any specific Quebec involvement in Canada’s G8 participation as regards transnational crime in general and organized crime in particular.
Terrorism and the City: Urbanism since 9-11
Jason Burke, Researcher, York Centre for International and Security Studies
Tuesday, 13 March 2007
1-2:30pm, Room 305 York Lanes
Terrorism is an ancient phenomenon that in its present form is threatening the way of life for people in cities around the world. Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre towers and the Pentagon, cities seem to have undergone a profound transformation as a result of the proliferation of makeshift security measures and the decentralization of services. Urbanism has been under attack physically, socially and economically by the threat of terrorism. Some of these changes are having a negative impact on the urban environment therefore it is important for planners and city officials to devise positive urban design initiatives for the purpose of reducing the effects of a potential terrorist act while maintaining the positives of urbanity. The impact of the US embassy in Ottawa on the merchants of Sussex Drive is used as micro-scale case study.
Jason Burke is a visiting MSc student from Utrecht University, The Netherlands. His research Interests focus on: Effects of terrorism on urban planning, terrorist threat and public space and emergency management schemes for cities.
The African Studies Saul Graduate Seminar and the York Centre for International and Security Studies (YCISS) present:
AFRICOM/AFRICAPLAN: THE NEW SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA?
A Roundtable Discussion
Participants: Ryerson Christie, Ph.D candidate Political Science and YCISS; Pablo Idahosa, African Studies; Robert Latham, Director, YCISS; Michael Skinner, Ph.D candidate Political Science and YCISS; Centime Zeleke, Ph.D Candidate, Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought
Tuesday, 6 March 2007
2:30-4pm, Room 280 York Lanes
Recently, Africa has seen a new wave of U.S. soldiers landing on the continent for training and other missions. The recent events in the Horn, where Ethiopian troops overthrew the Islamists in Somalia, with clear US logistical and combat support, are evidence of a wider presence and influence. As many Africans look to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Ghana’s independence, others are perturbed by what they see in its willingness to become a staging point for US military operations in Africa, aiding the US establishment of AFRICOM: the proposed US regional military command that will cover all of Africa (expected to be fully operational by September 2008).
This roundtable will address the implications of drawing Africa into the so-called War on Terrorism; the securing of strategic resources like oil; and the expanding role of China in the region. It will also consider more generally what this might mean for development, human security, and conflict throughout Africa.
The York Centre for International and Security Studies and the Centre for Refugee Studies present:
Why Small Solutions will Solve Africa’s Big Problems
Rebecca Tinsley
Monday, 26 February 2007
1:30-3pm, Room 280 York Lanes
Rebecca Tinsley is a former BBC television reporter and is now a freelance journalist. Her special interests include genocide and Africa. For 9 years she ran the Bosnian Support Fund. She founded a lobbying group focusing on Darfur after visiting the refugee camps there in 2004 (www.WagingPeace.info) and is now building a boarding school for 600 girls in Rwanda. She also ghost writes speeches, does election monitoring, is on the Human Rights Watch committee, and is trustee of the Carter Centre’s European base.
The YCISS Afternoon Seminar Series and the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security present:
Exploring the Relationships between Transnational Relations and Transnational Law as Fields of Study
Robert Latham, Director, York Centre for International and Security Studies, and
Craig Scott, Director, Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security
Tuesday, 20 February 2007
1-2:30pm, Room 305 York Lanes
The directors of two York research centres with complementary mandates will discuss the nature of “the transnational” in two fields that are central to their respective programs, international relations (YCISS) and law (Nathanson Centre). Professors Latham and Scott will comment on whether these fields need to have a transnational dimension thoroughly integrated in both empirical and normative senses, and, if so, how. Partly in order to explore how the two centres could collaborate in future years, Latham and Scott will also explore how transnational relations and transnational law might interact in how each is understood.
Doctrines in International Criminal Law and Individual Responsibility for Various Forms of Support for Transnational Terrorism
Payam Akhavan, Professor, Faculty of Law, McGill University
Monday, 12 February 2007
12:30-2pm, Room 107, Osgoode Hall Law School
Professor Akhavan teaches and researches in the areas of public international law, international criminal law, and transitional justice, with a particular interest in human rights and multiculturalism, war crimes prosecutions, UN reform, and the prevention of genocide.
Global Justice, Local Controversies: The International Criminal Court and the Sovereignty of Victims
Kamari Maxine Clarke, Associate Professor, Yale University
Thursday, 23 November 2006
11am-12:30pm, Room 390 York Lanes
Kamari M. Clarke is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Yale University and research scientist at the Yale Law School. Over the years Clarke's research has ranged from studies of social and religious movements in the United States and West Africa to related transnational legal movements, to inquiries into the cultural politics of power and justice in the burgeoning realm of international tribunals. She is the author of Mapping Yoruba Networks: Power and Agency in the Making of Transnational Networks (Duke University Press, 2004), and Globalization and Race: Transformations in the Cultural Politics of Blackness (Duke Press, 2006) and Justice in The Making: The International Criminal Court and the Cultural Politics of Human Rights, (forthcoming), a book on the emergent international human rights regime. By using examples from United Nations preparatory commissions for the International Criminal Court (ICC), Non Governmental Organizations engaged in ICC organizing, and controversies over the legal classification and management of violence, she argues that to understand human rights movements as they are taking shape in West Africa and elsewhere, is to understand the ways that local knowledge travels and is incorporated into third world democracies and neoliberal state projects.
Critical Problem-Solving in Global Spaces: The Case of Small Arms and Human Insecurity
Keith Krause, Professor, Political Science,
Institut universitaire de hautes etudes internationales, Geneve
Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva
Wednesday, 8 November 2006
12:30-2pm,
Verney Room, S674 Ross Building
Before joining the Graduate Institute of International Studies faculty in 1994, Keith Krause was Associate Professor at York University (Toronto) and Acting Director of the Centre for International and Security Studies. His research interests focus on three areas: arms transfers and arms control (in particular small arms), concepts of security and multilateralism, and global governance. Current research concentrates on state-formation and insecurity, the reconceptualization of security, and transnational civil society mouvements. He is Programme Director of the Small Arms Survey. His published work includes Arms and the State, a co-edited volume, Critical Security Studies.
Strengthening the Weak: Canadian Support in Developing the Afghanistan National Development Strategy
Colonel Mike Capstick, former Commander of the Canadian Strategic Advisory Team in Afghanistan
Wednesday, 4 October 2006
10-11:30am, Room 390 York Lanes
Col Capstick attended school in Montreal until joining the CF in 1975. He enrolled under the Officer Candidate Training Plan and graduated from Artillery Officer Classification Training in Gagetown in February 1977. He served as a junior officer in both the 1st and 2nd Regiments, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery in Germany and Petawawa. He commanded G Battery, 3rd Regiment Royal Canadian Horse Artillery in Shilo Manitoba from 1986 to 88. He has also served in a number of operational, personnel and doctrine related staff appointments in Land Force Command Headquarters, National Defence Headquarters and in Land Force Western Area. Col Capstick assumed command of 3rd Regiment Royal Canadian Horse Artillery (RCHA) in July 1991 and transitioned to command 1 RCHA upon the amalgamation of the two units in July 1992. This period included command of the Regiment and the Nicosia Sector in the United Nations Force in Cyprus. On promotion to Colonel in July 1997 he assumed command of the Canadian Contingent of the NATO Stabilization Force (CCSFOR) in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Col Capstick is a graduate of the IG (Field) Course, the Infantry Company Commander's Course, the British Joint Warfare Course, and both the Canadian Land Force Command and Staff College and Canadian Forces Command and Staff College. He participated in the Army Officer Degree Programme and graduated from the University of Ottawa in 2001. In July 2005 he was appointed to command the Strategic Advisory Team-Afghanistan in Kabul.
“What is your Story?”: An Israeli-Palestinian Two Narrative History Project
Professor Eyal Naveh, Tel-Aviv University
Thursday, 21 September 2006
11am-12:30pm, Room 305 York Lanes
Professor Naveh will discuss a unique project aiming to write a history text book of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by two separate narratives that will appear next to each other in the same book. He will analyze the idea, discuss the efforts and experience of the teams, and illuminate the difficulties and challenges of the project started more than four years ago.
Bi-National Planning Group Brief: A Continental Approach to Defence and Security
Tuesday, 11 April 2006
9-10:30am, Room 390 York Lanes
Captain (N) J.J.R.R. Bergeron, Canadian Forces
Captain (N) Richard Bergeron is Co-Director of the Bi-National Planning Group (BPG), Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado. The BPG was established post September 11, 2001 with an agreement signed by the United States Secretary of State and the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, for the purpose of enhancing military cooperation between the two countries through bi-national military planning, surveillance and support to civil authorities. After obtaining his bridge watchkeeping certificate in October 1980, Captain (N) Bergeron became an Antisubmarine Warfare Director. As a junior officer he served in various positions at sea aboard HMC Ships Saskatchewan, Nipigon, and Yukon. He also served aboard the French frigate Montcalm for a two-year tour in Toulon, France. In 1987, following a year-long Combat Control Officer course, Captain (N) Bergeron was appointed as Combat Officer of Margaree and the Commissioning crew of HMCS Halifax. Subsequently, he served as Operations Officer of the fifth Canadian Destroyer Squadron before attending the Canadian Forces Command and Staff Course in National Defence Headquarters as Executive Assistant to the associate Assistant Deputy Minister (Personnel) 1996-97. Captain (N) Bergeron commanded HMCS Ottawa from 1998 until 1999, during which he deployed to the Arabian Gulf as part of the Abraham Lincoln Battle Group for a six-month period. Following his command, Captain (N) Bergeron attended the U.S. Naval Command College in Newport, RI. He graduated in June 2000 and subsequently completed a Graduate Degree in Arts in the International Relations program at Salve Regina University before joining the Navy Warfare Development Command in Newport, R.I. as an exchange officer. In 2003 Captain (N) Bergeron returned to Canada and assumed the functions of Director NDHQ Secretariat in Ottawa, where he served until July 2005.
Captain Pamela W. McClune, JAGC, United States Navy
Captain Pamela McClune is Co-Director (Acting) of, and Legal Advisor to, the Bi-National Planning Group (BPG), Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado. The BPG was established post September 11, 2001 with an agreement signed by the United States Secretary of State and the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, for the purpose of enhancing military cooperation between the two countries, through bi-national military planning, surveillance and support to civil authorities. In April 1983, Captain McClune received a direct commission in the United States Navy Reserve. From 1983 until 2001, she served as a claims attorney, general attorney and staff judge advocate in several Reserve units, including units supporting the Office of the Judge Advocate General; Commander, Naval Surface Forces Pacific; Commander, Naval Forces Korea; and U.S. Space Command. In 1991, during Operation DESERT STORM, she served 7 months on active duty as Director of Legal Assistance at Naval Legal Service Office, San Diego. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Captain McClune was mobilized on October 1, 2001 in support of Operation NOBLE EAGLE and served as Deputy Legal Advisor, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) for two years. She joined the BPG as Legal Advisor on December 1, 2003; and she became U.S. Co-Director (Acting) in February 2006. Captain McClune is admitted to practice law in the States of Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas (inactive) and in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado.
Distinguished Critical Thinkers in World Politics Seminar Series
War on ... What? Security as Pacification
Mark Neocleous
Thursday, 18 March 2010
2:30–4:30 pm
Room 519, Fifth Floor
York Research Tower
Mark Neocleous brings together two concepts with very different histories. On the one hand, what is probably the major political fetish of our times: security. On the other hand, a concept about which nowadays virtually nothing is ever said: pacification. The paper will explore the ways in which these terms resonate through their early history, with the aim of unravelling the logic of pacification to contemporary security politics. In doing so, Professor Neocleous will criss-cross through the terrains of war and peace, and law and police, making links between original accumulation and the current war on 'terror'.
Mark Neocleous is Professor of the Critique of Political Economy and Head of the Department of Politics and History at Brunel University, UK. His most recent book is Critique of Security (2008). His earlier books include The Monstrous and the Dead (2005); Imagining the State (2003); The Fabrication of Social Order: A Critical Theory of Police Power (2000); Fascism (1997); and Administering Civil Society: Towards a Theory of State Power (1996). He is a member of the Editorial Collective of Radical Philosophy.
Your Blues Ain’t My Blues: The Constitution of International Security and Insecurity at the Edge of an African Landscape
Professor Siba Grovogui, Johns Hopkins University
Thursday 05 November 2009, 2:30-4:30pm
Conference Centre
Room 519, 5th Floor
York Research Tower (YRT)
York University
In this presentation, Professor Grovogui examinef the new Tuareg rebellions in Mali and Niger in the context of the US Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism initiative. Professor Grovogui also addressed two seldom explored conditions of civil strife and insecurity in postcolonial Africa. The first is of a political order. It is the adoption by African states of globalized notions of order and security that undermine regional and national systems that had previously sustained life and secured the well-being of populations. The second condition of insecurity, resulting from the first, is constitutional. It is the failure of postcolonial states to align the constitutional order on the exigencies of social life, specifically the securitization of domestic systems of production, distribution, solidarity, justice.
Professor Grovogui is Professor of International Relations and Political Theory at the Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University, where he has been a faculty member since 1995. A specialist in international relations theory and political theory, Professor Grovogui has written frequently about African sovereignty, including Sovereigns, Quasi-Sovereigns, and Africans: Race and Self-Determination in International Law (1996) and "Regimes of Sovereignty: Rethinking International Morality and the African Condition". Professor Grovogui previously taught at Eastern Michigan University and holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a law degree from the Institut Polytechnique, Gamal Abdel Nasser in Guinea.
Compassionate Resistance: Mapping Transnational Solidarity in the Age of Empire
Simona Sharoni, Professor of Women’s Studies, State University of New York, Plattsburgh
Wednesday, 10 September 2008
4-5:30pm, Room 305 York Lanes
Dr. Simona Sharoni is an internationally-known feminist scholar, researcher and activist. She holds a Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University and is the author of Gender and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Politics of Women's Resistance, (Syracuse University Press, 1995).
Dr. Sharoni has conducted research and has written extensively on gender dynamics, militarization, and on the politics of resistance, in Israel, Palestine, and the North of Ireland. In addition to putting the final touches on the 2nd edition of Gender and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, she is currently working on three major projects: the first is grounded in the concept of “compassionate resistance”, which she coined. The second project highlights the struggles of veterans to recover their humanity and is tentatively titles “de-militarizing masculinities,” and the last project explores the contemporary feminist pedagogy.
Geopolitics, Empire and the Bush Doctrine
Simon Dalby, Professor of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Department of Geography, Carleton University
Wednesday, 28 November 2007
11:30am-1pm, Room 280 York Lanes
Dr. Dalby reflects on the evolution of the Bush doctrine since the initiation of a war on terror in late 2001, linking discussions of the geopolitical premises of the doctrine with contemporary debates about the possibilities of war with Iran, and with how formulations of empire might be useful intellectual tools for interpreting contemporary events.
Development and Emergency: Blurring the National/International
Mark Duffield, Professor of Development Politics, Department of Politics, University of Bristol
Thursday, 3 May 2007
1:30-3pm, Verney Room, S674 Ross Building
It is now commonplace for politicians to claim that, in an interconnected world, the Western way of life is placed at risk by international instability and extremism. Strengthening social cohesion at home is strategically meshed with reducing poverty and reconstructing fragile states abroad. The talk explores how the control of immigration acts as a lynchpin connecting these regimes of internal and external development. Formed at the time of decolonisation (in response to each crisis of circulation) this risk-based international security architecture has been deepening ever since. The traditional national/ international dichotomy, for example, has now blurred in political imagination and practice. Within this strategic and expansive architecture it is possible to detect the contours of global civil war.
Deconstructing Colin Powell
Hugh Gusterson, Cultural Studies and Sociology, George Mason University
Friday, 9 March 2007
1-3pm, Room 305 York Lanes
Hugh Gusterson has a BA in history from Cambridge University and a PhD in anthropology from Stanford University. He is the author of the books Nuclear Rites (UC Press, 1996) and People of the Bomb (Minnesota, 2004), and co-editor of Why America’s Top Pundits are Wrong (UC Press, 2005) and Cultures of Insecurity (Minnesota, 1999). His articles have appeared in Alternatives, Cultural Anthropology, American Ethnologist, Social Studies of Science, and Science, Technology and Human Values. He writes a monthly column for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Technology Review, Science, and Tikkun.
Post-Communist Studies Seminar Series
YCISS Afternoon Seminar Series/Post Communist Studies Programme
Energy Security and the New Geopolitics of the Caspian Sea Basin
Mr. Farid Shafiyev
(Ambassador of the Republic of Azerbaijan to Canada)
Wednesday 17 March
11.30–1 pm
Room 524, Fifth Floor
York Research Tower
York University (Keele Campus)
Mr. Farid Shafiyev, will focus on the key political and economic issues in the Caspian Sea Basin and the wider international security implications of developments in the region. He will outline the main characteristics of this increasingly important region, review problems of post-Soviet transition of the region’s countries and existing international conflicts in the Caucasus.
Ambassador Shafiyev will also review a number of interrelated themes including:
- Post Soviet transition
- International security - the Caspian geopolitical environment
- Post Soviet conflict and conflict resolution in the context of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan
- Energy security and foreign economic relations - Azerbaijan as a new energy hub
Mr. Shafiyev’s lecture will be followed by open discussion. Do not miss this opportunity for a unique insight into developments in the region which links the Caucasus and Central Asia and their relevance to global security.
Ambassador Farid Shafiyev has a BA in History from Baku State University, Azerbaijan, a Masters Degree in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and a Law Degree from Baku State University. In 1996, Mr. Shafiyev joined the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry. His assignments have included a posting to the Permanent Mission of Azerbaijan to the United Nations in New York in 1998-2001. In 2005 he was posted as Counselor at the Embassy of Azerbaijan in Canada. In 2007-2009 he served as Chargé d’Affaires and was promoted to Ambassador in May 2009. Mr. Shafiyev is the author of several academic publications and has lectured on international security at Western University in Baku.
YCISS Afternoon Seminar Series/ Post Communist Studies Programme
Russia, Europe, and the Politics of Energy Security: The New Agenda
Dr. Vyacheslav Inozemtsev
Thursday 04 March 2010
1–3:30 pm
Room 519, Fifth Floor
Dr. Vyacheslav Inozemtsev, is an influential Russian academic who is a consultant to President Dmitry Medvedev. Dr. Inozemtsev is Director of the Center for Globalization Studies in Moscow, has a PhD in Economics, and works on a range of issues relevant to the modernization program adopted by the Russian government as the key national strategy for this decade.
Dr. Inozemtsev is visiting Washington and Ottawa in late February 2010. As part of this visit, he is kindly able to provide a lecture at York examining the modernization of Russia and its implications for international security. This is a rare and valuable opportunity for an inside look into the development of major new Russian policy approaches.
The YCISS Post-Communist Studies Seminar Series and The York Centre for International and Security Studies (YCISS) Afternoon Seminar Series:
Islam and Ideas of Nation in Central Eurasia
Dr. John Schoeberlein
Thursday October 8 2009 2:30 – 4:00 pm
International Conference Room
5th Floor York Research Tower
Dr John Schoeberlein is the Director, Program on Central Asia and the Caucasus, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University.
The YCISS Post-Communist Studies Seminar Series and The York Centre for International and Security Studies (YCISS) Afternoon Seminar Series:
20 Years since the wall came tumbling down: Observations of Post-Communist Europe
A Conversation with Ambassador John Morrison
(Canada’s Ambassador to Republic of Serbia, Republic of Macedonia and Montenegro)
Tuesday 6th October 2009
12 -2pm
International Conference Centre
5th floor, York Research Tower
John Morrison (BA, McGill University; MA,Cambridge University) is one of Canada’s most experienced diplomats. He joined the Department of External Affairs in 1985 and served abroad as third secretary at the High Commission for Canada in Kuala Lumpur; second secretary (political affairs) in Beijing; program manager (political, economic and public affairs), at the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei; counsellor (economic) in Tokyo; and minister counsellor and deputy head of mission in Moscow. In Ottawa, he has occupied a number of positions, notably director of the Eastern Europe and Balkans Division, and of the China and Mongolia Division. From 1999 to 2000, he was a foreign policy advisor in the Privy Council Office’s Foreign and Defence Policy Secretariat.
In 2008, he was named Ambassador to the Republic of Serbia, with concurrent accreditation to the Republic of Montenegro and to the Republic of Macedonia.
Putin's Legacy: Bureaucratic Power in a Weak State
Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky, Senior Fellow, Institute of Comparative Political Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
Thursday, 3 April 2008
3:30-5pm, Room 305 York Lanes
Russia, China, and Central Asia: New Patterns of Eurasian Integration and Security
A roundtable discussion
Thursday, 28 February 2008
1-4pm, Room 305 York Lanes
Sergei Plekhanov, Greg Chin, and Bernie Frolic
Department of Political Science, York University
Central Asia: Development, Security and Geopolitics
Didier Chaudet
Thursday, 15 March 2007
1-3pm, Room 305 York Lanes
Didier Chaudet is the founder of a new French think tank “Euro-Power / Europe Puissance”, a PhD candidate at the Institute of Political Studies, Paris, and Fox International Fellow at Yale University. He has extensive field experience in Central Asia. His book “The Neoconservative Movement and Islam” was published in Paris in 2005 by UniversCite Press.
For more details on all upcoming YCISS events
