Abstract:

Ballroom dancing legend Pierre Dulaine will discuss his 'Dancing Classrooms' method which he applied in his award winning documentary 'Dancing in Jaffa' to bring Arab and Jewish children together through dance. Mr. Dulaine will speak about the film, his journey into the world of dance and his experience as a Judge on the Arabic version of the TV show 'So You Think You Can Dance.'  Talk features audio-visual presentation and free lunch.

Speaker Bio:

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Pierre Dulaine was born in Jaffa, Palestine in 1944 to an Irish father and a Palestinian mother--both of whom fled the area in 1948.  After eight months of moving several times, Dulaine's family settled in Amman, Jordan. In 1956, the Suez Crisis forced Dulaine's parents to flee the country, eventually resettling in Birmingham, England.  In 1994 Dulaine founded the Dancing Classrooms program in New York City's public schools in which he encouraged children from various backgrounds to dance together. He later traveled to the city of his birth, Jaffa, to visit his childhood home and to make a film, 'Dancing in Jaffa,' where he brought Israeli Arabs and Jews together through dance and music.  His life was also fictionalized in the film Take the Lead starring Antonio Banderas.  More recently, Pierre Duaine has gained much acclaim in the Arab world for his role as Judge on the Arabic version of the TV show 'So You Think You Can Dance' where he encouraged young Arab men and women to pursue dance as way of dealing with difficult circumstances and certain outdated social taboos.

(See flyer for a list of the co-sponsors)

Note: A screening of 'Dancing in Jaffa' will take place on campus on May 29. For more information, click here.

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Abstract

Social and economic grievances of Tunisian youth played a major role in igniting the uprising in Tunisia, and more generally, the so-called Arab Spring. Despite a successful political transition in the country, progress on addressing youth grievances has been slow in light of deteriorating living conditions, rampant corruption, and rising unemployment. These realities continue to pose a serious challenge to the prospects of building a sustainable democracy in Tunisia. Based on data gathered from meetings with a diverse group of 500 young Tunisians, this talk will shed light on youth’s perceived and actual exclusion from social, economic, and political opportunities. In doing so it will provide a critical assessment of the underlying causes of youth alienation in the country and prospects for greater political, social and economic inclusion.

Speaker Bio

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Ghazi Ben Ahmed leads the Mediterranean Development Initiative of the Center for Transatlantic Relations, Johns Hopkins SAIS in Tunisia. He is the founder and the Secretary General of the Club de Tunis, a Tunisian based foundation that helps policymakers and entrepreneurs devise strategies and development projects for inclusive growth. He has set up jointly with Dar El Dhekra (Remembrance House, the first Tunisian Jewish Association), a project to safeguard Tunisian Jewish Heritage by promoting its products on the US market. Ghazi Ben Ahmed is the Tunisia Coordinator for Leaders Engaged in New Democracies (LEND). He cooperates with the U.S. State Department, the Community of Democracies, and the Club de Madrid to provide peer advice, peer support, and capacity building to political leaders and policy makers in Tunisia. Previously he was the Lead Trade Expert in the African Development Bank (AfDB). Before joining the AfDB, he was a Senior Advisor at the United Nation agency for Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in the Africa and LDC Division. He also worked for almost 10 years in the European Commission in Brussels, in several Directorates-Generals: Trade, EuropeAid and External Relations, responsible for trade issues, EU trade and development policy, textile negotiations, macroeconomic analysis, structural adjustment and institutional building in the Mediterranean countries.

*This event is co-sponsored with the Mediterranean Studies Forum.*

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ABSTRACT:

This study explores the relationship between elected representatives and the parties they belong to in the European context. It uses an elite cross-national survey, exploring the way elected representatives perceive their representative role and construct their perceptions of representation with regards to party unity. In order to bypass the "no-variance" problem in recorded votes, the study makes use of a legislator's sequential decision-making model, according to which party unity is not considered an end-result, but rather a process. Using attitudinal data on legislators’ perceptions and attitudes, the study shows that representatives often feel a tension between different, competing foci of representation – mainly party representation versus all other foci. It then examines how elected representatives reconcile this tension; how they are assisted by internalized perceptions of their role; and the effect of various institutional factors in this process.   

SPEAKER BIO:

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Reut received a Ph.D. in political science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2014, where she won the President Fellowship for outstanding doctoral students. She holds an M.A. with honors in political science from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a B.A with honors in political science and history also from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 

Abstract

A peculiar construction boom is in progress worldwide: border walls are being installed at an unprecedented rate in order to control unwanted immigration by poor people into wealthy countries. This paper asks why, almost a quarter of a century after the Iron Curtain came down, the walls are now going up again. It provides a provocative answer: I suggest that these separation barriers are a logical response of states to the way in which human rights law has been enforced in cases bearing on immigration. In other words, and counter-intuitively, the recent boom in border wall construction signals the success of the human rights tradition, rather than its failure to establish an alternative to territorial sovereignty.

Next, I use the case study of walls to make a larger point on the intractability of the human rights regime that bears on immigration. Building on a systematic analysis of jurisprudence, the paper argues that human rights courts and quasi-judicial bodies utilize an arbitrary category – territory – to balance the policy interests of the individual non-national and the state. The result is essentially random from the perspective of both these stake holders. Walls make concrete a perverse side effect of this compromise: because the regime conflates access with territory, it disproportionately rewards strong young men who already have sufficient capacity (in age, gender, or resources) to scale the barrier, even if their predicament may not actually call for protection. But it privileges them only after they have risked themselves, and if they survive that risk. And so, at least when it comes to immigration, the human rights regime operates in effect as a natural selection mechanism. This is fundamentally unstable and unjust.

Speaker Bio

Moria Paz focuses her scholarship on the intersection of minorities, immigrants, international law, and human rights. Paz is a visiting scholar at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a Fellow at Stanford Law School. Before joining FSI, she was a Law and International Security Fellow at CISAC, a Lecturer in Law and Teaching Fellow of the Stanford Program for International Legal Studies (SPILS) at Stanford Law School. Paz received her S.J.D. doctoral degree from Harvard Law School. While at Harvard, she was awarded a number of fellowships, including at the Hauser Center for Non-Profit Organizations, The European Law Research Center, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Before Harvard, she attended The University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and Beijing Normal University.

She is currently working on two books, Network or State? International Law and The History of Jewish Self-Determination (under contract, Oxford University Press) and The Law of Strangers – Critical Perspectives on Jewish Lawyering and International Legal Thought (co-edited with James Loeffler). In 2007 she was awarded the Laylin Prize for most outstanding paper in international law awarded by Harvard Law School. In 2013 she was selected by the American Society of International Law (ASIL) for the New Voices Panel at the Society’s Annual Meeting. In 2014 was a winner of the Law & Humanities Junior Scholar Interdisciplinary Writing Competition. Her papers appear in multiple journals, including the Harvard International Law Journal and the European Journal of International Law.