During Winter Quarter 2016, the UW Stroum Center for Jewish Studies will host three scholars who represent new approaches in the growing field of Israel Studies.
The lecture series is entitled “Beyond the Binary: Israel Studies Today” to reflect the fact that these researchers are going beyond standard divisions in the field. Their work, ranging from disability studies to sociolinguistics and the history of medicine, offers alternative perspectives on the region’s history. All lectures are free and open to the public.
Experts from the University of Washington are set to engage in next week’s Arctic Encounter Symposium. The largest annual Arctic policy event in the United States, the Symposium confronts the leading issues in Arctic policy, innovation, and development. It aims to raise awareness, engage challenges, and develop solutions for the future of a region and a people.
Professor Kathie Friedman discusses the evolution of her course on immigration, and what each of us can do to stay involved with the ongoing refugee crisis.
The legislature for Chubut province in Argentina has established a new marine protected area off Punta Tombo, which would help preserve the feeding grounds for about 500,000 Magellanic penguins that make their home along this rocky stretch of Argentine coast.
University of Washington biology affiliate associate professor Pablo Garcia Borboroglu says, “This new [marine protected area] designation is an historical accomplishment, since [until now] there is only one protected area in Argentina that is exclusively marine and only 4 percent of the marine surface of the country is currently protected.”
Law 103/15 passed the Chubut legislature with backing from the Global Penguin Society, its co-founder and president Borboroglu and teams of scientists led by Boersma, who provided key data about the penguins from their decades of research at Punta Tombo. The government and the Global Penguin Society agreed to the marine protected area in 2013, and Borboroglu drafted the proposal and designed the protected area. Critically, he also made regular trips to Rawson, the provincial capital, to explain its importance to legislators, answer questions, negotiate details and monitor the bill’s progress.
“This wouldn’t have happened without him,” said UW biology professor Dee Boersma. “The legislature had put off the vote for months, and then on Dec. 3 they voted — and just in the nick of time, too.”
The University of Washington Sephardic Studies Program will host its third annual International Ladino Day, celebrating Sephardic language and culture, in a free event at 4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 6, in Room 130 of Kane Hall. The event will be followed by a kosher reception.
This year’s featured speakers are members of Los Ladineros, a long-running local Ladino conversation group, and scholars Julia Phillips Cohen of Vanderbilt University and Sarah Abrevaya Stein of the University of California, Los Angeles, who is a former faculty member of the UW History Department. Cohen and Stein’s anthology “Sephardic Lives” won the 2014 National Jewish Book Award.
Prime Minister Miro Cerar of the Republic of Slovenia met with University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce at the University of Washington on December 4, 2015 to express interest in sustained collaboration between the UW and academic institutions in Slovenia.
Vice Provost for Global Affairs Jeffrey Riedinger and UW President Ana Mari Cauce in discussion with Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia Dr. Miro Cerar Photo: Piotr Horoszowski
The Slovene Prime Minister was accompanied by His Excellency Ambassador Božo Cerar, Slovene Ambassador to the U.S., Slovene Deputy Prime Minister Boris Koprivnikar, and other Slovene government officials. UW Vice Provost for Global Affairs Jeffrey Riedinger, Vice Provost for Digital Initiatives and Dean of Libraries Betsy Wilson, Divisional Dean for Humanities Michael Shapiro, Professor and Chair of Slavic Languages Katarzyna Dziwirek, Professor of Law Louis Wolcher, and Professor of Slavic Languages Michael Biggins also participated in the discussion.
Prime Minister Cerar praised the long-term impacts of the UW-University of Ljubljana Faculty Exchange, which has been in existence since 1979. He and President Cauce also discussed an initiative already underway at the UW to create an academic program in interdisciplinary Slovene studies, which would serve students at the UW and around the U.S. via distance learning.
UW graduate students working in Slovene studies, UW post-doctoral researchers from Slovenia, and two UW undergraduates recruited from Slovenia to compete as part of the UW men’s rowing team greeted the Slovene delegation at Gerberding Hall.
This was the first visit by a Slovene prime minister to the UW and took place as part of a larger Slovene trade delegation tour of five major U.S. IT hubs. Former Slovene Ambassador to the U.S. Samo Žbogar visited UW twice during his tenure, delivering a talk during a 2007 visit to a hundred students at the Jackson School of International Studies.
As climate negotiations continue in Paris, Old Weather, a citizen-science project led by a University of Washington scientist, is mining historic ships logs to get a unique peek at Arctic climate over the past two centuries.
In developing or war-ravaged countries where government censuses are few and far between, gathering data for public services or policymaking can be difficult, dangerous or near-impossible. Now, researchers with the University of Washington Information School and Computer Science and Engineering Department have devised a way to estimate the distribution of wealth and poverty in an area by studying metadata from calls and texts made on cell phones.
Join UW faculty on Tuesday, Nov. 24 for a roundtable discussion on “Paris II: Making Sense of the World” in Thomson Hall 101 at 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
Daniel Chirot, Herbert J. Ellison Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies
Kathie Friedman, Associate Professor, Jackson School of International Studies
Ray Jonas, Colonel Donald W. Wiethuechter, USA Ret., Endowed Faculty Fellow in History
Reşat Kasaba, Stanley D. Golub Chair of International Studies; and Director, Jackson School of International Studies
Anand Yang, moderator; Chair, Department of History; and Tamaki Professor, International Studies
Presented by The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, the Department of History, the Center for Global Studies, the Center for West European Studies, the European Union Center of Excellence, and the Middle East Center. The Middle East Center’s sponsorship of this event does not imply that the Center endorses its content.
You are invited to join us for a day-long dialogue on the current status and future of the Arctic Council including some of the founding voices in the Arctic Council and heads of the Permanent Participant organizations. Please join us for all or part of the day (see the program for presentation times). No registration necessary.
The Arctic Council at Twenty: Permanent Participants, Arctic Policy in Canada and the United States, and Stewardship
Friday, 20 November 2015, 8:30 a.m.- 4:30 p.m., Odegaard 220, University of Washington
The Arctic Council is the leading intergovernmental forum promoting cooperation, coordination and interaction among the Arctic states, Arctic Indigenous communities and other Arctic inhabitants on common Arctic issues. The Arctic Council is a unique international forum both historically and globally. It is the first international institution formed in dialogue with Indigenous peoples and the first where government and Indigenous organizations work on almost equal par to provide coordination for international decision making and activities in and concerning the circumpolar world. According the Griffith (2011) the Arctic Council was the result of a ground swell in civil society where scholars, practitioners and Indigenous leaders engaged in a dialogue concerning the need for an international coordinating body to address Arctic issues from a government and Indigenous perspective.
This workshop – supported by the Korea Maritime Institute, and hosted by the Canadian Studies Center/Arctic and International Relations in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies – will reflect on the almost 20-year history of the Arctic Council, its influence on Arctic policy in North America, and future options concerning its role. Participants will present and discuss their reflections on the Arctic Council including its influence on Canadian and U.S. Arctic policy, and the role of four of the six Permanent Participant organizations who are represented in the Pacific Northwest.
