The theme for the 2009-2010 Asch seminars is Visual Culture and Conflict. To kick off the new series, Associate Director and Documentary Photographer Jonathan Hyman will be speaking on Monday, September 14th, on public expressions in response to the 9/11 tragedy. Hyman’s 9/11 photographs have been exhibited at Ground Zero, at the National Constitution Center, […]

by Eranda Jayawickreme

There are good reasons to celebrate the Sri Lankan government’s final victory over the Tamil Tiger rebels last week. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were one of the most brutal and repressive terrorist organizations in the world, with a crypto-fascist ideology focused on the personality cult of their now-slain […]

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From cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper to displays of the Confederate battle flag over the South Carolina statehouse, acts of cultural significance have set off political conflicts and sometimes violence. These and other expressions and enactments of culture–whether in music, graffiti, sculpture, flag displays, parades, […]

Chaim Kaufmann, from Lehigh University’s International Relations department, spoke at Asch on February 24th. Here is a brief summary:

Academia, human rights organizations, and governments agree: partition is no solution to communal conflict. Indeed partition is just another name for ethnic cleansing Chaim Kaufmann has a radically different view, based on years of study of […]

Expectations for what will happen if U.S. troops leave Iraq on schedule in 2011 range from a functioning federal Iraq to a client state of Iran to an even larger civil war to genocide. These expectations are based on different understandings of Iraq’s path from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in April 2003 to where […]