Tuesday, September 20th, 5:30pm
Prof. Jennifer Lind (Dartmouth College, Dept. of Government)
"Sorry States. Apologies in International Politics"
Location: International Affairs Building Room 1510

Tuesday, October 18th, 5:15pm
Ruti Teitel (Ernst C. Stiefel Prof of Comparative Law, New York Law School Visiting Professor, London School of Economics)
"Peacemaking, Punishment and the Justice of War"
Location: The Faculty House of Columbia University

Wednesday, November 9th, 12pm - 4pm
Location:  Faculty House, 3rd Floor

Sacred Sites Violence: Gujarat and the Challenge of Accountability and Hindu-Muslim Relations

INCLUDES: a screening of Parzania
Wednesday, November 9, 6:00 - 10:00 (same location)

How do secular civil society organizations contribute to post conflict reconciliation in the wake of religious communal or ethno-religious violence? Following the Gujarat 2002 violence and the failure of the official judicial process to deliver justice the role of civil society has become even more critical. Several local organizations have committed themselves to promote reconciliation through a host of projects which consist of various stakeholders including religious organizations.

Particular attention will be paid to the instrumentalization of the history of the two communities to trigger off violence, and the way in which history is utilized to promote reconciliation and conflict resolution.

Co-sponsored with The Center for Democracy, Tolerance, and Religion (CDTR), The Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life (IRCPL), the South Asia Institute, and the Columbia University Institute for the study of Human Rights.

2010-2011 Past Meetings 

Monday, September 20, 2010 5pm
Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory.
Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer
Paper: The Persistence of Czernowitz

Monday, October 18, 2010
Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates
Susannah Radstone and Bill Schwarz
Co-sponsored with the University Seminar on Cultural Memory

Thursday, March 10, 2011 5pm
The German Foreign Office and the Nazi Past: Reflections on and by a Historical Commission
Professor Norbert Frei (University of Jena)

April 28 - 29, 2011
Symposium on Building a Public Memory of Guantanamo's History
Co-Sponsored with the Columbia Institute for the Study of Human Rights and the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience

Past Conferences

March 12-13, 2010
Workshop: Historical Commissions Comparative Perspectives
Sponsored by The Columbia University Seminar on History, Redress, and Reconciliation
The Harriman Institute (Columbia University)
The Center for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University

2009 - 2010 Past Meetings

Thursday, September 24
David Rieff, "Human Rights as Practice and as Ideology"

Thursday, October 22
Philip Gourevitch, "Recovering from Genocide, or Not? Revisiting Rwanda"

Thursday, November 19
Liz Sevcenko, "Sites of Conscience: Resisting Redress"

Monday February 22nd,5pm.
The Land of Pale Hands ~ Feminicide and Impunity in Guatemala.
Victoria Sanford (Associate Professor of Anthropology (on leave)
Lehman College & The GraduateCenter CityUniversity of New York)
Visiting Scholar, Center for Intl Conflict Resolution
Columbia University

Friday April 16th,3:30pm.
Memories of Conflict and the Politics of Redress: Across Time, Place
and Discipline
Atina Grossmann (History - Cooper Union )
Revenge, Restitution, and Rights: Jewish Survivors in Postwar Germany
Anna di Lellio (Sociology - New School University)
Engineering Reconciliation as New Historical Truth: the Case of Kosovo
Alex Hinton (Anthropology - Rutgers University)
Truth, Justice, and Transition after the Cambodian Genocide