The Haleh Esfandiari Forum 2024: Advocating for Afghan Women’s Rights on the Global Stage with Amb. Paula J. Dobriansky, Ph.D.

Friday, Feb. 2 // 12–1:00 pm (ET)

The Middle East Program and the Middle East Women’s Initiative are pleased to host Ambassador Paula Dobriansky. Ph.D. for the 2024 Annual Haleh Esfandiari Forum. Moderated by the director of the Middle East Program, Merissa Khurma, this conversation will center on Ambassador Dobriansky’s longstanding commitment to upholding the rights and freedoms of women in Afghanistan.

With the third anniversary of the Taliban’s return to Afghanistan approaching, Ambassador Dobriansky will reflect on the past two decades since the establishment of the US-Afghan Women’s Council, the establishment of the American University of Afghanistan, the role of women in peacebuilding and reconstruction, and the state of the women’s rights agenda as calls intensify for a feminist foreign policy approach to global challenges.

Still to Come this week

Bystander Society: Conformity and Complicity in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust

Monday, Jan. 29 // 4–5:30 pm (ET)

Drawing on personal accounts of experiences in the Third Reich and in wartime Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, Bystander Society explores the conditions for widespread passivity in face of violence against others. Fulbrook reconceives ‘bystanding’ in terms of changing interpersonal relations: indifference, ignorance (or choosing to ignore), and a sense of impotence, are historically produced. Many became increasingly complicit or involved in wartime perpetration; a few sought retreat or resistance; but remaining an ‘innocent bystander’ was largely a postwar myth.

Kennan Long View Series | Memory Makers: History, Memory, and Politics in Today's Russia

Tuesday, Jan. 30 // 11:00 am–12:00 pm (ET)

This Long View conversation will feature Memory Makers, the recent book by Jade McGlynn, a Researcher in the War Studies Department at King's College London. The book itself charts the exploitation of the past by the Kremlin, the creation of a state mythology, and the justification of an aggressive foreign policy through appeals to the past and to historical memory. McGlynn's research explains the inner workings of the Putinist system and is, as such, crucial context for understanding Russia's invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022.

Ukraine's Accession to the EU: Next Steps

Thursday, Feb. 1 // 10–11:00 am (ET)

The Global Europe Program is delighted for the opportunity to discuss the path Ukraine covered on the road to EU, as well as what lies ahead, with Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a Ukrainian politician and civil society leader who made an extraordinary contribution toward Ukraine's European integration.