The Constitutional Democracy Initiative (CDI) and Ambedkar Program in Global Constitutionalism are pleased to invite you to attend a discussion on the book The Future That Was: A History of Third World Feminism Against Authoritarianism by Durba Mitra. This discussion will feature Durba Mitra (Harvard), Adom Getachew (University of Chicago), Pratap B Mehta (Princeton), and Camille Robcis (Columbia University), moderated by Kate Redburn (Columbia Law). All registered guests will receive dinner and a chance to obtain a copy of the book. All attendees must pre-register by March 22nd 2026.
Please join the Political Sciences Department and The Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender for a discussion on The Labors of Resurrection: Black Women, Necromancy, and Morrisonian Democracy by Shatema Threadcraft. This event will feature Shatema Threadcraft (Vanderbilt University) in conversation with Erica Edwards (Yale University).
Join us for a conversation and performance with Spain-based Afro-Peruvian Drag Artivist Gad Yola!
A multidisciplinary artist and migrant activist working across Europe and Latin America, Gad Yola has become a key actor in the cultural articulation of antiracism in Spain. Belonging to an emergent LatinX Madrid scene, Gad Yola has performed in grassroots circuits, national museums, and academic institutions. Her trajectory spans several singles, the acclaimed album Travesti del Perú (2024), videoclips, academic publishing, tours, and performances across venues and publics. In her talk, Gad Yola will guide us through the Latin, trans, and travesti influences in her drag and perform some of her hits. MC: Miguel Ángel Blanco Martínez, PhD Candidate, Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures (LAIC)
Thursday March 26th, 5:00-6:30pm
Deutsches Haus (420 W 116th St.)
Open to the public; no special campus access required. Email cser@columbia.edu with any questions.
Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER) with support from the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender (ISSG).
The Institute for the Study of Comparative Literature (ICLS) will host the Technopolitical Form and the Global South symposium.
Organizers: David Bering-Porter (New School), Joshua Neves (Concordia), and Arvind Rajagopal (NYU)
Registration: Please RSVP at this link. Registration will be capped at 40, as this is meant to be an intimate workshop.
Is a philosophy of technology out-of-date even as it arrives, just as Minerva’s owl takes flight only at dusk? Even so, the idea of technopolitical form has arguably been influential, if only as concrete thought or as real abstraction. If struggle becomes political only by acquiring form, the modes of mediating form are technopolitical. Technopolitical form names a battlefield where alliances across race, class, nationality and sexuality are targeted and interdicted if possible, in the face of insurgence and resolute assertion.
If Empire appeared as a deterritorializing force at the beginning of the century, the disintermediation of imperial force today is reminiscent of territorialized authority. But now, the territory is that of the imagination. The vacuum of absolute space has turned into an interior geography of knowns and unknowns, of allies and aliens. Against the conventional view that information supersedes form, we ask: if the content of technopolitics is anti-imperial, what forms does it take, and what forms could it take?
If colonialism has always operated through the extraction of resources, the conscription of labor, and the appropriation of knowledge, these emergent regimes may represent its latest and most intimate formation, one in which the human subject itself becomes the territory to be colonized. Generative AI and the digital doppelgänger extend colonial logics through dispossession, enclosure, and substitution, mapping human capacity as planetary resource and positioning the Global South as both the site of extraction and the spectral labor force training the very systems that disavow its contributions. What technopolitical forms have been inherited, are emergent, or are yet to be imagined and how might we contest this interior colonization of the imagination?
Our symposium takes up the question of technopolitical form at a moment when the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution envisions all domains of life rendered as operational data; as vitality decomposed into discrete, manipulable, and interoperable units that can be isolated, stored, exchanged, and accorded value across time, space, and context. If technopolitical narratives have shifted from mid-century critiques of disequilibria and planetary exhaustion toward regimes of optimization operating at molecular and metabolic scales, what forms of political imagination become possible or foreclosed? How do we understand a new geography of late industrialism oriented not toward twentieth-century notions of core and periphery but toward the production of relative surplus value at a planetary scale, and what anti-imperial forms might emerge from or against it?
Participants: Sareeta Amrute (New School), Ahmed Ansari (NYU), Neda Atanasoski (University of Maryland), Sudipto Basu (Concordia), David Bering-Porter (New School), Heather Davis (New School), Aditi Dey (New School), Christine Goding-Doty (New School), Shikhar Goel (NYU), Debashree Mukherjee (Columbia), Joshua Neves (Concordia), Emma Park (New School), Arvind Rajagopal (NYU)
The University in/and Crisis Working Group invites you to attend a symposium featuring research and activism by students at Barnard College, Teachers College, and Columbia University. Students will present work that adopts methods drawn from the field of “critical university studies,” and that draws on archives and repositories held on campus and across the Harlem neighborhood to investigate the enduring effects of social difference and spatial segregation in shaping histories of democratic education and mass intellectuality. The evening will culminate with a celebration with music and snacks.
Spearheaded by Professors Anupama Rao (Barnard College) and C. Riley Snorton (Columbia University), the University in/and Crisis Working Group probes, through reading meetings and public programs, the state of the university today and aims to contextualize it within longer histories of its entanglement with wider socioeconomic and political structures. The working group is an initiative of Columbia’s Center for the Study of Social Difference, the Barnard Center for Research on Women, and the Edmund W. Gordon Institute for Advanced Study at Teachers College.
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required.
This webinar will provide historical context for understanding current events, specifically concerning immigration and freedom of speech in the classroom, and utilize tools and concepts from Ethnic Studies to help us create actionable strategies for the future.
Tuesday, March 31, 2026
4:00 – 5:15 PM ET
Virtual Webinar
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Speakers:
- Cynthia Copeland, Public Historian and Educator
- Mae Ngai, Professor of History and Asian American Studies, Columbia University
- Jack Tchen, Director of the Clement A. Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience, Rutgers University
Respondents:
- Vanessa Leung, Co-Executive Director of the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families
- Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Professor of English Education at Teachers College, Columbia University
- Judy Yu, Co-Founder of the Black and Asian Solidarity Collective and Principal Investigator at the Spencer Foundation
Organized by the Black and Asian Solidarity Collective, Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, and Asian American Initiative. Questions can be directed to cser@columbia.edu.
You are invited to the SECOND event in our three-part series, “Imborrable: Conversations on Latinx/Caribbean Diaspora Archives.”
The series is organized by the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER), the Greater Caribbean Studies Program at the Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS), and the Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RBML).
Roundtable 2: Art as Archive, the Archive as Art
Wednesday, April 1, 2026, 4PM
420 Hamilton Hall
A reception with food and refreshments will follow
RSVP HERE; contact cser@columbia.edu with any questions.
Roundtable 2 will gather artists, scholars, and RBML fellows to discuss the relationship between art and the archive.
Panelists:
- Judith Escalona, independent filmmaker and writer
- Rita Indiana, Global Distinguished Professor in Spanish and Portuguese and Director of the MFA Program at New York University
- Emily Oliveira, PhD student in Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University
- Jacqueline García Suárez, Assistant Professor in Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University
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Stay tuned for announcements about future roundtables as part of Imborrable: Conversations on Latinx/Caribbean Diaspora Archives!
You are invited to the FINAL event in our three-part series, “Imborrable: Conversations on Latinx/Caribbean Diaspora Archives.”
The series is organized by the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER), the Greater Caribbean Studies Program at the Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS), and the Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RBML).
Roundtable 3: Out and About: Projects from the Columbia Latinx Archive
Thursday, April 2, 2026, 4:30PM
Casa Hispánica
A reception with food and refreshments will follow
RSVP HERE; contact cser@columbia.edu with any questions.
Roundtable 3 will highlight three projects that have emerged from the Latino Arts and Activisms collection at Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
Panelists:
- Marcel Agüeros, Professor of Astronomy at Columbia University
- Leyre Alejaldre Biel, Lecturer in Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University
- Noelia Quintero Herencia, filmmaker, artist, and researcher
- Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities in the Department of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University
*Please note that, unfortunately, Casa Hispánica is NOT wheelchair accessible*
The Poetics of the Meantime series engages the role of art, practice, and relation in the tense of the meantime, protracted periods marked by what is as yet unrealized. The symposia urges thinking about revolution in a minor key and the everyday lives and working realities of Black communities during moments of upheaval not defined by organized collective protest or mass revolutionary action. The first event in the series is organized on the topic of Black feminist ecology as one such form of relation and refusal by other means.
Speakers:
- Sarah Haley, Director of the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender, and Associate Professor of History at Columbia University
- Saidiya Hartman, University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University
- Tiffany King, Barbara and John Glynn Research Professorship in Democracy and Equity, Associate Chair, and Associate Professor of Women, Gender & Sexuality at the University of Virginia
- J.T. Roane, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Geography, and Andrew W. Mellon Chair in Global Racial Justice in the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University
- Marisa Solomon, Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College
Presented by the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender at Columbia University.
The symposium Techno-Fascism: Past and Present will explore the convergence of far-right ideologies, authoritarian politics, and digital technologies. As algorithmic governance, social media influencers, and AI-driven propaganda reshape political power, this conference examines how digital tools are used to reinforce exclusionary nationalisms, gender and racial hierarchies, and anti-democratic regimes. Bringing together scholars and media practitioners, it offers a critical space to reflect on historical precedents, contemporary resistance, and the future of media, technology, and political struggle.
Co-organized by Society of Fellows Irina Kalinka and Daniela M. Traldi.
Schedule:
10:00 am – 10:30 am Introductory Remarks
10:30 am – 12:00 pm Roundtable 1: Platform Politics
This roundtable seeks to discuss how digital platforms, and the tech-corporations that run them, mediate politics; specifically, we will consider how these platforms enable and disable certain kinds of political action and subjectivity together with their role in perpetuating societal inequalities. In what ways do digital platforms reinforce authoritarianism—not because they are inherently authoritarian, but because they are designed, deployed, and governed in certain ways that centralize power, diminish accountability, and intensify control? Together, we will consider emerging trends such as techno-nationalism, the weaponization of digital platforms for radicalization and disinformation, disillusionment with democratic institutions, and a possible global reconfiguration of neoliberalism towards neoilliberalism.
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm Lunch
1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Domestic Dystopias: Tradwives, the Manosphere, and the Digital Aesthetics of Fascism
This panel examines how far-right gender politics are repackaged and circulated through digital culture. From tradwife influencers who aestheticize submission and domesticity to manosphere networks that weaponize grievance, these formations mobilize nostalgia, irony, and algorithmic amplification to normalize authoritarian ideals. The panel explores how platform economies reward hyper-visible performances of gender hierarchy and racialized nationalism, transforming intimate life into political spectacle. Situating these trends within longer histories of fascist aesthetics and propaganda, participants analyze how digital media reconfigure domesticity, masculinity, and belonging—and how these narratives might be contested.
2:30 pm- 3:00 pm Coffee Break
3:00 pm – 4:30 pm Roundtable 2: Media, Power, and Global Politics
This roundtable brings together perspectives on Latin America, India, and Russia to examine how media and digital technologies intersect with authoritarianism and far-right politics across past and present contexts. Speakers will offer historically grounded overviews of Hindu nationalism; Colombian and Venezuelan political dynamics within a broader regional framework; and Russian governance today, highlighting how media infrastructures have shaped ideological mobilization and/ or state power. The discussion will explore how digital platforms mediate relations between states and popular sectors, enable new forms of political organization, and challenge independent journalism under conditions of censorship and democratic erosion.
4:30 pm – 5:00 pm Coffee Break
5:00 pm – 6:30 pm Keynote: Fred Turner, Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication, Stanford University
Fred Turner is the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University, where he studies the impact of new media technologies on American culture since World War II. He is the author of half a dozen books, including most recently, with Mary Beth Meehan, Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a LeBoff Distinguished Visiting Scholar at New York University, a Beaverbrook Visiting Scholar at McGill University, and twice a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Before becoming a professor, he worked as a journalist for ten years. He continues to write regularly for newspapers and magazines in America and Europe.
Join the Asian American Initiative for a book reading by Michael Luo in conversation with Kat Chow, with welcoming remarks by Qin Gao, Acting Director of the Asian American Initiative. Register here.
5:00pm Check-in
5:30pm Program Begins
6:45pm Reception
The Asian American Initiative at Columbia University is focused on making the experiences of Asian Americans central to our understanding of America. The goals of the initiative are to use evidenced-based research to drive change in our public narratives, and to forge a greater sense of belonging and pride for and among Asian Americans.
The symposium brings together scholars working across and beyond Middle East and North Africa studies to explore how discursive fields are constituted, and to ask what becomes possible when we read across and against established disciplinary and regional boundaries. Rather than simply juxtaposing area studies frameworks (e.g., Syria or Palestine), we aim to theorize “the regional” anew. This conversation began as an exchange around Syro-Palestine, reflecting on how regional fields—particularly those of Lebanon, Turkey, Tunisia, and Algeria—have been positioned in relation to the Question of Palestine. This positioning has tended to circumscribe the terrain of inquiry, foreclosing other narratives, epistemologies, and questions. Our symposium aims to explore a conceptual vocabulary that resists colonial inheritances and disciplinary segmentation, and that reimagines scholarly methods through forms of relation not yet captured by dominant frameworks.
The two-day program includes a Thursday evening keynote panel featuring four speakers, open to the public and the Columbia community, followed by three closed-door sessions on Friday with a cohort of invited scholars.
SYMPOSIUM CO-ORGANIZERS:
- Aamer Ibraheem, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis, and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University.
- Adrien Zakar, Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies and the History of Science and Technology, University of Toronto
- Esmat Elhalaby, Assistant Professor in History, University of Toronto
- Iheb Guermazi, The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University
Join the Asian American Initiative for a conversation with author Ted Chiang and Professor Denise Cruz, Columbia University. Register here.
5:30pm Check-in
6:00pm Program Begins
7:00pm Reception
The Asian American Initiative at Columbia University is focused on making the experiences of Asian Americans central to our understanding of America. The goals of the initiative are to use evidenced-based research to drive change in our public narratives, and to forge a greater sense of belonging and pride for and among Asian Americans.
A special evening of literature, culture, and community at Casa Hispánica with New York Times Bestselling Author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Xochitl González to celebrate and discuss her newest novel, Last Night in Brooklyn.
Hosted by Dr. Nick J. Figueroa from the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, the Hispanic Institute, and the Latinos Urbanos Book Club, this intimate event brings together readers, book lovers, and the community for an engaging discussion with one of the most exciting literary voices writing today.
A proud Brooklyn native, Xochitl is the acclaimed author of Olga Dies Dreaming and Anita de Monte Laughs Last, works celebrated by The New York Times, TIME, NPR, and The Washington Post. In addition to her fiction, she is a staff writer for The Atlantic, where her cultural commentary earned her recognition as a Pulitzer Prize finalist in Commentary.
Her newest novel, Last Night in Brooklyn, continues her powerful exploration of identity, family, ambition, and the complexities of contemporary life – set against the vibrant backdrop of New York City.
Register Here For FREE = https://XochitlAtColumbia.eventbrite.com
From the Barnard Center for Research on Women (BCRW): Why AI Needs Feminism brings together feminist critical technologists Lauren Klein (Emory University) and Meredith Broussard (NYU) with Barnard’s Saima Akhtar (Vagelos Computational Science Center) and Gabrielle Gutierrez (Neuroscience) to examine how algorithmic surveillance is reshaping everyday life—from predictive policing in New York neighborhoods of color to the data infrastructures sustaining global conflicts and occupations. This conversation challenges the myth of “data-driven decision-making” as neutral progress and asks how feminist approaches grounded in care and accountability can offer paths toward refusal and repair.
Across higher education, including at Barnard, the rapid adoption of AI reflects wider struggles over power and control. “Smart” campus security systems and learning analytics promise efficiency and personalization while quietly expanding surveillance of movement, behavior, and intellectual labor. While AI can support learning and connection, it is also worth discussing how it reinforces existing hierarchies or privileges efficiency over care, trust, and human judgment.
The feminism AI needs, we insist, is not the mainstream feminism of representation or inclusion alone, but one that confronts how race, class, gender, and colonial power are built into technological systems. We ask: Who designs and benefits from these systems? Who bears their risks? And what would it mean to build technologies guided by care rather than oversight and control?
This event invites collective critique and imagination—toward technologies and institutions that center people, not just data.
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required. A light reception will follow the conversation.
