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.
Series: The Shifting Paradigms of American Religion
Speakers: Sarah Dees (Iowa State University), Sabrina Dent (Public Scholar and Author), and Mary Juzwik (Michigan State University)
Moderator: Justine Ellis (Columbia University)
What imprint do we leave behind on physical and digital landscapes? From monuments to museums, and from rituals to remembrance, perspectives from the study of American religion can help us understand the narratives we tell ourselves about the present. Join IRCPL for a conversation about the public stakes of preservation and erasure in our current moment.
Light refreshments will be provided
This series is made possible by generous support from the Henry Luce Foundation
Free and open to the public; registration is required
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!
Join Prof. Joanne Faryon in conversation with CBC journalists Falen Johnson and Dawna Dingwall about their podcast: See You in Court: Racine V. Woods: The girl whose life became a battleground for Indigenous child welfare.
Listen to the podcast here. Register for the event here: https://events.columbia.edu/go/story_taker
Co-sponsored by The Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights. All CUID holders welcome.
Event Contact Information: Columbia Journalism School
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.
Interested in publishing, children’s literature, colonialism or art repatriation?
Join us in celebrating the launch of Theft of the Ruby Lotus with author SAYANTANI DASGUPTA (Narrative Medicine, Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, Institute for the Study of Comparative Literature) in conversation with RIKA BURNHAM (Narrative Medicine). We’ll be taking a virtual tour of the Metropolitan Museum, doing a literary read-aloud, and discussing the similarities between museums, hospitals and novels! Refreshments will be served.
No RSVP required. Organized by the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, Institute for the Study of Comparative Literature, and Narrative Medicine Program at Columbia University.
Benjamin Balthaser (Indiana University South Bend) on Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left (2025), in dialogue with Benjamin Ratskoff (Occidental College). Moderated by Sonali Thakkar (New York University).
Benjamin Balthaser is an associate professor of multiethnic US Literature at Indiana University, South Bend. His scholarship, teaching, and creative work investigates the relationships among social movements, racial identity, and cultural production. He is the author of Anti-Imperialist Modernism: Race and Transnational Radical Culture from the Great Depression to the Cold War (2015) and a collection of poems, Dedication (2011). His most recent book, Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left, was published by Verso Books in 2025.
Benjamin Ratskoff is an assistant professor of Critical Theory and Social Justice at Occidental College. His current research interrogates the politics of Holocaust memory and representation and the relationship between antisemitism, colonialism and white supremacy.
Information regarding campus access for non-Columbia affiliates will be sent prior to the event. This event will be in person only. Please contact cumemory@gmail.com if you have any questions.
There will be an optional dinner at Faculty House before this event at 5:30pm. The full-course dinner costs $30 per guest for non-students and $20 for students. Attendees can pay in advance using this form, or on the day of the meeting by check. Checks should be made payable to “Columbia University,” and the following should be written on the memo line: “[Cultural Memory] FH Meal.” It is a full-course dinner buffet with white and red wine, soft drinks, dessert, and coffee/tea. Advance registration is required.
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.
