The Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER) presents:

Theorizing Liberation: Third Worldism and the Legacy of Gary Okihiro at CSER

A conversation with Moon-Ho Jung (University of Washington, History), Susie J. Pak (St. John’s University, History), Vivek Bald (MIT, Comparative Media Studies), and Elda Tsou (St. John’s University, English); moderated by Manu Karuka (Barnard, American Studies)

Monday, March 24, 2025, 5:30-7PM

World Room

Pulitzer Hall, 3rd Floor

Columbia Graduate School of Journalism

2950 Broadway

Light refreshments provided

RSVP HERE

Description:

The Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER) invites you to “Theorizing Liberation: Third Worldism and the Legacy of Gary Okihiro at CSER,” a gathering in honor of the legacy of CSER’s founding director, Gary Okihiro (1945-2024), who passed away in May of last year.

Gary served as CSER’s director from the Center’s formation in 1999 until 2007. He laid the groundwork for CSER to become Columbia’s only hub for comparative and interdisciplinary analysis of ethnicity, race, and Indigeneity, nationally recognized for its academic initiatives and transformative scholarship. CSER now serves over 100 undergraduate majors, minors, and M.A. students a year.

Gary’s 2016 book, Third World Studies: Theorizing Liberation (Duke University Press), contends that contemporary Ethnic Studies has fallen short of its original mandate, which emphasized the interconnectedness of the struggles of all Third World peoples. This event brings together five of Gary’s former students, several of whom studied with him during his years at CSER, and went on to become accomplished scholars in the field.

Our panelists will reflect on the histories of CSER and the field of Ethnic Studies more broadly, Gary’s scholarly contributions, and the prospect of Third World studies. In doing so, they will be engaging in “a work of imagination,” envisioning possible futures for Ethnic Studies at Columbia and beyond.  

Panelists: 

Moon-Ho Jung is a Professor of History and the Harry Bridges Endowed Chair in Labor Studies at the University of Washington. He is the author of Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation (Hopkins Press, 2006), winner of the OAH Merle Curti Award, and the editor of The Rising Tide of Color: Race, State Violence, and Radical Movements across the Pacific (University of Washington Press, 2014). Most recently, he published Menace to Empire: Anticolonial Solidarities and the Transpacific Origins of the US Security State (University of California Press, 2022), which seeks to reconsider Asians within the American nation-state.

Susie J. Pak is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at St. John’s University where she teaches U.S. American history (late-19th and 20th centuries). She specializes in the study of American business networks, and her research bridges the divide between social and economic history through the innovative use of quantitative and qualitative methods. Her book, Gentlemen Bankers: The World of J.P. Morgan, was published by Harvard University Press in 2013. 

Vivek Bald is a scholar, writer, and documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on histories of migration and diaspora, particularly from the South Asian subcontinent. He is the author of Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America (Harvard University Press, 2013) and co-editor of The Sun Never Sets: South Asian Migrants in an Age of U.S. Power (NYU Press, 2013). His films include “Taxi-vala/Auto-biography” (1994) and “Mutiny: Asians Storm British Music” (2003).

Elda Tsou (GSAS ‘08) is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at St. John’s University. She offers undergraduate and graduate courses on Asian American literature, American ethnic literature, and literary theory. Broadly, her research explores the formal relationship between literature and society, particularly in the context of ethnic literature. She has published work on how the social formation is supplemented by literary interventions. Currently, she is completing a manuscript on Asian American critical reading practices.

Manu Karuka is an Associate Professor of American Studies at Barnard College, where he has taught since 2014. He studies imperialism and anti-imperialism, and he teaches courses on imperialism, Indigenous critiques of political economy, cultural studies, and liberation. He is the author of Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad (University of California Press, 2019). He co-edited a special issue of Theory & Event, “On Colonial Unknowing,” (Vol. 19, No. 4, 2016), as well as The Sun Never Sets: South Asian Migrants in an Age of U.S. Power (NYU Press, 2013). 

Please note: due to campus access restrictions, non-CU/BC affiliates will be required to RSVP at least 48 hours in advance in order to receive a QR code to their emails which is required for access. 

This event is made possible with the generous support of Barnard American Studies, Columbia Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia Department of History, Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, and Barnard Asian Diasporic and Asian American Studies. 

The Asian American Initiative at Columbia is pleased to host The Honorable Goodwin H. Liu, Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court. Following a talk, Justice Liu and Ajay K. Mehrotra, Professor of Law & History at Northwestern University and the American Bar Foundation, will discuss their research on Asian Americans in the Law.

A Portrait of Asian Americans in the Law

Thursday, March 27

Doors open at 5:00pm | Program begins at 5:30pm

Columbia Law School

Jerome Green Hall 103

436 W. 116th Street

Co-sponsored with Columbia Law School, this event is open to the public and is in-person only; registration is required for entry.

How are settlement and migration enacted in relation to one another? What fictions of land and architecture live inside ‘settled’ histories of the colonized world? Through towns and camps, enclaves and ghettos, partitions and borderlands, this symposium studies the conversion of oceans, deserts, and forests into architectures, infrastructures, and territories. These sessions seek to ask how the homes of people and animals, now borderlands, frontiers, and wastelands, have been remembered and narrated. Within these forms and narratives live concept histories of settlement.

Presented by The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities and co-sponsored by CSER.

Full event details here.

The Institute for the Study of Human Rights and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race invite you to a panel discussion with two Human Rights Advocates, part of ISHR’s Human Rights Advocates Program.

Featuring Adija Adamu (Grants Coordinator Africa, International Indigenous Women’s Forum, Indigenous Women’s Rights to Finance, Cameroon) and Kathia Carrillo (Chairperson, Las Comunes, Decolonizing Advocacy with Arts and Communications, Peru); moderated by Elsa Stamatopoulou (Director, Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Program, ISHR).

Register here: https://bit.ly/41MT0vc

This panel brings together Indigenous scholars to critically examine the historical and ongoing impacts of exploration, scientific research, and anthropology on Indigenous communities in Papua New Guinea and Hawai‘i. Panelists will explore the intersections of Indigenous rights, data sovereignty, and the colonial legacies embedded within scientific knowledge production.

The panelists will reflect on how historical expeditions and research projects extracted knowledge, resources, and data from Indigenous lands and bodies, often without consent or reciprocity. They will interrogate the ways in which scientific and anthropological institutions have upheld colonial power structures, while also considering how Indigenous scholars and communities are reclaiming control over their knowledge and data.

Through discussions of biocultural heritage, climate research, conservation, and food sovereignty, this panel will highlight efforts to establish ethical research frameworks that respect Indigenous sovereignty. Drawing from experiences in both New Guinea and Hawai‘i, the panelists will address contemporary movements toward Indigenous-led research methodologies, legal protections, and data governance models that center Indigenous epistemologies and self-determination.

By placing these diverse yet interconnected histories and struggles in conversation, this panel challenges dominant narratives of scientific exploration and proposes pathways toward decolonial, community-centered knowledge practices that honor Indigenous rights, agency, and futures.

• Hi‘ilei Hobart, Assistant Professor of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration at Yale University
• Ikaika Ramones, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University
• Nayahamui Rooney, Senior Lecturer in Culture, History, and Language at Australian National University
• Miriam Supuma, Programme Manager at Synchronicity Earth
• Moderated by Paige West, Claire Tow Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University

Hosted by the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University. Co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University. Registration required.

Founded by Latina immigrants in East Harlem, Movement fights for dignity against displacement. Join the Human Rights Graduate Group at Columbia University, Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender, and Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race for a discussion with MJEB’s community activists about housing justice in East Harlem. Seating is limited and will be first come, first seated.

The Center for African Education (CAE), in collaboration with the Institute for African Studies (IAS) and the Society for International Education (SIE), proudly announces an exciting mini-conference—generously supported by the Office of the Vice President for Diversity & Community Affairs.

Conference Website: (click here to view)