Global Insights
Perspectives on World Affairs at UCLA
Brent Luvaas: studying youth culture in Indonesia
When Brent Luvaas spent 1996-97 in Indonesia as an exchange student from UC Santa Cruz, Yogyakarta had only "one coffee shop inside this exclusive little mall, and the only people who went there were rich, and they were the only ones with cell phones."
Posted: 6/30/2009
New Answers to Big Questions in Chinese History
For 30 years Lothar von Falkenhausen has observed changes in China over two very different time scales one of them measured in millennia.
Posted: 6/30/2009
In Memoriam: Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy: 1927-2009
Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy, an ethnomusicologist with an international reputation as a researcher, teacher, administrator, and an emeritus faculty member of the UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology and the Center for India and South Asia, died peacefully on Saturday, June 20 at his home in Van Nuys, California.
Posted: 6/29/2009
Research Tool for Latin Americanists Expands in Region by Giving Back
'HAPI: the Database of Latin American Journal Articles' has increased its subscriber base in that region by giving its online library product away in some countries and charging less for it in others. HAPI had flexibility to make the change, which shortens paths to knowledge for scholars, because of its good financial health.
Posted: 6/19/2009
Burkle Center Senior Fellow Gen. Wesley K. Clark (ret.) appointed to the President's Commission on White House Fellowships
President Obama appoints 28-member commission to recommend candidates for the White House Fellowship, Americas most prestigious program for leadership and public service.
Posted: 6/17/2009
Language Teaching, Meet Innovation
This spring, two centers under the UCLA International Institute went live with standalone, online courses on Azeri and the Iraqi dialect of Arabic and with a custom application that allows instructors to share web-based lessons. Meanwhile, the New Language Classroom has added videos for instructors, and the Language Materials Project launched a portal for K-12 schoolteachers on "less commonly taught" languages.
Posted: 6/17/2009
More Than 400 Graduate from International Institute in 2008-09
Gen. Wesley K. Clark, a senior fellow at the Burkle Center for International Relations, keeps the message simple in his keynote address to the largest-ever graduating class of the Institute's interdepartmental degree programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Posted: 6/16/2009
Fowler Tells Story of Tea Through Art from Asia, Europe, US
'Steeped in History: The Art of Tea' runs from Aug. 16 through Nov. 19. [In conjunction with the exhibition, the UCLA Asia Institute this fall will sponsor a series of lectures and a professional development program for K-12 teachers.]
Posted: 6/9/2009
Burkle Faculty Fellow Amy Zegart quoted in the NY Times on turf battles among spy chiefs
NYT's reporter Mark Mazzetti covers a recent dispute between Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, and Leon E. Panetta, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Posted: 6/8/2009
Scholars Review Beliefs, Lore, and Anthropology in Caribbean
A conference last month on Folklore and the Politics of Belief in the Caribbean invited scholars to explore the transmission of African culture in the region and the way this hybrid culture was viewed by observers and researchers from abroad. The event was sponsored by the UCLA Latin American Institute and the Mellon Seminar on Caribbean Cultural History.
Posted: 6/8/2009
How Obama Should Address Islamists and Jihadists
Bestselling author, columnist, and UC Riverside faculty member Reza Aslan has advice for the Obama administration on defeating transnational Muslim utopian radicals, or jihadists. Start, he says, by getting used to the idea of Islamists in politics.
Posted: 6/5/2009
Human Trafficking Escalates as World Economy Plunges
An Indonesian woman shared her story at the conference, "Impact of the Economic Crisis: Increase in Reports of Human Trafficking in LA County and Globally," co-sponsored by the Iris Cantor-UCLA Women's Health Center.
Posted: 6/5/2009
Bagram: Is it Obama's New Guantanamo?
Burkle Center Director Kal Raustiala is quoted in a recent MSNBC article by Tom Curry on a ruling by Judge Bates which forces President Obama to confront the issue of the Afghan prison. Raustiala's reaction is that Judge Bates is trying to take away the incentive to bring outsiders (those captured outside Afghanistan) to Bagram. He wants to avoid the problem posed by Guantanamo that the government is incentivized to move individuals there to avoid habeas and other rights.
Posted: 6/3/2009
Survivor of Tiananmen Square Reaches Her Goal, a Ph.D.
Chaohua Wang will participate in the June 11 Ph.D. hooding ceremony for UCLA's Graduate Division, after completing graduate studies that were unexpectedly interrupted by the uprising that held China's, and the world's, attention for a month and a half.
Posted: 6/3/2009
AIDS Researcher Detels Wins Teaching Award
Roger Detels, a professor of epidemiology, is recognized for Distinction in Teaching at the Graduate Level.
Posted: 6/2/2009
Experts Bring Africa Alive for Young Students
Nearly 1,000 middle and high school students came to campus on May 30 for the Teach Africa Youth Forum, the last and largest event in a yearlong collaborative effort carried out in Southern California schools to increase awareness about Africa and its place in global affairs.
Posted: 6/2/2009
Center of the Cosmos
Herman Ooms, a professor of premodern Japanese history at UCLA, explains how the Tenmu dynasty manipulated religious symbols to reinforce concepts of supreme authority.
Posted: 6/1/2009
Teach Africa Educates Students in Royce
In a forum on Saturday, speakers addressed several topics to break stereotypes of life in Africa, The Daily Bruin reports.
Posted: 6/1/2009
Shifting Standards in European Human Rights Rulings
In his contribution to an EU-backed project to study the impact of the European Court of Human Rights on selected countries, visiting professor Haldun Gulalp of Turkey's Yildiz Technical University observes the court preferring some models of church- and mosque-state relations to others. In "freedom of religion" cases, France and Turkey fare better than Greece and Bulgaria.
Posted: 5/29/2009
Renowned Italian Sculptor Pietro Coletta to Install Piece on Campus Friday
The final piece will be unveiled Tuesday, June 2, at a 5 p.m. reception to coincide with festivities planned in Royce Hall by the Italian Consulate for Italy's Festa della Repubblica (Republic Day).
Posted: 5/28/2009
Testing Torture
Reporter Carey Shenkman's 3-part segment on torture featuring former U.S. Air Force interrogator Matthew Alexander and former U.S. Army interrogator Eric Maddox. Alexander and Maddox came to UCLA to speak at the Burkle Center on April 24, 2009.
Posted: 5/26/2009
The New Guantanamo
Kal Raustiala is Director of the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and a professor at UCLA Law School and the UCLA International Institute, where he teaches in the Program on Global Studies. In this op-ed recently published by The Huffington Post, he discusses the future of Guantanamo and the new Guantanamo - Bagram Air Base.
Posted: 5/26/2009
Congress' Poor Oversight of Intelligence Is Longstanding Problem
Amy Zegart is an associate professor of public policy at the School of Public Affairs, a Senior Fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. This op-ed, addressing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's charge that the CIA and the Bush Administration misled Congress in its briefings about interrogations of terrorist suspects, was published recently by NationalJournal.com.
Posted: 5/22/2009
Mexican Writer Elena Poniatowska Addresses 250 on Literary Women
In a Spanish-language lecture on Latin America's women writers, the versatile and prolific Poniatowska explains that her vocation means something distinctive for Latin American women, and that passing centuries have brought little relief and appreciation for those who dare to make art.
Posted: 5/21/2009
Students Granted Pilipino Studies
Group lobbies successfully for new concentration within existing department, reports The Daily Bruin.
Posted: 5/21/2009
Three Stops and a Chart
Read about the Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture with Anderson Cooper as featured in the Jewish Journal.
Posted: 5/20/2009
Anderson Cooper Delivers Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture at UCLA
The lecture series, established at UCLA in 2002, features scholars, journalists and policymakers who have contributed original analyses or constructive approaches to problems of international concern. Cooper spoke to a crowd of 900 on Sunday.
Posted: 5/18/2009
Cooper Honors Daniel Pearl
Though he never met Pearl, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper said, he keeps a picture of him and another fallen journalist on his bulletin board at work as a source of inspiration. The Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture is cosponsored by the Burkle Center.
Posted: 5/18/2009
Japan Honors Notehelfer With Order of the Rising Sun
At a May 12 ceremony, the government of Japan recognizes former UCLA Center for Japanese Studies Director Fred Notehelfer for his contributions to history and Japanese studies in the United States. He is one of 70 non-nationals to receive the Order this year.
Posted: 5/13/2009
Professor in Japanese Studies Receives Award
Long-time former UCLA Center for Japanese Studies Director Fred Notehelfer receives the Order of the Rising Sun, one of the Japanese government's most prestigious decorations. The Daily Bruin looks at his legacy at UCLA.
Posted: 5/13/2009
Japanese, South Korean Consuls Discuss Regional Security, Global Economics
The top representatives from Japan and the Republic of Korea in Southern California visited campus on Monday for a discussion sponsored by the Graduate Student International Affairs Association at UCLA and cosponsored by the Asia Institute and the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies.
Posted: 5/12/2009
Love on the Run
Let us count the ways: why people fall in love while studying abroad.
Posted: 5/12/2009
Predicting Social Change
Psychology Professor Patricia Greenfield has elaborated a new theory that explains rapidly changing values in terms of adaptations to different types of environments. She posits a long-term, world-wide trend.
Posted: 5/8/2009
Guns, Roses and Graduate Degrees
At a conference that considered the impact of the French philosopher Michel Foucault on Middle East studies, visiting historian Janet Afary explains that the story of Iranian women since the Revolution is not entirely one of repression.
Posted: 5/6/2009
eBay Has Unexpected Effect on Looting of Antiquities, Archaeologist Finds
UCLA archaeologist Charles Stanish argues in the latest issue of Archaeology that the antiquities market created by the online auction house eBay has reduced incentives for looting.
Posted: 5/4/2009
Chilean Poet Raul Zurita Draws, and Stirs, a Crowd
Raul Zurita, one of Latin America's great living poets and one of Chile's most important voices against dictatorship, reads and discusses his poetry on campus.
Posted: 5/1/2009
Dr. Keller Presents at Princeton Colloquium on Public and International Affairs
Dr. Edmund Keller participated in the seventh annual Princeton Colloquium on Public and International Affairs, held on April 17-18, 2009 at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Keynotes and featured presenters explored the positive and negative effects of globalization.
Posted: 5/1/2009
Filling the Silent Space
One of the standing committees on South Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission documents Korean War deaths including mass killings of some 100,000 South Koreans by their own military, police and allies. Dong-Choon Kim of Sung Kong Hoe University discussed the work of the committee he leads earlier this quarter at UCLA.
Posted: 5/1/2009
Professor Rogers Brubaker Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
CEES congratulates Professor Brubaker on his election to the American academy of Arts and Sciences!
Posted: 5/1/2009
Ex-Interrogators Say Human Connection, Not Torture, Yields Results
In the national debate on whether the tactic of torture is warranted for the sake of national security, the experiences of the two former interrogators underscore the argument that torture is not an effective tool for unsealing secrets and getting at the truth.
Posted: 4/30/2009
Institute Hosts Conference on Latin American Economies
The gathering of international experts extends efforts of collaboration and exchange by the UCLA Latin American Institute.
Posted: 4/29/2009
Burkle Senior Fellow Kantathi Suphamonkhon: Can Thailand Avoid the Abyss?
Burkle Center Senior Fellow and 39th Foreign Minister of Thailand, Dr. Kantathi Suphamongkhon, explains in a widely circulated op-ed how his country can "reset" its politics.
Posted: 4/24/2009
UCLA Holds 1st Graduate Conference on Indonesia
Sponsored by the new UCLA Indonesian Studies Program, a graduate student conference promotes activism and collaborative scholarship about the world's fourth-largest nation.
Posted: 4/23/2009
UCLA Brings Egyptian Temple Karnak to Life
A virtual model and digital resources help students and instructors to learn about the historic, sacred site.
Posted: 4/22/2009
2 at International Institute Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Among the six new fellows on the UCLA faculty are Sanjay Subrahmanyam, a historian who directs the UCLA Center for India and South Asia, and Rogers Brubaker, a sociologist who serves on the Faculty Advisory Committee for the Center for European and Eurasian Studies.
Posted: 4/21/2009
Wangari Maathai Calls for Debt Forgiveness
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan founder of the global Green Belt Movement, told a Burkle Center audience that Africans "are literally slaves" to Western nations that profit from excessive interest payments on aid. Event coverage and video are available from Zocalo Public Square.
Posted: 4/21/2009
Professor Marina Goldovskaya Receives Scolarship and Preservation Award
CEES congratulates Professor Goldovskaya for receiving the 2008 Scolarship and Preservation Award from the International Documentary Association!
Posted: 4/20/2009
Is the Islamic Republic of Iran Headed for a Sexual Revolution?
Janet Afary, a visiting professor in the Department of History, will discuss her forthcoming book, "Sexual Politics in Modern Iran" (Cambridge University Press, 2009), at a public event on May 19. This related op-ed recently appeared in the Guardian newspaper.
Posted: 4/17/2009
Argentinean Paper La Nacion Features Joint CNSI Argentina Conference
Laura Garca Oviedo
For LA NACION (This text has been translated from the original)
Posted: 4/16/2009
Study Explores Roots of Ethnic Violence
Excluding ethnic groups from power is a recipe for civil war, say researchers led by Sociology Professor Andreas Wimmer and a former UCLA political scientist.
Posted: 4/16/2009
International Community Coming to Realize 'the Responsibility to Protect'
Gareth Evans, former foreign minister of Australia and author of a landmark report on stopping genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity, said Tuesday at UCLA that the international community is coming to realize that "the sin is not intervention, the sin is indifference."
Posted: 4/15/2009
Faculty Research, Foucault, and Human Rights are the Highlight of CNES's Spring Programs
Conferences on Women in Conflict Zones, Iranian-American Writers, and Foucault in the Middle East
Posted: 4/13/2009
Missed Opportunity Hurt US-African Relations for Decades
For the last half-century the United States has undermined itself in Africa by failing to distinguish itself from Europe and the colonial legacy, says Haskell Sears Ward, one of the first to graduate from UCLA with an interdisciplinary master's degree in African studies.
Posted: 4/10/2009
Finding the Cutting Edge of Fashion in Indonesia
The Graduate Quarterly profiles anthropology graduate student and Fulbright fellow Brent Luvaas.
Posted: 4/9/2009
Renewable Energy for Urban Homes
Urban planning graduate student and Fulbright fellow T.H. Culhane introduces handmade solar water heaters in Cairo and thinks about how energy projects can address both poverty and environmental problems.
Posted: 4/9/2009
Entrikin to Lead Institute, International Studies Through 2011
The UC Regents have approved the appointment of Professor Nicholas Entrikin as vice provost for international studies. Professor Entrikin has served as the acting vice provost since 2007.
Posted: 4/8/2009
'To Know Mexico Better Is to Know Ourselves Better'
UCLA is expanding its studies of and ties with Mexico with the creation of a dedicated center under the Latin American Institute and new programs of scholarly collaboration and exchange. At the inaugural event for the Center for Mexican Studies, speakers honored decades of service by UCLA's "dean of Mexican studies," Professor James Wilkie.
Posted: 4/8/2009
Universidad de California abre estudios sobre México
La UCLA reforzará las investigaciones sobre el país con la inauguración del Centro de Estudios Mexicanos
Posted: 4/7/2009
Former UCLA Dean to Head University in Hong Kong
Tony Chan, a former dean in the College of Letters and Science at UCLA, has been appointed the next president of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
Posted: 4/6/2009
Obituary: Jorge Preloran, 75, UCLA Professor, Documentary Film Pioneer
Jorge Preloran, a pioneer in the field of ethnographic documentary film and a professor emeritus at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, died March 28 in Los Angeles following a 10-year battle with prostate cancer.
Posted: 4/2/2009
Alumnus to Speak on US Relations with Africa
Haskell Sears Ward, an expert on development and one of the first UCLA graduate students in African Studies, will focus his Thursday afternoon talk on what Africa and the United States have meant to one another for the past 50 years.
Posted: 4/1/2009
Wartime Engineers as Social Visionaries
Aaron Moore, a Terasaki Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA and faculty member at Arizona State University, explains the vision of a modern empire behind Japanese engineering projects during the Sino-Japanese War.
Posted: 3/31/2009
Malcolm Kerr's Middle East
The family of a famous Bruin peacemaker, assassinated 25 years ago while serving as president of the American University of Beirut, has remembered him by seeking truth about his killers and reconciliation between nations.
Posted: 3/30/2009
The Buddha as Astute Businessman, Economist, Lawyer
Wall Street bankers would have benefited from being in the Buddha's audience. At the 106th Faculty Research Lecture, Gregory Schopen explains.
Posted: 3/19/2009
Language Fees Cut for Summer
Lower tuition for beginning intensive courses meant to accommodate students and professors
Posted: 3/18/2009
Toward a Pan-American School of Things Korean
Now in its third year, the Korean Studies in the Americas program brings students to UCLA from four Latin American countries, supports collaboration among faculty, and sends American Koreanist scholars north and south for lectures. Funded by the Seoul-based Academy of Korean Studies, the UCLA-administered program has begun to snowball, attracting interest in the form of travel grants for Latin American students and faculty members visiting Korea and the United States.
Posted: 3/18/2009
Three Chinese Histories of Globalization
Delivering the inaugural lecture for the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies speaker series "Beyond the Headlines: China and the Global Future," Wang Gungwu of the National University of Singapore shows how China's image of and role in globalization have changed as the country has become less closed off and more of an active participant in world affairs.
Posted: 3/16/2009
Historian Looks Back on Fall of Communism 20 Years Ago
Visiting professor Jurgen Kocka, a modern social historian at the Free University of Berlin, gave a lecture that kicks off more than a year of talks, conferences and film screenings organized by the Center for European and Eurasian Studies. An international conference about 1989's events and a film series are set for November.
Posted: 3/13/2009
Musawah Movement: Seeking Equality and Justice in Muslim Family Law
A doctoral student in women's studies reports on a February gathering in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, demanding inclusion of women's perspectives in the construction of family law in both Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority countries.
Posted: 3/13/2009
David Kaye: US Must Reengage with International Criminal Court
The U.S. risks being left without any influence on major international legal issues, writes the director of the UCLA Law School's Human Rights Program and its Sanela Diana Jenkins International Justice Clinic in The Los Angeles Times.
Posted: 3/11/2009
The Agonizing History of the CIA's Intelligence Failures
In a lecture addressed to an audience of nearly 200 in Dodd Hall on March 2nd, Tim Weiner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times and author of "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (Anchor Books), discussed his deeply researched book, which won the 2007 National Book Award for nonfiction. The event was organized by the Burkle Center for International Relations.
Posted: 3/9/2009
Drama: The Forgotten Genre
Cody Poulton of the University of Victoria traces the rise and fall of drama as a literary genre in early 20th-century Japan.
Posted: 3/6/2009
Colombian VP: Add Ecological Devastation to Cocaine's Toll
Francisco Santos Calderon, a former journalist and a victim of kidnapping himself by the Medellin drug cartel, came to campus with a message: cocaine use is killing Colombia's tropical rainforests, poisoning its rivers and land with toxic chemicals used in production of the drug, and ravaging a fragile ecosystem that sustains species of birds, amphibians, reptiles and plants that can be found nowhere else on this planet.
Posted: 2/27/2009
Lessons in Buddhism from an Iconoclastic Scholar
In his Faculty Research Lecture on March 10, Gregory Schopen hopes to illuminate a little-known aspect of Buddhism: the fact that it was one of the earliest social organizations in India to develop what might be called a corporation.
Posted: 2/26/2009
VP of Colombia to lecture at UCLA
Francisco Santos Calderon to discuss his movement to increase awareness about cocaine on Wednesday, February 25, 2009.
Posted: 2/25/2009
