Center for African Studies
The Center for African Studies played an active role in hosting the 2006 African Studies Association's 2006 annual meeting in San Francisco. Associate Director Martha Saavedra was one of three co-chairs for the meeting's local arrangements committee. The committee organized a series of events including exhibits at the Museum of the African Diaspora, film screenings, and a series of sponsored roundtables and panels on such topics as HIV/AIDS in Africa and debt cancellation. On November 18, 2006, in conjunction with UC Berkeley's Office of Resources for International and Area Studies (ORIAS) and the Bay Area Global Education Project (BAGEP), Saavedra and CAS organized a workshop entitled "Teaching and Learning about the African Experience" for K-12 teachers and librarians. The workshop was held at the World Affairs Council in San Francisco.
Center for Middle Eastern Studies
The Center for Middle Eastern Studies is delighted to announce the establishment of the Afaf Kanafani Scholarship Fund. This grant has been made possible through a generous donation by Fay Afaf Kanafani from the proceeds of her autobiography, Nadia, Captive of Hope: Memoir of an Arab Woman. The grant will be awarded annually to eligible UC Berkeley students whose academic work focuses on women's rights in the Arab world, in the hope that such scholarship will contribute to a better understanding of gender issues in the Middle East and beyond. The first competition is taking place this year, and the prize winner will be announced in early summer 2007.
Afaf Kanafani is deeply committed to peace in the Middle East and the advancement of Arab women. She resides in the Oakland hills where she continues her work as an artist and activist, and is surrounded by her sons, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. The Center for Middle Eastern Studies extends its warmest thanks to Afaf Kanafani for her kind generosity to the University.
Daniel Zoughbie received his B.A. in Urban Studies with a minor in Middle Eastern Studies in 2006 from UC Berkeley, where he studied as both a Haas and Strauss Scholar. He has received many honors and awards; most notably, he was named recipient of the prestigious Marshall Scholarship, given annually by the British government to scholars with exceptional academic achievements and outstanding leadership skills to pursue advanced degrees at any academic institution in the United Kingdom. Daniel is currently studying Development Studies at the University of Oxford.
Daniel is also the founder and director of the Global Micro-Clinic Project (GMCP), an organization dedicated to providing access to health care in the developing world. He supported his project through various prestigious fellowships, including the Haas and Strauss and set up various "microclinics" in Bethlehem, all meant to address chronic diabetes and a hollowed-out healthcare system.
CMES is pleased to welcome Dr. Tom Segev to Berkeley as the Spring 2007 Helen Diller Family Visiting Professor. Dr. Segev is hosted by the Graduate School of Journalism and the IAS Teaching Program.
Dr. Segev is an accomplished journalist and historian. He started his journalistic career as news editor at Kol Israel, Israel's national radio. His later positions included a variety of editorial and reporting assignments in Israel and abroad. He was editor-in-chief of the weekly news magazine Koteret Rashit, and since 1979 has been writing for Ha'aretz, Israel's leading daily newspaper. His publications have had a major impact on contemporary debates within Israeli society. The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (1993) portrays how the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine prior to 1948, faced the challenges of Nazi Germany and wartime Zionist politics. His book One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate (1999) explored the tumultuous period before the creation of the state of Israel. His most recent book, Six Days of War, will be published in 2007.
Dr. Segev is currently teaching MES 150, "The Six Day War-Forty Years Later," and a course in the Graduate School of Journalism, "Reporting in the Middle East." Dr. Segev will deliver a major public lecture titled "1967: Israel's Longest Year" on May 8, 2007, at the International House Auditorium. Please visit the CMES Web site at http://www.ias.berkeley.edu/cmes for updated information.
Human Rights Center
|
The Human Rights Center awards fellowships each summer to ten UC Berkeley students to work with human rights organizations in the United States and abroad. The fellowships enable students to build connections between their academic studies and complex issues in the field. Fellows have come from a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, political science, law, environmental science, public policy, public health, and medicine.
|
|
|
Among this year's fellows was Rohan Radhakrishna, a graduate
|
Children sleeping in a night commuter
shelter, Kitgum, Northern Uganda.
|
|
student in the UCBUCSF Joint Medical Program.
Rohan conducted a project in Kitgum, Uganda, where thousands of children have not only been displaced from their homes in the countryside and resettled in camps but also travel each night to "night commuter" shelters to ensure their safety. The shelters provide a measure of protection against possible assault or abduction as well as a forum for educational and cultural activities. While Rohan was there, the 13 shelters were threatened with immediate closure by the government, but his rapid assessment documented the health and human rights implications of a hasty closure. With timely research findings in hand, the shelters and Kitgum Town Council were able to make arrangements with organizations in the area to keep several facilities open as short-term sanctuaries for the most vulnerable. To read details of the 2006 Summer Fellows' projects, visit http://hrcberkeley.org/fellowships.
|
Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
|
|
Left to right: the Honorable Ferenc Bosenbacher, Consul General of the Hungarian Republic; Professor Andrew C. Janos; Barbara Voytek, ISEEES Executive Director; and George Breslauer, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost.
|
|
In 2006, Professor Andrew C. Janos was recognized for his lifelong contribution to the field of East European and Hungarian studies. The Honorable Ferenc Bosenbacher, Consul General of Hungary, visited UC Berkeley to award Janos the commander Cross of the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic. The ceremony hosted by ISEEES overflowed with Janos's colleagues, friends, and supporters in a tribute to his many years of scholarship and teaching.
|
Institute of East Asian Studies
Frederic Wakeman, Haas Professor of History, Director of IEAS from 1990 to 1999, and a member of the Berkeley faculty since 1965, died on September 14, 2006, at his home in Oregon, only months after his retirement from Berkeley. Wakeman authored, edited, or co-edited more than thirty books and more than 100 essays and articles in scholarly journals as well as magazines such as The New York Review of Books and The New Republic. He was a past president of the American Historical Association. IEAS has created an online memorial to Frederic Wakeman's life and work, with tributes from colleagues and friends around the world, at http://ieas.berkeley.edu/news/fredericwakeman.html. Your contributions to the online memorial are welcome and should be sent by e-mail to Catherine Lenfestey (lenfeste@socrates.berkeley.edu) for posting.
The Center for Chinese Studies finished its 2005-6 academic year with a record 105 events managed or co-sponsored. Highlights included a Kunqu opera demonstration in October, a documentary film festival and round-table in March, and three conferences on the same weekend in May. The 2006-7 year began with the co-sponsored U.S. premier of the new Peony Pavilion: Young Lovers Edition. Spanning nine hours over three nights, this classic sixteenth-century Kun opera played to a completely sold-out Zellerbach Hall, and received critical acclaim from the San Francisco Chronicle, World Journal, and New York Times. In conjunction with this performance, the Center for Chinese Studies sponsored a three-day academic conference, three lectures on various aspects of Kunqu, one master class with world renowned Kunqu opera stars, and a special fall class in the Music Department on Chinese Opera.
The Center for Korean Studies has been awarded $100,000 from the Academy of Korean Studies to launch new collaborative research projects in 2006-7. This comes on top of other recent grants for public programs and teaching from the Daesan Foundation, Koret Foundation and Korea Foundation. This generous support allows Korean studies at Berkeley to continue its dramatic growth.
|
