The Bahá’í Chair for World Peace welcomes everyone back to Fall Semester 2021. We want to welcome all new and returning students back to campus and to wish you all a safe, happy, and healthy semester.
We are hopeful that as things start to reopen we will be able to hold in person events again. However, for the moment, all of our events will be held online only as we continue to operate in a time of uncertainty. We are committed to ensuring the safety of our wider community and holding our events in a virtual format allows us to do this.
Our event program begins this Thursday, September 2, 2021 from 9am – 6pm with the Global Climate Justice Conference: Seeking Environmental Justice and Climate Equality. The conference features six speakers, including Professor Julian Agyeman, Tufts University, Professor Karletta Chief, University of Arizona, Professor Cara New Daggett, Virginia Tech, Professor Radoslav Dimitrov, Western University Canada, Professor Na’Taki Osborne Jelks, Spelman College, and Professor Byron Williston, Wilfred Laurier University. By approaching the challenge of climate justice from the perspective of environmental justice, the speakers will illuminate our common human challenges and will provide a comprehensive overview of where we came from, where we are now, and where we need to go to address the deeply human issues of climate change.
On September 14, 2021 at 12pm, Kirsten Mullen, Folklorist, Founder Artefactual, Founder Carolina Writers Circuit will give a presentation on Reading Monuments, Marking Turf, and Embedding Memories. The presentation is focused on monuments and memory–what is to be done with the 2,000+ Confederate monuments and memorials still on display in the US. This event is co-sponsored by the Phillips Collection and the Critical Race Initiative.
The following day, September 15, 2021, the chair is co-sponsoring a panel discussion organized by the Anti-Black Racism Initiative on Critical Race Theory: Public Debates and Teaching in the Classroom. The discussion will be moderated by Professor Rashawn Ray, David M. Rubenstein Fellow at The Brookings Institution, Professor of Sociology and Executive Director of the Lab for Applied Social Science Research (LASSR) at the University of Maryland, College Park. The panel also features Professor Crystal Marie Fleming, Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at SUNY Stony Brook and Professor Victor Ray, F. Wendell Miller Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Criminology and African American Studies, The University of Iowa.
The Bahá’í Chair for World Peace Annual Lecture 2021 will be held on September 30, 2021 at 1pm, and will be given by Professor Angela McRobbie, Professor Emeritus, Goldsmiths University of London and Professor of Cultural Studies, Coventry University UK. Professor McRobbie will give a lecture on ‘Breaking the Spell of the Welfare State?’: Public Culture in Neoliberalism’s Gender Regime, and the lecture will offer a feminist cultural studies perspective, on the re-configurations of the last decade which see precipitative encodings of public and popular culture.
We have more events coming up in October and November, which will be announced in a few weeks. Be sure to follow us on social media @bahaichair and visit our website to stay updated on all we have planned for the semester. We wish all students a successful academic semester and hope to virtually ‘see’ you at our events!
About the Author:
Kate Seaman is the Assistant Director to the Bahá’í Chair for World Peace where she supports the research activities of the Chair. Kate is interested in understanding normative changes at the global level and how these changes impact on the creation of peace.
You can find out more about the Bahá’í Chair by watching our video here.