Noah Coburn, political anthropologist at Bennington College, presented his current ethnographic research on Nepalese contractor employees to members of the YPIR network. Coburn has been interviewing people from Nepal, Georgia and Turkey, who have worked for contractors in Afghanistan during or after the war. He shared with YPIR members the socioeconomic profiles of his interviewees,…
Members of the Young Professionals in International Relations (YPIR) network gathered for an open forum at the end of the year to share their perspectives of the important international relations events of 2015. Participants included university professors and researchers, NGO members, academic journal editors, and diplomats. The main topics of the evening were the climate…
For any observer of Taliban reign in Afghanistan, the images of the collapsing Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 must be emblematic of the high price of war and extremism on humankind’s common cultural past. Likewise, for the current generation that is witnessing one of the worst humanitarian disasters in history, the explosion of Palmyra is an…
The deliberate targeting of cultural heritage in times of war and conflict is damaging on many levels: it robs countries of their past and impoverishes our shared heritage. What actions can be taken to mitigate the destruction? On October 15, 2015, the Hollings Center hosted a panel discussion entitled, “Preserving Cultural Heritage in Conflict” to…
At the start of 2015, it became readily apparent that Afghanistan will undergo significant transformations in the coming years. The United States referred to the year 2014 as a “transition” point for Afghanistan, as the International Security Assistance Force’s (ISAF) drawdown of forces shifted more of the security and economic responsibility to the Afghan government. …
On September 29, the Hollings Center organized a policy round table at the College of International Security Affairs of the National Defense University. It featured policy practitioners, academics, and government representatives. Speakers included Sumona Guha from the Office of the Secretary of State of the U.S. Department of State; George Gavrilis, a Visiting Research Scholar,…
The Center hosted an event for the Women in Foreign Policy initiative on September 17, 2015 in its Istanbul office conference space. The event, which featured speaker Asma Khader, President of the Sisterhood is Global Institute in Jordan, was the launch event for Women in Foreign Policy, an initiative that the Center is supporting. Ms….
On September, 29, 2015, the Hollings Center partnered with the Lifelong Learning Center at Kadir Has University to hold an event entitled Food for Diplomacy USA. This event followed-up on the Center’s next generation dialogue, Decoding Perceptions in U.S.-Turkey Relations held in fall of 2013. The event was held as part of the Lifelong Learning…
Timor Sharan, Program Management Unit Director at The Asia Foundation, discusses Afghanistan’s foreign policy in light of last year’s presidential election. He specifically examines Afghanistan’s experiences with neutrality versus alignments with regional or international powers. He also discusses how the upcoming loya jirga and 2016 parliamentary elections could affect power sharing in Afghanistan.
