World Issues Forum Fall 2020

The World Issues Forum challenges students, faculty, staff, and community members to be active and engaged global citizens. Distinguished guest speakers address urgent global justice topics including    planetary survival; decolonization and anti-racism; human rights; migrations; and the world economy.

           Link to World Issues recorded session

World Issues Forum Panel Presentation: “COVID-19 – Global Responses and Impact” (Africa, India, Latin America, Lummi Nation, US Minorities)

Panel Moderator: Professor Hilary Schwandt, Fairhaven College

Panel Presenters:

  Link to World Issues recorded session

World Issues Forum Presentation: “The Rebirth of University Amawtay Wasi: The Politics of Intercultural Higher Education in Ecuador”Presenter: Kelsey Evalyn Gilman, Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington

In 2014 the Indigenous lntercultural University of Ecuador
Amawtay Wasi (Kichwa: "House of Wisdom") closed after a state
evaluation found it lacked quality. A re-formed version of the
school was projected to re-open in 2020. This research asks
whether the school1s rebirth represents an Indigenous challenge
to colonial education, or whether it is another sign of the cooptation
and neutralization of lndigeneity. Through an embedded
ethnographic approach, I explore the co-production of this space
by state officials, Indigenous students and instructors. My work
contributes to a wider literature on neoliberalism and Indigenous
social movements, and respond to calls for re-thinking market
politics and Indigenous intellectual sovereignty in the Americas.

Link to World Issues recorded session

World Issues Forum Presentation: “Ethnic Violence and Refugee Crisis: The Case of the Rohingyas in South Asia”

Presenter: Srobana Bhattacharya, Associate Professor, Georgia Southern University

This talk highlights the extreme consequences of ethnic violence and how such violence can become genocidal. Informed by refugee interviews in Bangladesh, it emphasizes how the Rohingya minority group became victim of Buddhist nationalism and state­led violence in Myanmar. My field research in the Summer 2018 in Bangladesh led a documentary film, which deeply informs
the topic's work for political conflict. This talk will be followed
by the film: "The Voices of Rohingya Refugees': that showcases the experiences of some of the Rohingya refugees in the camps of Bangladesh. It highlights the precarious life in camps, the uncertainty of the future for these displaced people. It is a commentary on the effects of political violence and a search for meaning of what it means to be a refugee.

Link to World Issues recorded session

World Issues Forum Presentation: “Criminal Governance in Latin America” 

Presenters: Professor Andreas Feldmann, The University of Illinois at Chicago

Latin America (LA) is experiencing an acute security crisis with rising levels of violence by a plethora of actors involved in different criminal activities disputing power among themselves and with the state. With growing power and resources, they have begun to challenge states' monopoly of coercion transforming themselves into de facto authorities in large swathes of their respective countries. An estimated 10-15% of the LA population live under these conditions. This dynamic is conceptualized as criminal governance: the regulation of social order, informal or illegal economies through the enforcement of formal and informal institutions that replace, complement, or compete with the state, or through the distribution of public goods such as social services, justice, and security.

The project examines how legislative and policy changes introduced as a result of the 2011 Beyond the Border Agreement have affected the governance of the Canada-US border. Our focus is on the daily regulation of the border - how legal responsibility is exercised, how the discretionary decision-making process works, and how border regulation impacts the human rights and civil liberties of different border crossers. Our presentation will provide an overview of our project, to reflect on our preliminary research findings.

World Issues Forum Presentation: Drawing the REDLine

Presenter: Celeste Mergens, Founder and CEO, Days for Girls

World Issues Forum Presentation: “Genocide Today – The Uyghurs in China”

Presenter: Dr. Ellen Kennedy, Executive Director, World Without Genocide, Mitchell Hamline School of Law, St. Paul, MN