Fall 2012 Clarke Initiative Colloquium Series
Tuesdays, 4:15-5:55 pm, Room 276
September 4: Bernard Freamon, Professor of Law, Seton Hall University School of Law -- Constitutional and Electoral Reform in the Middle East: Democracy, Politics and Islam
Professor Freamon has lectured, consulted, and published in the areas of Islamic Jurisprudence, Islamic Legal History, American Legal History, Comparative Law, Evidence, Prisoners' Rights, Slavery and the Law, and Professional Ethics. He is the Director of Seton Hall Law School's Program for the Study of Law in the Middle East, based in Cairo, Egypt. The Cairo study abroad program is now in its seventeenth year and the program recently established a second site in Amman, Jordan. The Cairo and Amman study abroad programs are the first and only ABA-approved study abroad programs in the Arab world. In March 2010, Professor Freamon was elected to membership in the American Law Institute and, in 2011, he was appointed co-rapporteur to the Islamic Law Committee of the American Branch of the International Law Association. He recently completed a year as Chairperson of the Section on Islamic Law of the Association of American Law Schools and he was one of the conveners of a conference on "The Teaching of Islamic Law at American Law Schools," sponsored by the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School. He is the author of a number of articles and book chapters in Islamic law and jurisprudence, including "Martyrdom, Suicide and the Islamic Law of War," appearing in the Fordham International Law Journal, "Some Reflection on Post-Enlightenment Quranic Hermeneutics," published as part of a symposium on the future of Islamic law scholarship in the Michigan State Law Review and "The Emergence of a New Qur'anic Hermeneutic: The Role and Impact of Universities in West and East," which is part of a collection entitled "The Law Applied: Contextualizing the Islamic Shari'a" (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008). Professor Freamon is currently pursuing a major research and writing project on the abolition of slavery in the Islamic world, with a forthcoming book, "Islam, Slavery, and Empire in the Indian Ocean World" as the first installment in that effort.
September 11: Asma Barlas, Professor, Department of Politics, Ithaca College -- Islamic Scripture, Law, and Women
Professor Barlas joined Ithaca College in 1991 and is currently the director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity and a professor in the Department of Politics at Ithaca College. In 2008, she also held the Spinoza Chair in Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Professor Barlas's research interests focus on the ideologies, epistemologies and practices of violence. Much of her work studies Muslim sexual/ textual politics, especially the relationship between patriarchal interpretations of Islam's scripture, the Qur'an, and violence against Muslim women. Her work on the Qur'an has been translated into several languages (Arabic, Bengali, Indonesian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and Urdu). Professor Barlas began her career as a section officer (diplomat) in Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs but this was terminated on the orders of the country's military dictator, General Zia ul Haq. She eventually received political asylum in the United States. Professor Barlas holds a Ph.D. in International Studies (Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver), an M.A. in Journalism (University of the Punjab, Pakistan), and a B.A. in English Literature and Philosophy (Kinnaird College for Women, Pakistan).
September 18: James Grabowski, Vice President, Field Operations, AMIDEAST -- Building Judicial Institutions in the Middle East – A Report from the Field
James Grabowski began his AMIDEAST career in 2000, when he was appointed Judicial Education Adviser for the Administration of Justice Support I Project in Egypt. He has served as Chief of Party for the project since 2002. He also served as AMIDEAST's country director for Egypt from April 2003 until 2005. A former Peace Corps volunteer in Yemen, Mr. Grabowski received a Master of Science from Syracuse University and a Bachelor of Arts from Le Moyne College in New York.
September 25: Guenter Heidenhof, Sector Manager, Public Sector and Governance in the Middle East and North Africa Region, Washington DC --Governance Challenges in North Africa and the Middle East - A World Bank Perspective
Günter Heidenhof is the Sector Manager for Public Sector and Governance in the Middle East and North Africa Region of the World Bank.He is a German national who began his career as a Magistrate.He has comprehensive expertise with public sector governance, organizational development and managing change with special focus on the procedural and institutional underpinnings of public sector reform.He first joined the World Bank in 1998, as Cluster Leader for governance, public sector and public finance reforms in African countries.From 2005 to 2008 he was based in Madagascar as Coordinator for governance and institutional development programs in Madagascar, Mozambique, South-Africa, Mauritius, Namibia and other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.From 2008 to early 2010 he was Governance Advisor in the World Bank Office in New Delhi - leading and coordinating the governance and anti-corruption work of the World Bank in India. Prior to joining the Bank, Günter worked for the German Federal Government; he held several senior positions mainly in the area of change management and institutional development. He holds degrees in international law, public administration and economics; he has a PhD in International Law from the University of Cologne/Germany.
October 2 -- Sheila Lalwani, Merrill School of Journalism, University of Maryland -- Power and Expression: The Experience of Moroccan Female Bloggers During the Arab Spring
Sheila B. Lalwani, currently a Program Associate of the Clarke Initiative and a journalist and lecturer at the Merrill School of Journalism at the University of Maryland, was formerly Special Advisor to Foreign Policy magazine and Research Fellow for the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. A former Fulbright Scholar, she is a graduate of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Her online journalism has appeared on such widely read news and commentary websites as the Huffington Post and the Guardian (UK).
October 16: Fadhel Kaboub, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Denison University -- The Role of Law, Politics, and Economics in the Making of the Tunisian Revolution
Dr. Fadhel Kaboub is Assistant Professor of economics at Denison University (OH) and Research Associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College (NY), the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability(MO), and the International Economic Policy Institute (Ontario, Canada). Dr. Kaboub's regional expertise is on the economies of the Middle East and North Africa (especially Tunisia). Recent writings include "The Middle East's Neoliberalism-Corruption Nexus, " and "On the Jasmine Revolution." Recent presentations include "Tunisia's Revolution and Aftermath," (Economic Research Forum, Cairo, Egypt), "Post-Neoliberal Economic Policies for Tunisia," 2012 Allied Social Science Association Meetings, Chicago, and "Solidarity, Corruption, and Revolution in Tunisia: The Political Economy of Neoliberalism," Middle East Economics Association. Professor Kaboub holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from the University of Missouri - Kansas City, and a B.S. in Economics from the University of Economics and Management of Tunis, Tunisia.
October 23: Bruce Rutherford, Associate Professor of Political Science and Middle Eastern & Islamic Civilization Studies, Colgate University -- The Judiciary and Political Change in Egypt
Egypt after Mubarak: Liberalism, Islam, and Democracy in the Arab World (Princeton, 2008); "What Do Egypt's Islamists Want? Moderate Islam and the Rise of Islamic Constitutionalism," The Middle East Journal (Autumn 2006); and "Surviving Under 'Rule by Law': Explaining Ideological Change in Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood," in Said Arjomand and Nathan Brown (eds.) Constitutionalism, the Rule of Law, and the Politics of Administration in Egypt and Iran (SUNY Press, 2012). His research has been supported by grants from the Fulbright Commission, the Social Science Research Council, and the American Research Center in Egypt. He has held research fellowships at Princeton University and Harvard Law School.
October 30: Graciana del Castillo, Senior Research Scholar, Columbia School for International and Public Affairs -- Development and War: The Political Economy of Peace
Graciana del Castillo is an expert on countries in crises - both financial and post-conflict. She was the first economist at a senior level in the cabinet of the UN secretary-general in the early 1990's, and the first one to move from the UN Secretariat to the IMF. At the UN, she was responsible for economic reconstruction and was involved in ongoing operations in Central America, Africa, and Asia. At the Office of the Director-General at the UN, she was actively involved in the organization's work on sanctions in Iraq. With a Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University she was Senior Research Scholar and Associate Director of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia where she conducted research and organized conferences on issues at the top of the global economic and foreign policy agenda. She has been working with Jeffrey Sachs at Columbia University and with M. Ishaq Nadiri at New York University on preparing, discussing with the authorities, and mobilizing resources for an integrated rural development project in Afghanistan to deal with displaced populations, food security, job creation and entrepreneurship.She is the author of Rebuilding War-Torn States: The Challenge of Post-Conflict Economic Reconstruction (Oxford University Press, December 2008).
November 6 – Andrew Metcalf, King & Spalding, LLP -- Practicing Islamic Finance in the Global Economy
Andrew Metcalf is a partner in the Middle East & Islamic Finance Practice Group in King & Spalding's New York office. A graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, Mr. Metcalf joined King & Spalding after being in corporate practice in Cairo, Egypt, for 2½ years. Over the past fourteen years, he has represented a number of clients in Shari'ah-compliant finance and investment transactions, including corporate acquisitions, real estate transactions, working capital financing, structured and subordination financings, and letter of credit/guaranty facilities. He has also represented financial institutions and customers of financial institutions in connection with domestic and international finance transactions including secured and unsecured credit facilities, asset-based loan facilities, structured financings, project financings, bridge financings and other acquisition credits, participations and syndications, subordinated debt facilities, letter of credit facilities and other credit-related transactions.
November 13: Ziad Fahmy, Assistant Professor of Modern Middle East History, Cornell University Department of Near Eastern Studies -- Jurisdictional Borderlands: Extraterritoriality and "Legal Chameleons" in Pre-Colonial Alexandria, 1840-1870
Ziad Fahmy is an Assistant Professor of Modern Middle East History at the department of Near Eastern Studies. Professor Fahmy received his History Ph.D. in 2007 from the University of Arizona, where his dissertation "Popularizing Egyptian Nationalism" was awarded the Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award (2008) from the Middle East Studies Association. His first book, Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture (Stanford University Press, 2011), examines how, from the 1870s until the eve of the 1919 revolution, popular media and culture provided ordinary Egyptians with a framework to construct and negotiate a modern national identity. His articles have appeared in the International Journal of Middle East Studies and in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Professor Fahmy is currently beginning another book project tentatively titled, Listening to the Nation: Sounds, Soundscapes, and Mass Culture in Interwar Egypt. In 2011-2012, he was a Faculty Fellow at the Society for the Humanities at Cornell U., where the focal theme was "Sound: Culture, Theory, Practice, and Politics". His research has been supported by the Fulbright-Hays Commission, the American Research Center in Egypt, the Council for the Humanities, the Institute for Social Science, and the Einaudi Center for International Studies (Cornell U.).
November 20 – Sadeq Bigdeli, University of Waikato, New Zealand -- Middle Eastern Legal Consciousness
Sadeq Z. Bigdeli is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Waikato Faculty of Law in New Zealand. Dr. Bigdeli holds an LLB from Tehran University and an LLM from Harvard Law School. He is also a summa cum laude graduate of the Master of International Law and Economics (MILE) program of the World Trade Institute (University of Bern). His PhD on "Energy and Climate Subsidies in International Economic Law" was awarded summa cum laude by the University of Berne (Faculty of Law).In 2007-8, Dr. Bigdeli was a senior fellow at the World Trade Institute where he was co-leader of a significant research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, which focused on energy and climate change from the perspective of WTO law and policy. In that capacity he co-edited a volume on International Trade Regulation and the Mitigation of Climate published by Cambridge University Press (2009) to which he also contributed a chapter. Dr. Bigdeli is experienced in holding training sessions on trade regulation for government officials and businesses communities from both developed and developing countries. He also has more than three years of professional experience in legal practice in the Middle East on international business matters including contracts, foreign direct investment and energy.
November 27: Catherine Warrick, Assistant Professor, Political Science Department, Villanova University -- The Effects of Regime Reform on Women's Rights and Representation in the Arab World
Dr. Warrick has conducted extensive research on Middle East legal systems and political structures. She has lived in Amman, Jordan, while on research fellowships and was the recent recipient of a National Science Foundation Law and Social Science Program research grant for a project on Islamic law. She also specializes in the broader field of gender equality and civil rights issues. In addition to her academic endeavors, Warrick occasionally serves as an expert witness in asylum cases involving Arab refugees and has testified before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on the subject of honor crimes.