Call for Participants -- Mideast Wire's The Exchange: City-Focused Conferences in Beirut, Tunis, & Turkey

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Oct 1, 2012 Turkey
[Image from mideastwire.com] [Image from mideastwire.com]

Call for Participants -- Mideast Wire's The Exchange: City-Focused Conferences in Beirut, Tunis, & Turkey

By : Jadaliyya Reports

The Exchange is an effort by Mideastwire.com and its partners to promote understanding and academic enrichment through a variety of city-focused conferences in and around the Middle East. During their stay, typically lasting from one to two weeks, students and professionals from around the world engage directly with some of the leading intellectuals, academics and political leaders in the country - representing all sides.

The First Exchange was launched in June 2008 in Beirut, Lebanon. Now, several years on, over 270 students from forty-four different countries have participated, with many going on to work as diplomats in their home countries, for NGOs serving the region, and as social entrepreneurs.

The Tenth Beirut Exchange will be held 17-24 November 2012;

The Second Tunis Exchange will be held 3-13 January 2013;

The Second Turkey Exchange will be held 14-24 January 2013.

To request an application for any of the above Exchanges, email info@mideastwire.com.

Click here to view a previous programs for each Exchange. 

Note that tuition discounts, beyond standard financial aid allocations for those applicants with demonstrated need, are available for alumni of previous Exchange programs as well as students who wish to attend more than one Exchange. For more information, please email info@mideastwire.com

THE TENTH BEIRUT EXCHANGE (17-24 November 2012)

Application deadline October 20 2012

Limited spaces available/Rolling acceptance

The Beirut Exchange program rests on two tracks:

  • Academic - Participants will attend a series of lectures and colloquia led by leading professors and public intellectuals. Topics will include: The Arab Uprisings; The Special Tribunal for Lebanon; The United Nations as peacekeeper and mediator; Engaging political Islam; Asymmetrical conflict: the July 2006 Lebanon war; Human Rights in the Middle East and other topics.
  • Dialogue with Leaders - Participants will have the opportunity to meet, listen, and engage leading social, political and economic leaders from across the spectrum in Lebanon - with a particular (though not exclusive) emphasis on exposure to Islamist and opposition currents.

Costs

Tuition: $1,250; Partial financial aid is available for those students and individuals that can demonstrate need. Tuition is 50% refundable up to two weeks before the program commences should the situation in Lebanon warrant a cancellation by Mideastwire.com. 

Accommodation: Recommended accommodation is at the Cavalier Hotel in Hamra, Beirut. Room rates vary depending on arrangements, but generally fall within the range of $300-$400 for the duration of the program (including breakfast). Alternative accommodation is available upon request, although most lectures will be held in the conference room of the Cavalier Hotel and across the street at our partner organization Altcity.me

Airfare: $600, approximate from the European Union.


THE SECOND TUNIS EXCHANGE (3-13 January 2013)

Application deadline 15 November 2012

Limited spaces available/Rolling acceptance

Mideastwire.com is pleased to announce the Second Tunis Exchange in partnership with CEMAT, the overseas research center of the American Institute for Maghrib Studies based in Tunis, Institut Tunis Dauphine and Tunisia Live. Like our other Exchanges, the ten-day program 3-13 January 2013 will engage students from around the world in a multifaceted discussion of some of the key issues facing Tunisia and the wider region.

The Tunis Exchange program rests on two tracks:

  • Academic - Participants will attend a series of lectures led by leading professors and public intellectuals in Tunisia. Topics will include: Economic challenges facing Tunisia and North Africa; Political Islam and electoral politics; The status of women in Tunisia and the MENA region; Media coverage of the Arab revolts; Trade union politics in the post Ben Ali era; Emerging security challenges in the MENA region, as well as a range of other topics.
  • Dialogue with Leaders - Participants will have the opportunity to meet, listen, and engage leading social, political, religious and economic leaders from across the spectrum in Tunisia.


Program Format: The Tunis Exchange will be held over ten days in total. Students are expected to stay at the hotel Le Majestic, unless permission for offsite stay at alternative hotels or accommodations is requested, since most meetings will take place in the conference room at Le Majestic. Off-site meetings will entail bus travel as a group in and around Tunis. At least three days of the program will entail travel to other cities and regions in Tunisia for meetings with local activists, intellectuals, academics and political/religious leaders, including in Sidi Bouzid, Sfax and Gafsa.

Costs

Tuition: $1,500; Partial financial aid is available for those students and individuals that can demonstrate need.

Accommodation: Seven nights of the program will be spent at Hotel Le Majestic in downtown Tunis, while at least three nights will be spent at hotels outside of Tunis. Room rates vary depending on arrangements, but generally fall within the range of $450-$500 total for a shared double room during the duration of the program (breakfast is included). Alternative accommodation, including in a single room, is available upon request.

Airfare: $450, approximate from the European Union.


THE SECOND TURKEY EXCHANGE (14-24 January 2013)

Application deadline 15 November 2012

Limited spaces available/Rolling acceptance

Mideastwire.com and politicsinthefield.com are pleased to announce the Second Turkey Exchange. The ten-day program (14-24 January) will be held over eight days in Istanbul and two days in Ankara, immersing students and professionals from around the world in some of the key issues facing Turkey and the surrounding region.

The Turkey Exchange rests on two tracks:

  • Academic - Participants will attend a series of seminars led by leading Turkish academics, journalists, businesspeople, and public intellectuals. Topics will include: Turkey and the Syrian Revolution; The future of Turkey-EU and Turkey-US relations; Turkey`s role in the Middle East Peace process; Economic reform challenges now and on the horizon; Pipeline politics and Turkey`s energy role; The AKP party in domestic and regional relations; The Kurdish question; Terrorism and the PKK; Turkey`s constitution and justice system; Women in Turkey; Hydro-politics and Turkish foreign policy, among other topics.
  • Dialogue with Leaders - Participants will have the opportunity to meet and engage social, political and economic leaders from across the spectrum in Turkey.

Program Format: The first six days as well as the final two days of the Exchange will take place at the Madison Hotel in downtown Istanbul, although there will be several bus trips to meetings arranged outside the conference center. Two days of the Exchange will be spent in the capital, Ankara, where a series of meetings with political and diplomatic leaders will be convened.

Costs

Tuition: $1,500. Partial financial aid is available for those students and professionals that can demonstrate need, including being a current recipient of financial aid.

Hotel: $120 for Ankara (shared double room, two nights) @ the Ickale Hotel http://www.hotelickale.com/tr/. $480 for Istanbul (shared double room, eight nights) @ the Madison Hotel http://www.madison.com.tr/

Airfare: $400 approximately from the EU.

About the Organization

Mideastwire.com is a Beirut-based media monitoring company that translates the Arabic and Persian language media into English.

Click here to visit the Exchange Facebook page. 
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Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412