European Union Center of California – Scripps College, Claremont, California

The Importance of Endorsing Liberal Democracy for Human Development and Wellbeing in Europe: Insights from the ESS10 in Tumultuous Times
2025-09-17 12:15 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | Hampton Room, Scripps College
An important question facing European countries and the European Union is whether valuing democracy adds any insight, beyond basic human values such as benevolence and universalism, in accounting for variations in critical measures of wellbeing and thriving. Round 10 of the European Social Survey (ESS10) occurred in 2020-2022, during the tumultuous times of the Covid pandemic and a rise in EU votes signaling support of authoritarian and populist candidates. The ESS10 included a module specifically asking participants which features of democracy they value and endorse as important to democracy in general. Factor analysis resulted in a novel, scalar invariant, democracy values scale, 4Dem, with factors of Liberal Democracy, Populist Democracy, Economic Equality, and Diverse Voices. Bayesian modeling revealed that basic human values, as assessed with the ESS10’s Human Values Scale, did not covary strongly with 4Dem or with measures of wellbeing. Rather, Liberal Democracy and Diverse Voices both covaried with objective measures of wellbeing. The findings of this study support greater attention to the study of democratic values for the unique insight they provide into human wellbeing in Europe.
About the Speaker: Prof. Spezio is a computational cognitive neuroscientist specializing in valuation, emotion, and decision making in interaction. He joined Scripps College after completing postdoctoral fellowships in UC Davis’ Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Science and in the laboratory of Ralph Adolphs at Caltech. He has edited several interdisciplinary volumes on religion & science and science and virtue.
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Understanding Georgia's Ongoing Protests
2025-04-16 12:15 - 13:15 | Humanities Museum (HUM 225)
Since late 2024, Georgia has experienced significant social and political unrest, marked by persistent street protests. For over four months, Georgians have been taking to the streets daily demanding snap elections. The protests erupted following the ruling Georgian Dream party’s announcement to suspend European Union accession talks until 2028, a move that contradicted public aspirations for closer ties with the West. In response, the government has enacted repressive laws and employed excessive force against demonstrators, leading to widespread human rights concerns. The authorities in Georgia continue to arrest protesters, imposing harsh sentences, and enacting laws to increase penalties for protest-related offenses. Reports from human rights organizations detail instances of police brutality, including beatings and torture of detainees, as well as the levying of substantial fines against demonstrators. Ms. Chkhikvadze has been covering the protests and following the events closely. She will speak about the underlying causes behind the turmoil in Georgia, including concerns about democracy, human rights, and Russian influence. She will discuss what these protests signify for Georgia’s democratic future and geopolitical positioning.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER; Ani Chkhikvadze is a journalist reporting on international politics, security, and U.S. foreign policy, specializing in European and Eurasian affairs. Her extensive coverage of geopolitical developments has appeared in The Foreign Policy Magazine, The Washington Post, The Spectator, and The Free Press. Ms. Chkhikvadze spent eight years at Voice of America’s Georgian Service in Washington, D.C., reporting extensively on U.S. foreign policy, transatlantic relations, wider European affairs, and developments in the Caucasus and Georgia. Ms. Chkhikvadze holds a master’s degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and is fluent in Georgian and Russian.

2025 URCEU: Never Waste a Crisis: How the EU Uses its Digital Policies to Become More Innovative, Competitive and Safe
2025-04-04 12:15 - 13:15 | Hampton Room, Scripps College
The European Union was born out of a crisis. After WWII, six countries agreed to pull together coal and steel procurement to make war between them “not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible”. 70 years later, the European Union pulled together procurement of vaccines to address the pandemic, and introduced the digital Covid certificate that revolutionised travelling across the EU 27 member states. The EU Single Market rules removed obstacles to the circulation of people, goods, services and capital, allowing businesses to operate more efficiently across national borders. This not only increased consumer choice and lowered prices, but also improved consumer protection, ensuring safer and higher-quality goods for all European citizens. With the unprecedented speed of technology developments in the last two decades, business and communications between people have shifted online, sparking tremendous opportunity growth while also increasing risks. To help harness opportunities and foster innovation while protecting the fundamental rights of people, the EU devised a digital policy strategy with one consistent set of rules for 27 countries to allow companies to scale-up easier across the EU. The Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act aim to create a safer online environment, bring more transparency and accountability, and foster competition in the digital market, opening up opportunities for smaller companies. The recently signed EU AI Act governs artificial intelligence systems, prioritizing ethics and trustworthiness. To boost AI innovation, the EU is investing in supercomputers and established AI factories, providing researchers and companies access to compute power and data. And somehow, when you ask people about the EU, the narrative that Europe is held back by its “over-regulation” still prevails. Will the EU digital policies be enough to help its companies thrive? How can it leverage its strengths to create a unique value proposition in the global tech landscape?
ABOUT THE SPEAKER; Joanna Smolinska is Counsellor for Digital and Deputy Head of the EU Office in San Francisco. She focuses on AI policy and regulation, online content moderation, policies promoting digital markets openness and innovation in the context of transatlantic relations, forging cooperation with California civil society, business, academia and government. Before coming to SF, she had worked for 15 years in the European Commission in Brussels across a wide range of policy areas, including digital and green transformation, digital services and copyright regulations, tech standardization, blockchain, and technology start-ups/scale-ups. She was actively involved in the development of the EU Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act. Of Polish nationality, Joanna graduated from Warsaw School of Economics, holds a Master’s Degree in Finance from the University of Geneva, and a Master’s Degree in European Law and Economic Analysis from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. Joanna is also a Non-resident Fellow with the Transatlantic Leadership Program and the Digital Innovation Initiative at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and a Tech Policy Fellow of the 2024-25 cohort at UC Berkeley.
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2025 URCEU: Will Europe Meet This Moment?
2025-04-03 18:00 - 19:00 | Hampton Room, Scripps College
Europe has awoken to a stark new geopolitical reality. The post-Cold War era of European integration, transatlantic cooperation, and benign globalization is gone. For over three years Russia has waged a brutal war against an EU aspirant country, committing heinous war crimes and crimes against humanity. China lurks in the shadows while it props up the Kremlin, manipulates markets, and exploits economic dependencies. The lynchpin of European security, the United States, suddenly appears willing to walk away from its collective defense commitments and threatens Europe with a trade war. Meanwhile, internal challenges like oligarchic populism, de-industrialization, and over-regulation keep holding Europe back. Can European leaders muster the political will to address today’s internal and geopolitical challenges? And what will it take for them to do so?
ABOUT THE SPEAKER; Ambassador Michael Carpenter served in the Biden administration as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Europe at the National Security Council. From 2021-24, he was the U.S. Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the world’s largest regional security organization representing over a billion people across 57 countries. For that role, he was confirmed by the United States Senate by unanimous consent. Previously Ambassador Carpenter was Senior Director and then Managing Director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania. In the Obama administration, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia, and Conventional Arms Control. He also worked as a Special Advisor to the Vice President and as Director for Russia at the National Security Council. Before that Carpenter was a career Foreign Service Officer with the State Department. He served overseas in the U.S. Embassies in Poland, Slovenia, and Barbados as well as in Washington. Carpenter received four Superior Honor Awards and three Meritorious Honor Awards from the State Department. He has also received fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the International Research & Exchanges Board, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Ambassador Carpenter holds a B.A. in International Relations from Stanford University a M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley.
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The Future of Diplomacy: Preparing the Next Generation of Diplomats
2025-02-25 12:00 - 13:00 | Humanities Museum (HUM 225)
Global diplomacy has faced a combustible mix of unique challenges in recent years that have tested its agility and effectiveness, and those challenges are unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Diplomacy is the world’s best hope, but it has yet to be widely accepted as a real profession. No country has nearly enough professional diplomats, and proper training and career development barely exist.
NICHOLAS KRALEV, Executive Director, Washington International Diplomatic Academy, will reflect on the readiness of U.S. and global diplomacy to navigate and influence today’s complex world, and on why all countries need a better approach to recruiting and training diplomats. He will also discuss his latest book, Diplomatic Tradecraft, the first-ever practical diplomacy textbook, which was published recently by Cambridge University Press.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER; Nicholas Kralev is the founding executive director of the Washington International Diplomatic Academy, an independent organization providing practical training in diplomacy. A former Financial Times and Washington Times correspondent, he covered and accompanied U.S. Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright on their travels around the world. His books include “America’s Other Army,” “Diplomats in the Trenches” and the new “Diplomatic Tradecraft,” the first-ever practical diplomacy textbook. He holds a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
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If you’d like a signed copy of Mr. Kralev’s book, please purchase one in advance and bring it to the event.

PRIORITIES OF THE POLISH PRESIDENCY OF THE EU COUNCIL
2025-02-12 12:15 - 13:15 | Humanities Museum (HUM 225)
PAULINA KAPUSCINSKA, Consul General of the Republic of Poland in Los Angeles, will discuss the priorities of the Polish Presidency of the EU Council including border security, combatting disinformation, free market, energy, food security, and public health.
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Careers in Foreign Service w/ Kyle Liston, US State Department
2024-12-02 12:15 - 13:15 | Hampton Room, Scripps College
Join Kyle Liston, Special Assistant in the Office of the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, to discuss his career path and his Foreign Service experience in Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, and Iraq.
As a Political Officer, Kyle specialized in migration issues, the electoral process, the constitution, and civil society.
Before joining the State Department in 2013, Kyle was completing a PhD in Modern Middle Eastern and European History at Indiana University—Bloomington where he focused on Tunisia, Libya, and Italy during the colonial period. As a Fulbright Hays and Boren Fellow, Kyle completed his dissertation research in Tunisia from 2009-2012. He holds two Masters Degrees, one in North African Affairs, and the other in European History. Kyle completed his BA in History at the University of Akron.
Kyle speaks Arabic, including Tunisian and Moroccan dialects, French, and Italian.

Right-Wing Populism in Europe and the USA: A Threat to Liberal Democracy?
2024-11-14 12:15 - 13:15 | Humanities Museum (HUM 225)
Do right-wing populists simply constitute a protest vote in the name of those who feel disenfranchised or are they a political force that radically challenges (liberal) democracy? From a comparative transatlantic perspective, this presentation will critically examine the rise of populism, the forces driving its success, and the implications for democratic rule. One key focus of the presentation will be on what populist actors mean and try to achieve when they claim to represent the ‘people’ in their political mobilization.
Oliver Schmidtke is a Professor in the Departments of Political Science and History at the University of Victoria (Canada), where he also serves as the director of the Centre for Global Studies since 2012 and holds the Jean Monnet Chair in European History and Politics. He received his PhD from the European University Institute in Florence and has been a JF Kennedy Fellow at Harvard University, a researcher at Humboldt University Berlin, a F. Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute, a Marie Curie Fellow at Hamburg University ,and a Research Fellow at the Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study. His research interests are in the fields of the politics and governance of migration, citizenship, nationalism, memory, and populism.
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POPULISM ON THE LEFT AND RIGHT with Bernard-Henri Lévy
2024-11-05 12:00 - 13:15 | Hampton Room, Scripps College
Join French philosopher and humanitarian Bernard-Henri Lévy for a conversation to explore his insights on global conflicts and democracy, moderated by Pomona professors Mietek Boduszynski and Oona Eistenstadt. Lunch will be provided. Participants can enter a raffle to win a signed copy of Bernard-Henri Lévy’s latest book.
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Citizenship As Political Membership: A Fundamental Strand of 20th and 21st Century European History
2024-10-28 17:00 - 18:00 | Hampton Room, Scripps College
An individual’s affiliation to a politically constituted community is decisive for their opportunities in life and often vital to their survival. This talk will argue that the primary signifier of political affiliation in 20th century Europe is “citizenship.” The importance attached to citizenship is what distinguishes the 20th century significantly from previous historical periods and other forms of political affiliation (religious, political party, ethnic, nation-state, and social class). With the democratization of political regimens, the expansion of participatory rights, the development of social welfare rights, and states increasingly closing themselves off from one another, citizenship began to grow in importance for individuals. Even the present processes of transnationalization, Europeanization and globalization can bring on only gradual and non-essential changes to the preeminence of citizenship, because the delineating political membership and distinguishing it from non-membership remain the primary functions of the state, even as it is increasingly losing its nation-state character.
About the Speaker: DIETER GOSEWINKEL is a historian and legal scholar at the Free University of Berlin who specializes in the modern history of Europe, history of citizenship, civil society, constitutional law, and Europeanism. He earned his degrees in law and history in Freiburg/Breisgau and Geneva. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, and a Thomas Mann Fellow at the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles (www.vatmh.org). He was previously a co-director of the Center for Global Constitutionalism at the WZB Berlin (2011-2021) and the curator of the exhibition “Citizenships: France, Poland, Germany since1789” at the German Historical Museum Berlin (2020-2023).
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Middle Eastern Alliance Shopping: Is the U.S. Still a Better Choice Than Russia or China?
2024-10-10 16:15 - 17:45 | Hampton Room, Scripps College
The United States, China and Russia (at least until recently) stand out as contemporary superpowers able to support allies across the globe. What do each of these countries offer would-be client states and groups in the Middle East, and how do their approaches differ? Can Gulf Arab monarchies and states such as Iran, Israel, Egypt and Syria, or stateless groups such as the Kurds and Palestinians, shop around for the best patron? For those that have a choice, what costs come with choosing one patron over another?
About the Speaker: David Romano holds the Thomas G. Strong Chair in Middle East Politics at Missouri State University. His research focuses on nationalism, social movements, theories of peace and conflict, political violence, politicized Islam, Middle-East politics (with a special emphasis on Turkey, Iraq, the Kurds and other Middle Eastern minorities) and foreign policy. His work has appeared in journals such as International Affairs, The Oxford Journal of Refugee Studies, Third World Quarterly, International Studies Perspectives, The Middle East Journal, Middle East Policy, Ethnopolitics and The Journal of Kurdish Studies. He is the author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2006 – also translated into Turkish and Persian) and the co-editor of Conflict, Democratization and the Kurdish Issue in the Middle East (Palgrave Mamillan, 2014) and The Kurds in the Middle East: Enduring Problems and New Dynamics (Lexingtoon, 2020).
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Strategic Sketches: Russian Foreign Policy & Early Mapping of the Caspian Sea
2024-09-26 12:15 - 13:15 | Hampton Room, Scripps College
The Caspian Sea, the world’s largest inland lake, was an important point for commercial and strategic reasons. Much of the historiography on the Caspian locates the emergence of this region as a site of competitive tension in the eighteenth century. But a map of the Caspian brought back to Europe by the Dutchman Nicolaas Witsen (1642–1717) in the mid-seventeenth century reveals that many of the dynamics that animated developments in the eighteenth century were afoot decades earlier. Focusing on early efforts to map the Caspian Sea region in the seventeenth-century invites us to consider early modern strategies of the Russian Empire vis-à-vis this important trade node and Western European actors as well.
About the Speaker: Erika Monahan is an Associate Professor of History at the University of New Mexico. She specializes in the history of Russian enterprise with a special interest in borders and frontiers. She earned a BA in history from Dartmouth and a PHD in history from Stanford University. Professor Monahan’s first book is titled The Merchants of Siberia: Trade in Early Modern Eurasia (Cornell University Press, 2016). She is currently working on another book tentatively titled Spinning Russia: Nicolaas Witsen and the Making of Russia’s Image in Europe.
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Barbarian Trespassers? The Transformation of the Countryside in Post-Roman Italy
2024-09-09 12:15 - 13:15 | Hampton Room, Scripps College
The dramatic “Fall of Rome” narrative remains the most appealing story about the end Western Roman Empire, even though scholars have often insisted that it oversimplifies the events of the fifth century, as well as its consequences in the sixth and seventh centuries. The complexity of scholarly accounts leaves the ordinary observer bewildered and eager to reach for the trusty decline-and-fall narrative. Perhaps part of the problem is that picture emerging from archeology has not been given the attention it deserves. The traditional model continues to color the way we understand rural society in Italy, but a closer examination of Roman villas after antiquity challenges the notion that Barbarian incursions devastated the Italian countryside. This talk considers what the life—and afterlife—of a specific villa reveals about the shifting landscape of Late Antique Italy following the Gothic Wars and the Lombard conquest.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Kathryn Jasper is Associate Professor of History and Director of European Studies at Illinois State University. She is also a co-director of the Valle Gianni Archaeological Project. She earned a BA in archaeology and an MA in medieval history from the University of Arizona, and holds a doctoral degree from the University of California at Berkeley in history and medieval studies. Her first monograph, entitled Bounded Wilderness: Landscape and Land Management within the Congregation of Fonte Avellana, 1035-1393, studies monastic communities and how individuals relied on Late Antique models to build new institutions – relating to one another and to their physical environment in new ways – to pursue both ideological and political ends.
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Sustainability in the EU Closing Workshop with Ayam Eskenazi
2024-04-26 00:15 - 13:15 | Balch Conference Room (Balch 133)
Come learn about the EU’s environmental law and policy frameworks. Our speaker is a graduate student in Forest and Nature Conservation & Sustainable Development Diplomacy at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands.

The Debate Over Majority Rule in Revolutionary Britain
2024-04-25 18:00 - 19:00 | Humanities Museum (HUM 225)
Since at least the 1980s, intellectual historians and political theorists have recognized seventeenth-century Britain as the site of an “adversary revolution” in political thinking that had momentous consequences for the shaping of modern political thought. The quintessential expression of this revolution, understood as a rejection of consensual politics, was the endorsement of majoritarian decision-making. And yet the debates over majoritarian decision-making that occurred in seventeenth-century Britain remain almost entirely unstudied, despite involving nearly all the major political writers of the time. This talk will examine some of the particular discursive practices surrounding majority rule that emerged in Britain between the outbreak of the Civil War and the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution.
About the Speaker: William Bulman studies the political, religious, and intellectual history of Britain and its empire in the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as the broader global history of majority rule. His research has been supported by awards from the Mellon Foundation, the Templeton Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Education. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2015.

The Story of Blue/Yellow in Ukraine: The Role of NGOs in Supporting Ukraine’s Defense
2024-04-22 17:15 - 18:15 | Hampton Room, Scripps College
About the speaker: Jonas Oehman is one of the founders of the Lithuanian non-profit Blue/Yellow. The organization has since 2014 provided non-lethal aid to the Armed Forces of Ukraine for almost 90 million USD. Jonas will talk about the war in Ukraine, the support provided by non-state actors to Ukrainian defenses, and his perception of the deeper implications of the war in Ukraine for Europe and the US.
This event is organized by the Ukrainian Alliance of the Claremont Colleges, and co-sponsored by the Keck Center at CMC, the Mgrublian Center at CMC, and the EU Center at Scripps College.

Frodo Baggins… the Fascist? Using and Abusing Middle-Earth in Giorgia Meloni’s Italy
2024-04-11 12:15 - 13:15 | Hampton Room, Scripps College
Giorgia Meloni is Italy’s first female prime minister and its furthest-right political leader since the fall of Italian Fascism. She is also a widely-noted enthusiast of JRR Tolkien’s fantasy epic, The Lord of the Rings, even going so far as to cosplay as a hobbit during her youth. This talk explores the complicated relationship between Tolkien’s fantasy, extremist politics in Italy, and English-language news media. On the surface, the attachment of nationalist Italians to the highly-English Lord of the Rings may seem incongruous or inappropriate. For this reason, the surprising self-identification of far-right political figures with small and inoffensive hobbits provides a fruitful opportunity to think both about contemporary politics and medievalism (the appropriation of medieval symbols and images in contemporary culture).
About the Speaker: Jeffrey Miner is an historian of late medieval Europe. His current book project, Public Debt and Civic Culture in Fourteenth-Century Genoa, examines the accidental invention of permanent public indebtedness by medieval Italians. It considers how the fourteenth-century explosion of public indebtedness in Genoa inflected both private and public life, drawing on a wide variety of methodologies and sources including financial records, legal privileges, sermons and poetry. The subject of this talk is the result of an unexpected encounter between studying medieval history and modern medievalism: the study of how moderns apply medieval models to contemporary needs, or take inspiration from the arts and customs of the Middle Ages.
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2024 URCEU Friday Noon Keynote: THE EU AND NATO TAKE LEADERSHIP IN EUROPE: RESPONSE TO U.S. INDECISION ON UKRAINE
2024-04-05 12:30 - 13:30 | Hampton Room, Scripps College
Since the U.S. Congress has been dithering over providing funds to assist Ukraine, the European Union and NATO alliance have stepped forward. While the EU is looking for ways to pay Ukraine out of frozen Russian assets, NATO countries have found 800,000 rounds of ammunition that they are looking to purchase for Ukraine’s fight against Russia. Although these initiatives cannot replace the vital role of the United States in European defense, they are a welcome sign of European leadership at a time of great crisis.
About the Speaker: Rose Gottemoeller is a Lecturer at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and its Center for International Security and Cooperation. Before joining Stanford, Gottemoeller was Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016-19. Prior to NATO, she served in the U.S. State Department as Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the U.S. Department of State. In 2009-10, she was the chief U.S. negotiator of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russian Federation, an experience captured in her memoir, Negotiating the New START Treaty, published in May 2021 by Cambria Press.
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2024 URCEU Thursday Night Keynote: INTERNATIONAL LIBERAL CHALLENGES TO DEMOCRACY IN THE 21ST CENTURY
2024-04-04 18:00 - 19:00 | Hampton Room, Scripps College
Recent years have witnessed significant concern about democratic backsliding. Resulting from the actions of duly elected governments, the incremental deteriorations of democratic institutions, rules, and norms have affected democracies around the globe, including some of the oldest in the world. Dr. Schneider will discuss the current challenges to democracy, with a focus on the international liberal foundations of democratic backsliding and its implications for the United States, the European Union, and the international liberal order.
About the Speaker: Christina Schneider is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, and Co-Director of the Future of Democracy Initiative at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. Professor Schneider is an expert in research on the domestic politics of international cooperation, studying how international cooperation affects and is affected by democratic politics and representation. She is the author of two books, including The Responsive Union: National Elections and European Governance (Cambridge University Press). The book presents a comprehensive account on when and how EU governments are democratically responsive to public opinion when they cooperate at the European level. The book was awarded the Best Book of 2019 and 2020 by the European Political Studies Association. She has published widely on these and other research subjects, including bargaining in international organizations, globalization and democratic representation, challenges to democracy and the liberal international order, and democratic backsliding.
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Green Gridlock: Resolving the Transatlantic Disconnect on Climate Action
2024-03-06 17:30 - 18:30 | Hampton Room, Scripps College
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED FROM JANUARY 22 TO MARCH 6.
Climate action is increasingly intertwined with geopolitical risk — even among transatlantic allies. Both the US and EU are implementing landmark climate agendas laced with green industrial policies like subsidies and carbon tariffs that have raised concerns over competitiveness and trade fairness. Recent US-EU tensions over climate may preview a new era, in which even close partners and allies vie for dominance over clean energy supply chains and increasingly employ trade tools, putting at risk the energy transition itself. Achieving a better outcome that accelerates clean investment across markets without fragmenting trade will require adroit policymaking to reflect today’s reality of green industrial policy and climate tariffs. What form might climate cooperation take if one country’s progress might come at the expense of another’s?
About the Speaker: Sagatom Saha is an Adjunct Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA. He previously worked on cleantech competitiveness at the International Trade Administration in the U.S. Department of Commerce and served as a special advisor in the Office of the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. In this role, he was chief of staff to Secretary Kerry’s clean energy and innovation team and led on cleantech competitiveness, nuclear energy, industrial decarbonization, Ukraine and Eastern Europe, and India. Sagatom was also a Fulbright researcher in Kyiv, Ukraine, where he advised the Ukrainian Parliament and cabinet ministries on strategies to advance energy reform.

The Bosniaks: Post-Genocide Identity Politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina
2024-02-22 17:00 - 18:00 | Hampton Room, Scripps College
For the first time in nearly two centuries, one ethnic group now constitutes an absolute majority of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s population: the Bosniaks. It is an unlikely development given that, scarcely thirty years ago, they were targeted for extermination and expulsion by Serbia’s Slobodan Milošević. Even as the Bosniak community fought to survive these atrocities, it simultaneously came under attack from militants led by Croatian president Franjo Tuđman, who attempted to partition Bosnia and Herzegovina between Zagreb and Belgrade. Improbably, the Bosniaks and the Bosnian state survived these campaigns. But the country’s fractious sectarian post-war order has produced the world’s most convoluted constitutional regime, always teetering on the brink of collapse. This talk will examine the sources of contemporary Bosniak political identity, tracing the evolution of a religious community into a secular nation, the idea of Bosnia and Herzegovina as the ‘national homeland of the Bosniaks’, and how narratives of genocide influence self-identity.
About the Speaker: Dr. Jasmin Mujanović is a political scientist specializing in the politics of post-authoritarian and post-conflict democratization. His publications include two books: Hunger and Fury: The Crisis of Democracy in the Balkans and The Bosniaks: Nationhood after Genocide. Additionally, his analyses have appeard in numerous think tanks and leading global media such as the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and more. Originally from Sarajevo, he is currently a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy based out of Washington, D.C.
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Transnational Social Protection and the Future of the Welfare State
2024-02-07 12:15 - 13:15 | Hampton Room, Scripps College
Traditional models of the welfare state are bounded by place or nationality: social protection is conceived as something that we are eligible for based on where we live and what passport we may carry. This talk, based on a co-authored book by Prof. Dobbs with Prof. Peggy Levitt (Wellesley), Ken Sun (Villanova) and Ruxandra Paul (Amherst), offers a alternative model for understanding social protection, one that transcends international borders and recognizes transnational lives. In doing so, it also reflects on questions of precarity and the future of welfare state policy – particularly within Europe.
About the Speaker: Erica Dobbs is Assistant Professor of Politics at Pomona College. Her teaching and research focus on the comparative politics of social and political citizenship within the context of mass migration in Europe and North America.
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If States Are Black Boxes, Then What’s Up With Transatlantic Relations?
2023-11-14 17:30 - 19:00 | Humanities Museum (HUM 225)
We typically assume that the international system is made up of states, which we say function as black boxes in pursuit of their physical security and power. In this model, foreign policy does not change, even when domestic politics and priorities evolve. Why then has the transatlantic relationship run hot and cold over the past decade? Special Advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris for Europe, Eurasia, Multilateral Affairs, and Democracy, Dr. Robin S Brooks, will discuss the important and changing roles of security, values, transactionalism, and multilateralism in the United States’ relationships with our allies and partners, particularly in Central Europe and the Balkans, and how these fluctuations affect regional and global security.
Dr. Robin S. Brooks was previously the Director for Central Europe and the Balkans at the National Security Council. Her prior assignments as a Foreign Service Officer with the State Department have included Director of the Office for Multilateral Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, Deputy Political Counselor at the U.S. Embassies in Serbia and Bulgaria, Chief of Staff to the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and positions at the U.S. Embassies in Russia, Turkey, and the U.S. Mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Dr. Brooks holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and as the State Department’s Davis Fellow has served as adjunct faculty at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She also helped develop and teaches in a master’s program on Pathologies of the Contemporary State at Sofia University in Bulgaria.

Leading From Behind – How Angela Merkel Shaped German Gender Politics
2023-10-23 17:30 - 19:00 | Humanities Museum (HUM 225)
We know a lot about Angela Merkel as a leader in international politics; we know much less about how the first woman chancellor saw herself and acted as a woman leader. This talk, based on a volume co-edited by Prof. Lang with Prof. Petra Ahrens (Tampere University, Finland) and Prof. Phillip Ayoub (University College London) captures Angela Merkel’s legacy in gender equality. We argue that Merkel mostly led from behind on gender equality, with mixed success. Only in her fourth term did she acknowledge the particular challenges that women leaders face in domestic and international politics.
About the Speaker: Prof. Sabine Lang is Professor of European and International Studies at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington and Jean Monnet Chair of Civil Society, Inclusion, and Diversity. She directs the European Union Center and the European Studies Program at UW. Prof. Lang’s research is aimed at the intersection of states and societies in national and transnational environments with an emphasis on public voice and advocacy in the European Union. She works on the role of gender in politics with a special emphasis on the political representation of women and the advocacy of women in Europe.

Polish Communist Spies, the CIA, and the Road to NATO Expansion with John Pomfret
2023-10-11 17:30 - 19:00 | Hampton Room, Scripps College
As the United States cobbles together a coalition to undo Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, six US officers are trapped in Iraq with intelligence that could ruin Operation Desert Storm if it is obtained by the brutal Iraqi dictator. Desperate, the CIA asks Poland, a longtime Cold War foe famed for its excellent spies, for help. Just months after the Polish people voted in their first democratic election since the 1930s, the young Solidarity government in Warsaw sends a veteran ex-Communist spy who’d battled the West for decades to rescue the six Americans. John Pomfret’s gripping account of the 1990 cliffhanger in Iraq is just the beginning of the tale about intelligence cooperation between Poland and the United States, cooperation that one CIA director would later describe as “one of the two foremost intelligence relationships that the United States has ever had,” and one that paved the way for NATO’s eastward expansion.
Raised in New York City and educated at Stanford and Nanjing universities, John Pomfret is an award-winning journalist and writer who worked with the Washington Post for decades. Pomfret was a foreign correspondent for 20 years and spent eight years covering big wars and small in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Congo, Sri Lanka and Iraq. Pomfret spent seven years covering China—one in the late 1980s during the Tiananmen Square protests and then from 1997 until the end of 2003 as the bureau chief for the Washington Post in Beijing. Pomfret is the author of the best-selling “Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China” (1996). His book, “The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present” (2016) was awarded the 2017 Arthur Ross Award by the Council on Foreign Relations. His new book, “From Warsaw With Love: Polish Spies, the CIA and the Making of an Unlikely Alliance” was published in October 2021.
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Let There Be House: Queer of Color Perspectives on Germany's Techno Scene in the 1990s
2023-10-10 18:00 - 19:30 | Humanities Museum (HUM 225)
Dr. Tom Smith is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in German at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. His research focused on queer approaches to contemporary Germany. He was selected as an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker in 2019 and regularly presents his work on BBC Radio.
Event will include refreshments, book raffle, music and dancing.

Representing Gender in Court: Juridical Women in the Time of Boccaccio's Madonna Filippa (Decameron 6.7)
2023-10-02 16:15 - 18:00 | Vita Nova 100, Scripps College
Boccaccio’s character Madonna Filippa brilliantly defends herself in court against an adultery charge—and dodges a cruel capital punishment. Readers have long assumed that since medieval Italian women had no place in court, Filippa’s story must be an ironic parody. This presentation inserts Boccaccio’s heroine into her historical context of medieval northern Italy, where several women jurists rose to prominence in legal studia and yeshivas. The rich lore surrounding 14th c. Novella d’Andrea and her peers overlapped with ancient narratives that inspired Boccaccio, like Valerius Maximus’ account of the oratrix Hortensia. Modern readers have yet to fully appreciate Boccaccio’s deep interest in women’s voices at law, but one prominent medieval reader, Christine de Pizan, recognized Boccaccio’s engagement with the real and pressing issue of women’s participation in the discourses of justice.

The U.S. and the Struggle for International Justice in Ukraine
2023-09-25 17:00 - 18:00 | Hampton Room, Scripps College
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has resulted in an unprecedented alignment of international actors supporting accountability processes. And the atrocities committed in Ukraine have been extensively documented. But achieving accountability through international mechanisms like the International Criminal Court is more challenging than it seems. Drawing on his recent experience as a policy advisor in the Pentagon, Professor Boduszyński will discuss the political, legal, diplomatic, and other challenges that efforts to promote accountability through international institutions face.
Mieczysław (Mietek) Boduszyński is Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at Pomona College. Prior to joining Pomona, Boduszyński was a diplomat with the U.S. Department of State with postings in Albania, Kosovo, Japan, Egypt, Libya and Iraq. During the 2022-2023 academic year, he worked at the Pentagon for the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy as a policy advisor on issues related to civilian protection as well as atrocities, war crimes and accountability in Ukraine.
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The Difference a Date Makes: “9/11” versus “1973” in the Global History of NYC
2023-09-11 17:00 - 18:00 | Vita Nova 100, Scripps College
DARA ORENSTEIN, George Washington University
September 11, 2023, 5:00-6:00pm
Vita Nova, Scripps College
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It seems safe to say that the Twin Towers stand for globalism. Ever since they fell on the morning of September 11, 2001, they have endured as something much larger than local landmarks. Whether abstracted on magazine covers, sanctified in street murals, or domesticated in snow-globes, these two skyscrapers have come to signify the scale of American influence abroad, albeit with their brand of imperial cosmopolitanism now understood as more vulnerable than invincible. They hate us ‘cause they ain’t us, as the bumper stickers put it, with a drawing of a firefighter and a flag. But mythology is not history. To apprehend the Twin Towers teleologically in light of their destruction is to flatten our appreciation of how they functioned and how they were represented, and thus why they mattered, during the three decades that they held sway in the capital of capital, New York City. After the suits-with-shovels dedicated them in 1973, how exactly did the workers in and around these buildings interact with global capitalism from 9 to 5? Aside from the tourists visiting the observation deck, where was the world at the World Trade Center? Where was “Europe”? The Iron Curtain? Where were the lines of demarcation between the East and the West? And what sorts of documents might serve as illuminations of the banal operations of these borders and boundaries, given that much of the archival record relevant to such questions was lost on 9/11? As a preview of a larger project, this talk will spotlight two artifacts of the rise of the Twin Towers during the long 1970s, a New York Telephone phone book published specifically for the “World Trade Area” in 1977, and a work of performance art by a Belgian artist that was installed outside between the buildings and the harbor during the summer of 1982.
Dara Orenstein is an associate professor of American studies at George Washington University, where she teaches courses on cultural history and cultural theory. Her first book, Out of Stock: The Warehouse in the History of Capitalism, is about the long and little-known history of export-processing zones in the United States. A propos of her presentation at Scripps, she was born at the Kaiser in Harbor City and raised in Modesto, and she spoke with a Queens, NY, accent until around age 6.
