Young Conversations

The Young Initiative annually hosts a remarkable range of experts in global political economy and related international relations fields. These events give our campus community a chance to directly engage with those at the cutting edge of research and activism, per the following list of 2019-20 guests.

Alison Brysk

September 3, 2019

Reproductive Rights Regression

Alison Brysk is the Mellichamp Professor of Global Governance at UC Santa Barbara. Her research draws from global theory as well as fieldwork on human rights in Latin America and Asia. Brysk’s two most recent books are The Future of Human Rights (2018) and The Struggle for Freedom from Fear: Contesting Violence Against Women at the Frontiers of Globalization (2018).

Steven Jensen

September 9, 2019

An Alternate History of Human Rights: A Global South Project?

Steven Jensen is a lead researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights. Jensen focuses on the agency of the global south and its role in advancing human rights around the world. Jensen’s The Making of International Human Rights: The 1960s, Decolonization, and the Reconstruction of Global Values won the 2017 Best Book on Human Rights for his paradigm-shifting research.

Huss Banai

September 25, 2019

A Game of Rogues: Trump vs. Iran

Huss Banai is a noted expert on Iran, a professor at Indiana University at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, and a research affiliate at the Center for International Studies at MIT.

Momin Rahman

September 26, 2019

Queer Muslim Challenges to the Internationalization of LGBT Rights

Momin Rahman is a professor of sociology at Trent University. His scholarship focuses on LGBTQ citizenship and its role in Muslim culture, politics, and identity. Rahman was invited as part of the LGBTQIA+ Speaker Series.

Miry Whitehill

September 27, 2019

Welcome, Neighbor at Oxy: A Conversation in Support of Families Resettling in California as Refuge

Miry Whitehill is the founder and executive director of Miry’s List. Whitehill started Miry’s List in Eagle Rock in July 2016 when a friend introduced her to a family of newly arrived Syrian refugees resettling in Los Angeles with kids the same age as her own.

Erin Lockwood

October 3, 2019

The Politics of Global Economic Inequality

Erin Lockwood is an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine. Her research areas include international political economy, global financial politics, risk and uncertainty, power, authority, and legitimacy in international politics, and global inequality.

Robert Edelman

October 4, 2019

The Whole World Was Watching: Sport and the Cold War

Robert Edelman is a professor in the History Department at the University of California, San Diego. He is an expert in Soviet and Cold War-era sports history. His writing focuses on spectator sports in the USSR, the history of the popular soccer club Spartak Moscow, and sport in the Cold War.

Yuriko Romer

October 17, 2019

Diamond Diplomacy: U.S.-Japan Relations Through Baseball

Yuriko Romer is an award-winning film director based in San Francisco. Her current documentary project, Diamond Diplomacy, explores the relationship between the United States and Japan through a shared love of baseball. Romer also directed and produced Mrs. Judo: Be Strong, Be Gentle, Be Beautiful, the only biographical documentary about Keiko Fukuda (1913-2013), the first woman to attain the 10th-degree black belt in judo.

Alfred Madain

October 21, 2019

A History of Musical Politics in the Arab World: From Umm Kalthoum to Contemporary Arab Artists

Alfred Madain is the founding director of Bedouin X, the desert blues band, and an educator and ethnomusicologist in Los Angeles. He grew up in Jordan, listening to an eclectic selection of music from the Arab world, the United States, and Europe.

Andrew Zimbalist

October 24, 2019

Circus Maximus: The Political Economy of Global Sporting Events

Andrew Zimbalist is a professor in the Economics Department at Smith College. He has acted as a consultant in Latin America for the United Nations Development Program and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Toby Dalton

November 20, 2019

Trump and Nukes

Toby Dalton is a senior fellow of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He works on regional security challenges and the evolution of the global nuclear order, with a focus on South and East Asia.

Gabriele Magni

February 12, 2020

Lesbian, Gay, and Transgender Candidates in Advanced Democracies

Gabriele Magni is an assistant professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University. Magni’s research looks at how minority groups have long been underrepresented in politics. Magni is passionate about understanding the barriers to the election of LGBTQ people in U.S. government positions as a way to improve the representation of marginalized communities. Invited as part of the LGBTQIA+ Speaker Series.

Joseph Nye

March 3, 2020

Morality in U.S. Foreign Policy

Professor Joseph Nye was the former Dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Nye co-created the international relations concepts of neoliberalism and smart power and has consistently been named one of the most influential American political scientists in history. His last book, Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump, draws from the United States’ political history and his experience on the Foreign Policy Board.

Young-Sponsored Workshops and Faculty Research

Academic production is the heart of the Young Initiative, hence our commitment to supporting faculty workshops and research. Details of the fruits of this support follow.