The following seminars are being sponsored or co-sponsored by the Ralph Bunche Institute.

The Ralph Bunche Forum

Fall 2009

Speaker Biographies and Background Reading


Demand-Driven Democratization
Roland Rich

17 September 2009
Room C201, CUNY Graduate Center

Roland Rich has been Executive Head of the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF) since October 2007. Mr. Rich has over 30 years of experience as a diplomat, a scholar and a democracy-promotion practitioner. He has taught at the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies of the Australian Defence College and has been a research fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington DC. Between 1998 and 2005, he was Director of the Centre for Democratic Institutions at the Australian National University. Mr. Rich joined the Australian Foreign Service in 1975, with postings in Paris, Rangoon, and Manila before serving, from 1994 to 1997, as Australia’s Ambassador to Laos. He has also served as Legal Advisor and Assistant Secretary for International Organisations in the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He is the author of, most recently, Pacific Asia in Quest of Democracy (2007). His edited and co-edited books include Losing Control: Freedom of the Press in Asia (2000), The UN Role in Promoting Democracy: Between Ideals and Reality (2004), and Political Parties in the Pacific Islands (2006).

For more information on the UN Democracy Fund, visit
http://www.un.org/democracyfund/

Recommended background reading for this session:
  • Roland Rich and Edward Newman, ‘Introduction: Approaching Democratization Policy,’ in Roland Rich and Edward Newman (eds), The UN Role in Promoting Democracy: Between Ideals and Reality (United Nations University Press, 2004) – a pdf version of this chapter is available for download at www.unu.edu/unupress/sample-chapters/UNrole.pdf
Further relevant sources include:
  • Larry Diamond, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (Times Books, 2008), especially Chapter 4: ‘What Drives Democracy: The Internal Factors,’ pp. 88-105.

  • Defending Civil Society: A Report of the World Movement for Democracy (National Endowment for Democracy and International Center for Not-For-Profit Law, February 2008), available for download at the International Center for Not-For-Profit Law

  • Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Cornell University Press, 1998), especially Chapter 1: “Transnational Advocacy Networks in International Politics.”


‘Sexual Violence, Peace Mediation, and Security Council Resolution 1820’
Anne Marie Goetz

13 October 2009
Room C201, CUNY Graduate Center

Anne Marie Goetz has been Chief Advisor for Governance Peace and Security at UNIFEM since August 2005. Her areas of work include preventing the use of sexual and gender-based violence as a method of warfare, supporting women’s engagement in peace processes, gender-sensitive security sector reform, and inclusive post-conflict peace-building. Her skills in governance include building accountability systems that respond to women’s needs and supporting women’s efforts to influence public decision-making. Prior to joining UNIFEM in 2005, she was a Professor of Political Science at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex (UK), where she had been a research fellow since 1991. She has studied pro-poor and gender-sensitive approaches to public sector reforms, anti-corruption initiatives, and decentralization, as well as methods of supporting political liberalization and state-building in fragile states and post-conflict situations. She has written or edited six books, including Governing Women: Women in Politics and Governance in Development (2006), and (co-authored with Rob Jenkins) Reinventing Accountability: Making Democracy Work for Human Development (2005). Goetz holds a PhD in Politics from Cambridge and an MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

For more information on UNIFEM’s work on peace and security, visit http://www.unifem.org/gender_issues/peace_security/

Recommended background reading for this session:
  • UNIFEM, Women’s Participation in Peace Negotiations: Connections between Presence and Influence (2009) – to download a pdf version of this paper, click here.
Further relevant sources include:

‘South Asian Security and Pakistan as a “Failed State”’
Christophe Jaffrelot

11 November 2009
Room C201, CUNY Graduate Center

Christophe Jaffrelot is Senior Research Fellow, Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI) at the Science-Po, Paris. From 2000-2008, he served as director of CERI. A fellow of Frances’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Jaffrelot co-directs the CERI research project ‘The End of Violence,’ and participates in the center’s interdisciplinary project ‘Economic Reform and Regulation.’ He directs four book series (published by Fayard, Autrement, Hurst, and Palgrave). Jaffrelot was editor-in-chief of Critique Internationale from 1998-2003 and is currently a director of the journal. His is on the steering committee of Aspen France and a member of the scientific councils of Südasien Institut (Heidelberg) and IUED (Geneva). Jaffrelot chairs the Asia Group at the Directorate General for International Co-operation and Development of France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He holds degrees from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (IEP), the University of Paris I-Sorbonne, and the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales. His books include: The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics: 1925 to the 1990s; India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India; Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability: Fighting The Indian Caste System; Pakistan: Nationalism Without a Nation? (editor); and A History Of Pakistan And Its Origins (co-edited with Gillian Beaumont).

For more information on CERI, visit: http://www.ceri-sciencespo.com/indexang.php

Recommended background reading for this session:
  • Christophe Jaffrelot, ‘Nationalism without a Nation: Pakistan Searching for its Identity,’ in Christophe Jaffrelot (ed), Pakistan: Nationalism Without a Nation? (London: Zed, 2002), pp. 1-48 – online preview available at Google Books.
Further relevant sources include:
  • Christophe Jaffrelot, ‘India and Pakistan: Interpreting the Divergence of Two Political Trajectories,’ Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2002), pp. 251- 267 – for a pdf version of this article, click here.
  • Mariam Abou Zahab, ‘Unholy Nexus: Talibanism and Sectarianism in Pakistan’s “Tribal Areas,”’ CERI Research Dossier – available for download at http://www.ceri-sciences-po.org/kiosque.php#dossier
  • Muhammad Mushtaq, ‘Managing Ethnic Diversity and Federalism in Pakistan,’ European Journal of Scientific Research, Vol.33 No.2 (2009), pp. 279-294 – available for download at http://www.eurojournals.com/ejsr_33_2_07.pdf.

‘The Revival of Nuclear Disarmament’
Randy Rydell

15 December 2009
Room 5414, CUNY Graduate Center

Randy Rydell is Senior Political Affairs Officer in the Office of Mr. Sergio Duarte, the High Representative for Disarmament Affairs at the United Nations. He served from January 2005 to June 2006 as Senior Counsellor and Report Director of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission (Blix Commission) and Senior Fellow at the Arms Control Association in Washington, D.C. In 1998, he joined the UN Secretariat, where he has served as an adviser to Under-Secretary-General Jayantha Dhanapala and his successors, Ambassadors Nobuyasu Abe and Nobuaki Tanaka. He has also served as Secretary of the Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters (2001) and as a Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School (September 1998 to February 1999). Rydell worked for Senator John Glenn between 1987 and 1998 as a member of the Professional Staff of the Committee on Governmental Affairs of the United States Senate. He assisted in the drafting and subsequent enactment of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act of 1994 and other legislation. He also served as a staff member of the Senate’s Arms Control Observer Group. From 1980 to 1986, Mr. Rydell was an international political analyst at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he studied the problem of the global spread of nuclear weapons. He worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University from 1979 to 1980. He received a B.A. in Government and Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia (1973), an M.Sc. in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (1974), and an M.A. (1977) and a Ph. D. (1980) in Political Science from Princeton University.

For more information on the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, visit http://www.un.org/disarmament/

Recommended background reading for this session:
Further relevant sources include:
  • Randy Rydell, ‘Disarmament without Agreements,’ International Negotiation, Vol. 10, No. 3 (2005), pp. 363-380. To download a pdf version of this article, click here. To view the contents of the current issue of this journal, visit http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=212&pid=20806
  • Randy Rydell, ‘The Secretary-General and the Secretariat,’ in Jane Boulden, Ramesh Thakur, and Thomas G. Weiss (eds.), The United Nations and Nuclear Orders (United Nations University Press, 2009). To download a pdf version of this book chapter, click here.
  • Randy Rydell, ‘Nuclear Disarmament and General and Complete Disarmament,’ in David Krieger (ed), The Challenge of Abolishing Nuclear Weapons (Transaction Publishers, 2009). To download a pdf version of this book chapter, click here.

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