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

Unless otherwise indicated, all events are free and open to the public. For additional information on a specific event or to confirm event details, kindly contact the primary sponsor of that event using the links below.

The Ralph Bunche Forum

The Fall 2009 semester marks the beginning of a new series of talks—the Ralph Bunche Forum. Convened by Rob Jenkins, Associate Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute and Professor of Political Science at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, the Forum provides incisive analysis from speakers whose work spans the divide between academic analysis and institutional practice.

Held monthly, the Forum focuses on issues that cut across the three pillars of the United Nations’ mandate – security, development, and human rights. This semester’s topics include democratization, gender and security, failed states, and nuclear disarmament.

Fall 2009

• 17 September: Demand-Driven Democratization
  Roland Rich, Executive Head, United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF)
  Room C201


• 13 October: Sexual Violence, Peace Mediation, and Resolution 1820
  Anne Marie Goetz, Chief Advisor, Governance Peace & Security, UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)
  Room C201


• 11 November: South Asian Security and Pakistan as a “Failed State”
  Christophe Jaffrelot, Research Professor, Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI, Science-Po, Paris)
  Room C201


• 15 December: The Revival of Nuclear Disarmament
  Randy Rydell, Senior Political Affairs Officer, United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA)
  Room 5414

All events are from 6–7:30pm (please arrive at 6pm for a prompt 6:15 start) at the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue (at 34th Street), New York City.

Please click here for speaker speaker biographies and background reading.

Please RSVP to: nnolutshungu@gc.cuny.edu or for further inquires, call 212.817.2100.

The following lectures and conferences were sponsored or co-sponsored by the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies in the past.

For current events, please see the Ralph Bunche Institute Full Calendar of Events

Global Governance Seminar Series

Beginning in 1973 as part of the original mandate of the Ralph Bunche Institute, the Global Governance Seminar Series brought together experts and professionals in an informal setting to discuss international politics with special emphasis on the United Nations.

Recent themes and speakers included:

Spring 2009, "Whither the Responsibility to Protect?"

• Ramesh Thakur, Centre for International Governance Innovation
• Gareth Evans, International Crisis Group
• Lawrence Woocher, United States Institute of Peace
• Alex Bellamy, Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
• Conor Foley, author, The Thin Blue Line: How Humanitarianism Went to War (2008)

Fall 2008, Globalizing India and the Multilateral Order

• Manu Bhagavan, Hunter College, City University of New York
• Mira Kamdar, World Policy Institute
• Devesh Kapur, University of Pennsylvania
• Sanjay Reddy, Columbia University
• Vikram Doraiswami, Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations
• John Echeverri-Gent, University of Virginia

Spring 2008 Political Alignments since 9/11 and Shock and Awe

• H.E. Ambassador Alfredo Labbé, Permanent Mission of Chile to the United Nations
• Guiseppe Nesi, Permanent Mission of Italy to the United Nations
• Qi Qianjin, Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations
• Alem Habtu, Queens College, City University of New York
• Benjamin Rivlin, Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies
• Sir Brian Urquhart

DANKWART A. RUSTOW MEMORIAL LECTURE

The Dankwart A. Rustow Memorial Lecture, named for the late Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Sociology, was presented annually between 1998 and 2007 by the Ralph Bunche Institute and The Graduate Center's Department of Political Science. This lecture commemorates Professor Rustow's range of interests and stimulates expert discussion in these subject areas.

Lectures were given by:

• 2007: Alvaro de Soto, "Inclusive Diplomacy and the Search for Middle East Peace"
• 2006: Gareth Evans, "A Rule-Based International Order: Illusory or Achievable?"
• 2005: Michael Walzer, "The Paradox of National Liberation"
• 2004: Mary Robinson, "Renewing the Commitment to Rule of Law and Human Rights: The Way Forward"
• 2003: The Honorable Suleyman Sami Demirel, "Turkey's Relations With It's Neighbors and the U.S. after the War in Iraq"
• 2002: Michael Ignatieff, "Human Rights and Terror"
• 2001: Richard J. Goldstone, "Justice of the Consitutional Court of South Africa"
• 2000: J.C. Hurewitz, "Ottoman Diplomacy and the European State System"
• 1999: Bernard Lewis, "Some Cultural Aspects of Westernization in the Middle East"
• 1998: Arthur Hertzberg, "A Dead Language Comes Alive Before 1917"

Oxford Conference Series

Two research conferences on topics of global importance were co-sponsored in New York by the Bunche Institute and the Centre for International Studies of the University of Oxford. In May 2001, a group of distinguished practitioners and analysts gathered to focus on the inter-relationship between the United Nations and regional organizations in dealing with conflict in Africa. Among the conflicts studied in depth were those in West Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Burundi.

In September 2002, virtually on the anniversary of the tragic attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, an international group of experts focused on the international political and legal aspects of the response to terrorism in a conference titled “Terrorism and the United Nations: Problems and Prospects.”

From the best papers presented at the meetings, two edited volumes were published:
Jane Boulden, ed., Dealing with Conflict in Africa: The United Nations and Regional Organizations (New York: Palgrave, 2003).
Jane Boulden and Thomas G. Weiss, eds., Terrorism and the UN: Before and After September 11 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004).

NEH Summer Institute: "Human Rights in Conflict"

The five-week NEH Summer Institute focused particularly on conflicts involving relationships between human rights and power, addressing how power and the diversity of human experience constitute conceptual and practical understandings of human rights as a contemporary discourse of freedom and equality. It considered both the contestable character of human rights and addressed the sources of these contests from philosophical, historical, legal, cultural, and political perspectives. Drawing from the expertise of individual authorities on these aspects of human rights, channeling their perspectives towards a common subject, and involving the interests and projects of participants, the Institute fostered understanding of the strengths and limitations of human rights as an international language of political ethics, particularly in relation to democracy.
For more information click here.