Please join the Kellogg Institute in its annual tradition — this year in a new format! — that introduces research of its new Visiting Fellows in an informative and inviting atmosphere. Learn firsthand why Kellogg has invested in the work of these fellows from brief research overview presentations then delve deeper during a Q&A session, moderated by Kellogg Director Aníbal Pérez-Liñán. A light lunch will be available in this first session of a three-part series. Session 1Marianne Kneuer, Professor of Comparative Politics and Director of the Institute of Political Science at the Dresden University of TechnologySandra Botero, Associate Professor in the Facultad de Estudios Internacionales, Políticos y Urbanos at the Universidad del RosarioJuan Chamorro, Nicaraguan Economist,Businessman, and PoliticianFor more information, click here.  Sponsored by the Kellogg Institute for International Studies

Lasting peace in Colombia requires understanding and addressing the different and disproportionate impacts of the armed conflict on ethnic peoples and communities. Now that Colombia is at the halfway point in implementing its peace accord, it is clear there are serious challenges in achieving the goals established to guarantee the rights of ethnic peoples in the peace process. As part of this event, the Kroc Institute is launching its third special report on the implementation of the Colombian Final Accord’s Ethnic Approach. The report seeks to understand the limitations and weaknesses, as well as progress and successes, of implementing Ethnic Approach’s commitments. Based on quantitative and qualitative findings, the report offers recommendations that can guide the second half of the implementation period for the Ethnic Approach to experience accelerated implementation. Event speakers will provide an overview of the report findings and open space to discuss lessons learned and best practices for inclusive peacebuilding. Additionally, opening remarks and closing reflections from the international community supporting the accompaniment of the Ethnic Approach will provide insights on the critical next steps for guaranteeing Colombia’s ethnic communities stay at the center of the peace process.   Opening Remarks: H.E. Mr. Daniel García-Peña Jaramillo, Ambassador of Colombia in the United States  Panelists: Josefina Echavarría Alvarez, professor of the practice and director of the Peace Accords Matrix (PAM)  Anne A. Witkowsky, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, U.S. Department of State  Ángela María Ramírez Rincón, executive director of the Barometer Initiative in ColombiaIvonne Zúñiga, researcher for the Barometer Initiative in ColombiaGimena Sánchez-Garzoli, Director for the Andes, Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA)María Claudia Pulido, Assistant Executive Secretary for the Monitoring, Promotion and Technical Cooperation, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Helmer Quiñones, researcher, Accountability Research Center, American University School of International Service       Originally published at kroc.nd.edu.

Join the Robinson Community Learning Center and the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion in a service activity intended to honor the legacy of those who lost their lives and those who responded heroically to the events of September 11, 2001. Together we will build four cedar flower boxes as a gift to the homeowners of the new Habitat for Humanity homes constructed in the Near Northwest Neighborhood as part of the inauguration events celebrating the inauguration of the Rev. Robert A. Dowd, CSC as the University of Notre Dame's 18th President. In addition to commemorating the events of September 11, we know that shared opportunities to collectively engage in service and share meals together nutures dialogue, cooperation, and civic engagement. We hope this event will continue to build upon the multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-generational, and multi-faith community already established at the Robinson Community Learning Center through its preschool and English classes and carry that forth into the broader community. Bringing out the best in America, this event wil embody the motto on the Great Seal of the United States of America, E Pluribus Unum, "out of many, one." A light meal will be provided. RSVP here. This event is sponsored by the Robinson Community Learning Center, the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion, the United Religious Community, and the University of Notre Dame's Department of Art, Art History, and Design through a grant from the AmeriCorps State program overseen by Serve Indiana. Originally published at ansari.nd.edu.

The Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, in partnership with its Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) Working Group, as part of the Keough School of Global Affairs, proudly offer a four-part lecture series over the 2024-25 academic year. The series focuses on U.S. imperialism and U.S. military and humanitarian involvement in the Middle East, and in particular Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. Graduate students serve as discussants after each lecture, prior to Q&A with the audience. The series conducts a critical evaluation of U.S. policy in the Middle East and calls for a reassessment of the nature and function of a U.S. presence, and the implications posed for peacebuilding practitioners and contemporary global affairs scholarship. Though the US-led “war on terror” has been ongoing for over two decades, it is a war that has been waged largely in the shadows—in the concealed spaces of black sites, extraordinary renditions, covert drone programs, secret global surveillance, and through expanding terrorism laws and security databases. This talk tracks a little-known but ever-expanding dimension of US counterterrorism warfare, one that travels in and through a growing body of US counterterrorism law and sanctions regimes that tether to foreign aid flows and monetary transactions around the world. Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic fieldwork in Palestine, this talk traces how US counterterrorism law bundles and embeds in humanitarian and development aid flows inbound to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, transporting, in turn, Washington’s counterterrorism regime into the intimate spaces and interstices of Palestinian everyday life—in a greenhouse in Gaza, in a library in Bethlehem, in the collection of personal information and mapping of land plots, in the halls of municipal councils, and in local elections. Tracing the transnational operation of US law, this talk demonstrates how US empire operates as a topological formation that projects security and war power through opaque arrangements and blended genres of rule—in this case contracted relationships of aid—that render Washington’s counterterrorism regime intimately embedded in the lifeworlds of those afar. More broadly, it suggests that a close analysis of the topological workings of the US security state in Palestine tells us something significant about the shape-shifting nature of imperial formations, their realignments and reformulations, their haunted sites, and their obscured but intimate forms. Speakers:Lisa Bhungalia is a political geographer researching late-modern war, law, empire, and transnational linkages between the US and Southwest Asian and North African region and an Assistant Professor of Geography and International Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her first book, Elastic Empire: Refashioning War through Aid in Palestine, published by Stanford University Press in December 2023, examines the entanglements of aid, law, and war in Palestine with attention to policing and surveillance regimes produced through the embedding of counterterrorism laws and infrastructures into civilian aid flows. She is also developing new research on the social lives of terrorism databases. Her research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, National Science Foundation, and Palestinian American Research Center, among other bodies, and her published work has appeared in Politics and Space, Political Geography, Geopolitics, Small Wars & Insurgencies, Society and Space, Environment and Planning A, Middle East Report, and Jadaliyya, among other venues.Student respondent: Francesca Freeman, Peace Studies and HistoryFaculty respondent: Perin Gürel, Associate Professor American StudiesOriginally published at kroc.nd.edu.

Kellogg Work-in-Progress seminars are designed to generate in-depth discussion of new scholarly work. For the pre-circulated paper and to attend, register here.  Kelly McMannKellogg Institute Visiting FellowLucy Adams Leffingwell Professor, Case Western Reserve University When are democracies, or other regime types, more successful at mitigating problems? Examining numerous economic, environmental, health, and security problems and guided by an initial theoretical framework, this project will provide an answer to the question. For mor information, click here. 

The International Day of Peace, established by the United Nations in 1981, provides an opportunity for the Notre Dame community to come together to pray for peace. This year’s theme is Cultivating a Culture of Peace. What can we do to create peace in the world? Join University President Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., at the Our Lady of the Lake World Peace Plaza (next to St. Mary's Lake, across the street from the Grotto) for a prayer service to celebrate the International Day of Peace.  Originally published at pulte.nd.edu.