Room 423 Tobin Hall

Refreshments will be served

Sramana Majumdar is a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Psychology, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India. She is currently working as a Fulbright Visiting Research Fellow at the Hiatt School of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, MA.  Since obtaining a Masters in Criminology, she has been interested in studying various aspects of violence, attitude towards violence, emotional and cognitive antecedents and repercussions of violence, violence and youth and the like.  As part of her doctoral project she is studying the impact of exposure to violence and mind set on the emotional and behavioural aspects of the youth in Kashmir. She has also been interested in looking at gendered aspects of the exposure to violence, intergroup reconciliation and the role of identity among the youth in Kashmir.

The Valley of Kashmir has been a disputed territory for more than two decades. It is today a site of intractable conflict and one of the most militarized areas in the world. The ‘Kashmiri’ narrative has gone through many twists and turns, from secular self determination to a radical and highly polarized anti-state character, building upon a collective memory of struggle and suffering. The ethno-political-religious conflict has affected the lives of almost every civilian within the Valley and in the larger Kashmiri Diaspora. This presentation summarizes her experiences and observations while working with the youth in Kashmir Valley. She hopes to facilitate a discussion around the discourse of self determination, identity assertion and resistance to occupation that has been driving the movement in Kashmir and the consequent violence that has dominated civil life from the latter half of the 1980s.

Room 423 Tobin Hall

Refreshments will be served

Congressman McGovern will discuss human rights crises and situations around the globe, and the politics of responding to them in an effective manner.

Since his election in 1996, Congressman Jim McGovern has been widely recognized as a tenacious advocate for his district, a tireless crusader for change, and an unrivaled supporter for social justice and fundamental human rights.

Currently serving his ninth term in Congress, McGovern serves as the second ranking Democrat on the powerful House Rules Committee, which sets the terms for debate and amendments on most legislation; and a member of the House Agriculture Committee. McGovern is also co-chair of both the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission and the House Hunger Caucus.

McGovern voted against the initial authorization of force in Iraq in 2002, and has been among the most prominent Congressional voices on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. McGovern introduced a bipartisan, bicameral bill calling for a flexible timetable for withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan as a matter of national security and fiscal responsibility.

McGovern has also taken a leadership role in the fight against hunger at home and abroad, successfully expanding the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program, which helps alleviate child hunger and poverty by providing nutritious meals to children in schools in the world’s poorest countries.

Before his election to Congress,  McGovern spent 14 years working as a senior aide for the late U.S. Representative John Joseph Moakley (D-South Boston), former dean of the Massachusetts delegation and Chairman of the House Rules Committee. In 1989, McGovern was the lead investigator on the Moakley Commission Congressional Investigation into the murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in 1989. The investigation ultimately led to a seminal change in U.S. foreign policy towards El Salvador when determined that the Salvadoran military was implicated in the murders. That landmark determination led to future military aid from the U.S. being conditioned on an improved human rights record.

McGovern earned his Bachelor of Arts (‘81) and Masters of Public Administration (‘84) degrees from The American University, working his way through college by serving as an aide in the office of U.S. Senator George McGovern (D-SD). He went on to manage Senator McGovern’s 1984 Presidential campaign in Massachusetts, and delivered his nomination speech during the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco.

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Speaking as both a scholar and a practitioner, Dr. Babbitt will discuss a core challenge that she has experienced when facilitating track 2 discussions in specific types of international conflict: how to catalyze a process that supports both peace and justice, in cases where there are large power asymmetries between disputing parties, and massive human rights violations are being or have been committed. Her experiences (in Israel-Palestine, Turkey-Armenia, and Rwanda among others) have led her to look more closely at what she perceives to be a tension between the goals of conflict resolution and those of human rights. In relation to conflict resolution, she will speak specifically about processes that seek to bring disputing parties together with the assistance of a third-party mediator. She will be using human rights as a proxy for justice-seeking, including accountability mechanisms for human rights abuses, war crimes, and genocide. She wants to frame a series of questions to consider and think about, relating to the appropriate or effective role for a third party in these challenging contexts.

Dr. Eileen F. Babbitt is Professor of International Conflict Management Practice and Director of the International Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Program at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She is also a Faculty Associate of the Program on Negotiation at the Harvard Law School and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Her research interests include identity-based conflicts; coexistence and trust-building in the aftermath of civil war; and the interface between human rights concerns and peacebuilding. Her practice as a facilitator and trainer has included work in the Middle East, the Balkans, and with U.S. government agencies, regional intergovernmental organizations, and international and local NGOs.

Before joining the Fletcher faculty, Professor Babbitt was Director of Education and Training at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. and Deputy Director of the Program on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. Professor Babbitt’s latest publications include the forthcoming article, “The Evolution of International Conflict Resolution: From Cold War to Peacebuilding.” Negotiation Journal, 25th Anniversary Issue, and Human Rights and Conflict Resolution in Context: Colombia, Sierra Leone, and Northen Ireland. Co-edited with Ellen Lutz and published by Syracuse University Press. Dr. Babbitt holds a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a Ph.D. from MIT.

Graeme is the Director of Policy and Learning at Interpeace and he is also the Director of Interpeace USA. Interpeace is a global peace-building organization headquartered in Geneva and working in 18 conflict and immediate post-conflict zones around the world for the past decade and a half. Graeme Simpson has a law degree (LLB) and a Masters degree in History from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He was a co-founder (1989) and Executive Director of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR), in Johannesburg, South Africa, until April 2005. In 2005, he was appointed as the Director of Country Programs at the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), headquartered in New York City and in that capacity oversaw the organization’s work in more than twenty five countries around the globe.

Thereafter, he was the Director of Thematic Programs at the ICTJ for two further years, and oversaw work on Prosecutions, Reparations, Truth-Seeking, Security System Reform, Memorials, Gender, and a program on Peace & Justice. Simpson also co-founded and now serves on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Transitional Justice (IJTJ) published by Oxford University Press. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of The International Conflict Research Institute (INCORE) in Northern Ireland. He is an Adjunct Professor and has taught a post-graduate seminar on Transitional Justice at Columbia Law School since 2006. Simpson has published widely in books and journals covering a wide range of issues.