New TPPI Webinar Series: China Keywords

Announcing a new Telos-Paul Piccone Institute webinar series, “China Keywords,” beginning Thursday, March 21, at 10 a.m. Eastern Time.

Register for the event here.

Tipping our hat to Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, by Raymond Williams, the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute announces its newest webinar series: “China Keywords.” Each webinar will introduce and explore a single concept essential for understanding contemporary Chinese social and political theory. The series will illuminate these concepts with an eye toward non-specialists in the West, while also addressing deep contestations of interest to experts in the field. “China Keywords” is part of TPPI's larger Telos China Initiative.

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Sexual Violence, Feminism, and the Hamas Massacre

The third webinar in the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute’s yearlong series reckoning with the response to October 7 will take place on Thursday, March 7, 2024, at noon Eastern Time.

Click here to register for the event.

All subsequent panels are likewise scheduled for noon Eastern Time on the seventh day of each month. Panels will run between 90 to 120 minutes, followed by a colloquy among the panelists and audience Q&A.

Our third webinar considers feminist perspectives on sex and violence in the Israel–Hamas conflict. Our panelists are Mariam Memarsadeghi and Batya Ungar-Sargon. Our respondent is Nina Power.

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Democracy in India: Mark Kelly Speaks with Salvatore Babones

On today’s episode of the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute podcast, TPPI’s Mark G. E. Kelly, organizer of the 2024 Telos conference on “Democracy Today?,” speaks with Salvator Babones of the University of Sydney about democracy in India, asking him in particular about his sympathetic reading of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The podcast is available in both video and audio-only formats.

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Frantz Fanon and October 7: A Conversation with Abe Silberstein

In today’s episode of the TPPI Podcast, Gabriel Noah Brahm talks with scholar and writer Abe Silberstein. Their podcast follows a webinar about the role of critical theory in the response within higher education to the atrocities of October 7. During the webinar, which also featured Cary Nelson and Manuela Consonni, Silberstein had presented a working paper about Frantz Fanon. The podcast conversation with Silberstein and Brahm is available as a video or in audio-only form. A podcast conversation with Cary Nelson is also available here.

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Historians on Ideology and Politics in the 1948 War: October 7 and the Aftershocks of World War II

The video of the second webinar in the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute’s Israel initiative is now available and can be viewed here. Titled “Historians on Ideology and Politics in the 1948 War: October 7 and the Aftershocks of World War II,” the webinar featured historians Jeffrey Herf, Matthias Küntzel, and Benny Morris. Their conversation was moderated by Israel initiative director Gabriel Noah Brahm.

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A Tour of the Aftermath of Israel's Black Sabbath

Our tour began at the central train station in Tel Aviv. My colleagues and I were delighted to see the members of our board as well as several others in the field of international relations. While waiting for our bus to arrive, we engaged in pleasant conversation. As we boarded the bus to begin our descent to Kfar Aza, I noticed that the sky was emblazoned with a beautiful double rainbow.

Once on the bus, the conversation quickly turned to our musings on the war and the future of the region. As those who attended were quite knowledgeable, it was a pleasure to listen to their erudite analysis. Conversation quickly subsided once we drove past the area in which the cars from the Nova party were parked. The enthusiastic conversation died down, and everyone looked slack-jawed upon the cenotaph. The rest of the journey was quieter.

Upon arriving at the Kibbutz, there was a palpable change in mood from when we had first departed. Though faces of those in attendance were concealed by the benches on the bus throughout the journey, it was now clear that their expressions had hardened. We donned our vests and helmets, and set out.

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