CPU > Newsletter > 2005-2006 > 2/6/06

CPU Newsletter

February 6, 2006

CPU EVENTS: 1) New Website Online! :: 2) "A Rising China? Internal Impediments to China's Rise" (Thursday, 02/09) :: And Much More!

CPU EVENTS:

1. New Website Online! (http://www.cupolitics.org)

2. "A Rising China? Internal Impediments to China's Rise" Panel (Thursday, 02/09)

3. John Mueller: "Devils and Duct Tape: Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat Exaggeration" (Wednesday, 02/15)

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1. New Website Online!

We've updated the website! Visit http://www.cupolitics.org to read speakers' biographies, download press releases and posters, and learn more about upcoming events! We welcome comments at cpu@cupolitics.org.

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2. "A Rising China? Internal Impediments to China's Rise"- Panel Discussion

Date: Thursday, 02/09
Time: 8PM
Location: 517 Hamilton Hall

Featuring:

Thomas Bernstein,
co-author of "Taxation without Represenation in Rural China," Columbia professor of political science focusing on Chinese politics and rural China. Professor Bernstein serves on the editorial boards of China Quarterly and Comparative Politics. He is currently working on a forthcoming book, "Conflict and Cooperation between the Chinese Communist State and the Peasantry".

Tom Grunfeld,
SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor at Empire State College/SUNY focusing on the history of modern central Asia, author of "The Making of Modern Tibet," and former chair of the Columbia University Modern China seminar. Professor Grunfeld has traveled to China 15 times over the past thirty years, and been to Tibet on several occassions, as well as in Dharamsala, the seat of the Dalai Lama's administration and Nepal. He has also written extensively on the history of Tibet, China's policies towards ethnic minorities and threats to social stability from racial tensions.

Guobin Yang,
Professor Yang is completing a book manuscript on Struggles for a Chinese Civil Society in the Information Age. Articles related to this project include "The co-evolution of the Internet and Civil Society in China," Asian Survey (May/June, 2003), "The Internet and Civil Society in China: A Preliminary Assessment," Journal of Contemporary China (August 2003), "Environmental NGOs and Institutional Dynamics in China," The China Quarterly (March 2005), and "How Do Chinese Civic Associations Respond to the Internet?" The China Quarterly (forthcoming). In another project, Yang studies the origins and impact of the Cultural Revolution. Related articles include "The Liminal Effects of Social Movements: Red Guards and the Transformation of Identity," Sociological Forum (2000) and " China's Zhiqing Generation: Nostalgia, Identity, and Cultural Resistance in the 1990s," Modern China (July 2003).

Yang is the author of Dragon-Carving and the Literary Mind, 2 volumes (Library of Chinese Classics in English Translation . Beijing : Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2003), an annotated English translation of the 6 th-century classic of literary criticism Wenxin Diaolong. With Ming-Bao Yue, he guest-edited a special issue on "Collective Memories of the Cultural Revolution" for The China Review (Fall 2005). With Ching Kwan Lee, he edited a book titled Re-Envisioning the Chinese Revolution: The Politics and Poetics of Collective Memories in Reform China (under review).

Guobin Yang has received several prestigious awards and fellowships.  Several of his articles won awards from the American Sociological Association, including one on the 1989 Chinese student movement (The Sociological Quarterly, 2000). In 2003, he received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation "Writing and Research Grant." He was a Summer Faculty Fellow of Social Science Research Council (2001) and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. (2003-2004). Currently he serves on the editorial board of Sociological Perspectives. Guobin Yang has a Ph. D. in English Literature with a specialty in Literary Translation from Beijing Foreign Studies University (1993) and a second Ph.D. in Sociology from New York University (2000). Before joining the faculty in Barnard, he was an assistant professor of sociology in the University of Hawaii at Manoa (2000-2005).

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3. John Mueller on "Devils and Duct Tape: Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat Exaggeration"  

Date: Wednesday, 02/15
Time: 8PM
Location: 517 Hamilton Hall  

Description:

John Mueller holds the Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center, and is professor of Political Science, at Ohio State University where he teaches courses in international relations.

He is currently working on terrorism and particularly on the reactions (or over-reactions) it often inspires. His "A False Sense of Insecurity?" published in Regulation in 2004, gives some indication of his approach to the subject, and the ideas there are developed further in "Simplicity and Spook: Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat Exaggeration," International Studies Perspectives, May 2005, and in "Six Rather Unusual Propositions about Terrorism," Terrorism and Political Violence, Autumn 2005 .

Mueller is the author of a book analyzing public opinion during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, War, Presidents and Public Opinion (Wiley, 1973) (called "a classic" by the American Political Science Review) and of Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (Basic Books, 1989) which deals with changing attitudes toward war. In a front page review of this latter book in the Sunday book section of the Washington Post, McGeorge Bundy commented, "Mueller makes you think, and his method of argument combines fresh insights with trenchant prose in a way that makes thoughtful reading agreeable." Mueller has also published Policy and Opinion in the Gulf War (University of Chicago Press, 1994) and Quiet Cataclysm: Reflections on the Recent Transformation of World Politics (HarperCollins, 1995). His Capitalism, Democracy, and Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery was published in 1999 by Princeton University Press. In his review in The Weekly Standard, David J. Silver writes, "Mueller's provocative book deserves a wide audience. . . . Mueller writes sharp, brisk, and witty prose that is unfailingly lucid." Mueller's book about international and civil wars, The Remnants of War, was published by Cornell University Press in 2004. Writing the The New Republic, Gregg Easterbrook called this book "brilliantly original and urgent." It was awarded the Lepgold Prize for the best book on international relations in 2004.

Mueller has published scores of articles in such journals as International Security, American Political Science Review, Security Studies, Orbis, American Journal of Political Science, National Interest, Foreign Affairs, Political Science Quarterly, Journal of Peace Research, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Foreign Policy, as well as many editorial page columns and articles in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New Republic, Reason, Washington Post, and New York Times. He has been a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the Nobel Institute in Olso, Norway.

Mueller is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has been a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, and has received grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has also received several teaching prizes.


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