Cas Mudde is a senior lecturer and vice-chairman of the Department of Political Science at the University of Antwerp. He is also the co-founder and convener of the ECPR Standing Group on Extremism and Democracy. Mr. Mudde is the co-editor of the Routledge Studies in Extremism & Democracy book series, which has covered topics such as terrorism in the United States, extremism and terrorism, freedom of speech, and extreme right activists. His current project is a research monograph entitled Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. From January through June of 2006, Mr. Mudde has been a Fulbright EU Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for Comparative European Studies and the Department of Political Science of Rutgers University. He is teaching an undergraduate course on "Radical Right Politics in Western Democracies" as well as leading a series of workshops on "Contentious and Extreme politics" for graduate students.

Mr. Mudde received his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Leiden. Prior to joining the University of Antwerp in July 2002, he taught at the Central European University and the University of Edinburgh. Additionally, Mr. Mudde has held visiting positions at New York University, Univerzita Karlova, University Jaume I, and the University of California Santa Barbara.

Recently, a Russo-Turkish strategic relationship has emerged. Trade in general and energy (gas) supplies in particular play a key role in shaping ties between the two countries. But Moscow and Ankara seem to be on the same page too with regard to major regional issues as well: the Iraq war, Iran's nuclear program, security in the Black Sea-Caspian area, and "frozen conflicts" in the South Caucasus. Despite being a NATO member and an EU candidate country, Turkey appears to be much closer to Russia than to the West on all these issues.

Moreover, with the Iraq situation becoming ever more volatile in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion, and the anti-Turkish sentiments on the rise in many European countries, Ankara is deeply dissatisfied with the nature of its relations with Western powers and is, therefore, seeking new strategic allies. In this context, Moscow looks like a natural and valuable partner. Russia, for its part, is also going through a rough patch in its relations with the West and is looking for prospective allies.

Interestingly, the Turkish-Russian rapprochement is accompanied by heated internal debates on Russia and Turkey's international identities and the re-emergence in both countries of Eurasianism -- the ideology that, among other things, promotes historical and cultural affinity between Russia and Turkey.

Igor Torbakov is a historian and analyst who specializes in the political affairs of the former Soviet Union. He holds an MA in History from Moscow State University and a PhD from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He was a Research Scholar at the Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow; a Visiting Scholar at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC; a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University, New York; and a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University. He is now based in Istanbul, Turkey and writes regularly on these issues for a variety of publications.

About the series: The year 2005 marked the 60th anniversary of the end of Pacific War and Japan's unconditional surrender. Post-war Japan has embraced a new constitution that renounced war as a right of the nation and for the past six decades pursued economic growth under democratic government. Ironically, the years leading to this anniversary were filled with various disputes over territorial and historical issues with China and Korea and questions from neighboring countries whether Japanese society is shifting towards the right. Triggered by Prime Minister Koizumi's official visits to Yasukuni Shrine, which enshrines "A" class war criminals, anti-Japan sentiment is widely spreading among its neighboring countries, accompanied by strong nationalism, and is posing a potential threat to the political stability of the region.

This colloquium series will focus on Japan's relationship with China and Korea and the historical controversies that are central to their deteriorating political relationship. The series speakers will address the following questions: What are the historical roots of these controversies? How did post-war Japanese foreign policy effect and was effected by Japan's handling of its militaristic past? What is the nature of domestic politics of these three countries that politicizes these historical issues and influences their responses to one another?

Each of the speakers in this series has been asked to address a specific aspect of Japan's relations. Professor Kimura will address the post-war political relationship between Japan and Korea.

Christine Scheiber is the Microsoft Research Scholar on Corruption on the Rule of Law at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). Her current research examines corruption in the extractive industries (in particular hydrocarbons and diamonds) and how international anti-money laundering instruments can help to prevent and combat political corruption and further the restitution of ill-gotten funds. She received her PhD from the London School of Economics. Her dissertation advances a functionalist theory of the design of international institutions with a focus on international institutions that deal with illicit flows of money, small arms, narcotics and conflict diamonds. She pursued her undergraduate studies in Switzerland and at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po), Paris, France.

Sonja Schmid is a social science research associate at Stanford University. Having received her Ph.D. in Science & Technology Studies from Cornell University, she is now a science fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, and affiliated with the Program in Science, Technology and Society at Stanford. Her research has focused on understanding complex decision-making processes at the interface between science, technology, and the state in the Cold War Soviet context, and is based on extensive archival research and narrative interviews with nuclear energy specialists in Russia. She is currently working on a book about reactor design choices and the development of the civilian nuclear industry in the Soviet Union. In addition, she is involved in an international research project on Cold War Technopolitics and Colonialism, where she works on Soviet technology transfer to Central and Eastern Europe. Her research interests also include risk communication, and the popularization of science and technology, subjects on which she has published in the past.

Co-sponsored by the German Studies Department and the German Consulate General, San Francisco

Over the past 25 years, the discussion surrounding the history of National Socialism and the Holocaust has developed into a meaningful topic of discourse in German politics, society and culture. Since the 1990s, there has been talk of a real "remembrance boom", which materialized in a flood of academic literature and autobiographies, television documentaries and feature films, as well as documentation centers, centers for eye witnesses, memorials and monuments. In the year 2005 - 60 years after the end of WWII in Europe - this collective process of commemoration presumably reached a climax: preceded by fifteen years of debate, the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated in Berlin. However, the Memorial is still debated today. The history of its genesis is illustrative of the problematic nature of finding an appropriate form for the commemoration of the Holocaust. Many issues have led to the questioning of the traditional forms and functions of a memorial and the search for alternative strategies of commemoration. Dr. Pottek will introduce examples of contemporary commemorative art in order to demonstrate the breadth of artistic strategies for remembrance in Germany and to inspire a discussion about appropriate and less appropriate forms of commemorative art.

Dr. Marina Pottek studied history of art, German literature and Romanic literature at the University of Bochum and received her Ph.D. from the University of Bonn. Her main topics are modern European and American art, contemporary art, art and memory, conceptual art, and narrative art. Since 1998, Dr. Pottek has held a scientific assignment at the University of Bonn and has worked at the equal opportunity office (public relations manager, curator of an interdisciplinary exhibition on female scientists, coordinator for the mentoring programme for talented female scientists at the University of Bonn).

The United Nations Secretariat--the main part of the UN bureaucracy directly under the Secretary-General--has arguably changed or been challenged more than any other part of the UN system in recent years, with more and more mandates and rising expectations. Though much attention has been given to the reform of the Security Council, and though Washington has made UN 'management reform' a core pillar of its UN policy since the Oil-for-Food scandal, the UN Secretariat has nevertheless proved singularly impervious to even the common sense suggestions for improvement. In many ways, there is a greater gap today than at any time in the past between what the Secretariat does, what it's meant to do, and the capacity it has. Why has improvement been so difficult and what have been the recurrent mistakes of UN reform efforts? With the election of a new Secretary-General due in late 2006, can we think about the UN bureaucracy in a different and more practical way?

Thant Myint-U is a visiting senior fellow at the International Peace Academy. He is also a senior advisor to the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum at the Social Science Research Council and a Fellow of the Cambridge University Centre for History and Economics.

From 2000-2006 he worked in the United Nations Secretariat, first for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and then for the Department of Political Affairs (DPA). From 2004-5 he was Chief of DPA's Policy Planning Unit of the Department of Political and in 2005-6 he was a Senior Political Officer in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General. In 2004 he was also a member of the Secretariat of the Secretary-General's High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change.

Thant Myint-U has also served on three United Nations peacekeeping operations, with UNTAC in Cambodia in 1992-3 and with UNPROFOR and UNMIBH in the former Yugoslavia from 1994-6. In 1994 he was the UN's senior spokesman in Sarajavo.

From 1994-1999 Thant Myint-U was a fellow of Trinity College Cambridge, where he researched and taught Asian and British imperial history. He received his bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1988, his master's degree in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in 1992 and his PhD in history from Cambridge University in 1996.

He is the author of several published and broadcast works, including two books: The Making of Modern Burma (Cambridge University Press, 2000) and The River of Lost Footsteps: Remembering Burma's Past (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2006 forthcoming).

Co-Sponsored by the Austrian Consulate General, Los Angeles

Leopold Engleitner of Austria is one of the oldest living Holocaust survivors. Born in 1905 in Salzburg, Mr. Engleitner became a Jehovah's Witness in his late twenties. In 1938 when the Anshluss (the inclusion of Austria into "Greater Germany" by the Nazi regime) occurred in Austria, Mr. Engleitner found himself imprisoned a number of times for what the Nazis claimed was a promotion of an unacceptable religious faction. Rather than being released from prison he was placed into Nazi "protective custody" and sent to a concentration camp. Mr. Engleitner spent the next five years in three different concentration camps. He was subjected to severe physical labor and demeaning treatment from both the Schutzstaffel (the Nazi defense squadron) and fellow prisoners. Throughout his internment, Mr. Engleitner was offered freedom in return for signing a declaration renouncing his beliefs. Time and time again, he refused. Finally, in June 1943, he was offered his freedom in exchange for working solely in agriculture for the remainder of his life. On July 15, 1943, he was released from the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Bernhard Rammerstorfer, also of Austria, is an author and film producer. Mr. Rammerstorfer met Leopold Engleitner in 1994 and consequently wrote his biography, Unbroken Will: The Extraordinary Courage of an Ordinary Man. Mr. Rammerstorfer also produced an accompanying film documentary. In 2006, he produced another documentary entitled, "Unbroken Will Captivates the United States".

In recent years, Mr. Rammerstorfer and Mr. Engleitner have traveled the world, holding lectures at various universities, schools and memorial sites in Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and the United States. In 2004, they made presentations at Columbia University, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His most recent book is Thomas Jefferson: Author of America. His most recent collection of essays is titled Love, Poverty, and War. Mr. Hitchens, longtime contributor to The Nation, wrote a wide-ranging, biweekly column for the magazine from 1982 to 2002. With trademark savage wit, he flattens hypocrisy inside the Beltway and around the world, laying bare the "permanent government" of entrenched powers and interests. Mr. Hitchens has been Washington editor of Harper's and book critic for Newsday, and regularly contributes to such publications as Granta, The London Review of Books, Vogue, New Left Review, Dissent and the Times Literary Supplement.

Born in 1949 in Portsmouth, England, Mr. Hitchens received a degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1970.

Event Synopsis:

In this presentation Mr. Hitchens presents a "balance sheet" from point of view of those, like him, who advocated regime change in Iraq and hoped that it would have positive effects in Saudi Arabia and Iran as well. He presents areas where progress has not materialized, such as attempts to revive Iraq's badly damaged oil industry. However, he points out political progress made by Kurds in the north of Iraq, and growing pressure on the regimes of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. Attempts to "dry up the swamp" where terrorism breeds have not eliminated but have isolated Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. He urges the international community to "make friends" with moderate forces in Muslim countries which reject terrorism, and to pursue policies that continue to isolate extremist groups.

 A discussion period following the talk raised such questions as: Is there a secular democratic alternative to Hamas? In light of difficulties encountered in establishing democratic governance in Iraq, shouldn't there be a reassessment of the belief system that led to the Iraqi operation? What evidence can be found that Iraq was on the verge of collapse prior to the recent military intervention? How do the happenings in the Middle East translate into a policy regarding North Korea, which is vocal about acquiring weapons of mass destruction? With Saddam Hussein gone, can Iraq remain one country? Is there a risk that intervention in places like Iraq has a galvanizing effect on other enemy groups?

For nearly twenty years, an array of mainly Western governments, NGOs, and international organizations including the UN have tried to promote democracy in Burma using sanctions and diplomacy. The net result has been an ever more entrenched military dictatorship, a looming humanitarian crisis, and a possible resumption of armed conflict. How are we to think about this failure in international policy? Thant Myint-U will identify at the core of this external impotence a singularly ahistorical analysis of Burma, its 44-year-old dictatorship, and its even longer-running civil wars. He will also ask: Could things have been handled differently? What does Burmese history tell us about what is and is not possible today? And what are the prospects for constructive change?

Thant Myint-U is a senior visiting fellow at the International Peace Academy in New York City. In 1994-99 he was a fellow of Trinity College in Cambridge University where he taught Indian and colonial history. He has also served for many years in the United Nations, first in three different peacekeeping operations (in Cambodia and ex-Yugoslavia) and then at the United Nations Secretariat in New York. In 2004-05 he was in charge of policy planning in the UN's Department of Political Affairs. He has written two books on Burma: and The River of Lost Footsteps (2006) and The Making of Modern Burma (2000). He was educated at Harvard and Cambridge Universities and completed a PhD in modern history at Cambridge in 1996.