German Studies Colloqium, Co-Sponsored by the Department of German Studies and the European Forum

Professor Dorschel will present the lecture in German and the discussion following the lecture will be in English.

Co-Sponsored with the Humanities 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:

Mr. Hitchens recounts the early history of American war, including its first foreign engagement in North Africa against the Ottoman Empire after it had enslaved Europeans and Americans in the region. He then reflects on the turnaround in European and American attitudes toward Islam since 1967, when US President Lyndon Johnson began to make concessions to Israel regarding its presence in Gaza in order to gain support for the Vietnam war. Johnson's predecessors as well as European leaders, in contrast, had pressured Israel to leave Gaza and had threatened economic consequences against Israel and England.

Mr. Hitchens relates recent conversations with several prominent figures - Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, Dutch newspaper editor Flemming Rose, and Somali-Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali - as illustrations of the new approach to the Muslim world by America and Europe. He describes a "civil war" within Islam between fundamentalists working to impose Sharia and "export" the conflict to the West, and moderate Muslims. Hitchens also recounts how he discouraged Tony Blair from pursuing measures to allow separate schools for Muslims in Britain, and argued against extending the anti-blasphemy law to cover Islam, instead calling for it to be revoked entirely.

Mr. Hitchens concludes his talk with the observation that the fight against Islamic extremism and terrorism will be a key battle for both the US and Europe in years to come and will transcend cultural or strategic differences between the two regions.

During a discussion session, the audience raised such questions as: Does Mr. Hitchens see the French ban on girls' head scarves as a positive measure? Where are there differences between the war in Iraq and the war against militant Islam? What are the implications for Europe if Turkey joins the EU? Is there a common European view toward terrorism, Islamism, and jihadism?

The Honorable Joschka Fischer, member of the Bundestag, and former German Foreign Minister and Deputy Chancellor (1998-2005) in the government of

Gerhard Schroeder, will deliver the 2006 Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecture.

The Payne Professorship is named for Frank E. Payne and Arthur W. Payne, brothers who gained an appreciation for global problems through their international business operations. Their descendants endowed the annual lecture series at FSI in order to raise public understanding of the complex policy issues facing the global community today and to increase support for informed international cooperation.

The Payne Distinguished Professor is chosen for his or her international reputation as a leader, with an emphasis on visionary thinking; a broad, practical grasp of a given field; and the capacity to clearly articulate an important perspective on the global community and its challenges.

The Japanese anti-nuclear movement has been characterized by the same kinds of political divisions as other popular movements, while it also reflects some uniquely Japanese features. Today, with the risk of use of nuclear weapons climbing towards levels not reached since the darkest days of the Cold War, the Japanese movement, led by the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the aging "Hibakusha" (survivors), plays a key role in the global nuclear abolition movement, serving as its conscience and its inspiration. At the same time it is confronting new challenges at home. The Japanese government maintains an ambivalent relationship with nuclear weapons. While it rhetorically calls for global nuclear disarmament in the United Nations, it remains firmly situated under the U.S. "nuclear umbrella." Meanwhile, the U.S. is refurbishing and upgrading its still vast nuclear arsenal, and expanding the role of nuclear weapons in its national security policy. With an enormous civilian nuclear power program, and huge stocks of plutonium, Japan has the capacity to produce its own nuclear weapons, should it decide to do so - a fact that does not go unnoticed by its neighbors in the region, China, and the Koreas.

Japan's three nonnuclear principles of not possessing, not producing, and not allowing nuclear arms on its soil, and Article 9 of its 1946 post-war constitution, which renounces war and prohibits maintenance of armed forces, are under serious attack. In 2004, Japan, one of the U.S.'s closest allies, deployed 1000 members of its "Self Defense Forces" to Iraq - the first time Japanese troops have been sent into combat zone since World War II. According to some estimates, Japan is second only to the U.S. in its military spending.

On the 60th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of their cities, the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki declared August 6, 2005 until August 9, 2006 to be an international Year of Inheritance, Awakening, and Commitment.

Jacqueline Cabasso has served as Executive Director of the Western States Legal Foundation (WSLF) in Oakland, California since 1984. Founded two years earlier, the nonprofit WSLF seeks to abolish nuclear weapons as an essential step in making possible a more secure, just, and environmentally sustainable world. Since 1994, Ms. Cabasso has participated as an accredited non-governmental organization representative in 12 negotiating and review sessions of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In 1995, she co-founded the Abolition 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons, which has grown to include more than 2000 organizations in over 90 countries, and she continues to serve on its international Coordinating Committee. Ms. Cabasso chairs the Coordinating Committee of the multi-issue Peoples NonViolent Response Coalition, located in the Bay Area, and formed in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks.