Please join us for an evening of presentation and discussion concerning the history and development of the Rohingya humanitarian tragedy in Myanmar and the resulting refugee crisis. The evening’s conversation will focus on the causes and conditions of the crisis along with the role that Buddhist laity and monastic communities have played in the rhetoric and violence. Led by an esteemed guest panel, this open discussion will hopefully bring a better understanding to the situation and identify compassionate ways of seeking justice and delivering relief to those who are suffering.

The panelists for the event are:

• Khin Mai Aung, US Coordinator of the Free Rohingya Coalition

• Dr. Azeem Ibrahim, Author of “The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar's Hidden Genocide”

• Adem Carroll, New York and UN Program Director of the Burma Task Force

• Ashley Aye Aye Dun, Writer and Founder of Saddha: Buddhists For Peace

To register for the event, click here.

HOSTED BY:

• The Buddhist Action Coalition

• Buddhist Council of New York

• The Union Thích Nhất Hạnh Program for Engaged Buddhism

A fragile alliance of Islamist groups known as the "212 Movement" that first emerged in 2016 has managed to sustain its mobilizing power by using Prabowo, the rival of incumbent candidate Joko Widodo, as a rallying point during the campaign leading up to the April 17 election. Now that Prabowo is the presumed loser, what will happen to the Islamists? Is a Jokowi win really a victory for pluralist democracy?

Nava Nuraniyah has been an analyst at the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) since 2015, and her research interests include the role of Islam in politics as well as the evolution of extremism in South East Asia, including the role of women. Before joining IPAC, she worked as a researcher on terrorism and radicalization in Indonesia at the Centre of Excellence for National Security, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore.

For more information, click here.

HOSTED BY:

• NYSEAN

• Race to Istana

• Wagner's Office of International Programs

In the spirit of April 30th, a diasporic Vietnamese day of remembrance, and April 17th, the Cambodian Genocide Remembrance Day, Mekong NYC is hosting a 2-part event centered around Southeast Asian resilience and healing. The first portion of the Southeast Asian Day of Resilience is an invite-only discussion featuring Southeast Asian (Vietnamese and Cambodian) community leaders and members, with a select group of Mekong NYC's allies invited to listen to and support this discussion. The second half of the event (from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm) is an open reception where Mekong and Southeast Asian artists will share our work, especially regarding how Southeast Asian people have pioneered amazing healing work for our diasporic community. We are proud to show the work of Khmer, Viet, and Lao artists: Amy Lee Sanford, LinDa Saphan, and Michelle Nguyễn Bounkousohn.

For more information, click here.

HOSTED BY:

• Mekong NYC

• Manhattan College

• Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation

The April 17th national election is over, but Indonesia remains polarized and vulnerable to further democratic decline. Marcus Mietzner, a leading scholar of Indonesia from the Australian National University, and Margaret Scott, a journalist who writes about Indonesia and an adjunct at NYU Wagner, will discuss the results and what they mean for the future of Indonesia’s democracy.

Speakers

Marcus Mietzner has written many books on Indonesia, and his most recent is Money, Power, and Ideology: Political Parties in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia. He has also co-written a chapter entitled "The Mobilization of Intolerance and Its Trajectories: Indonesian Muslims’ Views of Religious Minorities and Ethnic Chinese,” in the forthcoming book. Contentious Belonging: The Place of Minorities in Indonesia.

Margaret Scott writes for The New York Review of Books and is one of the founders of the New York Southeast Asia Network.

For more information, click here. 

Hosted by: 

• NYSEAN

• Wagner's Office of International Programs

Crisis, warring, and never-ending suffering propel humanitarian organizations to the forefront of media attention. Examining the use of témoignage (witnessing) in the work of MSF, Peter Redfield notes that big NGOs now play a central role in defining secular moral truth for an international audience (Redfield 2006: 5–6). Combining medical expression, expert knowledge, public expression, and in the case of the Free Burma Rangers, mission, health organizations are able to mobilize both the most vulnerable people as well as substantial financial and moral support from a great field of followers (Redfield 2013). Moreover, the Free Burma Rangers also involve Rangers and ethnic minority villagers in witnessing and fact finding, by training them for independent human rights documentation, which will then feed the news of their website.

Through the work of the Free Burma Rangers (FBR), professor Alexander Horstmann looks at how emergency healthcare is provided for the wounded ethnic minorities in Myanmar’s border zones and analyzes how humanitarian health organizations shape new landscapes for humanitarian assistance and mobilization.

Alexander Horstmann is an Associate Professor in Anthropology of Southeast Asia,at the School of Humanities at Tallinn University. His teaching includes Current Anthropology courses, Applied Anthropology “LIFE” project courses, AsianPolitics and Society courses, and PhD courses in Cultural Studies.

For more information, click here.

HOSTED BY:

• Cornell Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies

• Cornell Southeast Asia Program

• Cornell East Asia Program

• Cornell Department of Anthropology

Join Boon Hui Tan, Asia Society Museum Director & Vice President of Global Arts and Cultural Programs; Livia Straus, Founder of Hudson Valley MOCA; and Malaysian artist Anne Samat for a discussion on the role of gender and traditional art-making practices in Samat’s work.

Anne Samat (b. 1973, Malaysia. Lives and works in Kuala Lumpur) creates elaborate totems that merge the traditional and the contemporary through her innovative practice of weaving with everyday household objects. The artist received a BA in Art and Design from the Mara University of Technology. She has been included in international group exhibitions at venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (2019); Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium (2018); Yokohama Triennale (2017); and the National Visual Arts Gallery, Kuala Lumpur (2015). Samat is currently an artist-in-residence at Hudson Valley MOCA.

Livia Selmanowitz Straus is co-founder and Board President of Hudson Valley MOCA, formerly known as Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art. Straus is an educator who has lectured widely on art and spirituality. She is currently Professor Emeritus of Education and Jewish Religious Thought at The Academy for Jewish Religion and was formerly Adjunct Professor of Theology at Fordham University among other prestigious positions. Straus has served on the boards of the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York and the Hebrew Union College Museum in Manhattan as well as participated in various capacities at other art institutions.

Hosted by: 

• Asia Society

Indonesia’s tour-de-force music duo Senyawa and Melbourne’s choreographic luminaries Lucy Guerin and Gideon Obarzanek join forces with two of Australia’s leading dance companies, Lucy Guerin Inc and Dancenorth to create Attractor. Senyawa reinterprets the Javanese tradition of entering a trance through dance and music as a powerful, secular, present-day ritual. Dancers are propelled into wild abandonment and ecstatic release, creating a visceral experience for the audience, as unrehearsed volunteers join the company on stage, to dissolve the demarcations between professionals and amateurs.

Find more information here. 

On April 17th, Indonesia will choose between incumbent Joko Widodo (widely known as Jokowi) and challenger Prabowo Subianto for the presidency. Simultaneously, Indonesian voters will choose representatives to its national and regional Parliaments. Jokowi’s victory in the last election was accompanied by optimism for change and prosperity — he is the first president to not have come from the military or the political elite. President Jokowi has successfully jump-started massive national infrastructure projects with tangible results, and a national health insurance plan. Yet, critics will point to his handling of the economy, human rights, and religious intolerance. On foreign policy, Jokowi has taken a more assertive position on Indonesia’s maritime borders — specifically involving the Natuna Islands in the South China Sea — and expressed his desire for Indonesia to shape the Indo-Pacific region as a maritime country.

Join us for a conversation with Ambassador Cameron Hume, Chairman of the American Indonesian Chamber of Commerce’s Executive Committee, the Hon. Mari Pangetsu, former Minister of Trade of Indonesia, and Dr. Robert Hefner, Professor of Global Affairs and Anthropology at Boston University, on the results of the election, and what the future holds for the country, its economy, and the Indo-Pacific region.

For more information, click here.

Hosted by: 

• Asia Society

The Trump administration has articulated a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ strategy as the new modus operandi for the United States's policy on Asia, but is it a useful organizing concept? Please join Dr. Amy Searight, Senior Advisor and Director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, for a discussion of the Trump administration’s ‘free and open Indo-Pacific” and the Southeast Asian response. Dr. Andrew Nathan will provide a Chinese view of the ‘free and open Indo-Pacific” strategy in promises to be a stimulating discussion of an important topic. Acting as the moderator for the event will be Dr. Ann Marie Murphy of Seton Hall University. 

Hosted by: 

• NYSEAN

• Columbia Weatherhead East Asian Institute

Q&A with Kavich Neang

Once a thriving artist community and cultural hub, Phnom Penh’s historic White Building has been sold to Japanese condo developers, displacing nearly 500 families. Born and raised in the building, filmmaker Kavich Neang returns to interview friends, neighbors, and family as they prepare to uproot, stirring up the dust and memories that have accumulated in the building’s walls. As longtime residents somberly reflect on their old home and its imminent destruction, summoning memories of Cambodia’s post-independence golden age and of similar evictions during the Khmer Rouge, Neang captures the serene light and music its storied hallways one last time.

For more information and to buy tickets, click here. 

Hosted by: 

• Film Society of Lincoln Center

In celebration of the new year - the Cambodian New Year in the month of April - the Cambodian American Literary Arts Association presents "Herstories and Healing: A Khmer Culinary and Literary Workshop Poetry and Khmer Food In Memory of Mak's Kitchen." 

This hybrid writing and culinary workshop will take its cue from the flavors and healing herstory of Khmer cuisine. Taking into account the sensations on our tongue, we will also play and reimagine traditional flavors while adapting to the contemporary diasporic experience. Come share, eat, and write with us as we bring in the Cambodian New Year.

POET SOKUNTHARY SVAY

Sokunthary Svay was born in a refugee camp in Thailand shortly after her parents fled Cambodia after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime. They were sponsored to come to the United States and resettled in the Bronx where she grew up. She is currently poetry editor for Newtown Literary, the only literary journal for the borough of Queens, a founding member of the Cambodian American Literary Arts Association (CALAA), the recent recipient of the American Opera Projects' Composer and the Voice Fellowship for 2017-19, and the 2018 Emerging Poets Fellowship at Poets House. Her publication credits include Homelands: Women’s Journeys Across Race, Place and Time, FLESH, Prairie Schooner, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Perigee, and The Margins. Her first collection of poetry, Apsara in New York, is available from Willow Books. She is currently a doctoral student in English at the The Graduate Center, CUNY.

CHEF CHAKRIYA UN of KREUNG CAMBODIA

To visit her Instagram page, click here.  

It is necessary to RSVP for this event with a $10 admission fee. 

For more information and to register for this event, click here. 

Hosted by: 

• Cambodian American Literary Arts Association

The night starts out in the AACC at 5 pm with a dinner and discussion with Vietnamese poet and novelist Lê Thị Diễm Thúy, author of the widely acclaimed 2003 novel 'The Gangster We Are All Looking For.' The event will feature a performance and reading from Ms. Thúy and then a moderated discussion on her experiences as a Vietnamese writer and engaging with Vietnamese identity and the traumas of war in her work. Afterward, from 7-8pm, ViSA will have a reception for its 'Fall of Saigon' exhibit in the AACC Exhibition Room. The exhibit will feature photography, interview excerpts on personal interpretations of what it means to be Vietnamese, family stories relating to the war, and a project on media representations of Vietnamese refugees. 

For more information, click here. 

Hosted by: 

• Yale Vietnamese Students' Association

• Yale Council on Southeast Asian Studies

• Yale Center for Race & Indigeneity and Transnational Migration

Recent scholarship on labour and development in the global South has renewed critiques of conventional development theory along two main lines. The first has highlighted the unsuccessful transition of peasant small-holders into wage workers, whose incomes and employment benefits, it was once argued, would both satisfy their social reproduction needs and allow for expanded consumption. As a consequence of this apparently ‘stalled transition’ a contradiction has emerged between the valorization of wage labour/full employment, and the precarious reality of work and underemployment in contemporary capitalism. The second critique to emerge has focused on the failure of numerous late industrializing economies to transition from low- to high-value-added manufacturing. This latter failure of the development project exposes the contradiction between the promise and the reality of contemporary development strategies, and has led to disillusionment with industrial and other forms of waged work. As a result, growing frictions at the point of production and beyond have emerged, exposing tensions and fissures in development models across Continental Southeast Asia. What happens, we thus need to ask, when low-value-added export-oriented factories that are central to long-term strategies for economic growth at a sub-regional level, fail to serve as a stepping stone to higher-value-added manufacturing? How do states and workers adapt to and address the apparent lock-in of low-value, precarious, production network at the national and sub-regional scale? This presentation, led by speaker Professor Dennis Arnold of the University of Amsterdam, seeks to address these questions through analysis of the multiple power relations between state, capital and labor in Cambodia’s garment production network.

For more information, click here. 

Hosted by: 

• Cornell Department of Development Sociology

• Cornell Industrial and Labor Relations

• Cornell Southeast Asia Program

Human Rights Defenders and Indigenous Peoples are increasingly under attack worldwide. This convergence of threats was recognized by a report last year from the UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples. That report highlighted how intensified competition over natural resources -- led by private companies and at times with government complicity -- has placed indigenous communities seeking to protect their traditional lands at the forefront as targets of persecution.

This panel features perspectives from the Americas, Asia, and Africa on the nature of these threats against indigenous rights defenders and the responses these organizations and their allies are taking to ensure the security of indigenous rights defenders and advancing efforts to defend the lands, resources, and rights of indigenous communities.

A reception will follow the panel discussion.

Panelists:

Antenor Vaz, a former senior official at FUNAI, the federal agency responsible for Brazil's indigenous peoples, and an author of a recent report on the situation of voluntary isolated tribes in the Amazon.

Nidia Becerra, has been elected leader of the Inga three times. Nidia works with the Yunguillo, a reserve in the department of Putumayo, in the Colombian Amazon, to achieve the protection of its territory. Under her leadership, she has quintupled the amount of formally protected traditional Inga land. She also coordinates Land is Life’s Indigenous-Led Grantmaking initiative throughout the Amazon.

Daniel Kobei, Founder and Executive Director of Ogiek Peoples’ Development Program, a Kenyan-based NGO working to secure human and land rights of the indigenous Ogiek community and other Indigenous Peoples across Kenya and Africa.

Aisah Czarriane Mariano is Deputy Secretary General of the Cordillera Peoples’ Alliance, a federation of peoples organizations in the Cordillera region of the Philippines.

Relmu Ñanku is a Mapuche leader from Argentina.

Moderator: John Gershman, Clinical Professor of Public Service, Wagner Graduate School of Public Service

For more information, click here. 

Hosted by: 

• NYSEAN

• Wagner's Office of International Programs

• Land is Life