News

 

For the full list of conference speakers, registration and more, please visit : https://nerps.org/hiroshima_nerps2024/

On October 2nd, 2023, AC4 hosted President Moetai Brotherson, Head of State for French Polynesia. 

In conversation with Professor Jenik Radon, President Moetai discussed the sustainability challenges facing his region.

The full video and more information about this talk will be made available via our Youtube channel.

We are pleased to invite you to two unique and powerful panels at Columbia University, associated with the current United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues:

 

Indigenous Amazonian Guardianship

Wednesday, April 19th, 11am, Teachers College, Thompson Hall Room 229

Indigenous rights groups note that Indigenous peoples sustain 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity, including ecosystems essential to global climate, fresh water, and food security. This underscores the centrality of Indigenous thinking and action on a range of guardianship issues. In the Amazon, a vast, complex, and threatened eco and socio-system, Indigenous guardianship is indispensable to the future. However, states and the international community often marginalize, displace and threaten indigenous communities. This has a range of negative impacts, on both the natural environment and the Indigenous peoples who live in and with the Amazon. This panel will bring leading Indigenous Amazonian voices together to discuss the role of these peoples in guardianship, the challenges facing these communities, and action being taken by Indigenous actors to re-center Indigenous voices, perspectives and action.

 

Indigenous views on the Colombian Peace Agreement

Friday, April 21, 11am, Teachers College, Horace Mann Room 150

In the context of the peace process between the Colombian government and the FARC (2012-2016), the signing of the Peace Agreements, including the Ethnic Chapter, the unsuccessful Referendum (2016), and the subsequent Congressional ratification of a revised peace deal, it is imperative to understand the views, concerns and needs of the diverse indigenous peoples of Colombia. Indigenous peoples often suffer the brunt of war, and also bring underappreciated and powerful wisdom to peacebuilding. As political actors, indigenous peoples should be, but often are not, central to any peace process. This panel explores a range of critical issues from the indigenous Colombian perspective, from justice to historical memory, and from the pursuit of human rights to the ongoing and widespread deadly violence against indigenous leaders.
 

Refreshments will be served. Thank you to our world-class event partners: NIA TERO, AC4, Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Institute of Latin American Studies, Kent Global Leadership Program on Conflict Resolution, MD-ICCCR, and SIPA International Organization and UN Studies Specialization

Time Magazine is to publishing a series of 3 articles co-authored by Pearce Godwin and AC4 Professor, Dr. Peter Coleman over the next few weeks on the Political Courage Challenge.

Check out the first article here, the second article here, and the third and final article here.

Calling out to all Politically-Exhausted Americans! (It's 80+% of us) 

Beginning on March 20, 2023, Time magazine will be partnering with the nonprofit Starts With Us and over 100 other organizations who make up the Bridging Movement Alignment Council to launch a new social movement in the U.S. 

It will begin small and easy by offering you access to our Political Courage Challenge, a series of once-a-day “nudges” or micro-exercises, 5-days a week for a month, to help exercise and build up community tolerance and courage – within yourself, your political ingroup, in your cross-partisan relationships, and in your broader community.

Join us and learn more about the Finding The Way Out Challenge!

Happy #ListenFirst Friday! Thanks for joining us on this journey.

About the #ListenFirst Coalition
400+ organizations bringing Americans together across differences to transform division and contempt into connection and understanding. See their many Offerings here.

Professor Joshua D. Fisher will be speaking on a panel at the Columbia Global Center in Santiago, Chile next week! 

How will the unprecedented changes to climate, and the economic transitions required to stave off the worst effects of climate change, affect regional and international security dynamics? Physical scientists have been informing us for many decades now that human-induced climate change is a severe threat to the planet and our ability to live on it. Scholars have only more recently begun to grapple seriously with the implications of changing climate on issues of international and regional security. Climate change is a global phenomenon, but its effects on security will play out in different ways around the globe. Regional perspectives are therefore crucial to understanding these issues.  We aim to facilitate a dialogue and to begin to build a global community of interdisciplinary scholars, experts, policy-makers, and activists working to understand how climate change will affect regional security dynamics. 

Register here.  

Professor Fisher moderated a panel on Peacebuilding and Sustainability through Food and Art this past week, at which Professor Yoshida spoke alongside colleagues from the University of the Basque County, Pais Vasco. 

The panel discussed how societies around the world face several challenges to social stability and environmental sustainability and the innovative approaches to positive disruption to engage community members in peacebuilding and social innovation, using examples from Colombia and Southern Thailand. 

 

The theme of Rooted Futurities: Collective Visions of Peace and Justice will be explored via research presentations, workshops, art exhibits, and various plenaries. The IPRA Conference will take place in Trinidad and Tobago in May 2023, with AC4 as a co-sponsor.