Once dominated by vast empires, the world is now divided into close to 200 independent countries with laws and constitutions proclaiming human rights—a transformation that suggests that nations and human rights inevitably developed together. But the reality is far more problematic, as Eric Weitz shows in this compelling global history of the fate of human rights in a world of nation-states.

Through vivid histories drawn from virtually every continent, A World Divideddescribes how, since the eighteenth century, nationalists have struggled to establish their own states that grant human rights to some people. At the same time, they have excluded others through forced assimilation, ethnic cleansing, or even genocide. From Greek rebels, American settlers, and Brazilian abolitionists in the nineteenth century to anticolonial Africans and Zionists in the twentieth, nationalists have confronted a crucial question: Who has the “right to have rights?” A World Divided tells these stories in colorful accounts focusing on people who were at the center of events. And it shows that rights are dynamic. Proclaimed originally for propertied white men, rights were quickly demanded by others, including women, American Indians, and black slaves.

A World Divided also explains the origins of many of today’s crises, from the existence of more than 65 million refugees and migrants worldwide to the growth of right-wing nationalism. The book argues that only the continual advance of international human rights will move us beyond the quandary of a world divided between those who have rights and those who don’t.

Alain Badiou is a French philosopher and playwright.
He is a professor emeritus at the Department of
Philosophy of the École Normale Supérieure in
Paris. His major works include the philosophical
trilogy Being and Event, Logics of Worlds, and The
Immanence of Truths. His philosophical oeuvre
connects continental and analytical philosophical
traditions along with his reflections on set theory
and contemporary mathematics.

Cheikh Ndiaye is an artist who divides his time
between New York, Dakar, and Lyon. His work
includes paintings, installations, and film. Ndiaye
has shown his works internationally, including
at Centre Pompidou; La Maréchalerie Centre
d’Art Contemporain; Dak’Art Biennale; the 56th
International Exhibition of the Venice Biennale
and the 2019 Havana Biennale. Recently, Ndiaye’s
work was included in Sanguine. Luc Tuymans on
Baroque at Fondazione Prada in Milan, Italy, and in
Domestic Horror at Gagosian Gallery, NYC. Ndiaye
is represented by Cécile Fakhoury Gallery, Abidjan
and Jason Haam Gallery, Seoul. He is one of the
founders of the publishing house Suture Press.

This talk will be about ongoing transformations in the sacred musical repertoires practiced by ḥazzanim (synagogue cantors) and their synagogue congregations in Istanbul’s contemporary Jewish community. Dr. Alpar argues that clergy and laypeople alike negotiate their religious identities as Turkish Jews in the musical choices they make. While many try to maintain the community’s local music tradition, rooted in makam—the Ottoman Turkish melodic system—others attempt to broaden their repertoire with musics from Israel, the United States, and Ḥabad Hasidic Judaism. He will examine adjustments made to the musical components of ritual as responses to decades of Jewish religious life as experienced under the authority of the secular Turkish state and to the resurgence of religious observance within certain segments of the Jewish community. Newly religious and spiritually searching Jews now have a conflicted relationship with their community’s historic, sacred musical practices, appreciating their cultural significance but questioning their relevance and efficacy. He asserts that ḥazzanim and community members articulate ambivalent and changing attitudes about their Jewish identities, memory, and the value of local tradition in their diverse approaches to making sacred music. Based on more than two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Istanbul’s Jewish community, Dr. Alpar’s talk investigates the tension between their loyalty to tradition and the freedom and fear of being liberated from it.

In the frame of the recently published volume Women Mobilizing Memory (Columbia University
Press, 2019), editors and contributors will talk about their contribution to the book in
the Armenian/Turkish context. Women Mobilizing Memory, a transnational exploration of the
intersection of feminism, history, and memory, shows how the recollection of violent
histories can generate possibilities for progressive futures. Questioning the politics of
memory-making in relation to experiences of vulnerability and violence, this wide-ranging
collection asks: How can memories of violence and its afterlives be mobilized for
change? What strategies can disrupt and counter public forgetting? What role do the
arts play in addressing the erasure of past violence from current memory and in creating
new visions for future generations?