Schedule

“Expansion & Contraction of the International Neighborhood”

February 18-19, 2011

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Sponsored by the Boston University Department of International Relations, The BU Center for International Relations, The BU Center for the Study of Asia, and the Graduate International Relations Council

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Friday, February 18th

5:00 pm – Registration begins at the Trustee’s Ballroom, 9th Floor, SMG Building (1 Silber Way)

6:00 pm – Trustee’s Ballroom, 9th Floor, SMG Building (1 Silber Way) – Keynote Address

6:45 pm – Reception

7:30-8:30 – Dinner w/participants, moderators

Saturday, February 19th

All Saturday Events Will Take Place at 154 Bay State Road Unless Otherwise Noted

9:30 am – IRB 100 – Breakfast

10:30 am – IRB 220 – The Environment as Neighbor: International Development and Natural Resources

Moderator: Professor Helwege

Kristin Sippl: “Prospects for Natural Resource Certification in the Democratic Republic of Congo”
Nyambati R. Aori: “Globalization and the 21st-Century World”
Satgin Hamrah: “Peak Oil: A tragedy for the world’s most vulnerable”

IRB 102 – Neighborhood Watch: The U.S. at War

Moderator: Professor Wippl

Adam Cox: “Win-Lose-Hold?: Adapting Strategy and Force Structure to the New International Security Environment”
Krist Thodoropoulos: “Georgia: U.S. Support as a force for stability”
Eugenia Garrisi: “EU-US Agreement on the Transfer of Financial Messaging Data for purposes of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme (TFTP): a case study”
Fu En-Ping: “From Mercantalist ‘Isolation’ to Strategic Involvement: An Interactive Institutionalist Explanation of U.S. Responses to Japanese Acts of Aggression, 1931-1941”

12:00 pm – Lunch

1:00 pm – IRB 102 – Society as Neighbor: Civil Society and Transnational Actors

Moderator: Professor Norton

Satgin Hamrah: “Women & the 2009 Iranian Presidential Elections”
Mentor Mustafa: Contestations of Trans-national Sacred Landscapes and the Albanian Bektashi Perspective on Islam and the ‘International Neighborhood’”
Anshul Jain: “Standoff in Iran: New Media, Transnational Civil Society and the Prospects for Political Reform”
Brian Trenor: “The Polish Desk: Zbigniew Brzezinski and Radio Free Europe”

IRB 220 – The Gears of Internal Policy & Development: China

Moderator: Professor Fewsmith

Ceren Ergenc:
“Public Participation in Reform China: A Case Study on Public Hearings”
Gao Xiang: “The Institutional Foundation of the Chinese Developmental Government”
Rumin Luo: “Migration, Integration and Life Chances – An Empirical Study of Urban China”
Chun-Yi Sum: “An Exercise for the People’s Republic: Order and Discipline in the Morning Ritual of a Chinese Primary School”

2:30 pm – IRB 102 – Neighborly Behavior – Ethics, the Theory of War, and Military Power

Moderator: Professor Arreguín-Toft

Kristin Sippl: “Just War Theory and Autonomous Weapons Systems: The Ethics and Impact of Distancing Soldiers from the Battlefield”
Kamae Ippei: “Why Hasn’t Japan Gone Nuclear?”
Chien-Kai Chen: “Taiwan’s Ambiguous International Status”
Abram Trosky: “Of the People, by the People, and for other Peoples? The Expansion of National to International Politics in Howard Zinn’s Philosophy of History”

IRB 220 – Gated Communities? Regional Integration and the International Neighborhood

Moderator: Professor Schilde

Lenka Wieluns: “The European Neighborhood: Privileged, Tentative or Frozen?”
Jerome Marston: “Are Small and Medium States Superior to Large?: The Role a State’s Size Plays in Regional Integration”
Cristal Downing: “Smoke and Mirrors: The United States’ elusive approach to human rights in the War on Drugs in Mexico and why a focus on institutional development could be the solution”
Jocelyn Levin: “The Eurobarometer: Reporting and shaping European public opinion”

4:30 pm – BU Pub (225 Bay State Road) – Reception