Fall 2021

September 20, 2021

11:00am-12:15pm | Virtual on Zoom

Most violent jihadi movements in the twentieth century focused on removing corrupt, repressive, secular regimes in the Muslim world. But, following the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a new form of jihadism emerged: global jihad, turning to the international arena as the primary locus of ideology and action. In this talk, Glenn Robinson develops a compelling and provocative argument about this violent political movement's evolution. His new book, Global Jihad, tells the story of four distinct jihadi waves, each with its own program for achieving a global end: a Jihadi International to liberate Muslim lands from foreign occupation; al-Qa'ida's call to drive the United States out of the Muslim world; ISIS using "jihadi cool" to recruit followers; and leaderless efforts of stochastic terror to "keep the dream alive." Robinson connects the rise of global jihad to other "movements of rage," such as the Nazi Brownshirts, White supremacists, the Khmer Rouge, and Boko Haram. Ultimately, he shows that while global jihad has posed a low strategic threat, it has instigated an outsized reaction from the United States and other Western nations.

Glenn Robinson is on the faculty at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California and is affiliated with the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He has served as an expert advisor to USAID and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Event co-sponsored by the Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies program, Department of History, Department of Politics, and the International and Global Studies program at Brandeis.

October 6, 2021

11:00am-12:15pm | Virtual on Zoom

Since October 2019, Iraq has been experiencing an unprecedented movement of popular protests that is mobilizing a new generation to demand radical political change. In this talk, Zahra Ali argues that uprisings and mass protests expand the political and theoretical imagination in relation to life, violence, space, and emancipation.

Event co-sponsored by the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies program, International and Global Studies program, and the Department of Sociology at Brandeis.

October 6, 2021

5PM-6:30PM | Mandel Center for Humanities Atrium

Meet the IGS faculty and current majors and learn more about IGS as a major.

October 26, 2021

12-1:30pm Eastern Time | Virtual on Zoom

This book talk reviewed how Al Qaeda grew in the West. Taking a comparative and historical approach, deploying cutting-edge analytical tools, and drawing on her unparalleled database of up to 6,500 Western jihadist extremists and their networks, Prof. Jytte Klausen has produced the most comprehensive account yet of the origins of Western jihadism and its role in the global movement.

Event co-sponsored by Center for German and European Studies and the Department of Politics at Brandeis.

November 22, 2021

12-1:30pm EST | Virtual on Zoom

Since the coming to power in 2015 of the so-called Law and Justice party, led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, basic values of Western-style democracy like the independence of the judiciary and media pluralism came under heavy attack in Poland. Following the example of Hungary under Viktor Orban, successive laws of the Polish government gradually undermined the separation of powers and the independence of the mass media and ultimately provoked a massive conflict with the European Commission, which according to the European treaties, signed by all member states, is the guardian of the European legal order.

Event co-sponsored by Center for German and European Studies and International & Global Studies Program at Brandeis.

December 1, 2021

11:00am-12:30pm EST | Virtual on Zoom

The Iranian Revolution caused other governments to fear that the uprising would spread beyond Iran’s borders. More than forty years later, assessments of the Islamic Republic’s "success" in exporting its particular theocratic model continue to dominate how we talk about the revolution’s transnational impact. But this Iran-centric perspective largely ignores the critical role of non-Iranian actors who have brokered the revolution to various groups in different countries. Building on case studies from a variety of countries—Lebanon, the Gulf monarchies, Pakistan—three panelists analyzed how Shi‘i and non-Shi‘i Islamist groups made sense of the revolution and how they have translated the Iranian message into their particular local contexts.

Event co-sponsored by Crown Center for Middle East Studies, the Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies Program at Brandeis, and International & Global Studies Program at Brandeis.