PANEL DISCUSSION: Photographers and Journalists Document Gendered Refugee Experience

“In recent days, we’ve seen the supposed prevalence of violence against women in Muslim countries used to justify travel bans and immigration prohibitions,” remarked Jean Howard, George Delacorte Professor in the Humanities, as she introduced Refugees and Gender Violence: Media and the Arts, the latest event in a two-year series on Reframing Gendered Violence, co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Social Difference, and the Dean of the Humanities.

The unsatisfactory state of affairs noted by Howard inspired the panel’s questions about how journalists and photographers can vivify the precarious realties of refugees, reframing conventional narratives to tell stories that disrupt our clichéd understandings of gendered violence.

A photojournalist based in Istanbul, Bikem Ekberzade spoke to this question in her wide-ranging, revealing presentation, entitled “The Refugee Project: Anatomizing Gendered Violence.” Showing photographs of forced migrations in forgotten conflict zones such as Kosovo and Afghanistan, she illustrated the stories of women stranded midway through their journeys toward refuge and the hope of a better life.

Sarah Stillman, a staff writer for The New Yorker and the Director of the Global Migration Project at Columbia School of Journalism, spoke thoughtfully on the ways that narrative can affect our understanding of gendered violence against refugees. “How can we resist binaries in storytelling, which distinguish between ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ victims?” she asked. “When I think about reporting on gender-based violence in this context, one of the most critical things is to show people in the act of being creative, or loving. That has really stuck with me when I think about the families I’ve gotten to know in the context of my reporting.”

Susan Meiselas, president of the Magnum Foundation and author of acclaimed books such as Carnival Strippers and Nicaragua, built on the themes of the two previous speakers, detailing the challenges and discoveries of her latest project, A Room of Their Own. This collaborative endeavor uses photos, testimonies, and original artwork to document the experiences of women in a haven in the United Kingdom. Of her experience working on the product, she explained, “this is hard…I am making something with, and in some ways for, these women…I am trying to tell a story that is fairly complex, building a path for readers to hopefully care about a place they might not be anywhere near. Can what I’m making help sustain the haven?”

The event concluded with a lively Q & A that featured questions on topics ranging from the practical benefits of artistic intervention to the narrative ethics of the journalistic profession. The conversation will continue next year with segments on gendered urbanisms and the gender of global climate change.

Access photos from the discussion here and videos here.

Contributed by Liza McIntosh

Jackie Leach Scully Discusses Precision Medicine, Embodiment, Self & Disability

On March 9, 2017, Dr. Jackie Leach Scully, Professor and Executive Director of PEALS (Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences) Research Center at Newcastle University in Newcastle, UK, led a thought-provoking and insightful seminar and discussion on "Precision Medicine, Embodiment, Self & Disability" as part of CSSD's project on Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics and Culture.

Dr. Scully largely explored biomedical perceptions surrounding disability, and proposed how these perceptions are and will continue to change within the era of precision medicine. Traditionally, biomedical views have largely considered disability as a nominative and quantifiable pathology with less consideration for cultural, environmental, social, economic and political aspects. And while precision medicine remains rooted in this conventional biomedical perspective, rapid advances in the field are posing new bioethical questions and challenges that will continue to shape not only the biomedical but also the social/societal perceptions of disability.

Dr. Scully dove into a variety of such issues that we are currently facing and those that will likely be forthcoming. For example, paradoxically, individualized probabilistic data of genomic abnormalities obtained in the preconception/prenatal setting can effectively uncouple genetics from physical manifestations (the “walking ill”), thereby resulting in unjust discrimination—where the concept of disability exists prior to the individual’s embodiment and identity have taken form. This challenge reflects the central question of how precision medicine’s attitude toward “disability” differs from that of “disease.” While medicine in general rationalizes the avoidance or elimination of disease, will this rationalization inevitably apply to genetic variation associated with disability? And how will our society come to these decisions regarding what type of genomic variation we consider “abnormal” and appropriate for preconception and prenatal modification such as through preimplantation genetic diagnosis or in the near future, gene editing techniques.

With the surge of funding for precision medicine research over the past three years, Dr. Scully makes the case that we should allocate a portion of this funding to monitor the ethical ramifications surrounding these biotechnological advances in effort to keep up with the rapidly evolving landscape of precision medicine.

Contributed by Liz Bowen

KEYWORDS PANEL DISCUSSION: "Justice" defined in legal, institutional, and environmental terms

On March 23rd, CSSD presented its 2017 Keywords Roundtable Discussion featuring panelists from various departmental homes who discussed definitions of the word “justice.” Rachel Adams, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University and Director, Center for the Study of Social Difference introduced the group and commented on the challenges the new presidential administration presented to minority groups like people of color and the LGBT community, calling into question the U.S. government’s commitment to social problems and inequality.

Adams said that for people with disabilities, the legal definition of “justice”—the administration of fairness—posed a problem because the definition for “fairness” varies for those with disabilities. The American democratic social contract does not by nature take into account people whose bodies deviate dramatically from the norm or who might possess different capabilities for autonomy or reasoning, she said.

“Are there ways to revise that definition or are these individuals an add-on to those theories?” asked Adams, pointing out that some minority groups like the disabled need much more assistance in claiming their rights.

Adams said that while the new administration’s threats to the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and education all impacted justice for people with disabilities, the surge in public protests also presented problems for those individuals because of their difficulties with mobility, crowds, marching, and speaking. She concluded with a call for “activism for justice when you don’t have a body for protest.”

Kathryn Kolbert, Director of the Athena Center for Leadership, Barnard College, examined “justice” through the lens of U.S. constitutional law, saying that the Constitution provided “multiple and overlapping guarantees” of justice with legal protections of free speech and press; due process and equal protection; and the protection of liberty. While the Trump Administration threatens all of those freedoms, vigilance against incursions against them by any governmental agent is always necessary, she said.

Kolbert said there were four prerequisites that underpin the notion of American justice and all of them are currently being challenged. First, the system of governmental checks and balances keeps political powers in the three branches separate so they won’t unduly influence the administration of justice. “Today they are totally out of alignment,” said Kolbert, citing the Republican domination of the House and Senate as an example.

Kolbert said civil debate was the second guarantee of justice and that the lack of it in current U.S. politics was problematic. Freedom of speech and the press were also crucial measures that were in danger, according to Kolbert, who claimed that “Americans are totally divided over what facts are and over a common set of measurements for determining what is effective,” she said.

The fourth prerequisite for justice that Kolbert cited was access, which is currently being undermined by the huge income disparities within our society. “The gap between the haves and have nots is now so pronounced that one’s access to freedom and institutions of civil society are defined solely by one’s economic status,” she said, citing healthcare as a classic example.

Carla Shedd, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Columbia University presented herself as an urban sociologist who is intrigued by the power public institutions have over people’s lives.

Shedd described the awesome power within the concept of parens patriae—the legal framework through which the state acts as the surrogate parent for its citizens and through which governmental actors are allowed to intervene in the lives of individuals (particularly those in juvenile court) and their families with the ultimate goal of building better citizens.

She also explained the phrase “carceral continuum” a term she uses to describe the expanding systems of social control and punishment that are experienced at different levels of severity according to one’s social status. She said her work explored how societal structures such as neighborhoods, schools, and courts unjustly shape the trajectory of young people’s lives.

“Steeped in the language of justice, and often in the name of protecting America’s poor and vulnerable, the nurturing arm of the state may also operate like an instrument of punishment,” said Shedd. She explained that the institutions mentioned earlier are often used to distribute criminal justice unequally, with racially subordinated groups receiving a disproportionate amount of the carceral system’s punishments.

Jennifer Wenzel, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University, discussed her work on justice in relation to the environment and climate.

“Environmental justice…is concerned primarily with environmental racism and the toxic burdens borne disproportionately by racialized minorities,” said Wenzel, explaining that current theorists posit the socially marginalized as receiving few environmental benefits like natural resources but receiving more environmental burdens like pollution. The case is similar with climate change, in which the industrialized Global North is responsible for the production of most of the greenhouse gases on the planet but the most severe effects of climate change are felt in the Global South, she said.

Even in the very definition of environmental justice, hegemonic values and conceptualizations of nature also inform the discussion. Thus, mainstream environmental movements in the Northern hemisphere set the norms, eclipsing the actual, specific environmental concerns of those who are suffering environmental fallout in the Global South.

In conclusion, Wenzel called for an "environmentalism of the poor" that would demand a healthy environment for everyone, not just the poor, and said that “One of my concerns as a scholar-citizen is that this newfound interest in geological stratification threatens to displace attention to social stratification.” Overwhelming concerns about future dystopias that currently dominate mainstream dialogues could displace a more practical focus on present injustices and inequalities affecting people now, she said.

Photos from the roundtable discussion are available here.

Contributed by Terry Roethlein, Communications Manager

CSSD 2017 Call for Proposals

CSSD 2017 Call for Proposals

CSSD’S deadline for proposal submissions for 2017 projects has been extended to Monday, March 20th.

Proposals may be submitted for consideration by any Columbia or Barnard faculty member(s) whose project aligns with the mission of CSSD, although preference will be given to faculty affiliated with one or more of CSSD's member centers and institutes.

New submission deadline is March 15, 2017. Read the full CFP here. 

DISCUSSION: Refugees and Gender Violence: Media and the Arts on Thursday, March 30

CSSD presents "Refugees and Gender Violence: Media and the Arts," Thursday, March 30th, 2017, from 4:10 - 6 p.m. in Butler Library 523.  Presenters include Bikem Ekberzade, Photojournalist, Turkey, on "The Refugee Project: Anatomizing Gendered Violence," Susan Meiselas, Photographer, Magnum Photos, on "A Room of Their Own," and Sarah Stillman, Columbia School of Journalism, The New Yorker, on the "Global Migration Project."

Reframing Gendered Violence is a two­-year initiative of Women Creating Change at the Center for the Study of Social Difference, supported by the Dean of the Humanities, the Columbia Global Centers, and linked to the project on “Religion and the Global Reframing of Gender Violence” supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.

This event is free and open to the public. Columbia is committed to creating an environment that includes and welcomes people with disabilities. If you need accommodations because of a disability, please email tkr2001@columbia.edu in advance of the event.

This event will be videotaped.

Image: West end of the border, Chad. Photo by Bikem Ekberzade

Jacqueline Chin Presents on "Precision Medicine: Privacy & Family Relations"

Dr. Jacqueline Chin, Associate Professor at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Singapore spoke in February on the subject of "Precision Medicine: Privacy & Family Relations" for CSSD's project on Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics, and Culture.  Dr. Chin's  presentation underscored the leading pillars of privacy and family relations in connection with precision medicine. She espoused several focal points through which a humanistic conceptualization of the relevant issues might be achieved, including: the metaphor of precision medicine itself, the problem of genetic privacy, pragmatism and frameworks of choice, and enabling responsible choices in the context of precision genomics.

The Metaphor of Precision Medicine

"Precision Medicine" (PM) implies a certain model of medical care that is personalized and tailored to the individual. But “precision” itself is a cultural construction. The term connotes accuracy, and favors results that should be shared, generalized, and standardized, as opposed to ones that can be true about an individual case. In acknowledging this tension, Dr. Chin argued that PM amounts not to individually tailored healthcare, but rather to genetically based healthcare. Is precision necessarily a social or physiological “good”?

By all accounts, central to PM is conceptualizing “genetic information.” As the literature makes evident, there is little consensus about what genetic information even is. Indeed, countless debates concerning when and on what basis genetic information is significant and to whom—and when such information should be kept private—continue to proliferate. The group found that these realities bring to light an important tension that should be qualified in our humanistic conceptualization of such emerging medical approaches, which is distilling whether PM is specific to an individual versus to a cohort of individuals that share a particular common trait or disease. On a more granular level within this framework, one might distinguish between the clinical versus research uses of the genome. That is, in the clinical context, the purpose is to deliver diagnostic and treatment information to a treating healthcare provider, and in the research context, a researcher is conducting a genetic analysis to explore a specific hypothesis that is independent of diagnosis or treatment for any one individual. We acknowledged that in these settings, from a privacy/disclosure perspective, the individual human subjects are not necessarily informed of the results of genetic analyses, and it was argued that healthcare professionals and ethicists ought to calibrate such communication practices with deference to ethical guidelines and patients’ rights. Thus, when we conceive of the PM metaphor, such distinctions and considerations are of import.

Precision Medicine & Genetic Privacy

Dr. Chin articulated that the term “genetic privacy” can be problematic when taken at face value (e.g., as if there were something exceptional about genetic information that necessitates special ethical attention or legal protections). Instead, she suggested starting with the observation that a general problem of privacy occurs when technological feats (such as data capture and storage, processing, and retrieval) are accomplished. In reflecting upon this conundrum, an important inquiry surfaced: Given the proliferation of public and private sector genetic databases and genomic research, and in light of function creep (e.g., the benefits of using technology in new ways), how might we reconcile attempts to somehow “draw the line” in crafting regulations/policies that protect identifiable information yet also leave room for advances in genomics? In grappling with this challenge, identifying the stakeholders is key.

Pragmatism and Frameworks of Choice

Chin discussed with the group precision medicine in connection with social and familial obligations. The dialogue centered on (i) reflections of pragmatism and (ii) what medical anthropologist Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner terms “frameworks of choice.”

Drawing on philosopher Herman Saatkamp’s work, discussants considered the argument that pragmatism prioritizes the good over truth, and the idea that pragmatism is a vehicle for assessing what he terms the “new genetics.” What is perhaps most important here is embracing the complexity of the connection between genes, environment, and culture, and accordingly the urgency to redirect research efforts to developing “responsible” individuals. But many issues remain with regard to this line of thought, and a plethora of questions were raised in our seminar. For example, how might we define a responsible parent, and to what extent is that definition fluid? To what degree is being responsible context-specific, and is it a product of free will exclusively, or a combination of other forces within us, our environment, and our culture? Finally, how possible is it to achieve a pragmatic directive for parents to use genetic information in child rearing? While these issues cannot be solved in a brief discussion, one of the prevailing arguments asserted that given the complex biological and societal nature of human beings, single genetic traits are likely less responsible for determining complex human actions, whereas the perspective that draws upon both genes and environment is more convincing.

The other work we reviewed in this context is that of Sleeboom-Faulkner’s frameworks of choice writings. What was most thematic in our discussion was that while reproductive governance is a function of social individuals and of the state’s regulatory impositions, the reality remains that individual choice and free will wildly varies depending on the context (for instance, in response to community and cultural norms, which may produce coercive or poorer outcomes). Additionally in this vein, one’s choice has the potential to be constrained or restricted by social and economic limitations, such as conflicting religious values or financial barriers that prevent or disable access to a given genetic test or treatment. As Sleeboom-Faulkner argues, the relative bioethical permissiveness of state and local governments influences the degree to which populations participate in, and benefit from, genetic testing.

Precision Genomics and Enabling Responsible Choices

Another issue that Dr. Chin emphasized related to precision genomics and enabling responsible choices. The topics she highlighted included the importance of the force of the law in protecting individuals from being coerced into undergoing genetic or whole genome testing, and the notion of sharing such test results “responsibly.” In considering the latter, for instance, what might be an appropriate way to arrive at decisions to inform next-of-kin in consideration of family members’ interests? In a perhaps-controversial conviction, Dr. Chin posited that individuals who undergo genetic or whole genome testing should be required to consent to sharing relevant results with close family members who desire to access the information. She argued that families should be notified so that they can choose whether or not to apply for access to a family member’s findings and undergo testing themselves. This set of claims produced a wave of skepticism among some working group members, who questioned what the scope of the “family” would entail (e.g., “close” family? Only those with whom one can establish trust? All blood relatives? Would it also include people with whom they are thought to have a reasonable degree of trust in?), and to what extent moral, relational, or other civic duties might bolster or compromise such an obligation to disclose. Another response underscored the notion of risk stratification: as it stands now, PM is more so an issue of risk, as opposed to identifying a particular variant that may be indicative of someone’s potential to inherit or develop a particular condition. So perhaps the extent of the obligation to disclose hinges on the notion of actionability—the degree of information that is actually useful to patients or not. To calibrate, Dr. Chin did acknowledge that the right of individuals not to know and to make their own judgments about the risks to privacy of undergoing genetic testing should be protected. Still, a strong argument in favor of disclosure remains, which is that PM succeeds only if people do share information—in essence, sharing information is part of the “deal” of PM, and without it, PM may not materialize as expected.

Contributed by Matt Dias

Alice Kessler-Harris' "Women Have Always Worked" MOOC Launched

The first part of the "Women Have Always Worked" MOOC (massive open online course), led by Alice Kessler-Harris, R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History Emerita at Columbia University and former project director of CSSD's Social Justice After the Welfare State, was recently launched on the edX platform.

The Women Have Always Worked course is the first full-length MOOC on the history of women in America and is free and open to the public. A joint venture between Columbia University and the Center for Women’s History at the New-York Historical Society, the course introduces students to historians’ work to uncover the place of women and gender in America’s past.

Read the full story here.

DISCUSSION: Keyword: Justice — Interdisciplinary Conversation on Thursday, March 23!

On Thursday, March 23, 2017 from 4:30 – 6:30 p.m., CSSD and the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Council will co-host a Keywords: Interdisciplinary Roundtable Conversation on the keyword “Justice” in Butler Library 203, Columbia University.

Keywords programs draw participants together from a wide range of disciplinary homes in order to explore the various ways we think about fundamental critical/theoretical ideas and to generate new vocabularies and new methodologies.

This year's program features:

Che Gossett
Community Archivist and Student Coordinator, Barnard College

Mark Hatzenbuehler
Associate Professor of Sociomedical Sciences and Co­Director, Center for the Study of Social Inequalities and Health, Mailman School of Public Health

Kathryn Kolbert
Constance Hess Williams Director of the Athena Center for Leadership, Barnard College

Carla Shedd
Assistant Professor of Sociology, Columbia University

Jennifer Wenzel
Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature and
Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University

Rachel Adams (moderator)
Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University and Director, Center for the Study of Social Difference

CSSD Call for Proposals for Fall 2017 Projects Extended to March 20

CSSD’S deadline for proposal submissions for 2017 projects has been extended to Monday, March 20th. Proposals may be submitted for consideration by any Columbia or Barnard faculty member(s) whose project aligns with the mission of CSSD.

Proposals must be for a new project to begin in 2017. Proposals may be submitted for consideration by any Columbia or Barnard faculty member(s) whose project aligns with the mission of CSSD, although preference will be given to faculty affiliated with one or more of CSSD’s member centers and institutes. Submission deadline is March 20, 2017. Read the full CFP here.

Jackie Leach Scully Speaks on Precision Medicine, Ethics, Politics, and Culture on March 9

On March 9th, the CSSD project Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics and Culture will host Jackie Leach Scully for a lecture at Columbia.  Leach Scully is Professor of Social Ethics and Bioethics, and Executive Director, Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Centre, Newcastle University, UK.

Professor Leach Scully asks how the enormous recent advances in genomic knowledge and capabilities might affect the public's understanding of embodiment that is disabled. How might precision medicine influence thinking about and attitudes towards disability, and disabled people, in the future?

Read more about the event here.

Anupama Rao publishes in New York Times on Indian Supreme Court Ruling

Anupama Rao publishes in New York Times on Indian Supreme Court Ruling

Anupama Rao, Associate Professor of History, Barnard College, and director of the recently completed CSSD project on Gender and the Global Slum, published an opinion piece in the New York Times on an Indian Supreme Court ruling that bans political appeals to identity.

"In India today, we are seeing the overturning of an order predicated on the protection of social minorities in favor of majority rights," wrote Rao. "Given current politics, will Hindu majoritarian claims be allowed, while minorities are banned from making claims to discriminated identity, or social suffering?" she wrote.

Read the full piece here.

China and Africa at a Crossroads: Revisiting the Legacy of Bandung Humanisms

China and Africa at a Crossroads: Revisiting the Legacy of Bandung Humanisms

The CSSD working group Bandung Humanisms hosted the conference “China and Africa at a Crossroads: Revisiting the Legacy of Bandung Humanisms.”  Read the full blog entry on the conference here and see photos from the day here

David Scott receives Distinguished Editor Prize for "Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism"

David Scott receives Distinguished Editor Prize for "Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism"

David Scott, Professor of Anthropology at the Institute for Research in African American Studies, Columbia University, and former co-director of CSSD’s Digital Black Atlantic Project, received the Distinguished Editor prize from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals for his work on Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism.

“Small Axe edited and published under Scott’s vision has become one of most relevant intellectual and creative publications for our current political, social and cultural climate. Small Axe continues to reflect the ‘problem space’ of the contemporary global moment,” said Roshini Kempadoo, lecturer at University of Westminster.

Read more about David Scott’s prize here.

Jacqueline L. Chin Discusses "Precision Medicine, Privacy, and Family Relations" on February 9

On February 9, the CSSD working group Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics, and Culture will host a discussion by Jacqueline L. Chin, Associate Professor, Centre for Biomedical Ethics, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, on the topic of "Precision Medicine, Privacy, and Family Relations."

Chin posits that a better understanding of genetic information not only enables the linking of genetic identity to conceptions of disease, treatment and prevention, but offers the possibility of using information mining techniques (such as comparison with bodies of data about environment and lifestyle, and stratification of information) for refining disease classifications, refining risk assessment by determining individual risk, and targeting treatment and preventive behavior. Much of the attraction of precision medicine, in Chin's view, is driven by glimpses into the complex base of human life, the desire to understand current health statuses and future health implications, and the concentration of power in big data. This evolving metaphor is bound up with other important ones, including powerful stories of people wishing to have or not have knowledge about future health, depending on how such choices and their ramifications are framed in their context. Exploring the ethical debate on ‘genetic privacy’, this lecture offered some examples of how social debates about the goals of genomics are helping to structure individual and family decisions.  Chin asks how precision medicine initiatives in different parts of the world can foster citizen participation in defining the goals of genomic medicine.

David Scott Wins Distinguished Editor Prize from the Council of Learned Journals

David Scott, Professor of Anthropology at the Institute for Research in African American Studies, Columbia University, and former co-director of CSSD's Digital Black Atlantic Project, received the Distinguished Editor prize from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals for his work on Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism.

“Small Axe edited and published under Scott’s vision has become one of most relevant intellectual and creative publications for our current political, social and cultural climate. Small Axe continues to reflect the ‘problem space’ of the contemporary global moment," said Roshini Kempadoo, lecturer at University of Westminster.

Read more about David Scott's prize here.

Anupama Rao Publishes New York Times Opinion Piece on Indian Supreme Court Ruling

Anupama Rao, Associate Professor of History, Barnard College, and director of the recently completed CSSD project on Gender and the Global Slum, published an opinion piece in the New York Times on an Indian Supreme Court ruling that bans political appeals to identity.

"In India today, we are seeing the overturning of an order predicated on the protection of social minorities in favor of majority rights," wrote Rao. "Given current politics, will Hindu majoritarian claims be allowed, while minorities are banned from making claims to discriminated identity, or social suffering?" she wrote.

Read the full piece here.

Refugees and Gender Violence: Vulnerability and Resistance

On Thursday, February 9, CSSD presents a panel discussion on “Refugees and Gender Violence: Vulnerability and Resistance” from 4:10 to 6 p.m. in 523 Butler Library. This is the third panel discussion in a two-year series called Reframing Gendered Violence.Reframing Gendered Violence is part of the Women Creating Change initiative supported by the Dean of the Humanities and the Columbia Global Centers. The project is also linked to the project on Religion and the Global Reframing of Gender Violence, which is supported by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Wendy Vogt, Professor of Anthropology, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, will present on  “Rape Trees, State Security and the Politics of Sexual Violence along Migrant Routes in Mexico” and Chloe Howe Haralambous, Graduate Student, English & Comparative Literature, Columbia University will discuss her work with Syrian refugees on Lesbos and on “Suppliants and Deviants: Gendering the Refugee/Migrant Debate on the EU Border.” Isin Onol, Curator in Vienna and Istanbul, talks about an exhibition she curated with refugee artists called “When Home Won’t Let You Stay: A Collective Deliberation on Taking Refuge” and Diana Taylor, Director, Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, NYU, will speak on her work with migrants in Mexico and Central America in, “Migrants and a New Mothers’ Movement.”

Reframing Gendered Violence is an international collaboration between scholars, artists and activists that aims to recast the way violence against women (VAW) and gender-based violence (GBV) are currently discussed in a wide range of fields, both academic and policy-oriented, including human rights, public health, journalism, law, feminist studies, literature, sociology, religious studies, anthropology, and history.

The fourth and final event in the series, “Refugees and Gender Violence: Media and the Arts,” takes place Thursday, March 30th from 4:10 to 6 p.m. in 523 Butler Library.

See the Facebook event page for this event here.

Lila Abu-Lughod Reviews Katherine Zoepf's "Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of Young Women Who Are Transforming the Arab World"

Lila Abu-Lughod, Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science, Columbia University and director of CSSD's working group on Religion and the Global Framing of Gender Violence, reviewed Katherine Zoepf's Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of Young Women Who Are Transforming the Arab World  in the latest issue of the Women's Review of Books.

In the review titled "'Muslimwomen,' Journalists and Scholars," Abu-Lughod credits Zoepf with concrete observations in her journalistic stories, saying "She shows not a trace of the self-promotion, polemic, or prejudice that colors so much popular writing on this subject," but finds other problems with the writing.

Zoepf makes no reference to the devastating effect that U.S. policies have had on people living in the Arab world, Abu-Lughod contends, but instead focuses on sensationalizing, cliched subjects like virginity examinations, medieval history, and the hijab.

Abu-Lughod goes on to say that "Zoepf’s apparent loyalty to the standard operating procedures of her profession (of journalism) prevents her from considering the extraordinary feminist scholarship that exists now on the very topics she covers."

Read the full review here.

Ruha Benjamin on “Can the Subaltern Genome Code? Reimagining Innovation and Equity in the Era of Precision Medicine”

In November, Ruha Benjamin, Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University, visited CSSD’s Project on Precision Medicine: Ethics, Politics, and Culture to argue for a re-imagining of innovation and equity in the era of precision medicine. Her presentation, “Can the Subaltern Genome Code?” presented a number of competing struggles over the future of precision medicine, positioning the field in a contemporary landscape of racialized inequality and disparities in access to genetic information.

The stakes of precision medicine, Benjamin explained, involve thinking through the underlying reasons for scientific intervention in human genetics. She emphasized that it is crucial for stakeholders involved in the creation and imagination of precision medicine’s possibilities to also reimagine inequality as a concept with biological underpinnings.

Benjamin critiqued the life sciences’ claims to be able to arbitrate the reality of race—particularly genomic researchers' attempts to establish a biological basis for racial difference—and emphasized that questions remain about the racialized aspects of who has the power to translate and interpret genetic information. (Hence the question: Can the subaltern genome code?)

Benjamin also challenged the policies of some states, like the U.K. and Kuwait, that have adopted border-control and information-gathering policies based on the notion that social differences such as ethnicity and nationality can be verified with genetic groupings. This false diagnosis of identity brands national populations as biologically distinct, and thus naturalizes boundaries, instead of celebrating genetic sovereignty, Benjamin said.

Benjamin highlighted the importance of imagination as a tool to think through ethical challenges that arise with advances in genomic science. She cautioned the thinkers and creators of precision medicine to be vigilant about the potential for the creation of hierarchies based on genetic differences. Those who invest in biotechnology don’t limit themselves to the “realistic” when it comes to imagining the possibilities of precision medicine, she reminded the group, inviting those who are concerned about genomic science’s ethical stakes not to limit their imaginations for alternative possibilities, either.

In a working group session the followed, members continued to examine the question of inequities by applying questions of bio-constitutionalism to the realities of the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI).

Responding to group members’ questions about informed consent and informed refusal, Benjamin introduced the idea of a consent framework known as “DNA on loan”—a means of navigating genomic rights among marginalized groups. Within this framework, Canadian researchers collecting genetic information from First Nations tribes cannot simply obtain one-time consent, but must return to the community and ask them to re-consent as research progresses.

Building on these concepts, the question of the “right not to know” was brought forward as an issue of informed consent. With increased knowledge of genetic predictors of illness coming forth as a result of initiatives such as PMI, group members argued, questions of consent apply not only to participation in studies, but also to the potential for knowledge of a genetic risk for an illness. With a growing effort to identify relationships between genes and manifestation of illness, what are the limits to informing the participant of potential statistically, but not clinically, significant genetic findings?

Benjamin pointed out that consent starts with incorporating the reality of the participant as a part of the process—that it is not simply a single moment of consent, but a process of building a relationship. By shifting the onus of responsibility to provide pertinent information from the participant to the clinician/researcher, Benjamin suggested, researchers can begin to enable the subaltern to genome code.

To achieve such an empowering person-to-person connection requires a restructuring of the foundation upon which clinicians are trained: not in cultural competency, but rather in cultural humility. Benjamin advocated for physicians to broaden their perspectives beyond what they need from the participant, and instead attend to what narratives and experiences the participant brings to the clinical encounter.

Contributed by Amar Mandavia & Fatemeh Adlparvar

Paige West and J.C. Salyer Discuss Dispossession and Capital Accumulation in the Context of Papua New Guinea

Paige West, Claire Tow Professor of Anthropology (Columbia), and J.C. Salyer, Staff Attorney for the Arab-American Family Support Center and Term Assistant Professor of Practice in Sociology (Barnard), were interviewed for a blog by the Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences at Rice University.  West and Salyer,  co-directors of CSSD's Pacific Climate Circuits working group, discussed how the controversy around Australia's forced internment of migrants and refugees in detention centers in PNG belies a deeply inequitable, neo-colonial relationship between the two sovereign nations. They also discussed how the different causes of migration (war, economy, climate change) are often blurred and how the detention centers in PNG should be viewed as an experimental venture that reveals how states like Australia intend to handle the increasing future flows of refugees.

West also discussed her latest book, Dispossession and the Environment: Rhetoric and Inequality in Papua New Guinea, which explores how rhetoric of Papua New Guinea's (PNG) alleged “savagery” operates as a mode of dispossession in domains like tourism, conservation and resource extraction.

West explained how Western corporations and governments repeatedly invoke rhetoric that casts PNG as a primitive place so specialists from industries centered on tourism, environmental conservation, and petrochemical development can dominate the discourse, "hollowing out" the country's sovereign agency and replacing it with their own interests. West referred to this dispossession as the "ideological work that capital requires for constant regeneration."

Listen to the full interview here.