News

2007-08 IICAS Research Travel Grants

IICAS expects to announce a renewed call for proposals for its popular Research Travel Grants in late Fall. IICAS’ Student Research travel Grants are intended to support graduate student dissertation and undergraduate senior thesis research in international, comparative, and area studies. The awards are intended to partially offset travel expenses incurred in the U.S. or abroad. While IICAS grants are directed primarily to students in the social sciences and humanities, students in any discipline are eligible.

Potential applicants are encouraged to review previously funded proposals posted on the IICAS website, and to review the IICAS Grants FAQ for helpful tips on preparing a successful proposal.

2006-07 IICAS International Law Series on Global Security and the Rule of Law

IICAS and the International Legal Studies Program at California Western School of Law are pleased to present their fourth annual International Law Speaker Series.

In 2004, the United Nations released the report, “A More Secure World,” compiled by the Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change.  The report identified six clusters of threats that the world must confront now and in the coming decades:

1) conflict between states;
2) violence within states, including civil wars and large scale human rights abuses;
3) poverty, infectious disease, and environmental degradation;
4) weapons of mass destruction;
5) terrorism; and
6) transnational organized crime.  

IICAS’ 2006-07 International Law Speaker Series will examine each of these threats, offering comments from distinguished scholars and practitioners about how best to address international security. Dr. Thomas Novotny of UCSF’s School of Medicine kicks off this year’s series with a talk on October 26 on the topic of global governance and public health (details to the right).

Future lectures in this series:

“Civil War and the High Level Panel Report”
Andrew Mack, University of British Columbia
November 30, 2006, 4:00 PM
Weaver Center, Institute of the Americas, UCSD

“Transnational Organized Crime”
Bruce Zagaris, Esq., Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe, LLP
January 16, 2007, 12:10 PM
California Western School of Law

“Nuclear, Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Weapons”
Larry D. Johnson, United Nations Office of Legal Counsel
February 27, 2007, 12:10 PM
California Western School of Law

“War Between States”
Mary Ellen O’Connell,
Notre Dame Law School
March 6, 2007, 4:00 PM
Weaver Center, Institute of the Americas, UCSD

“Imminence and Proportionality: The U.S. and UK Response to Global Terrorism”
Todd Landman, University of Essex
March 29, 2007, 12:10 PM California Western School of Law

2007 IREX/WWC Regional Policy Symposium:
“The Former Soviet Republics of Central Asia and the Contemporary Silk Road”
March 2007,
Washington, DC

Application Deadline: December 1, 2006

IREX (The International Research & Exchanges Board), in collaboration with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ Kennan Institute (WWC), is pleased to announce its 2007 Regional Policy Symposium: “The Former Soviet Republics of Central Asia and the Contemporary Silk Road.” The research symposium will bring together US senior and junior scholars to examine and discuss a variety of political, security, economic, historical, educational, and cultural topics related to the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and their relationships with countries along the contemporary Silk Road. Grant funding is available to help defray costs of participation.

Contact: Symposium@irex.org. See also the IREX website.

"Cultural Capital and the Cultural Bases of Ethnic Exclusion in Israel"

A Colloquium with

Aziza Khazzoom
Department of Sociology,
UCLA and Hebrew University

Thursday, October 5, 2006
12:30-2:00 PM
Social Science Building, Room 101 (SSB 101)

This event is free and open to the public.
Co-sponsored by the Dept. of Sociology

ABSTRACT: This paper concerns an empirical finding that cultural capital affected individual occupational attainment in Israel in the 1950s. However cultural capital is defined as characteristics that signal ethnic rather than class background and the concept of cultural capital is used to address classic questions about why ethnic exclusion occurs in modern industrialized societies. I use Israel's 1961 census to analyze the occupational attainment of labor-force aged men who immigrated to Israel during the first ten years of statehood. This first decade was a period of flux, in which a nascent society of about 600,000 Jews incorporated over a million new immigrants. The Zionist ideology adopted by state elites sought to produce Israel as part of the putative west, but half of the immigrants who arrived were from the Middle East, and therefore defined as culturally "eastern". In this context, cultural capital is defined as practices that signaled westernness, according to prevailing conceptions. I show that among immigrants who did not have cultural capital, Jews from the Middle East obtained lower returns to education than those from Europe, but among those who did have cultural capital, there were few ethnic differences in returns to education; in other words, Middle Eastern Jews could avoid labor market discrimination by having cultural capital.

The finding is consistent with arguments that acquisition of cultural capital can be a tool for social mobility. In addition, it suggest that ideological interests - in this case making Israel culturally western - can be at least as important as resource monopolization in explaining why ethnic discrimination occurs. - Aziza Khazzoom

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