Wednesday, December 12, 2007
5:00 AM
1636 SSWB/International Institute, 1080 S. University Ave.
Moderator:
Michael D. Kennedy, director, CREES/CES-EUC, and professor of sociology. Participants:
Dario Gaggio, associate professor of history, U-M;
Anna Grzymala-Busse, professor of political science, U-M;
Gerard Libaridian, Alex Manoogian Visiting Professor of Modern Armenian History and director, Armenian Studies Program, U-M.
From struggles for national liberation to the European Union's celebration of the right of persons, goods, services, and capital to move within its borders, freedom has been articulated as a universal good. Democracy itself depends on freedoms of speech, religion, association, and thought; many assume democracy's spread to reinforce peace. This linkage of freedom and democracy is certainly shaping social change, but has scholarship engaged those transformations as well as it might? Kennedy will introduce the discussion with proposals about how the study of past, present, and prospective emerging democracies in Europe and Eurasia might inform our sense of freedom and its place in global transformations and in the work of universities, with comments by Gaggio, Grzymala-Busse, and Libaridian to follow.
From struggles for national liberation to the European Union's celebration of the right of persons, goods, services, and capital to move within its borders, freedom has been articulated as a universal good. Democracy itself depends on freedoms of speech, religion, association, and thought; many assume democracy's spread to reinforce peace. This linkage of freedom and democracy is certainly shaping social change, but has scholarship engaged those transformations as well as it might? Kennedy will introduce the discussion with proposals about how the study of past, present, and prospective emerging democracies in Europe and Eurasia might inform our sense of freedom and its place in global transformations and in the work of universities, with comments by Gaggio, Grzymala-Busse, and Libaridian to follow.
