Throughout the year, the International Institute (II) and its 16 centers and programs will host a range of events exploring the theme of “Sovereignty.”
Of paramount importance in the building of the modern international order, sovereignty has been a beleaguered concept for some time in an increasingly borderless world. It now faces a full-on crisis in the context of weakening supranational institutions, resurgent imperialisms, ongoing wars, climate change, and the AI revolution.
How is the concept of national sovereignty being challenged, reasserted, and/or redefined? What other scales of human experience, from individual to the planetary, are becoming newly relevant in these renegotiations and redefinitions?
The year-long program will cover topics ranging from food sovereignty and indigenous borders in Latin America, transnational criminal activity and victimization in Southeast and East Asia, US-Africa relations, America's role as a force both for and against global democracy, the impact of the US-Israel war in the Middle East on Ukraine, and the geopolitics of sovereignty surrounding Taiwan.
September 2026
October 2026
« November 2026 »
11/2: Teresa Poggi Lecture on Italy and the Mediterranean World (Weiser Center for Europe & Eurasia)
“Signor Presidente:" Giorgia Meloni and the Italian Laboratory
Rachel Donadio, The Atlantic; former The New York Times Rome Bureau Chief and European Culture Correspondent
5:00–6:30 p.m. | 1010 Weiser Hall
11/10: Lecture Series (Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies)
The Sacred Edict as Hate Speech: Griffith John, the Hunan Riots, and Qing imperial ideology
Pär Cassel, University of Michigan
12:00–1:00 p.m. | 1010 Weiser Hall
11/11: Lecture (Center for Middle Eastern & North African Studies)
‘Western Sahara: Multi-scalar Struggles, Recognition and Change in a Thawing Conflict
Irene Fernández-Molina (University of Exeter, United Kingdom)
2:00–4:00 p.m. | 555 Weiser Hall
Part of the 2026 CMENAS Fall Colloquium Series: Power & Struggle.
11/17: Lecture Series (Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies)
Chinese and Muslim Refugees on the Tibetan Frontier, 1860–1965
Gyatso Marnyi, University of Michigan
12:00–1:00 p.m. | 1010 Weiser Hall
11/20: Provosts in Conversation (International Institute)
International Education at a Crossroads
Laurie McCauley, University of Michigan; John Coleman, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; John Ciorciari, Indiana University Bloomington
12:00–1:30 p.m. | Palmer Commons
