University Studies

If you believe that the outcome of this month’s elections could have changed anything fundamental about America, Christopher Hedges ’79, P’12 thinks you’re wrong. As a journalist and writer, Hedges spent two decades living and working in war zones. He has seen combat in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, […]

When Jake Lightman ’16 attended a lunchtime talk with Daniel Kurtzer, former ambassador to both Israel and Egypt, he wanted to know why the Middle East peace process has stalled, and why the Arabs seem to suffer the blame. “So I asked him,” Lightman said without a touch of irony. Such a thing is de […]

Midway through last night’s open meeting at the Women’s Studies Center, Matt Ford ’13, president of the Student Government Association (SGA), made an impressive entrance. With 40 members in tow, he presented a permanent Senate resolution “condemning the hateful remarks during Coming Out Week at Colgate University against members of our community.” Sam Flood ’14, speaker […]

Voters expected the fourth and final debate between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney to shed light on the differences between their positions on key foreign policy issues. However, according to two Colgate professors the promise fell flat on two counts: not only did the candidates cover no new ground, there was little difference in […]

Visiting Colgate recently, Joy Gordon, author of Invisible War: the United States and Iraq Sanctions, laid bare an atrocity hiding in bureaucratic plain sight: after the 1991 bombing nearly flattened Iraq, the United States knowingly allowed economic sanctions to cause starvation, disease, poverty, and heightened rates of childhood mortality to the country’s people.

When Colgate’s new Russian and Eurasian Studies (REST) program promised not only a Russian menu, but also cloth headgear and the titillating-sounding topic of the Pussy Riot phenomenon, they had a winning formula. (Pussy Riot is the feminist, subversive band whose members have been in prison since March for performing an anti-Kremlin “punk prayer” in […]

This semester, Rebecca Friedland ’13, a double major in peace and conflict studies and pre-med, is reading about revolution and war in Peru, Iran, Africa, and elsewhere around the globe. That’s in her English class. The stories will come to life when nine authors — including Ha Jin, Salman Rushdie, Orhan Pamuk, Azar Nafisi, and Alexandra […]

Jacob Mundy, assistant professor of peace and conflict studies at Colgate, called the Sept. 11 attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi and the resulting death of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens a “rude wake-up call to the coalition of states that was too-quick to say ‘mission accomplished’ following their humanitarian intervention last year.”

Members of the faculty in the Department of Russian and Eurasian Studies take their passion for their work well beyond the walls of the classroom. Over the past year they have traveled the globe, prepared and published significant academic works, and worked with Colgate students both on and off campus. Here is a sampling of […]

Roy Simon Bryce-Laporte, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of sociology and anthropology emeritus, passed away after a long illness in Upper Marlboro, Md., on Monday, July 30, at the age of 78. Born in the Republic of Panama of West Indian ancestry, Bryce-Laporte earned degrees from Panama Canal College (AA), the University of […]