SIA to host renowned author, historian Vijay Prashad

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State School of International Affairs and the Center for Global Studies (CGS) will host Vijay Prashad from Trinity College on Wednesday, Oct. 5, for a lecture on western military strength and the influence and implications the west can have on eastern societies. The event, which is free an open to the public, will be held 5 to 6:30 p.m. in Sutliff Auditorium, 118 Lewis Katz Building. .

Prashad's talk will explore the landscape of intervention and its perils, including the United Nations mandate Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which revived the ideas of humanitarian intervention that had been called into question from the failure of Iraq. After the implementation of R2P came Libya, a society now in ruins, and then Syria, a country whose civil war had been fanned along even as no good outcome seemed on the horizon.

Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist as well as the chair of South Asian studies and professor of international studies at Trinity College. His work can be found in various international and domestic publications. Prashad has authored 20 books, with his most recent being The Death of the Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution.

The presentation is intended to provoke discussion about the connection between western and eastern societies, destruction of governments and communities through western intervention, and how R2P has caused huge consequences for millions of people. Following the lecture will be a question-and-answer forum with Prashad. Sophia McClennen, director of CGS and associate director of the School of International Affairs, will moderate the discussion. This visit is co-sponsored by the Department of Asian Studies, the Department of Comparative Literature and the Weiss Chair of the Humanities, the Department of History, and the Rock Ethics Institute.

For a complete listing of the Center for Global Studies’ events, visit their website.