Public Lecture Series
Upcoming lectures
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Date March 11th 2009, 6.30pm Title Countdown to Apartheid in Israel/Palestine Location Elisabeth Murdoch Lecture Theatre A, Elisabeth Murdoch Building Speaker Dr Jeff Halper Background Retired Professor Jeff Halper has been a peace and human rights activist for more than three decades. After emigrating to Israel from the US in 1973, Halper taught anthropology at Haifa and Ben-Gurion Universities. His academic research has focused on the history of Jerusalem in the modern era, contemporary Israeli culture, and the Middle East conflict. He is the author of Between Redemption and Revival: The Jewish Yishuv in Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century. During his mandatory Israeli military service, he refused to bear arms or serve in the occupied Palestinian territories. In 1997, Halper co-founded the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD) to challenge and resist the Israeli policy of demolishing Palestinian homes and has put his own personal safety on the line, facing bulldozers and confronting Israeli soldiers. He organizes Israelis, Palestinians and internationals to help rebuild demolished Palestinian homes. His most recent venture is sailing to Gaza with some 46 other activists to break Israel’s siege that is reducing 1.4 million Palestinians to a miserable sub-human existence.
Dr Halper realized early on that the Israeli government did not intend for the Oslo peace process of the 1990’s to lead to the recognition of Palestinian rights. He developed the "Matrix of Control" framework that accurately predicted the course the Israeli Occupation would take as the Oslo process collapsed and Israel continued to build settlements, settler-only highways, and the Separation Wall. His was an early voice warning about the development of Israeli apartheid policies in the Occupied Territories, a subject on which he frequently speaks. His book, Obstacles to Peace , is a resource manual of articles and maps on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and is published by ICAHD.
A tireless writer and speaker, Halper travels extensively to build international support for ICAHD. He was nominated along with Palestinian activist Ghassan Andoni, for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.
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Date May 14th 2009, 6.00pm Title Key Thinkers: Han Feizi Location Prince Philip Theatre, Architecture Building Speaker David Holm Background Han Feizi lived at the end of the Warring States period, at a time when bureaucratic rationality and a protracted arms race had transformed the old feudal society of ancient China. As a minister in the state of Han, he provided hard-headed advice on how a ruler should exercise control over his ministers, and advocated the infamous ‘burning of the books’. As a political realist he antedates Machiavelli by some 1700 years. Labelled by Guo Moruo as a ‘fascist’, he is indeed a man for our times.
Past lectures
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Date May 1st 2008, 6.00pm Title The Impossibility of History Location Old Geology Theatre 2 Speaker Laksmi Pamuntjak Background Laksmi Pamuntjak is one of the most versatile literary figures of the contemporary world, and a leading poet, essayist and food critic in contemporary Indonesia. The range of her writing - in both English and Indonesian - is exceptional, and constitutes not only a complex meditation on Indonesian cultural experience and political history, but also a reflection on the wider human condition. Her talk in Melbourne, as part of the Asia Institute’s Public Lecture Series, will focus on her first novel The Blue Widow. -
Date April 15th 2008, 6.00pm Title Pondering China’s Size Location Economics and Commerce Prest Lecture Theatre - Room 115, Sidney Myer Asia Centre Speaker Professor Patricia Ebrey (University of Washington) Background Patricia Ebrey is one of the world’s leading historians of Chinese society, and she has published numerous books and articles on this subject, including one of the most admired general introductions to Chinese history, The Cambridge Illustrated History of China. Known particularly for her work on the history of the Chinese family in imperial times, the history of women and the history of ritual, her interests have for many years focused on the medieval era, particularly on the history of the Song dynasty (960-1279). Her most recent contribution to this field is a study of the art collections of the emperor Huizong of the Northern Song, famed for his talents as a painter and calligrapher. Her talk at Melbourne, which is sponsored by the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne as part of its public lecture series, involves her reflections on the historical consequences of the physical dimensions of China’s territory.