Have you RSVP’d for our September Fall 2021 events? This month, the Center for Jewish Civilization is pleased to host Professors Dan Byman, David Ebenbach, Bruce Hoffman, Philippe Sands and Elizabeth Stanley. Find out more about our events and RSVP below.
“Discussion of the Twentieth Anniversary of the September 11 Attacks”
Thursday, September 2, 5:00 PM EST
About the Event:
The CJC invites you to our event on the twentieth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. RSVP to our panel here! Our virtual lecture event will be accessible to all viewers via Zoom. Zoom invitations will be emailed to all those who RSVP.
In light of the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, our panelists will convene to discuss where the U.S went wrong, what it did right, and how the world was affected. Please join leading terrorism experts, Professor Daniel Byman and CJC Director Bruce Hoffman, in discussion with the CJC’s Executive Committee Chair, Professor Elizabeth Stanley, as they examine the legacy and continuing repercussions of the September 11 attacks. In addition to their renown as scholars of terrorism and counterterrorism, both Professors Byman and Hoffman were across from the Pentagon when American Airlines flight crashed into it that fateful morning and thus bring a unique first-hand perspective to a subject that they have both spent their careers analyzing.
About the Speakers:
CJC Director, Professor Bruce Hoffman presently serves as Director of the Center for Jewish Civilization. He has been studying terrorism and insurgency for over four decades. He is a tenured professor in Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and until recently was director of its Center for Security Studies and Security Studies Program. Hoffman is also visiting Professor of Terrorism Studies at St Andrews University, Scotland. He previously held the Corporate Chair in Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency at the RAND Corporation, where he was also director of RAND’s Washington Office and vice president for external affairs. Hoffman was appointed by the U.S. Congress as a commissioner on the 9/11 Review Commission and has been Scholar-in-Residence for Counterterrorism at the Central Intelligence Agency; adviser on counterterrorism to the Coalition Provisional Authority, Baghdad, Iraq; and, an adviser on counterinsurgency to Multi-National Forces-Iraq Headquarters, Baghdad, Iraq. Hoffman’s most recent books include The Evolution of the Global Terrorist Threat (2014); Anonymous Soldiers (2015); and, Inside Terrorism (3rd edition, 2017). Hoffman is currently a Wilson Center Global Fellow, a visiting senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior fellow at the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center.
CJC Executive Committee Member, Professor Daniel Byman is a professor in the School of Foreign Service with a concurrent appointment with the Department of Government. He served as Vice Dean of the SFS undergraduate program from 2015 until 2020 and before that as director of Georgetown’s Security Studies Program and Center for Security Studies from 2005 until 2010. He also leads at Georgetown team in teaching a “Massive Open Online Course” (MOOC) on terrorism and counterterrorism for EdX. Professor Byman is also a part-time Senior Fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. From 2002 to 2004 he served as a Professional Staff Member with the 9/11 Commission and with the Joint 9/11 Inquiry Staff of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Before joining the Inquiry Staff he was the Research Director of the Center for Middle East Public Policy at the RAND Corporation. Previous to this, Professor Byman worked as an analyst on the Middle East for the U.S. government. He is the author of Road Warriors: Foreign Fighters in the Armies of Jihad (Oxford, 2019); Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Global Jihadist Movement: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, 2015); A High Price: The Triumphs and Failures of Israeli Counterterrorism (Oxford, 2011); The Five Front War: The Better Way to Fight Global Jihad (Wiley, 2007); Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism (Cambridge, 2005); Keeping the Peace: Lasting Solutions to Ethnic Conflict (Johns Hopkins, 2002); and co-author of Things Fall Apart: Containing the Spillover from the Iraqi Civil War (Brookings, 2007) and The Dynamics of Coercion: American Foreign Policy and the Limits of Military Might (Cambridge, 2002). Professor Byman has also written extensively on a range of topics related to terrorism, international security, civil and ethnic conflict, and the Middle East. His recent articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy, as well as journals including Political Science Quarterly, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, International Security, and Journal of Strategic Studies.
CJC Executive Committee Chair, Professor Elizabeth Stanley is an Associate Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University. Previously, she served as Associate Director of Georgetown’s Security Studies Program. Professor Stanley served as a U.S. Army intelligence officer in South Korea, Germany and on Balkans deployments, leaving service as a captain. She created Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT)®, and has taught MMFT to thousands in civilian and military high-stress environments. Additionally, she is a certified practitioner of the body-based trauma therapy, Somatic Experiencing. Her book, Paths to Peace, won the 2009 Edgar S. Furniss Award for its “exceptional contribution to the field of national security.” She received her B.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Yale University. She holds a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University and an M.B.A. in technology strategy and organizational behavior from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Her latest book is titled Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma.
“The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive”
Thursday, September 09, 4:00 PM EST
About the Event:
The CJC invites you to our book discussion with Professor Philippe Sands about his latest book, ‘The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive.” RSVP to our event here! Our virtual lecture event will be accessible to all viewers via Zoom. Zoom invitations will be emailed to all those who RSVP.
From Penguin Random House :
From the author of the internationally acclaimed, award-winning East West Street: A tale of Nazi lives, mass murder, love, cold war espionage, a mysterious death in the Vatican–and “the Ratline,” the Nazi escape route to Peron’s Argentina.
Baron Otto von Wächter, Austrian lawyer, husband, father, high Nazi official, senior SS officer, former governor of Galicia during the war, creator and overseer of the Krakow ghetto, indicted after as a war criminal for the mass murder of more than 100,000 Poles, hunted by the Soviets, the Americans, the British, by Simon Wiesenthal, on the run for three years, from 1945 to 1948.
Philippe Sands pieces together, in riveting detail, Wächter’s extraordinary, shocking story. Given full access to the Wächter family archives–journals, diaries, tapes, and more–and with the assistance of the Wächters’ son Horst, who believes his father to have been a “good man,” Sands writes of Wächter’s rise through the Nazi high command, his “blissful” marriage and family life as their world was brought to ruin, and his four-year flight to escape justice–to the Tirol, to Rome, and the Vatican; given a new identity, on his way to a new life via “the Ratline” to Perón’s Argentina, the escape route taken by Eichmann, Mengele, and thousands of other Nazis. Wächter’s escape was cut short by his mysterious, shocking death in Rome, in the midst of the burgeoning Cold War (was he being recruited in postwar Italy by the Americans and the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps or by the Soviet NKVD or by both; or was he poisoned by one side or the other, as his son believes–or by both?) . . .
An extraordinary discovery, told up-close through access to a trove of family correspondence between Wächter and his wife–part historical detective story, part love story, part family memoir, part Cold War espionage thriller.
About the Speaker:
Philippe Sands is a Professor of Law, Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals, and a key member of staff in the Centre for Law and the Environment at University College London. His teaching areas include public international law, the settlement of international disputes (including arbitration), and environmental and natural resources law.
Philippe is a regular commentator on the BBC and CNN and writes frequently for leading newspapers. He is frequently invited to lecture around the world, and in recent years has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto (2005), the University of Melbourne (2005) and the Universite de Paris I (Sorbonne) (2006, 2007). He has previously held academic positions at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, Kings College London and , University of Cambridge and was a Global Professor of Law at New York University from 1995-2003. Sands was co-founder of FIELD (Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development), and established the programs on Climate Change and Sustainable Development. He is a member of the Advisory Boards of the European Journal of International Law and Review of European Community and International Environmental Law (Blackwell Press). In 2007 he served as a judge for the Guardian First Book Prize award.
As a practicing barrister, Professor Sands has extensive experience litigating cases before the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, and the European Court of Justice. He frequently advises governments, international organizations, NGOs and the private sector on aspects of international law. In 2003 he was appointed a Queen’s Counsel. He has been appointed to lists of arbitrators maintained by ICSID and the PCA.
“Judaism in Space: A Reading and Discussion”
Thursday, September 23, 6:00 PM EST
About the Event:
The CJC invites you to our reading and discussion with Professor David Ebenbach about his latest book, ‘How to Mars.’ RSVP to our event here! Our virtual lecture will be accessible to all viewers via Zoom. Zoom invitations will be emailed to all those who RSVP.
How to Mars is an exploration of a somewhat absurd effort to colonize the red planet, and has been called “A poignant examination of what it means to be human” (Kirkus Reviews). The CJC’s Professor Ebenbach will also discuss a question that arose in writing the novel: given how tied Judaism is to the time cycles and places of Earth, how could it survive on other planets?
About the Speaker:
David Ebenbach is the author of seven books of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, winners of numerous awards, including the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, the Juniper Prize, and the Orison Fiction Prize. He teaches creative writing and literature in the Center for Jewish Civilization and is a Project Manager at Georgetown’s teaching center, the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship.