PANEL DISCUSSION: 20/20 Vision in a Time of Crisis

A conversation with Etienne Balibar, Adam Tooze, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Emmanuelle Saada, moderated by Bernard Harcourt

To sign up for this virtual transatlantic event, RSVP here.

The Covid-19 pandemic and public health crisis; economic collapse; waves of anti-racist protests; threats to democracy and rising authoritarianism in the U.S. and elsewhere, all against a backdrop of an ever-worsening climate crisis… how can we make sense of the current moment in history? Bernard Harcourt engages Etienne Balibar, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Adam Tooze, and Emmanuelle Saada in a wide-ranging discussion about these destabilizing developments that bring into focus fundamental fault lines in the world today. 

Etienne Balibar teaches at Columbia every Fall semester. He is Professor Emeritus of moral and political philosophy at Université de Paris X – Nanterre and Professor Emeritus of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine. Emmanuelle Saada is Professor of French and of History, and Director of the Center for French and Francophone Studies at Columbia. Adam Tooze is the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History at Columbia. Souleymane Bachir Diagne is the Director of the Institute of African Studies, Professor of French and of Philosophy at Columbia. Bernard Harcourt is the Isidore and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at Columbia.

This event is presented by the Columbia Maison Française. It is co-sponsored by the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia Global Centers | Paris, the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought, the European Institute, and the Alliance Program.

For general public: Livestream on Facebook and YouTube!

For Columbia affiliates: register and attend via Zoom

This panel will cover immigration justice issues including xenophobia, ICE, CBP and their presence at BLM protests, the US-Mexico border wall, US-China relations and policy amid COVID-19, Islamophobia, histories of state violence, and related topics.

Organized and moderated by Saeeda Islam (Faculty Affairs Coordinator) and Emma Sheinbaum (Communications & Development Coordinator)

Brianna Nofil is an Assistant Professor of History at the College of William and Mary. She earned her PhD from Columbia University (GSAS ’20). Nofil’s research areas focus on immigration, borders and borderlands, carceral state, and legal.

Pablo Piccato, professor, specializes in Mexican history. He has worked on the political and cultural history of Mexico, and on the history of crime. He is currently working on an overview of crime in Mexico during the twentieth century.

Mae M. Ngai, Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History, is a U.S. legal and political historian interested in questions of immigration, citizenship, and nationalism. Before becoming a historian she was a labor-union organizer and educator in New York City, working for District 65-UAW and the Consortium for Worker Education.

Karl Jacoby is a specialist in environmental, borderlands, and Native American history. His books include Crimes Against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves and the Hidden History of American Conservation and Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History.