George Packer is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author, most recently, of The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq. That book, which traced America's entry into the Iraq war and the subsequent troubled occupation, won the Overseas Press Club's 2005 Cornelius Ryan Award and the Helen Bernstein Book Award of the New York Public Library, was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, and was named by The New York Times as one of the ten best books of the 2005.

Betrayed
"In early 2007, George Packer published an article in The New Yorker about Iraqi interpreters who jeopardized their lives on behalf of the Americans in Iraq, with little or no U.S. protection or security. The article drew national attention to the humanitarian crisis and moral scandal. Betrayed, based on Mr. Packer's interviews in Baghdad, tells the story of three young Iraqis - two men and one woman - motivated to risk everything by America's promise of freedom. Betrayed explores the complex relationships among the Iraqis themselves, and with their American supervisor, struggling to find purpose while a country collapses around them." (coultureproject.org, where Betrayed had it's world premiere in January 2008.)

The play is directed by Rush Rehm, an actor, director, and professor of drama and of classics who publishes in the areas of Greek tragedy and contemporary politics. Along with courses on ancient theater and culture, he teaches courses on contemporary politics, the media, and U.S. imperialism. Rehm also directs and acts professionally, serving as Artistic Director of Stanford Summer Theater (SST). An activist in the peace and justice movements, Rehm is involved in anti-war and anti-imperialist actions, and in solidarity campaigns with Palestine, Cuba, East Timor, and Central America.

On Thursday, May 19, Packer will be in conversation with Tobias Wolff (English, Stanford) and Debra Satz (Philosophy, Stanford).

For more information, please visit the Stanford Ethics and War Series website

5:00 pm: Reception
6:00 PM: Screening of “Coffee Futures” (2009, 22 minutes), followed by a discussion with:

• Zeynep Gursel
  (Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan- Ann Arbor; Director & Co-producer of “Coffee Futures”)
• Hakan Tekin
  (Consul General of the Republic of Turkey in Los Angeles)
• Cihan Tugal
  (Department of Sociology, University of California- Berkeley)

Panelists will focus on political, historical and cultural issues surrounding Turkey’s accession to the European Union.

Coffee Futures (2009, 22 minutes) weaves together the Turkish custom of coffee fortune-telling with Turkey’s attempt to join the European Union since 1959, revealing the textures of a society whose fate has long been nationally and internationally debated often in relation to Europeanness. It aims to encourage a dialogue born from openness, and explores what kind of a place one wants Europe to be in the future.  Coffee Futures received 2009 Special Jury Award for Originality from EurActiv Fondation. In 2010,  it received Best Documentary Short Award in MiradasDoc Festival, Audience Award in !f Istanbul International Independent Film Festival, and Audience Award in Ann Arbor Film Festival. For more information, please visit http://www.neysehalimfilm.com/

Zeynep Gursel is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan- Ann Arbor, and director & co-producer of “Coffee Futures.” She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California-Berkeley. Her research focuses on how things become imagineable both for individuals and groups, and how forms in which the past and today are narrated are shaped by, and in turn shape, expectations of the future. She was introduced to the documentary world when she worked on Damming the Euphrates(Paxton Winters, 2001) in Southeast Turkey. She is currently completing a book manuscript, Image Brokers,  on the culture of the international photojournalism industry. 
 
Hakan Tekin is Consul General of the Republic of Turkey in Los Angeles. He received his B.A.in International Relations from Ankara University in 1989 and joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey in 1990. He served in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) and Sofia (Bulgaria), attended the NATO Defense College Senior Course in Rome, and worked at the Permanent Mission of Turkey to the United Nations in New York. He assumed his post in Los Angeles as Consul General in April 2007.

Cihan Tugal is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California- Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan- Ann Arbor. His research focuses on the role of religion in political projects and how the interaction between religion and politics shapes everyday life, urban space, class relations, and national identity. His book Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism was published in 2009 by Stanford University Press. His works also appeared in Economy and Society, Theory and Society, Sociological Theory, the New Left Review, the Sociological Quarterly, and edited volumes.

Co-sponsored by the Mediterranean Studies Forum, The Europe Center, The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Turkish Student Association,  Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies.

5 mm film screening (94 mins) followed by a Q&A session with the film director Florin Serban, and moderated by Steve Kovacs, Professor, Cinema Department at San Francisco State University.

Film Synopsis:
Silviu has only 5 days left before his release from the juvenile detention centre. But 5 days becomes an eternity when his mother returns from a long absence to take his younger brother away - a brother whom he raised like a son. Moreover, he has fallen in love with a beautiful social worker. With time running out and his emotions boiling over, Silviu closes his eyes... freedom, the wind, the road, his first kiss. Anything can happen to him now...

About the Director:
Florin Serban was born born in Resita, Romania in 1975. He studied philosophy at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca earning a Master’s degree in Philosophy of Culture & Hermeneutics. He was accepted in the Film Program at the National University of Theatre and Film Arts in Bucharest where he studied film directing. In parallel, he also worked as producer/director for ProTv Bucharest and wrote, directed and acted in several short films. Florin continued his studies on a full scholarship at Colombia University in New York City and graduated five years later with a MFA in film directing. Upon his graduation, Serban returned to Romania and directed his first feature lengh film titled If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle, which premiered at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival, winning the Silver Bear and the Alfred Bauer Prize for innovation in filmmaking. Recently Florin Serban founded an acting school for people from different social and economic backgrounds including youth who have been through the correctional or penitenciary systems in Romania.

Co-sponsored by the Billie Achilles Fund; Bechtel International Center, Graduate Student Council, Romanian Student Association, Special Language Program, Drama Department, and The Europe Center, Stanford; ISEEES, UC Berkeley; IRC Bucharest, Romania; Romanian Honorary Consulate, San Francisco; Casa Romana, Hayward; Blue Collar Films, San Francisco; Coupa Cafe, Palo Alto

Lee Kong Chian was among the most influential Chinese entrepreneurs in the Asian diasporic landscape from the 1920s to 1960s. In 1903, as a young boy, he migrated from China to then-British Singapore. He went on to build a formidable plantation-based business empire. Known in his heyday as Southeast Asia’s “Rubber King” and “Pineapple King,” he left profound imprints on business, education, and philanthropy that can still be felt in the region today.

Lee Kong Chian lived through tumultuous times: the rise of Chinese nationalism, World War II, British decolonization, independent state formation, and the Cold War. Different impressions of him have been produced and projected at different times in different places: as “a leading capitalist and philanthropist in Nanyang,” “a representative patriot of the Chinese Diaspora,” and “a virtuous pioneer in the revised national history template.” After reviewing these images, Prof. Huang will move “beyond representation” to explore less well-known aspects of Lee’s life including the nature of his economic empire and the political sensitivity of his position at a time when the sun was setting over the British empire.

Huang Jianli is an associate professor in the Department History at the National University of Singapore and a research associate in the university’s East Asian Institute. His many publications include The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and Its Pasts (2008), Power and Identity in the Chinese World Order (co-edited, 2003) and Macro Perspectives and New Directions in the Studies of Chinese Overseas (co-edited, 2002). Recent journal articles include “Umbilical Ties: The Framing of Overseas Chinese as the Mother of Revolution” (2011), “Portable Histories in Mobile City Singapore: The (Lack)lustre of Admiral Zheng He” (2009), “Chinese Diasporic Culture and National Identity: The Taming of the Tiger Balm Gardens in Singapore” (2007), and “Entanglement of Business and Politics in the Chinese Diaspora: Interrogating the Wartime Patriotism of Aw Boon Haw” (2006). Further details including contact information are accessible at http://profile.nus.edu.sg/fass/hishjl.

The movement of people leaving and returning to China from the second half of the 19th century to the present is a vast and complex subject. Among scholars worldwide, none has contributed more to the study of these cycles of migration and settlement in Southeast Asian contexts than National University of Singapore Prof. Wang Gungwu. His extensive writings on the topic richly illustrate the conceptual difficulties involved. 

The very terms used to name the phenomenon are contested: “Greater China,” “Chinese Diaspora,” “Huaqiao,” and “Nanyang Chinese”? Are these migrants and settlers and their descendants “Overseas Chinese” or “Chinese Overseas”? Are they even “Chinese” at all?  Prof. Wang’s struggles with nomenclature will be used by Prof. Huang to discuss larger issues, including how language can bias thought and influence policy and how to navigate the troubled waters at the confluence of scholarship and policy.

Huang Jianli is an associate professor in the Department History at the National University of Singapore and a research associate in the university’s East Asian Institute. His many publications include The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and Its Pasts (2008), Power and Identity in the Chinese World Order (co-edited, 2003) and Macro Perspectives and New Directions in the Studies of Chinese Overseas (co-edited, 2002). Recent journal articles include “Umbilical Ties: The Framing of Overseas Chinese as the Mother of Revolution” (2011), “Portable Histories in Mobile City Singapore: The (Lack)lustre of Admiral Zheng He” (2009), “Chinese Diasporic Culture and National Identity: The Taming of the Tiger Balm Gardens in Singapore” (2007), and “Entanglement of Business and Politics in the Chinese Diaspora: Interrogating the Wartime Patriotism of Aw Boon Haw” (2006).