Events

The People and Power: Dictators, Supporters and Detractors, was a conference held at Florida State University on February 20-22, 2019 and sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights and the Rintels Professorship on Holocaust Studies.

This century is seeing a new proclivity for populist dictatorships that few would have predicted two or three decades ago. At the same time, the world is witnessing an increased use of mass collective actions, a surge in ‘people power’ protests and grassroots initiatives together with human rights activism, that resist advances in tyranny. Individual autocrats are often blamed for autocracy. But how have peoples facilitated dictatorships or democracies in recent national histories? What (perceived) circumstances of opportunity or grievance explain the success of strongmen and their repression of democracy? This conference examined the historical role over the course of the past several decades or more that a country’s people have played, collectively and aggregately, in movements toward or away from democracy and autocracy.

Keynote/Introduction, Adam Roberts, Oxford University
“Civil Resistance against Authoritarian Rule: The Tragedy of the Arab Spring”
Watch Adam Roberts's keynote address here.

Marina Ottaway, The Wilson International Center
”The Arab Uprisings: Romantic Views and Hard Realities”

Michael Bernhard, University of Florida
“Paths of Extrication and the Framing of Post-communist Memory Politics”

Laura Henry, Bowdoin College
“People Power in Putin’s Russia: The Ambiguous Role of Popular Mobilization”

Olga Onuch, Manchester University
“Revolutionary Moments and Movements: Mass Mobilization in Ukraine”

Azat Gundogan, Florida State University
“Mass Violence, Populism, and the State in Turkey: A Tale of Two Authoritarianisms, 1925 to
Present”

Andrew Bacevich, Boston University
"Why Trump Is Not the Problem"

Federico Finchelstein, The New School, Latin America
“Populism in Latin America as Global History”

Zachariah Mampilly, Vassar College
“Protesting Democracy in Africa: Popular Movements and Political Transformation?”

Meredith Weiss, University at Albany/SUNY
“Malaysia Paradoxes of Reform: Protest, Progress, and Polarization in Malaysia”

Diana Fu, University of Toronto
“The Era of Authoritarianism? Goliath State and Prostrate Civil Society in Contemporary China"

Nadine Strossen, John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law at New York Law School, is the immediate past President of the American Civil Liberties Union (1991-2008), the nation’s largest and oldest civil liberties organization.  Strossen still holds leadership positions in the ACLU and other human rights organizations, and she is a frequent public speaker and media commentator.  Her newest book is HATE:  Why We Should Resist it With Free Speech, Not Censorship (Oxford University Press 2018).  Read about Nadine Strossen's career and new book in the Washington Post article, "Free speech's worst enemies aren't who you'd expect!"

In her 13 November 2018 lecture at the Broad Auditorium Nadine Strossen, along with a panel of four distinguished members of the FSU community, explained and defended the distinctions that U.S. law make between constitutionally protected and unprotected “hate speech,” and why they best promote not only liberty and democracy, but also equality, dignity, and societal harmony.  Drawing upon actual experience with laws in other countries that punish speech solely because its views are hateful or hated, she shows that such laws especially endanger dissenting viewpoints and expression by minority group members.  You can see her talk here.

Confronting the Nazis: Reflections on the Forms and Dilemmas of Resistance, a conference held at Columbia University on 4-5 October 2018, was sponsored by Columbia University and Florida State University in conjunction with the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, the Israel and Jewish Studies Institute, and the German Consulate General, New York.  See the program here.

Jan Tomasz Gross, Norman B. Tomlinson Professor of War and Society, and Professor of History at Princeton University, spoke on “Jews and their Neighbors in German-Occupied Poland" on February 27. 

Watch the lecture here.

Gross addressed the question of whether the complicity of the local Polish population in the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust was the work of marginal and criminal elements only.  Drawing on examples from post-war trials he argued that citizens of good standing including leaders of the local society participated in such persecution.  The lecture was co-sponsored by the Holocaust Education Resource Council.

Steve Crawshaw, Office of the Secretary General, Amnesty International, London, “Against Impossible Odds: Extraordinary Achievements in Confronting Tyranny.” The lecture took place on February 13 at 5 PM.

Watch the lecture here.

Steve Crawshaw is a former international advocacy director at Amnesty International and author of Street Spirit: The Power of Protest and Mischief (2017), foreword by Ai Weiwei. He was the Germany bureau chief for the Independent and as East Europe Editor he reported on the east European revolutions, the Soviet coup, and the Balkan wars. He is the author of 'Goodbye to the USSR’ (1992) and a five-part BBC series 'Germany Inside Out’. (2003) His book, Small Act of Resistance (2010) co-authored with John Jackson, with a preface by Václav Havel,has been translated into 10 languages including Arabic, Bahasa Indonesian, Czech, Tibetan, and Chinese.  He is also the author of Easier Fatherland (2004).

Again and again, we hear how change in certain circumstances is unachievable – until it is achieved. (Often those achievements come through what Vaclav Havel described as the “power of the powerless”.) As a journalist with The Independent and in his roles at Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, he has repeatedly witnessed remarkable transformations – often combined with creative mischief. He will relate stories of courage and change,  in especially dark times of human rights abuses.

Norman JW Goda, Braman Professor of Holocaust Studies, Center for Jewish Studies, University of Florida spoke on November 8, 2017 at 5 PM on "France, the Jews, and the Trial of Klaus Barbie."  The lecture was held in the William Johnston Building room G40.