Month: December 2014

2015 Faculty Development Seminar on Palestine, May 14-25, 2015

The Palestinian American Research Center (PARC) announces its sixth Faculty Development Seminar on Palestine. This 12-day seminar is for U.S. faculty members with a demonstrated interest in, but little travel experience to, Palestine. PARC will select 10 to 12 U.S. faculty members to participate in Jerusalem-based activities that will include roundtable discussions, tours of historic cities, and visits to local universities, research institutes, and cultural institutions in the West Bank.… more

Weekly Kyunghyang cover story asks, “Is it impossible to co-exist with street vendors?”

A matter of law enforcement or livelihood struggles of the urban poor? Winter is high season for street vending and urban crackdown as can be seen in the recent violence against street vendors in Gangnam district of Seoul. With hundreds of city-hired security contractors (a.k.a. “thugs”) recorded on video overturning carts and destroying vendor property, it’s also high time to consider the urgent questions of informal economy, urban poverty, and state violence. Are legalization and taxation the obvious solution? It’s not such a simple matter, the article argues. For one, there is an enormous range among street vendors, from corporate to livelihood-based, income levels, and vending forms…… more

Application Summer Institute on military occupation, Cornell University

Looks like an interesting & timely theme for sure. “Preoccupation with occupation in its multiple forms is spreading. The theme of the Third Annual Summer Institute at Cornell University is military occupation and its civilian society relatives. Military occupation refers to temporary control of territory by a conquering nation. Such occupation at times continues open-endedly as post-war governance: 11 of 42 military occupations since the end of World War II continue today.”… more

Open Letter from Rainbow Action in Seoul

Apparently Mayor Park yielded under pressure of extreme rightists and conservative protestant groups of South Korea. These groups of bigots have persistently pathologized and stigmatized sexual minorities and gender nonconforming people. They have been virtually following every public event held by LGBTQ groups to violently disrupt those scenes and attack the participants for last few years.… more