MEDIA ADVISORY
The Institute for Public Knowledge (IPK) at NYU will host a dialogue, which launches the institute’s Humanitarian Action Seminar, with author and journalist David Rieff on Wed., Sept. 10, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Rieff will be joined in dialogue by University Professor and IPK Director Craig Calhoun. The event will be held in NYU’s Jurow Lecture Hall, Silver Center, 100 Washington Square East at Waverly Place. The event is free and open the public. RSVP to ipk.info@nyu.edu. Call 212-992-9561 for more information.
Now in its second year, the Humanitarian Action Seminar brings together practitioners and scholars working on humanitarianism for monthly discussions of shared interest. Sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, historians, and others dialogue with representatives from the United Nations, non-governmental organizations, and research institutes to reflect on such topics as humanitarianism’s role in geopolitics, its narrative forms, organizational practices, and ethical commitments. Past speakers include Executive Director of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Nicolas de Torrente; writer and researcher Alex de Waal; and Presidential Professor of Political Science at The CUNY Graduate Center, Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, and co-director of the UN Intellectual History Project, Thomas Weiss.
Rieff is a contributing writer to the New York Times Sunday Magazine and the author of eight books, including Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West, A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis, and At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Interventions. Calhoun is University Professor of the Social Sciences at NYU and director of its Institute for Public Knowledge. He is also President of the Social Science Research Council. Calhoun is author most recently of Nations Matter: Citizenship, Solidarity and the Cosmopolitan Dream.
Reporters interested in attending the event should contact James Devitt, NYU’s Office of Public Affairs, at 212.998.6808 or james.devitt@nyu.edu.