A conference with Christophe Jaffrelot, Alliance Visiting Professor (Sciences Po-CERI, Paris) and author Hindu Nationalism: A Reader (2008), A History of Pakistan and Its Origins (2004), and The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India (1998), Alfred Stepan (Columbia University), Philip Oldenberg (Columbia University), and many others.
Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion.
Click here to listen at SIPA’s website.
MORNING SESSION 9:30 am – 12:30 pm
Introductory Remarks by Alfred Stepan and Christophe Jaffrelot
The Domestic Scene
“Economic Crises or Political? Not Learning from the Past,” by Akbar Zaidi, Visiting Professor at SIPA and MESAAS
“The Military and Democracy after Musharraf,” by Aqil Shah, Research Fellow, Society of Fellows Harvard University
“Internal Security at the Time of Counter Insurgency,” by Hassan Abbas, Quaid-i-Azam Chair at the South Asia Institute, Columbia University
“Will the Judiciary Save Pakistan?” by Phillip Oldenburg, Research Scholar, South Asia Institute, Columbia University
AFTERNOON SESSION 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Pakistan in its Region and Beyond
“The Afghan and Pakistani Taliban as a Social Movement,” by Mariam Abou-Zahab, CERI – Sciences Po
“India and Pakistan in Afghanistan: Opportunities and Constraints,” by Christine Fair, Assistant Professor at the Center for Peace and Security Studies (CPASS), Georgetown
“Prospects for Normalization of Indo-Pak Relations,” by W.S.P. Sidhu, Vice President of Programs at the East West Institute in New York
“US-Pakistan Relations at the Crossroads – Once Again,” by Christophe Jaffrelot, CERI – Sciences Po/CNRS
Dr. Hassan Abbas is Quaid-i-Azam Chair Professor at the South Asia Institute, Columbia University. Abbas is also a Senior Advisor at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, after having been a Research Fellow at the Center from 2005-2009. He is also a Bernard Schwartz fellow at the Asia Society headquarters in New York. Abbas holds a MALD and PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He earned a master’s degree in political science from Government College Lahore, Punjab University (Pakistan) and an LLM in International law from School of Law, Nottingham University, UK as a Britannia Chevening Scholar. Abbas’ acclaimed book Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army and America’s War on Terror (M E Sharpe, 2004) remains on bestseller lists in Pakistan and India. He also runs a blog named WATANDOST.
Mariam Abou Zahab, a specialist on Pakistan, is a researcher affiliated with the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI) and a lecturer at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO), both in Paris. Her research focuses on Shiism in Pakistan, on sectarianism and jihadi groups in Pakistan, and also on Pashtun society and the tribal areas of Pakistan. Her recent publications include: “’I shall be waiting for you at the door of Paradise’: The Pakistani Martyrs of the Lashkar-e Taiba (Army of the Pure)”, in A. Rao, M. Böck, M. Bollig (eds), The Practice of War: The Production, Reproduction and Communication of Armed Violence, (Oxford: Berghahn, 2007); and Salafism in Pakistan: The Ahl-e Hadith Movement“ in Roel Meijer (ed)Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement, (London: Hurst & Co, 2009). She is co-author with Olivier Roy of Islamist Networks. The Afghan-Pakistan Connection, Hurst, London/Columbia University Press, New York, 2004 and co-author with Shuja Nawaz and al. of FATA – A Most Dangerous Place. Washington, CSIS, 2009.
Dr. C. Christine Fair e is an assistant professor in the Center for Peace and Security Studies (CPASS), within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. She is also a Senior Fellow with the Counter Terrorism Center at West Point and is a Research Fellow with National Bureau of Asia Research’s National Asia Research Program. She has a PhD from the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilization in 2004 and an MA in the Harris School of Public Policy. Recent books include Political Islam and Governance in Bangladesh with Ali Riaz (Routledge, 2010); Treading Softly on Sacred Ground: Counterinsurgency Operations on Sacred Space with Sumit Ganguly (OUP, 2008); Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other States (Lyons, 2008); The Madrassah Challenge: Militancy and Religious Education in Pakistan (USIP, 2008).
Dr. Christophe Jaffrelot is a French political scientist specializing in South Asia, especially India and Pakistan, who serves as an advisor to the French government on the region. Jaffrelot is the Director of the Center for Studies and Research (CERI) and Research Director at CNRS. He has written fourteen books on India and Pakistan including Religion, Caste, and Politics in India,(Delhi: Primus Books, 2010), and Pakistan: Nationalism Without A Nation? (Zed Books, 2002).
Dr. Philip Oldenburg has taught political science at Columbia University since 1977, and has served there as Director and Associate Director of the Southern Asian Institute. He was a member of an assessment team on the 2002 Pakistan election for the National Democratic Institute. His scholarly writing includes essays on the 1971 crisis in Pakistan, on elections in India, and grassroots government in India. Editor or co-editor of ten volumes in The Asia Society’s India Briefing series., his most recent publication is India, Pakistan, and Democracy: Solving the Puzzle of Divergent Paths (London and New York: Routledge, 2010).
Dr. Aqil Shah is a research fellow at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Columbia University and an M Phil in International Development from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Prior to his Harvard appointment, he was a Hewlett fellow at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He has also worked as an analyst in the Crisis Group’s Pakistan-Afghanistan Office. His work has appeared in the Journal of Democracy, Foreign Affairs and edited volumes.
Dr. Alfred Stepan is the Wallace Sayre Professor of Government at Columbia University, the Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion, the co-Director of the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life and the former Dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. He worked with George Soros as the founding Rector and President of Central European University in Budapest, Prague and Warsaw and he was Gladstone Professor of Government and Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford. Stepan is a specialist on comparative democracies in the modern world and his thirteen books and edited volumes have been translated into over a dozen languages. Recent books include Crafting State Nations: India and Other Multinational Democracies (JHUP, forthcoming) and Democracies in Danger (JHUP, 2009).
Dr. S Akbar Zaidi is a Visiting Professor at SIPA and at MESAAS. Zaidi taught economics at the University of Karachi from 1983 to 1996 before becoming a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford (1998) and later a research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for the Advanced Study of India in New Delhi (2002–2003). From 2004 to 2005 he was a visiting professor at SAIS and in 2008 he was a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy. Zaidi’s twelfth book, Military, Civil Society and Democratization in Pakistan, is to be published by Vanguard Press, Lahore in October 2010.