CU Global Thought

Part of Politics of Visual Arts in a Changing World, an initiative of the Committee on Global Thought

Made possible through the generous support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

A discussion with scholars and activists on the various issues surrounding the removal of public monuments across the globe in the wake of social justice uprisings in the United States.

Part of the CGT’s Rethinking the World series. For information on other programs in the series, click here.

We would like to extend our gratitude to our outreach partners for this program: Columbia University School of the Arts, Columbia Global Centers, the Alliance for Historical Accountability and Dialogue program at ISHR, and the Historic Preservation Program at GSAPP.

Register at bit.ly/contestedlegacies

YouTube Livestream: @GlobalThoughtCU

Featuring:

Marie-Louise Jansen

Marie-Louise Jansen directs the IHJR’s Contested Histories in Public Spaces Project that is organised in cooperation with All Souls College at the University of Oxford. She previously worked at the Salzburg Global Seminar where she held diverse positions including director of the Holocaust Education and Genocide Prevention program, director of alumni affairs and administrative director and director of development of the IHJR, which was founded at the Salzburg Global Seminar.

Shahid Vawda

Shahid Vawda graduated from the universities of Durban-Westville (BA), Queens (Belfast)(MA) and KwaZulu-Natal (PhD). Before taking up academic positions he worked in the trade union movement and at the educational NGO, the SACHED Trust in the 1980s, and as consultant researcher for the post-1994 local, provincial and national governments. His academic teaching and research has been at various universities in South Africa, some African countries and abroad, including participation in some UNESCO and International Council of Museums (ICOM) research workshops related to culture, heritage and diversity. He held positions as head of the departments of Anthropology at the Universities of Durban-Westville and Witwatersrand, and was the Head of the School of Social Science at the University of Witwatersrand. He has been active on the boards of the International Council of Museums committee for history and archaeology (ICMAH), and the local South Africa ICOM committee, the Public Affairs Research Institute, Centre for Critical Diversity Studies, African Centre for Migration and Society and the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research Currently he holds the Archie Mafeje Chair in Critical Humanities and the directorship of the School of African and Gender Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics.

Research projects have included themes and topics on the following: The history of trade unions; opposition and resistance politics in Natal; colonial and Islamic financial institutions and development; livelihoods and land reform; traditional authorities; informal settlements; urbanisation and migration; culture heritage and modernity; religion, race, ethnicity and class.

Zeynep Çelik

Zeynep Çelik is distinguished professor emerita at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Her publications include The Remaking of Istanbul (1986), Displaying the Orient (1992), Streets (1993—co-editor), Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations (1997), Empire, Architecture, and the City (2008), Walls of Algiers (2009—co-editor), Scramble for the Past (2011, co-editor), Camera Ottomana (2014, co-editor), About Antiquities (2016), and Europe Knows Nothing About the Orient (forthcoming). She co-curated several exhibitions and has been the recipient of prestigious fellowships and awards, including John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2004), American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship (1992, 2004, and 2011), National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (2012), Vehbi Koç Foundation Award (2013), the Sarton Medal from Ghent University (2014), Levi Della Vida Award (UCLA, 2019), and Tamayouz Award (2019).

Colin Wayne Leach

Moderated by:

Vishakha N. Desai

Dr. Vishakha N. Desai is Senior Advisor for Global Affairs to the President of Columbia University and a Senior Research Scholar for the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. She also serves as Senior Advisor for Global Programs to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. From 2004 through 2012, Dr. Desai served as President and CEO of the Asia Society, a global organization dedicated to strengthening partnerships between Asia and the U.S. Under her leadership the society expanded the scope and scale of its activities with the opening of new offices in India and Korea, a new center of U.S.-China Relations, internationally recognized education programs, and inauguration of two new architecturally distinguished facilities in Hong Kong and Houston.

With commentary from:

Harriet F. Senie

Professor Harriet F. Senie’s chief areas of research are public art, memorials, memory, and material culture. She is Professor of Art History at City College of New York. In Fall 2000 Prof. Senie was appointed Visiting Distinguished Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. She previously served as Associate Director of the Princeton Art Museum and Gallery Director at SUNY, Old Westbury. In 2008, with Professor Cher Krause Knight, she co-founded Public Art Dialogue, an international organization that is also a College Art Association (CAA) affiliate. The journal, Public Art Dialogue, that she co-edited with Prof. Knight, has appeared twice annually since 2011 and is the only peer-reviewed publication devoted to public art. She has served on the Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers; the She Built NYC advisory panel; and was recently appointed to the Task Force on Monuments, Statues, Public Art and Historical Markers by the New York City Council.

Ravina Aggarwal

Ravina Aggarwal has been the Director of the Columbia

Global Centers | Mumbai since 2015. She is a sociocultural anthropologist with a doctoral degree from Indiana University in 1994. Dr. Aggarwal taught in the Department of Anthropology for over a decade and also served on the Women’s Studies Program at Smith College, where she became a tenured faculty member. Her research is based on extensive fieldwork in the Himalayas and her areas of study and teaching included political anthropology, peace-building, cultural studies, gender, and development.