Michigan Sangeetha Natya Academy presenting. Performers: Shri. Sandeep Narayan - Vocal Dr. Trichy Sankaran - Mridangam Shri. VVS Murani - Violin Shri. KV

In Collaboration with Michigan State University College of Music and Asian Studies Center

Annual Membership: $125/family | $50/individual Free admission to all MSNA concerts for the year. For tickets/membership: visit: www.msna.org or call 551-486-3220

A Conversation with Junaid Mattu, Mayor of Srinigar, India’s Sole Muslim-Majority State 

Register in advance here.

Continuation from Sept. 18 event (available on YouTube)

Full title: The Leonard Gilman Symposium on “Jewish perspectives of reproductive rights: Jews, religious liberty, and reproductive freedom in the United States”- Part 2

Dr. Gillian Frank will discuss the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion and liberal religious repro activism in Michigan from his forthcoming book A Sacred Choice. It centers Jewish history by using Michigan’s 1970 prosecution of an Illinois based rabbi (and the attempts to extradite him) for abortion counseling and referral. He uses this story as a jumping off point to broader questions of abortion & pastoral counseling and abortion travel. Gillian Frank is a historian of sexuality and religion and a visiting affiliate fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Culture, Society and Religion. He is the author of numerous academic articles on the histories of sexuality, gender and religion (which have appeared in venues like the Journal of the History of Sexuality, American Jewish History, and Gender and History) and public facing scholarship (with bylines in publications including The Washington Post, Time, Jezebel and Slate). He is co-editor of Devotions and Desires: Histories of Sexuality and Religion in the 20th Century United States (UNC Press: 2018). Frank is currently at work on a manuscript called A Sacred Choice: Liberal Religion and the Struggle for Abortion Before Roe v Wade (forthcoming UNC Press). You can listen to his podcast Sexing History--co-hosted with Lauren Gutterman--which explores how the history of sexuality shapes our present, wherever you stream your shows.

Representative Elissa Slotkin is currently in her second term as Congresswoman for Michigan’s 8th Congressional District, which includes all of Ingham County, all of Livingston County, and the Northern portion of Oakland County. Rep. Slotkin has spent her career in national service. She served in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to be a Middle East analyst, working alongside the U.S. military during three tours in Iraq as a militia expert. In between her tours in Iraq, Rep. Slotkin held various defense and intelligence positions under President Bush and President Obama, including roles at the White House and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. In 2011, Rep. Slotkin took a senior position at the Pentagon and, until January 2017, she served as Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs.

Attorney General Dana Nessel is a former criminal prosecutor and civil rights attorney, Dana Nessel was sworn in as Michigan’s 54th Attorney General on January 1, 2019. She has taken a lead in consumer protection, environmental protection, as well as worked to protect elders from abuse. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Wayne State University Law School.

Matthew Kuiper (Hope College), “Da‘wa: Islamic Missionary Thought and Practice”

A research grant from Shenandoah University’s Center for Islam in the Contemporary World (CICW) helped Matthew Kuiper, formerly an assistant professor of Religious Studies at Missouri State University, complete his recent book on Islamic da‘wa (“inviting” to Islam, or Islamic mission). The book, Da‘wa: A Global History of Islamic Missionary Thought and Practice, is set to be published in February 2021 by Edinburgh University Press. Part I, or Chapters 1-4, covers Islamic missionary thought and practice from the Qur’an to roughly 1700 CE. Part II, or Chapters 5-7, covers Islamic missionary thought and practice in early modern and modern times.

Palestinian and Israeli veteran peace negotiators, researchers, and Middle East policy analysts, will discuss their recent 100 page document “The Holy Land Confederation as a Facilitator for the Two State Solution.” They have presented this vision to the UN Secretary General and to the Biden Administration, and are trying to involve Israeli and Palestinian officials and publics. The speakers all believe that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is soluble, and the best solution for Palestinians and Israelis is the establishment of two states with clear and agreed-upon borders. Most of the contributors hold that a confederal framework may enable both Palestinians and Israelis to break through the current deadlock in the peace process. They believe that this can facilitate a two state solution and have a consequential impact on the culture of peace and on closer cooperation in Israel/Palestine for the good of both peoples.

 Yossi Beilin is a politician and researcher. For 24 years he has held senior positions in the Knesset and the Israeli Government. His most latest ministerial role was as Minister of Justice. Taught at Tel Aviv University, Department of Political Science, for 13 years. In 2019-2020 he served as a visiting professor at NYU. In addition to the Oslo process and the Taglit-Birthright project, he initiated the Beilin-Abu Mazen understandings and the Geneva Initiative.

Omar M. Dajani is a professor of Law at the McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific. In 1999, he was recruited to serve as a legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in peace talks with Israel, ultimately participating in the summits at Camp David and Taba. He then joined the office of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO), where he worked on peacebuilding initiatives and played a lead role in marshaling and organizing international efforts to support Palestinian legal and political reforms.

Hiba Husseini is the managing partner of the Law Firm of Husseini and Husseini. Under her management the Firm serves a large domestic and international client base on a wide range of legal matters. She practiced law in Washington, DC. Ms. Husseini chairs the Legal Committee to Final Status Negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis. She has served as legal advisor to the peace process negotiations since 1994. Ms. Husseini participates in various meetings that seek to interject innovative thinking to the hard and complex issues involved in the peace process, especially Jerusalem. possible solutions to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. She is invited to speak on these issues all over the world.

Dr. Saliba Sarsar is professor of Political Science at Monmouth University and a visiting scholarly collaborator at Princeton University in 2022-2023. He is also the President/CEO of the Jerusalem Peace Institute. His teaching and research interests focus on the Middle East, Palestinian-Israeli affairs, Jerusalem, and peacebuilding.

MSU is home to dozens of current, returned, and aspiring Fulbrighters. All are welcome to join us for this casual get-together during International Education Week. A returned Scholar might chat with a visiting student from their host country. An outbound grantee might meet a Humphrey Fellow in the same discipline. A current FLTA might connect with someone who just applied for a student grant to their home country. Join personnel from the Office for International Students and Scholars and MSU's Fulbright Office to mingle with others in the Fulbright sphere!

Cosponsored event with GenCen: Camelia Suleiman (MSU), “To Be Maqdisi in Jerusalem: Palestinian Women Education”

Camelia Suleiman, Associate Professor, Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures

Friday, Nov. 18, 1:30-3:00 pm, Location TBD

What does it mean to young Palestinian women to study at the Hebrew University, Israel’s most esteemed university, and in the Hebrew language? How do they make sense of their lives in  a space which deprives them of many of their other human  rights? Through ethnographic research conducted at the Hebrew University since Fall 2019, Dr. Suleiman will try to answer these questions.

Measuring Muslim Publics: Curves, Columns, Spheres and Squares
February 23-24, 2023
Michigan State University, International Center, East Lansing, MI, USA

Michigan State University is hosting an international conference entitled “Measuring Muslim Publics: Curves, Columns, Spheres and Squares.” This conference investigates who is ‘the public’ in public opinion? What effect does it have on politics? These questions have received a great deal of attention by scholars of American and European contexts where their contributions have taken on a universalistic overtone. Are these generalized assumptions valid in other societies – notably in Muslim-majority contexts? In addressing these questions, this conference aims to contribute to the interdisciplinary study of public opinion and ‘the public’ in Muslim contexts inside and outside of the Muslim world. 

Previous research on public opinion and the public often falls into one of the following metaphorical categories. Survey research aggregates individual attitudes into curves measuring supplies of cultural values and of political demands. Media studies interprets the public through the writing of columns by journalists and their contemporary electronic equivalents. Social movement theories investigate the contentious social and political behavior of protest and demonstrations in city squares. Theories of public spheres investigate both the discourses that shape collective norms and the institutional settings they reside in. 

Studies of public opinion from these various approaches in the Muslim world have increased in quantity and quality in recent years. However, researchers often fail to have conversations across both disciplinary boundaries and geographic scope. Area Studies specialists – of the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, or of Africa – may share interdisciplinary findings on their region of focus. Scholars within disciplines may use comparative research but without engaging with theories and methods from other fields. Moreover, with greater globalization of media and communications people hear, share (and ‘like’) content from beyond their own communities and nations. Yet, social media have also created information ‘bubbles’ while linguistic differences reflect lasting boundaries. Finally, do these theories and methods reflect imported or indigenous practices? While academic research on public opinion has been globalized in various disciplines, do the concerns of the field only reflect priorities from outside the regions they study? Thus, this conference seeks to foster a dialogue across disciplinary and geographic boundaries about research on public opinion and especially on who constitutes the public that it assumes. 

Conference format: The two-day conference will take place on February 23-24, 2023