On Tuesday, February 5, Matthew Parent will present "Outgunned: Israeli Military Innovation and the Talpiot Program" for our Faculty Colloquium series. A kosher lunch will be provided.

The talk is free and open to the public. It is made possible by the UConn Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life and the UConn Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages.

If you require an accommodation to participate, please contact Pamela Weathers at 860-486-2271 or pamela.weathers@uconn.edu.

About the Talk:

Engaged in conflict from its inception, the Israeli military faced complex challenges requiring creative solutions. While military aid and acquisitions from other countries, like the US, proved essential to early conflicts, Israel quickly needed its own indigenous solutions. Culminating in the establishment of the Talpiot program, military innovation was--and is--pivotal in the strengthening of Israel's military power. This presentation looks at the history, challenges, and major events in Israeli military innovation, as well as its unique characteristics compared to many other military establishments around the globe.

About the Speaker:

Matthew Parent is a PhD candidate in the Political Science Department at UConn, concentrating in International Relations. His research focuses on the intersection of security studies, military innovation, and popular culture. His data comes from diverse electronic and print sources, popular media, as well as from places like NATO's archives in Brussels, Belgium. His work attempts to intentionally bridge the gap between scholarly study and practical policy applications. He holds degrees from the University of Massachusetts, the Catholic University of America, and the University of Connecticut.

This UConn Foreign Policy Seminar will feature Dr. Gretchen Heefner of Northeastern University to speak on "Hiding Tanks in the Desert: U.S. Military Engineers and Extreme Environments."

Heefner's first book, The Missile Next Door: The Minuteman in the American Heartland, was published by Harvard University Press in 2012.

The reception will begin at 4:30 pm, followed by the presentation at 5:00 pm. If interested in attending the catered dinner, please RSVP to Frank Costigliola at frank.costigliola@uconn.edu.

Postcolonial Atmospheres: How Delhi's Air Pollution Crisis is Shaped by Colonialism.

Asher Ghertner
Department of Geography
Rutgers University

This presentation examines how popular and governmental responses to extreme air pollution levels in Delhi-which the WHO declared the most air-polluted city in the world in 2014-draw from spatial logics, aesthetic orientations, and scientific protocols with roots in colonial rule. Using three case atmospheres-the Indian lung, the hill station, and the air-purified home-it argues that a geographical imaginary institutionalized in colonial urban planning has led spatial practices of sequestration to supersede post-colonial investment in pollution abatement. By focusing on the infrastructures through which urban air pollution is rendered a tropical norm, it argues that until the colonial ontology of sequestration is broken down, investment in prosthetic technologies of seclusion will detract from structural efforts to produce air otherwise. It concludes with reflections on how we might conceptualize a postcolonial Anthropocene.

Plausible Legality: Legal Culture and Political Imperative in the Global War on Terror

Rebecca Sanders
University of Cincinnati

Wednesday, February 20th
12:15pm Oak Hall 438

In Plausible Legality, Rebecca Sanders examines how the US government interpreted, reinterpreted, and manipulated legal norms and what these justificatory practices imply about the capacity of law to constrain state violence. Through case studies on the use of torture, detention, targeted killing, and surveillance, Sanders provides a detailed analysis of how policymakers use law to achieve their political objectives and situates these patterns within a broader theoretical understanding of how law operates in contemporary politics. She argues that legal culture--defined as collectively shared understandings of legal legitimacy and appropriate forms of legal practice in particular contexts--plays a significant role in shaping state practice. In the global war on terror, a national security culture of legal rationalization encouraged authorities to seek legal cover-to construct the plausible legality of human rights violations-in order to ensure impunity for wrongdoing.