NYU Abu Dhabi Lecture Series in New York City
The term cosmopolitan is often used to describe NYUAD—the orientation of its students and faculty, the outlook of the university, and the character of Abu Dhabi as a place. This inaugural series interrogates the values and challenges of cosmopolitanism, the tensions between its global orientation and local communities, its prospects at a time of economic contraction, and its relevance in the Arab and Muslim worlds, among other issues.
The Cosmopolitan Idea
November 11, 2009 | 4:30-6:00 PM
Watch a video of the Cosmopolitan Idea Symposium
Invitation-only event to celebrate the opening of 19 WSN.
Location: 19 Washington Square North
Vartan Gregorian President, Carnegie Corporation of New York
Craig Calhoun University Professor of the Social Sciences, NYU
Jeremy Waldron University Professor in the Law School, NYU
Cosmopolitanism or Multiculturalism
January 25, 2010 | 6:30 PM
After the “culture wars” of the 1980s, the triumph of multiculturalism had beneficial effects on educational policy and public discourse. In promoting the value of cultural diversity, multiculturalism led to the recovery of neglected histories, artistic traditions, and a greater sense of toleration for various kinds of difference. But along with the gains came costs, including increasingly rigid ideas about identity politics and a few critiques that crossed cultural boundaries. Cosmopolitanism may offer an alternative approach to difference, in which difference is viewed as an opportunity, rather than a problem that needs to be solved.
Location: 19 Washington Square North
David A. Hollinger Preston Hotchkis Professor of American History, University of California, Berkeley
Walter Benn Michaels Professor English, University of Illinois at Chicago
Professor Cyrus Patell Associate Professor of English, NYU
The Cosmopolitan Idea and National Sovereignty
February 4, 2010 | 6:30 PM
Modern thinking about cosmopolitanism begins with Hannah Arendt’s remark in On Violence (1969) about ‘the bankruptcy of the nation state and its concept of sovereignty’. In this context, cosmopolitanism appeared to offer new form of internationalism that could establish legal and ethical standards for a world in which the sovereign state, the previous guarantor of the rights of the citizen, was seen to be failing. Cosmopolitanism, with its claims to universal human rights, particularly with respect to the rights of refugees and migrants, was thus opposed to ideas of national sovereignty. More recently, however, as cosmopolitanism threatens to merge indistinguishably with the uneven processes of globalization, commentators have focussed on the question of how to mediate the universal claims of cosmopolitanism with the rights of local democracy, and with the disjunctive experiences of marginalized or minority communities—differences which may require us to rethink the form of the universal itself. Is it possible to formulate a new ‘transnational’ or ‘vernacular’ cosmopolitanism that can reconcile the competing and often conflictual claims which cosmopolitanism faces today?
Location: 19 Washington Square North
Homi Bhabha Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Department of English; Director of the Humanities Center at Harvard, Harvard University
Bruce Robbins Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Robert JC Young Julius Silver Professor of English and Comparative Literature, NYU
Cosmopolitan Faces
February 17, 2010 | 6:30 PM
Stripped of titles and cultural context, portrayed individuals are difficult to categorize in an increasingly globalized world. In conjunction with his exhibition of photographs, The Cosmopolitans, Zubin Shroff will discuss with Shelley Rice how cultures and people connect across place, space, and ethnic boundaries.
Location: 19 Washington Square North
Zubin Shroff Photographer, New York City
Shelley Rice Arts Professor, NYU
The Universal Claims of Cosmopolitanism
March 24, 2010 | 7:00 PM
Kant’s Ideas for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Standpoint remains to this day a major reference for the universalist claims associated with cosmopolitanism. This session considers the Kantian idea of cosmopolitanism, the “unsocial sociability” of human beings, and the goal of building a universal organization of nations where morality would ultimately win over self-interest.
Location: 19 Washington Square North
Pauline Kleingeld Chair of Practical Philosophy, University of Leiden
Béatrice Longuenesse Professor of Philosophy, NYU
Samuel Scheffler University Professor of Philosophy, NYU
The Cosmopolitan Idea and Religion
April 14, 2010 | 6:30 PM
Cosmopolitan values are typically associated with secularism and ecumenicism. While fundamentalism and cosmopolitanism are antithetical orientations, this session asks whether cosmopolitanism can find common ground with religion, with special attention to the practices of Islam.
Location: 19 Washington Square North
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law School of Law, Emory University
Jean Bethke Elshtain Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics, University of Chicago
Marion Katz Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, NYU
The Cosmopolitan Idea and Translation
April 21, 2010 | 6:30 PM
What languages will the cosmopolite speak? Is the cosmopolitan idea tied to the idea of a universal language? Of master languages into which all others should be translated? Or rather, does the cosmopolitan idea require that we preserve and cultivate that which is untranslatable amongst languages and cultures? Is true cosmopolitanism the experience of being at home in all languages, or an exile in them all, and differently in each? Through conversation, these questions will be discussed and debated.
Location: 19 Washington Square North
Tahar Ben Jelloun Novelist, Paris and Tangiers
Jacques Lezra Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Comparative Literature, NYU
Emily Apter Professor of French and Comparative Literature, NYU
