Hobart and William Smith Colleges

17 February 2004 HWS Day: How the Soviet Collapse is Reshaping the World

HWS Day is Tuesday, Feb. 24. The theme for the day is Aftershocks: How the Soviet Collapse is Reshaping the World. Four experts will present discussions on issues ranging from finances to ethnic conflict.

Nancy Ries presents Coping with Violence in Conditions of Social Upheaval, focusing on the effects of poverty, crime and the mafia on contemporary Russian life. Ries is director of the Peace Studies Program and associate professor of anthropology at Colgate University, and the author of the Heldt Prize-winning book Russian Talk: Culture and Conversation During Perestroika. Her lecture is at 10:20 a.m. in the Geneva Room.

At noon, in the Faculty Dining Room of the Scandling Center, Christine Loomis presents Fostering Financial Markets and Entrepreneurship in Russia. She will discuss her work with businesses and high-growth entrepreneurs. Loomis was senior vice president and director of the Bank Partner Program of the U.S.-Russia Investment Fund in Moscow from 1996 until 2002. She is a member of the Professional Advisory Council of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University.

Georgi Derluguian, assistant professor of sociology and international studies at Northwestern University, is a world-systems theorist with extensive research experience in Africa, the Caucuses, and Central Asia. His work deals with the way political transformation affects ethnic and global conflict, in the former Soviet Union and around the world. Derluguian will present Soviet Collapse, Ethnic Conflict and Implications for Third World Development at 1:30 p.m. in Albright Auditorium.

The concluding lecturer is world renowned journalist and author Ahmed Rashid. Rashid covers Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia for the Wall Street Journal and London's Daily Telegraph. He is the author of the national best-seller Taliban, and most recently, Jihad. Rashid's talk, Post 9/11 Power Rivalry in Central Asia and the War on Terrorism, begins at 7:30 p.m. in Albright Auditorium.

Two student panels also have been organized: Russian Environmental Issues: Aral Sea, Lake Baikal, and Limits on Agriculture at 8:45 a.m. in Coxe Hall, Room 8; and Old and New Religious Issues in Russia: Tolerance, the State, and Marginal Religiosity at 3 p.m. in the Fisher Center.

For more information on the Feb. 24 events, visit the HWS Web site at http://www.hws.edu/academics/hwsday/.

The Finger Lakes Times also featured the day in their Feb. 17 article.