Author Phyllis Bennis on ISIS and Terror 2/8

“Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror”

a lecture by writer and activist Phyllis Bennis.

Wednesday, February 8, 2017
10:30 a.m.
Campus Center 375, University at Albany
(uptown campus)

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Phyllis Bennis directs the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.. She has written and edited eleven books, including Understanding ISIS & the New Global War on Terror: A Primer,  Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict,  Before& After: US Foreign Policy and the War on Terror and Challenging Empire: How People, Governments and the UN Defy U.S. Power. She has served as an informal adviser to several top UN officials on Middle East and UN democratization issues.

Co-Sponsors:
UUP Albany Chapter
UAlbany Department of Communications
Women against War

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Insight into How We Pick Our Visiting Writers

A couple of years ago we were approached at an event by James Mann's mother (an Albany resident who is now 92 years old). She told us in no uncertain terms that we needed to feature her son in our series.

Since that time, we have been trying to work out a suitable date with Mann, who was born and raised in Albany, and who attended the Albany Academy.

Mann visits this coming Tuesday. His mother plans to attend both events.

James Mann, journalist and nonfiction writer
October 9 (Tuesday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus
Reading — 8:00 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center, Uptown Campus
Born and raised in Albany, NY, journalist James Mann is a sought-after authority on the behind-the-scenes deliberations over foreign policy within recent American presidential administrations. His newest book is The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power (2012), an insider’s guide to the events, ideas, personalities, and conflicts that have defined Barack Obama’s foreign policy. In a New York Times review Michiko Kakutani said, “Drawing upon some 125 interviews…Mr. Mann writes with shrewdness and insight about the evolution of the president’s thinking, tensions among his staff…and contrasts and continuities between his conduct of foreign policy and that of the previous two presidents.” Mann achieved international renown with Rise of the Vulcans (2004), a revelatory and much-cited study of George W. Bush’s war cabinet. A former Beijing Bureau Chief for the L. A. Times, Mann is also the author of three award-winning books on America’s evolving relationship with China.

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The Obamians Reviewed in NY Times

James Mann, child of Albany, has a new book on President Obama's foreign policy team.

Leslie Gelb reviews it in the New York Times:  "Like the best reporters, Mann lets his subjects speak for themselves, then checks their fancies against the facts. He has given us a very good first cut at history."

Read more.

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Can North Korea Be Fictionalized?

"In the stories we tell ourselves in the West, we expect to be the central character in our own narrative; we are a society of individuals and no matter how much we love others, they're secondary characters. The DPRK is exactly the opposite. There's one national narrative, tailored and maintained by script writers and censors. In a totalitarian world that script writer is responsible for everything that happened."

"If you're a secondary character in North Korea, your aptitude for certain things and your class background sends you down paths, maybe to be a doctor, or a peasant farmer, or a soldier, or a music player. Your own wants and desires are only going to get in the way of the role you've been given and that you have to play if you're going to survive."

Isaac Stone Fish interviews Adam Johnson in the journal Foreign Policy.

Johnson visits Tuesday, Feb. 14th.

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