Peace and conflict issues in focus for UQ free seminars and film

The Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at UQ is organising two free public seminars on Middle East peace, and atomic veterans issues in the next few weeks.

It will also screen a free documentary on land rights for Indian farmers, followed by a discussion, at the UQ St Lucia campus.

• On Wednesday, May 24, Professor Ibrahim Aoudé, who is Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawaii, will discuss Palestine and Iraq: the prospects for peace. The free seminar will be held at the Don Carruthers Room, Level Five, Dorothy Hill PSE Library, Hawken Building No 50 from 2.30pm to 4.30pm (go through Library entrance and take the lift to level 5).

Professor Aoudé is the Editor of Arab Studies Quarterly and has published on Middle East politics, Arab diasporic identities, and Hawaiian political economy and social movements. He teaches courses on the Middle East, the Pacific, and Hawaii.

• On Thursday, May 25, Professor Kurt Schock, a visiting scholar at the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, will lead a discussion forum following the showing of a free film, Land first: a struggle for livelihood — a story on Ekta Parishad. The film is about a month-long padyatra (extended foot march protest) that occurred in the Indian state of Orissa in 2004.

Professor Schock is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University, New York. The event will be held at the Abel Smith Lecture Theatre, Building 23, Campbell Road, St Lucia from 4pm to 6pm.

• On Friday, June 2, the Centre is organising another seminar, Ask my wife if I glow in the dark: one veteran’s case against nuclear weapons, to be held in the Social Sciences Annexe (Building 31A) from 12 noon to 2pm. Guest speaker Dr Lincoln Grahlf served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1948.

In 1946 he was stationed on a rescue tug assigned to the salvage unit for OPERATION CROSSROADS, the Atomic Bomb Test series at Bikini Atoll, and from the Summer of 1947 until the end of his enlistment he was on a small cargo vessel assigned to the Governor of the Trust Territories of the Pacific Islands.

He retired in 1988 from the University of Wisconsin, where he chaired the Department of Anthropology and Sociology. Having experienced health problems as a consequence of his participation in OPERATION CROSSROADS, and wondering about the experiences and feelings of other Atomic Veterans, he researched the topic for his PhD dissertation.

For enquiries about the events, contact the Executive Assistant for the Centre, telephone 33651763, email: acpacs@uq.edu.au