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Professor Sanjib Baruah on How the UN’s Ukraine Vote Shows the Racial Subtext of Global Politics

In Professor of Political Studies Sanjib Baruah’s article “Not the World’s War,” published in the Indian Express, he argues that the ambivalence of many countries in condemning  Russia has made the fault line between Europe and non-Europe visible. The UN resolution was supported by an overwhelming majority of countries with 35 abstaining to vote. Baruah points out that commentators have mostly speculated on the interests of the abstaining countries rather than try to understand their positions. “Ukrainians now strongly identify with ‘Europe’ and ‘the West.’ Unfortunately, these concepts are haunted by the memories of colonialism and racial segregation,” writes Baruah. “Orientalism, as Edward Said put it memorably, ‘is never far from … the idea of Europe, a collective notion identifying “us” Europeans against all “those” non-Europeans.’ ” Ambivalence from abstaining countries in “non-Europe,” according to Baruah, should hardly be surprising. “One can’t expect the struggle for recognition as privileged ‘Europeans’ to inspire warm sentiments of solidarity in non-Europe. In these circumstances, abstaining from the vote to reprimand Russia for its war on Ukraine was not an untenable position.”
 

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Not the World’s War

(Originally published in print by Indian Express, excerpt below)
by Sanjib Baruah

“Like sex in Victorian England . . . race is a taboo subject in contemporary polite society.” This is how the late R J Vincent, a highly regarded British international relations theorist, began his 1982 article, ‘Race in international relations’. Behind the diffidence about race, he said, there lurk dire apprehensions about racial divisions in international affairs. Apparently, Alec Douglas-Home, British prime minister in the early Sixties, was among the few politicians to publicly acknowledge such forebodings. Douglas-Home is reported to have said, “I believe the greatest danger ahead of us is that the world might be divided on racial lines. I see no danger, not even the nuclear bomb, which could be so catastrophic as that”.

His fears were not unfounded. It was during his brief tenure as prime minister (1963-64) that radical Black American leader Malcolm X appealed to the leaders of newly-independent African countries to place the issue of the persecution and violence against Blacks on the UN agenda. “If South African racism is not a domestic issue,” he said, “then American racism also is not a domestic issue.” US officials worried that if Malcolm X were to convince just one African government, US domestic politics might become the subject of UN debates. It would undermine US efforts to establish itself as leader of the West and a protector of human rights.

Two years ago, the worldwide protests against racism and police violence sparked by the police killing of George Floyd reminded everyone that the influential Black intellectual W E B Du Bois’s contention that America’s race problem “is but a local phase of a world problem” still resonates in large parts of the world.

Perhaps America’s Ambassador to the UN, Black diplomat Linda Thomas-Greenfield could have given some thought to DuBois’s prophetic words before commenting on the large number of African abstentions in the UN General Assembly vote deploring the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She vigorously rejected any analogy with the non-aligned stance of former colonial nations during the Cold War. The resolution was supported by an overwhelming majority of countries: 145 to 5 with 35 abstentions — India, China, and South Africa among them.

Post Date: 03-29-2022

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Professor Sanjib Baruah Reflects on Why the Capitol Attack Remains Hotly Contested in the United States

Writing for the Indian Express, Sanjib Baruah, professor of political studies, examines the impact of the January 6 Capitol attack in the United States. Tracing the demographics of those who participated in the attempted insurrection, most were from counties “that have seen the white population shrink fast and the non-white population grow rapidly,” Baruah writes. One year later, many Republican representatives remain wary of denouncing the attack on the Capitol, a position Baruah argues is in line with the current U.S. political climate. “The Republican Party’s ambivalence towards the insurrection is largely because of its mainstream provenance and because the ideas and values underpinning it have purchase among many white Americans,” he writes.
 
Full Story in the Indian Express

Post Date: 01-11-2022

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Fifty Years Later, Professor Sanjib Baruah Reflects on the Impact of the Civil War That Split Pakistan 

On the 50th anniversary of the 1971 civil war in East Pakistan, Sanjib Baruah, professor of political studies, wrote about its destabilizing effects and impact on India’s national identity for the Indian Express. “The standard story is that most refugees returned home soon after the liberation of Bangladesh,” Baruah writes. “This is partly responsible for the unfounded myth that India’s domestic political order was insulated from the refugee influx. This is, of course, not how the refugee influx is remembered in Assam and other Northeastern states.”

Full Story in the Indian Express

Post Date: 12-21-2021

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Bard Students Assist Local Government Leaders on Key Projects for a New Course, All Politics Is Local, Taught by Jonathan Becker and Erin Cannan

Bard Executive Vice President and Vice President for Academic Affairs and Director of the Center for Civic Engagement Jonathan Becker and Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Civic Engagement Erin Cannan are coteaching a new course on local politics and civic engagement. As part of the course, Bard students have accepted internship positions in local governments, including the offices of Red Hook Village Mayor Karen Smythe, Red Hook Judge Jonah Triebwasser, and Tivoli Deputy Mayor Emily Major. Students are also working at the City of Hudson mayor’s office, and with State Sen. Michelle Hinchey (D-46). 

“Jonathan and I realized that there is very little engagement with local government here, when more engagement of local people and Bard means more civic literacy and a better functioning government,” said Cannan in an article appearing in the Red Hook Daily Catch. “Few people have access to youth voices, the perspective of someone who is current on certain trends that older people don’t have. Students are going to move into the world soon, and this experience gets them ahead of the times and properly engaged in politics.”

Post Date: 11-23-2021

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For Foreign Policy, Professor Omar G. Encarnación Asks What Is Behind Prime Minister of Spain's Pledge to Ban Prostitution

Reporting on Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s pledge to ban prostitution, Omar G. Encarnación, professor of political studies, writes on the politics of regulating sex work for Foreign Policy. “The news caught many by surprise,” Encarnación writes. “Spain is one of the world’s most socially progressive societies, and in 2005, it became the first overwhelmingly Catholic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, ahead of Sweden, Britain, and the United States.” Though politically and legally complicated, “Sánchez is looking to his proposed ban—whatever shape it takes—to bolster an already impressive record of improving the lives of women in Spain as he ponders reelection in 2023.”

Post Date: 11-16-2021

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The COP26 Summit and the Global Age of Shams | Professor Mead Pens Wall Street Journal Opinion

The intellectual and political disarray on display at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow was terrifying, writes Walter Russell Mead, James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities at Bard, in the Wall Street Journal. “Pandering is much more dangerous to human civilization than methane, strategic incompetence a graver threat than CO2; and dysfunctional establishment groupthink will likely kill more polar bears than all the hydrofluorocarbons in the world.”

 

Post Date: 11-13-2021