Dear EPD-ers,

We hope you are all taking care of yourself despite the daily deadlines, midterms and other academic commitments. And, academic commitments remind us of the much awaited - drumrolls - Capstone travels!

We are aware of how much work and effort all of the second years have been putting into their Capstone projects, some of which we were able to witness last week when many non-EPD and EPD students had their Capstone presentations. We are so proud of all of you for coming this far, and you will do a great job when you hand in your final deliverables. For now, here’s looking at the much deserved spring break and Capstone travels! Don’t forget to have fun with your teams while you’re researching.

This week’s newsletter includes:

• SIPA events
• Career Advancement Center Events 
• Events Happening at Columbia 
• EPD Office Hours

Events at SIPA

• Corruption, Disinformation, and Social Justice: Stories from the Philippines, El Salvador and the United States 

When: TODAY, Mon, Mar 4, 2024 | 1-2PM
Where: IAB 409

Speakers: 

• Gabriel Billones Jr., Founder and President, Break the Fake Movement (Philippines)
• Amanda Morrall, Philanthropic Thought Leader; Former Executive Director, Coretz Family Foundation (United States) 
• Luis V. Villaherrera, Founder and President, TRACODA; Creator, GobData; Founder & Advisor, Center for Democratic Strengthening (El Salvador)

Lunch will be provided. Register here. 

• The UN'S Work on Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

When: Tue, Mar 5, 2024 | 1–2PM 
Where: IAB 407

The Office of the Special Coordinator on improving the United Nations response to sexual exploitation and abuse (OSCSEA) examines and addresses policy and operational gaps in the protection from sexual exploitation and abuse. Under-Secretary-General Christian Saunders will share how he and his Office strengthen the response to, and the prevention of, sexual exploitation and abuse across the UN system, from headquarters to the most remote field bases. He will provide insights into the key challenges to achieving this goal and what his role means for system-wide cooperation and coherence.

The talk will be moderated by Professor Daniel Naujoks, director of SIPA's UN Studies specialization.

Columbia students, faculty, and staff may attend in person; others please join us virtually. Please see the different registration options. A light lunch will be offered during the event.

Register here.

• Private Tour - Museum of the City of New York

When: Thu, Mar 7, 2024 | 5:45PM – 8PM
Where: Private Location 

Join USP for a private after-hours Museum of the City of New York tour on Thursday, March 7th, at 6 pm. Limited spots are available. Optional drinks after! Register here.

• Debate Night!

When: Thu, Mar 7, 2024 | 6:15PM – 8:15PM
Where: TBD

Join us for a parliamentary style debate to determine our team for our upcoming Princeton Debate. Teams will be randomized and topic will be selected on the night of the debate.
*Food Provided (Roti roll and snacks).

Register here. 

Career Advancement Center Events

• Asian Development Bank Employer Briefing

When/Time: Monday, March 4, 2024 @ 8:00 am - 9:00 am
Where: Virtual
Dress Code: Casual
Work Authorization Requirement: All Work Authorizations Accepted

ADB is the leading development finance institution dedicated to reducing poverty and improving people’s lives in Asia and the Pacific. We are committed to helping developing member countries evolve into thriving, modern economies that are well integrated with each other and the world. ADB is a multilateral development bank based in Manila, Philippines with 41 resident mission, representative and field offices in Asia and the Pacific. This is a consortium event hosted by Harvard Kennedy School (HKS)

For more information, CLICK HERE.

• LGT Impact Fellowship Information Session

When/Time: Thursday, March 7, 2024 @ 8:00 am - 9:00 am
Where: Virtual
Dress Code: Business Casual
Work Authorization Requirement: All Work Authorizations Accepted

The LGT Impact Fellowship connects talents, with the desire to apply their professional skills in a more meaningful way, with leading social/environmental organizations and companies of LGT Venture Philanthropy’s and Lightrock’s global portfolio. The program is currently welcoming applications for the upcoming intake starting in July 2024 for one-year engagements.

For more information, CLICK HERE.

• HBCU & Minority Serving Institutions Virtual Career & Grad School Fair

When/Time: Thursday, March 7, 2024 @ 11:00 am - 3:00 pm
Where: Virtual
Dress Code: Casual
Work Authorization Requirement: All Work Authorizations Accepted

For event information and registration, please visit this link:  HBCU & Minority Serving Institutions Virtual Career & Grad School Fair (careereco.com)

For more information, CLICK HERE.

• Summer Stipend Info Sessions: Summer Internship Funding Search

When/Time: Thursday, March 7, 2024 @ 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Where: Virtual
Dress Code: Casual
Work Authorization Requirement: All Work Authorizations Accepted

Unlock funding for your summer internship with SIPA's Summer Stipend Info Sessions! Discover how to apply for competitive stipends to support unpaid or low-paying internships. Join us to learn about the application process, eligibility, and tips for securing funding. We're hosting multiple sessions to fit your schedule: March 7th, 11 AM (Zoom); March 21st, 11 AM (CAC Conference Room); April 1st, 1 PM (Zoom); April 4th, 11 AM (CAC Conference Room)

For more information, CLICK HERE.

• Introduction to the Millennium Challenge Corporation

When/Time: Thursday, March 7, 2024 @ 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Where: Virtual
Dress Code: Business Casual
Work Authorization Requirement: Permanent US Work Authorization Required

You are invited to learn about the Millennium Challenge Corporation. Its distinctive model for development involves MCC forming partnerships with developing countries who are committed to good governance, economic freedom and investing in their citizens. MCC grants are designed to complement other U.S. and international development programs, as well as create an enabling environment for private sector investment. While this session is open to all, MCC can only hire US citizens.

For more information, CLICK HERE.

• NBR Ellings-Korduba Research Fellowship Information Session

When/Time: Thursday, March 7, 2024 @ 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Where: Virtual
Dress Code: Business Casual
Work Authorization Requirement: All Work Authorizations Accepted

NBR is pleased to host a virtual information session about the Ellings-Korduba Research Fellowship Program on Thursday, March 7, 2024, at 12:00 p.m. PT/3:00 p.m. ET. Join us and learn more about the fellowship and application requirements from NBR staff and program alumni and ask any questions you may have. RSVP to receive login information. The fellowship application deadline is March 31, 2024! If you plan to attend, please RSVP by March 6, 2024.

For more information, CLICK HERE.

• Credit Agricole CIB International Women’s Day Event

When/Time: Friday, March 8, 2024 @ 12:00 pm - 2:30 pm
Where: 1301 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019
Dress Code: Business Casual
Work Authorization Requirement: Permanent US Work Authorization Required

You are invited to apply for the Credit Agricole CIB International Women’s Day Event on Friday, March 8th from 12:00 – 2:30 PM. This is a great chance to learn about Credit Agricole CIB, early career opportunities, network with current professionals, and set oneself up for professional success.

For more information, CLICK HERE.

• REGISTRATION DEADLINE - UNICC - Columbia University Thinkathon 2024

When/Time: Thursday, March 21, 2024 @ 9:00 am - 12:00 pm
Where: Virtual
Dress Code: Business Casual
Work Authorization Requirement: All Work Authorizations Accepted

Link to more Info & Registration: https://www.unicc.org/unicc-thinkathon-3-0/

UNICC (United Nations International Computing Centre) is partnering with the Columbia University to bring students together for a 3-day live competition from April 5 to April 7, 2024, to tackle the great challenges of our time. We invite students from all over the world to participate in the UNICC-Columbia University Thinkathon 2024, jointly organized by UNICC and Columbia SPS. The goal is to work together on real-world solutions based on Digital Public Goods (DPGs). Registration is open until March 21 at Noon EST.

For more information, CLICK HERE.

• Business & HR Virtual Career Fair

When/Time: Thursday, March 21, 2024 @ 11:00 am - 3:00 pm
Where: Virtual
Dress Code: Casual
Work Authorization Requirement: All Work Authorizations Accepted

Who is invited?

Online recruiting event for Jobseekers pursuing Business & HR Career Opportunities

Candidates seeking Full-time, Intern, & Co-op jobs

Where do I have to go?

Nowhere, it all happens online!

Flexible Time Frame: Each organization chooses their own chat times during the event

Leverage the power of Recruiting Technology | Attend the Fair from Anywhere

More information here:  Business & HR Virtual Career Fair (careereco.com)

Register here:  Log In (careereco.com)

For more information, CLICK HERE.

• Summer Stipend Info Sessions: Summer Internship Funding Search

When/Time: Thursday, March 21, 2024 @ 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Where: Virtual
Dress Code: Casual
Work Authorization Requirement: All Work Authorizations Accepted

Unlock funding for your summer internship with SIPA's Summer Stipend Info Sessions! Discover how to apply for competitive stipends to support unpaid or low-paying internships. Join us to learn about the application process, eligibility, and tips for securing funding. We're hosting multiple sessions to fit your schedule: March 21st, 11 AM (CAC Conference Room); April 1st, 1 PM (Zoom); April 4th, 11 AM (CAC Conference Room)

For more information, CLICK HERE.

• NBR Japan Studies Research Fellowship Information Session 

When/Time: Thursday, March 21, 2024 @ 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Where: Virtual
Dress Code: Business Casual
Work Authorization Requirement: All Work Authorizations Accepted

NBR is pleased to host a virtual information session about the Japan Studies Research Fellowship Program on Thursday, March 21, 2024, at 12:00 p.m. PT/3:00 p.m. ET. Join us and learn more about the fellowship and application requirements from NBR staff and program alumni and ask any questions you may have. RSVP to receive login information. The fellowship application deadline is April 14, 2024! If you plan to attend, please RSVP by March 20, 2024.

For more information, CLICK HERE.

Events at Columbia 

• Tabla recital by Mir Naqibul Islam, with Shreyas Ravi & Elliot Cole

When: Tuesday, March 5, 2024 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Where: St. Paul's Chapel, 1160 Amsterdam Ave 

Shreyas Ravi is a senior disciple of the notable sitarist Pt. Ravi Chary. He has given numerous harmonium solo and duet performances across India and the United States. He has been a recipient of the prestigious Pt. Vishu Digambar Paluskar Award and the Pt. Omkarnath Thakur Award. Along with a thoughtful and robust harmonium solo, he also regularly accompanies singers and tabla players, including, most notably, Vidushi Arti Ankalikar Tikekar and Pt. Anindo Chatterjee.

Elliot Cole is a composer and “charismatic contemporary bard” (the New York Times). He has written for and performed with Grammy-winners Roomful of Teeth, Grammy-nominees A Far Cry and the Metropolis Ensemble, and many other groups. His percussion music evokes “parkling icicles of sound” (Rolling Stone) and has been performed by over 250 groups around the world. Cole is currently on faculty at the the New School and the Juilliard evening division, and is director of Musicambia at Sing Sing, where he runs a music school for incarcerated men. He has a PhD in composition from Princeton. In addition to work in modern, early, electronic, and computer music, he studies Hindustani singing with Ustad Mashkoor Ali Khan.

In person and on YouTube. Click here for more information.

• Creative Writing Lecture: Ayşe Papatya Bucak

When: Wednesday, March 6, 2024 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM
Where: Dodge Hall, 2960 Broadway, New York, NY 10027, Room/Area: 501

Ayşe Papatya Bucak is the author of The Trojan War Museum and Other Stories which was awarded the Spotlight Award by the Story Prize. Her writing has been published in a variety of journals including One Story, Bomb, Brevity, and Guernica. Two of the stories from The Trojan War Museum were reprinted in the O. Henry and Pushcart Prize anthologies, and the collection was short-listed for the 2020 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award for a Debut Short Story Collection. She is an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University and has received support from Yaddo, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. 

About the Creative Writing Lectures Series

The Creative Writing Lecture Series brings distinguished writers to Columbia for original talks on craft. Recent guests have included John Keene, Sarah Manguso, Lynne Tillman, and Carmen Maria Machado.

Click here for more information.

• Exploring the Politics of Dignity in the Spaces of Death

When: Thursday, March 7, 2024 12:15 PM - 2:00 PM
Where: Heyman Center for the Humanities, 74 Morningside Dr., New York, NY 10027
Room/Area: Second floor common room

Palestinian death, grief, and mourning are critical sites for exploring questions of Indigenous rights, sovereignty, and belonging in ongoing contexts of settler colonialism. Over the past seven decades, Israel has systematically confiscated and withheld the bodies of slain Palestinians as a form of punishment and control over the living. Israel has deployed this tactic in a multiplicity of ways, including through clandestine mass graves, withholding bodies in police morgues, and disappearing the dead altogether. As the families are left in limbo about the fate of their loved ones, they can not resolve the tremendous grief of being denied traditional burial rites. As such, Israel’s captive corpses policy represents the intergenerational dehumanization and criminalization of Palestinians from birth to death and a mechanism of collective captivity for those who remain.

Inspired by the families’ varied yet interconnected strategies to resist Israel’s corpse confiscation policy, I argue that the Palestinian dead body is an interim space where the politics of anticolonial resistance plays out in the grand scheme of territorial sovereignty and self-determination as the political horizon of liberation. The diverse actions taken by the families to affirm the dignity of the dead are meant to defy Israel’s ability to claim control over death and by extension, sovereign control over Palestinians. I call their defiance the “politics of dignity” to capture their actions as a collective practice that must be understood as both an anti-colonial expression of refusal and decolonial exercise in sustaining Indigenous rituals and practices against the grain of settler colonial erasure.

Speaker

Randa M. Wahbe is a recent PhD graduate in anthropology at Harvard University. Her research focuses on how Palestinian dead bodies are exploited by the Israeli state to facilitate its settler-colonial expansion. She also holds an MPH in Epidemiology from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and a BA in International Development from the University of California, Los Angeles. She serves as a policy member at Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, co-editor of the Palestine Page of Jadaliyya online magazine, and is a member of the Palestinian Feminist Collective.

Register for in-person HERE.

Register for Zoom HERE.            

EPD Office Hours 

• José Antonio Ocampo, EPD Co-Director
  • jao2128@columbia.edu
  • Sign up online for office hours:
    https://tinyurl.com/officehours-ocampo
• Eugenia (Jenny) McGill, EPD Co-Director & EPD Workshop Director
  • em419@columbia.edu
  • Sign up online for office hours: https://tinyurl.com/mcgill-oh
• Ilona Vinklerova, Concentration Manager
  • iv2105@sipa.columbia.edu
  • Email for appointment 
• Paras Abbasi (MPA/EPD), Program Assistant
  • pa2643@columbia.edu
  • Email for appointment
• Orcun Dogmazer (MIA/EPD), Program Assistant
  • od2263@columbia.edu
  • Email for appointment

Your favorite PAs, 
Paras and Orcun