We’re delighted to announce that the Center has received a major grant from the Achelis and Bodman Foundation for its ongoing Tradition Project, a new research initiative exploring the value of tradition for contemporary citizens and the relationship of tradition and change in today’s world.
Conceived and co-directed by Professors Marc O. DeGirolami and Mark L. Movsesian, the Tradition Project seeks to develop a broad and rich understanding of what tradition—the received wisdom of the past—might continue to offer in cultivating virtuous, responsible, self-governing citizens.
The first component of the Project, which gets underway in New York next week and is supported by a generous grant from The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, examines tradition in American law and politics.
The new grant from the Achelis and Bodman Foundation will help support the second component of the Project, which focuses on tradition and culture. Slated for 2017 in New York, this component will explore tradition’s role in sustaining a common culture, defined as a people’s habits, beliefs, attitudes, education, and everyday morality—its way of life.
The Tradition Project brings together leading public figures, scholars, judges, and journalists for lectures, workshops, and sponsored research. Work related to the project will include book manuscripts, journal articles, and curricular development.
The Achelis and Bodman Foundation was established in 2015 from the merger of the Achelis Foundation and the Bodman Foundation, each of which dates to the 1940s. The Foundation sponsors grants in six major areas, including education, arts and culture, and public policy. It focuses its giving mainly in New York City.
This timely book offers an accessible introduction to religion in international affairs. Shireen T. Hunter highlights the growing importance of religion in politics and analyzes its nature, role, and significance. She places the question of religion’s impact on global affairs in the broader context of state and nonstate actors, weighing the factors that most affect their actions. Through the lens of three compelling and distinctive case studies—Russia’s response to the Yugoslav crisis, Turkey’s reaction to the Bosnian war, and Europe’s policy toward Turkish membership in the EU—Hunter demonstrates that religion increasingly shapes international affairs in significant and diverse ways. Her book is essential reading for anyone needing a better understanding of why and, more important, how, religion influences the behavior of international actors and thus the character of world politics.
Zionism is the nationalist movement affirming Jewish people’s right to self-determination through the establishment of a Jewish national state in its ancient homeland. It is one of the most controversial ideologies in the world. Its supporters laud its success at liberating the Jewish people after millennia of persecution and at securing the creation of Israel. But to its opponents, Zionism relies on a racist ideology culminating in Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories and is one of the last manifestations of colonial oppression in the world. Since the late 1990s, the centrality of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the world news has sharpened this controversy, dramatically politicizing any attempt to understand Zionism and its significance as an intellectual and cultural movement.