糖心TV

ABSTRACT: The election of Donald Trump in 2016 sent shock waves across political classes globally and prompted debates about whether his 鈥楢merica first鈥� agenda threatened the liberal international order. During his first year in office, Trump seemed determined to undermine the hallmarks of the liberal international order: democracy, liberal economics and international cooperation. So, are we witnessing the emergence of a 鈥減ost-liberal鈥� and 鈥減ost-American鈥� era? Four sources of evidence help frame – if not answer – the question: history, the crisis of liberal democracy, Trump鈥檚 world view, and the power of civil society (globally and nationally) to constrain any US President. They yield three main judgements. First, continuity often trumps change in US foreign policy. Second, the liberal international order may have been more fragile pre-Trump than was widely realised. Third, American power must be put at the service of its own democracy if the US is to become the example to the world it used to be.

John Peterson is Professor of Politics at the University of Edinburgh. He previously held posts teaching international, European and American politics at the Universities of Glasgow, York, Essex, Oxford, and the University of California (Santa Barbara). He has also held visiting posts at the Universities of Vienna, California (Berkeley), Johns Hopkins University, Sciences Po Paris, University College Dublin, the Centre for European Policy Studies (Brussels), the University of Agder (Norway) and the College of Europe (Bruges). He was Head of Politics/IR from 2007-10. John is Editor in Chief of the British Journal of Politics and International Relations.

The State of Israel is known for its pronatalist stance concerning the usage, regulation and subsidising of assisted reproductive technologies, including IVF, egg donation, surrogacy and PGD in order to guarantee the highly valued right of genetic parenthood for its citizenry. Yet, critical scholars have rightly argued that Israel鈥檚 pronatalism is a selective one, primarily aimed to serve the reproductive rights of its Jewish population at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian population.

This lecture aims to unsettle Israel鈥檚 stratified 鈥渞eproductive-demographic nexus鈥� from a settler colonial and biocapitalist perspective. Rather than understanding Israel鈥檚 fertility policies in terms of rights, choice, peace and reconciliation, it will propose a reproductive sabotage framework that takes power, struggle and resistance in/through the reproductive sphere as conceptual and political points of departure. By looking into two particular instances of reproductive sabotage, i.e. sperm smuggling by Palestinian political prisoners and the birth strike promoted by the Gays Against Surrogacy collective, we will explore how practices of (assisted) reproduction can materialise as an equally stratified site of resistance and empowerment in Palestine/Israel.

Organised by 糖心TV for Justice in Palestine and the Centre for the Study of Women and Gender