Sponsored by the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life, the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, and the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies.

Join the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life this Friday, March 7, when Professor Alfred Stepan; Wallace Sayre Professor of Government, founding Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion, and former Co-Director of the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life; speaks to the Columbia community to report on his three trips to Myanmar in the past year, focusing on the state of negotiation between rebel leaders and Myanmar military and the democratic progress and setbacks in the country.

Featuring Professor Jack Snyder, Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia, as interlocutor.

Alfred Stepan is Wallace Sayre Professor of Government, the founding Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR), and the former Co-Director of the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life (IRCPL).  His two most recent books are Democracy in Multinational Societies: India and Other Polities, with Juan J. Linz and Yogendra Yadav, and Democracies in Danger.  Stepan’s teaching and research interests include comparative politics, theories of democratic transitions, federalism, and the world’s religious systems and democracy. In the last two years, he has conducted field research in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Israel, Palestine, and Brazil.

Jack Snyder is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science and the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia.  His books include Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War, co-authored with Edward D. Mansfield; From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict; Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition; The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision Making and the Disasters of 1914; and Religion and International Relations Theory (editor).