Steering Commitee
Hatem Bazian, Lecturer, Near Eastern Studies, Religious Studies, Dr. Hatem Bazian is a native Palestinian who immigrated to the US Middle East issues. He currently teaches at UC-Berkeley where he graduated with a Ph.D. in Islamic studies, specializing in Islamic Law and the history of Muslims in Jerusalem Middle East . In the past, he has also played a significant role in the civil rights, anti-Apartheid, and affirmative action movements at Berkeley Jerusalem
Ed Epstein, Senior Research Scholar, Institute for Governmental Studies (IGS)Professor Ed Epstein is a Senior Research Scholar at the Institute for Governmental Studies (IGS). Formerly the Director of the Rotary Center
Charles Hirschkind, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Professor Hirschkind's research interests concern religious practice, media technologies, and emergent forms of political community in the Middle East, North America, and Europe . Taking contemporary developments within the traditions of Islam as his primary focus, Professor Hirschkind has explored how various religious practices and institutions have been revised and renewed both by modern norms of social and political life, and by the styles of consumption and culture linked to global mass media practices. His first book, The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics (Columbia 2006), explores how a popular Islamic media form-the cassette sermon-has profoundly transformed the political geography of the Middle East over the last three decades. Professor Hirschkind spent the spring 2008 semester conducting research in Cairo and Granada related to his Carnegie Scholar of Islam grant.
Professor Mahmood's research interests lie in exploring historically specific articulations of secular modernity in postcolonial societies, with particular attention to issues of subject formation, religiosity, embodiment, and gender. In her book, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton University Press, 2005), she addressed some of these issues through an ethnography of a women’s piety movement that is part of the larger Islamist movement in Egypt
Richard Norgaard, Professor, Energy & Resources GroupRichard Norgaard's research emphasizes: how neoclassical economic theory and free market fundamentalism contradict new, more biologically-oriented understandings of nature and society; economism as religion; how the resolution of complex socio-environmental problems challenges modern beliefs about science and policy processes; and development as a process of coevolution between systems of value, knowledge, technology, organization, and the environment. He has served on the dissertation committees of several PhD students at the Graduate Theological Union.
Professor Norgaard teaches a course on "Religion, Science and the Ecological Crisis in Postmodern America." His writing is informed through work on energy, environment, and development issues around the globe but especially Alaska, Brazil, and California. He currently serves on the Independent Science Board of CALFED (California Bay-Delta Authority) and on the Board of Directors of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and EcoEquity. He was the founding chair of the Board of Redefining Progress.
Edward Walker, Adjunct Professor, Political Science; Executive Director, Berkeley
Dr. Edward W. Walker is Executive Director of the Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California , Berkeley Soviet Union and its successor states, and more broadly on the influence of normative ideas and mythologies on institutional change. His book Dissolution: Sovereignty and the Breakup of the Soviet Union (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), emphasizes the role of institutions and the mythologies of Soviet federalism and nationality policy in the breakup of the Soviet Union.
He has written and taught on problems of Soviet and post-Soviet ethno-politics and ethnic conflict; problems of federalism, secession, and nationalism; religion and the state; the Chechen conflict; Islamist movements in the successor states, and geopolitics in post-Soviet space. He is the editor of a posthumous volume of writings by Mark Saroyan, Minorities, Mullahs, and Modernity: Reshaping Community in the Former Soviet Union (1997). He received his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University
Jason Wittenberg, Assistant Professor, Political Science
Jason Wittenberg's teaching and research interests include comparative politics, East European politics, social science methodology, and mathematical modelling. He is the author of Crucibles of Political Loyalty: Church Institutions and Electoral Continuity in Hungary (Cambridge University Press, 2006), as well as author and co-author of numerous journal articles and book chapters. His main current project explores the social bases of support for extremist parties, with an emphasis on interwar Eastern Europe. He has had fellowships with the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, Harvard University, and the Kellogg Institute, University of Notre Dame.
Jason Wittenberg's teaching and research interests include comparative politics, East European politics, social science methodology, and mathematical modelling. He is the author of Crucibles of Political Loyalty: Church Institutions and Electoral Continuity in Hungary (Cambridge University Press, 2006), as well as author and co-author of numerous journal articles and book chapters. His main current project explores the social bases of support for extremist parties, with an emphasis on interwar Eastern Europe. He has had fellowships with the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, Harvard University, and the Kellogg Institute, University of Notre Dame.
