Displacement -- the involuntary movement of persons and groups from the places they call home -- affects more than 36 million (1 in 170) people worldwide. Refugees, Rights, Resettlement, the 2011-2012 winter forum hosted by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, will explore the practical and ethical challenges of displacement.
Undergraduates will meet from Jan. 8-10, with policy makers at all levels, NGO leaders, academics, humanitarian aid workers and local refugees to debate legal questions of repatriation and resettlement; assess and design solutions to practical problems of camp life; develop more effective resettlement processes; and consider the politics of representation through performance and the arts.
Read MoreThe forum will start at 4 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 8, and conclude Tuesday, Jan. 10, at 7 p.m. Students will be asked to read a background paper (less than 20 pages in length) and a short refugee memoir to prepare for the forum. They will also need to attend "pre-forum" events to begin exploring various ethical questions surrounding the refugee crisis. These will be a great opportunity for students to meet informally with their teammates and faculty facilitator.
The opening and closing events of the forum, which will highlight the issues being discussed and the spirit of the forum, will be open to the public. On Sunday, Jan. 8, at 7 pm, a play by Kim Schultz, titled "No Place Called Home," which chronicles the experience of Iraqi refugees will take place in Fuqua's Geneen Auditorium. This event will be followed by a dessert reception in the Kirby Reading Room.
DukeImmerse: LEAPED
Kenan's refugee focus continues in the spring with the Law, Ethics, and Political Economy of Displacement (LEAPED), part of DUE’s new DukeImmerse program. Students will investigate how displacement affects the well-being and the social identity of those displaced in a multidisciplinary four course sequence that also involves an international research trip. Learn More.
BorderWork(s) Lab
Refugees and borders also are the subjects of a new humanities lab sponsored by the Franklin Institute. BorderWork(s) draws together scholars from the humanities, social sciences, and policy studies to explore the acts of division and demarcation that have parceled up the inhabited world into bounded communities. Learn more here.
On Tuesday, Jan. 10, at 5:45pm, the closing reception will be held in Fuqua's Kirby Winter Garden. A highlight of the evening will be food prepared by teams of local chefs and resettled refugees from various countries.
The winter forum, sponsored annually by the Office of Undergraduate Education and the Provost's Office, is free and will take place this academic year on campus, just before the start of classes. The intense two-and-a-half day format allows undergraduates from all disciplines, led by Duke faculty and experts, to explore global challenges and what people can do about them. Each forum focuses on a single global issue and is led by a different university institute or school each year. It is a voluntary activity for which students apply in the early fall of the academic year.
For students who want to delve even deeper in the issues of displacement, the Kenan Institute offers first-year students the opportunity to take courses on international migration law and policy in the Focus cluster "Ethics, Leadership and Global Citizenship." DukeEngage Dublin participants partner with refugee- and migrant-led NGOs in Ireland, while students working with the Bhutanese Resettlement Project research refugees in the process of resettling from eastern Nepal to Durham.
Online winter forum applications opened Aug. 29. The deadline was Sept. 30.
The 2010 forum was entitled "Making the Green Economy Work" and the 2011 forum was "Pandemic 2011: Are You Ready?"