The Ellison Center at the University of Washington

Dr. Evelyn N. Farkas is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Future Europe Initiative. She served from 2012 to 2015 as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia, responsible for policy toward Russia, the Black Sea, Balkans, and Caucasus regions and conventional arms control. From 2010 to 2012 she served as Senior Advisor to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe/Commander, US European Command, and as Special Advisor for the Secretary of Defense for the NATO Summit. Prior to that she was a Senior Fellow at the American Security Project, where she focused on stability and special operations, counterproliferation, and US-Asia policy. In 2008 to 2009, she served as Executive Director of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, which published the report World at Risk (Random House, 2008). From April 2001 to April 2008, she served as a Professional Staff Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Her issue areas included foreign and defense policy in Asia Pacific, Western Hemisphere, Special Operations Command (policy and budget oversight), foreign military assistance, peace and stability operations, the military effort to combat terrorism, counternarcotics programs, homeland defense, and export control policy.

From 1997 to 2001 Farkas was a professor of international relations at the US Marine Corps Command and Staff College. She served in Bosnia with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in 1996 to 1997, and was an election observer in Afghanistan in 2009. She has published numerous journal articles and opinion pieces and Fractured States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, Ethiopia, and Bosnia in the 1990s (Palgrave/St. Martin’s Press, 2003, 2008). She speaks Hungarian and German; has studied French, Spanish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, and Hindi; and appears as a commentator on major television networks, including NBC, CNN, and Fox. Dr. Farkas obtained her MA and PhD from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Aspen Institute Socrates Seminar advisory board.

During her 34-year reign, Catherine the Great embarked on a single-minded quest to modernize and westernize Russia. Among her tactics was a ravenous acquisition of art, which she used to strengthen her image and that of her empire. A self-proclaimed “glutton for art,” the wily tsarina created St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum and spearheaded the expansion of the former capital into an architectural wonder. Join author Susan Jaques as she discusses highlights of Catherine II’s extraordinary cultural campaign. Following the talk, Susan will be signing copies of her new biography, The Empress of Art: Catherine the Great and the Transformation of Russia (April 2016, Pegasus Books).

Susan Jaques is a journalist specializing in art. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA. She lives in Los Angeles, California where she's a gallery docent at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

The case of Kyrgyzstan, mired in a durable oscillation between abrupt descents into violence and swift returns to stability, represents a useful vantage point to capture the trans-national dimension of post-Soviet conflicts. Kyrgyzstan’s post-independence political trajectory has been marked by stateness issues and the contestation of nationhood, rendering more acute perceptions of threats to the integrity and survival of the state. Drawing on the linkage and leverage framework, this talk investigates the role of external actors in the domestic conflicts that have occurred in the country, focusing especially on the 2010 events in and around the city of Osh. It shows that linkages with international actors have grown more dense and diverse over time, most notably with Russia and, to a lesser but growing degree, China. Non-western leverage has become increasingly consequential in shaping Kyrgyzstan’s domestic and foreign policy. This has been both conflict-inducing and -mitigating, and has varied considerably throughout the conflict cycle. Ties with Russia have been activated and have turned into leverage, whereas in the cases of China and Uzbekistan links have either not been activated or have been de-activated. Once violence broke out no outside actor showed willingness to become embroiled in the conflict, despite the local authorities’ calls for external intervention. Conflict dynamics have altered both the domestic political landscape and trans-national linkages.

Matteo Fumagalli is an Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations at Central European University, Budapest (Hungary). He was awarded his PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 2005. Before joining CEU, Matteo worked at University College Dublin (Ireland), the University of Edinburgh and St Andrews University in the UK. Matteo’s interests include comparative authoritarianism; ethnicity, nationalism and diaspora politics; and the politics of natural resources. Matteo has strong interests in Central Asia, the South Caucasus and South-East Asia (especially Myanmar). His recent and forthcoming publications include articles in the International Political Science Review, Electoral Studies, East European Politics, Europe-Asia Studies, Ethnopolitics, Central Asian Survey, Osteuropa, and the Journal of Eurasian Studies. At CEU Matteo teaches courses on Comparative Authoritarianism, Transnational Environmental Politics, Central Asia, and post-Soviet politics.

Lucan Way | Pluralism by Default: Weak Autocrats & Rise of Competitive Politics in Ex-USSR (4.20.16) by The Ellison Center at the University of Washington

Bálint Ablonczy | A View From Budapest: On Hungary and Contemporary Crises in Europe by The Ellison Center at the University of Washington

Tanya Merchant | Treadgold Lecture | Women Performing Musical Nationalism in Uzbekistan (3.9.16) by The Ellison Center at the University of Washington

Marius Laurinavičius | Russia and the World: A View from Lithuania (3.3.16) by The Ellison Center at the University of Washington

Marius Laurinavičius | Lithuania, Poland, Russia and International Security (3.3.16) by The Ellison Center at the University of Washington

Michelle O'Brien | Tipping Points in Soviet History (3.12.16) by The Ellison Center at the University of Washington

Ghengis Khan, the Mongol State, and Primary Existential Angst