The impact of race on foreign policy formulation and governance interventions in Haiti
Speaker
Dr. Robert Fatton and Dr. Millery PolynéDate & time
Location
This is a Virtual Event.Understanding how race intersects with public policy has never been more important. This requires examining the racial foundations of public policy in the United States—the focus of an inaugural series convened by the Center for Racial Justice (CRJ) this fall—and how race impacts policy choices and consequences at the global level. This winter, the CRJ is partnering with the International Policy Center and Weiser Diplomacy Center to host a series on race in international relations. The series will explore topics including America’s relationship with the colonial project, the role of race in the development of the International Relations discipline, and transnational advocacy and the global BLM movement.
Please join us on March 10 for a conversation on how race and racism have affected international governance interventions, including international policing, economic and humanitarian actions, and development initiatives. The conversation will focus in particular on Haiti, the world’s first independent Black republic and the site of numerous international interventions from the era of French colonial rule to the present. Our guests will be a pair of scholars with deep knowledge of Haiti and its international relations, as well as the role of race in international affairs more broadly: Robert Fatton and Millery Polyné. They will share thoughts with Ford School professors John Ciorciari and Susan D. Page on how race has contributed to the nature and frequency of U.S. and multilateral interventions in Haiti, as well as the effects of those interventions on Haiti’s own domestic development.
From the speakers' bios
Robert Fatton Jr. is the Ambassador Henry J. Taylor and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Professor of Politics in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. He also served as chair of the Department of Politics from 1997 to 2004; and associate dean of the Graduate School at the University of Virginia from 2010 to 2012. He is the author of several books and a large number of scholarly articles. His most recent book is The Guise of Exceptionalism: Unmasking the National Narratives of Haiti and the United States (2021). His other publications include: Black Consciousness in South Africa (1986); The Making of a Liberal Democracy: Senegal’s Passive Revolution, 1975-1985 (1987); Predatory Rule: State and Civil Society in Africa (1992); Haiti’s Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition to Democracy (2002); The Roots of Haitian Despotism (2007); and Haiti: Trapped in the Outer Periphery (2014). He is the recipient of the 2011 Award for Excellence of the Haitian Studies Association for his “commitment and contribution to the emerging field of Haitian Studies for close to a quarter of a century.”
Millery Polyné is associate professor and former associate dean for faculty at the Gallatin School, New York University. His teaching and research interests include the history of U.S. African-American and Afro-Caribbean intellectual thought; coloniality in the Americas; human rights and dictatorship; and race and sports. He has published articles in journals such as Small Axe, Caribbean Studies, and the Journal of Haitian Studies, and he is the author of From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti and Pan Americanism, 1870-1964 (University Press of Florida, 2010). Professor Polyné was the recipient of the 2012 National Endowment for the Humanities Schomburg Scholar-in-Residence Fellowship and a 2005 University of Rochester Post-Doctoral Fellowship. He edited The Idea of Haiti: Rethinking Crisis and Development (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) and co-edited The Haiti Reader (Duke University Press, 2020). He holds a PhD in history from the University of Michigan.