FOUR FREEDOMS FORUM
No Place Like Home:
The Refugee Crisis
Thursday, February 16,
5:30 p.m.
This forum will be streamed live here on NRM.org.
This Town Hall-style conversation, inspired by Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms paintings, will explore today’s refugee crisis, as borders tighten around the world and millions of people from impoverished and war-torn nations seek a safe place to restart their lives. Refreshments and a reception will follow. Free.
Speakers:
Hilary Greene
Director Berkshire Immigrant Center
Hilary Greene Director of the Berkshire Immigrant Center grew up in the Berkshires and graduated from Mt. Greylock Regional High School. She earned her BA in Soviet and Russian Studies from Colby College. Her interest in immigration began in the early ’90s when she spent four years living and working as an expatriate in St. Petersburg, Russia. After returning to the United States, Hilary worked as the Refugee Resettlement Coordinator at the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires and helped to establish the Berkshire Immigrant Center . Hilary complements her work in immigration as Nordic Ski Coach at Mt. Greylock Regional High School. She currently lives in Williamstown.
Dr. Asma Abbas
Associate Professor of Politics and Philosophy
Emily H. Fisher Faculty Fellow
Simon’s Rock of Bard College
Dr. Asma Abbas is Associate Professor of Politics & Philosophy and Emily H. Fisher Faculty Fellow at Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. She is also founding director of Hic Rosa, an art, politics, and education collective which hosts the Falsework School—moving communities of study on key social and political issues—in the Berkshires and abroad. Born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, which still furnishes most of the affective abundances that drive her vocation, she is a transdisciplinary political theorist interested in the history of forms of political existence. Situated at the intersection of politics, ethics, and aesthetics, her work addresses how these domains and their demands shape the tasks of knowledge and subject production in a global postcolonial context and inform struggles for peace and justice. She is the author of Liberalism and Human Suffering: Materialist Reflections on Politics, Ethics, and Aesthetics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and several published essays, and is completing her second book, Another Love: A Politics of the Unrequited. She lives in Richmond, MA.
Dr. Charles Park
Director, Berkshire Immigrant Stories Project
Berkshire Community College
Dr. Charles Park is an assistant professor of English. Prior to joining BCC, he taught a wide range of Composition and Literature courses at both two-year and four-year institutions. His research, presentations and teaching focus on the creation of multicultural identity in contemporary consumer culture. Park earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from California State University and his Ph.D. from Purdue University.