Protecting Cultural Heritage under Siege

This panel and a forthcoming report from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art are designed to help understand the pressing issues facing the cultural heritage field, especially in protecting and preserving tangible cultural heritage and those who steward it in zones of armed conflict and violence. 

The challenge is hardly new, but the catalyst for this discussion is the continuing and widespread destruction and looting of heritage in recent decades. The obvious need to identify and comprehend the nature of the responses and nonresponses and of successful and unsuccessful efforts was evident after a thwarted effort in August 2021 to protect works of art and museum professionals in the National Museum of Afghanistan . The pertinence of these challenges became even more obvious with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 

The panelists will examine the linked political, economic, humanitarian, philanthropic, military, and administrative challenges of protecting our shared cultural heritage. 

This program is generously supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York 

Participants: 

Thomas G. Weiss (moderator) is Presidential Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center; Distinguished Fellow, Global Governance, at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs; and Global Eminence Scholar, Kyung Hee University, Korea. He was co-chair of the J. Paul Getty Trust’s Heritage at Risk Project and co-editor of the resulting Cultural Heritage and Mass Atrocities.  

Irina Bokova was director-general of UNESCO from 2009 to 2017. As a Bulgarian politician, she was previously Minister for Foreign Affairs; Coordinator of Bulgaria-European Union relations; Ambassador of Bulgaria to France, Monaco, and UNESCO; and Personal Representative of the President of the Republic of Bulgaria to the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie. 

Valéry Freland is the executive director of the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas, (ALIPH). A French career diplomat with experience in numerous posts linked to cultural heritage, he has been responsible for the strategic implementation and management of ALIPH since its founding in 2018. 

Gil J. Stein is professor of Near Eastern archaeology at the University of Chicago and director of the Chicago Center for Cultural Heritage Preservation. His research investigates ancient colonialism, the development of early urban civilizations in Mesopotamia, and cultural heritage preservation. He has directed archaeological excavations in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.  

Jennifer M. Welsh is the Canada 150 Research Chair in Global Governance and Security at McGill University. She was previously chair in international relations at the European University Institute and professor in international relations at the University of Oxford, where she cofounded the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict. From 2013 to 2016, she served as the special adviser on the Responsibility to Protect to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.  

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