CSE Hosts Event on Discrimination of Minorities in Europe
On October 23, 2020, the Center for the Study of Europe (CSE), an affiliated regional center at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University (BU), hosted a panel discussion titled “Discrimination of Minorities in Europe: Differences, Similarities, and Intersections.”
Eddie Bruce Jones – William & Patricia Kleh Visiting Professor at BU’s School of Law – focused his remarks on the concept of race and how it is marginalized in European discourse at multiple levels. Sultan Doughan – post-doctoral fellow at BU’s Elie Wiesel Center – talked about her work with Muslim communities in Germany and the ways in which legal structures, for example, those governing religious groups, produce racism. Magda Matache – Roma rights activist from Romania and director of the Roma Program at Harvard’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights – addressed the ongoing discrimination faced by Roma in Europe and how the narrative of a post-racial Europe hinders efforts to tackle structural racism.
CSE Director Daniela Caruso, responding to the presentations, described the need to call racism for what it is if we are going to grapple with it. The problem she said is not the word itself, but pretending it does not exist.
A recording of the event is available below.
The mission of the Center for the Study of Europe is to promote understanding of Europe through its cultural heritage; its political, economic, and religious histories; its art, literature, music, and philosophy; as well as through its recent emergence as a new kind of international form through the European Union (EU). Operationally, the center provides a focal point and institutional support for the study of Europe across Boston University through coordination of teaching missions, support of research, community-building among faculty and students, and outreach beyond the University. Visit the center’s website for more.