EVENT: Nationhood reframed: when migration signifies an opportunity

The re-tooled concept of nationhood involves the process of expanding the nation when otherwise different people share some combination of language, religion, norms, values, faith, culture, identity and ideals. It is based not on ethnic or racial origins but like its glorious precursor Рthe color-blind Republic - it values liberty, equality of opportunity and solidarity. Unity out of diversity Рan abused clich̩ Рtakes on meaning when nationhood is reinvented to manage differences and produce a felt and experienced whole. What distinguishes nationhood from related notions of social cohesion, multiculturalism and diversity are enlarging the nation so that different if integrated (not fragmented) ethnic parts generate social capital. In building nationhood, the virtues of hospitality and conviviality play especially important parts.

Born and educated in Montreal, Raymond Taras completed his postgraduate research at European universities and began publishing scholarly books in the 1980s. He is author or editor of some twenty books: on the collapse of the USSR, Russia's identity in international relations, the rise of liberal and illiberal nationalisms, the internationalization of ethnic conflict, the threats of xenophobia and Islamophobia, the critique of multiculturalism, the impact of fear on foreign policy, and a new understanding of nationhood. In 2018-19 he is Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the Australian National University in Canberra. He served on the faculty of universities in North America and Europe including Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, Vermont; the European University Institute, Aalborg, Malmö, Warsaw, and Sussex. He lives in New Orleans and teaches at Tulane University.