On Thursday, May 15, the Center’s MIT-Israel Program will host a send-off for students who will be traveling to Israel this summer. Rony Yediddia, Consul of Israel at the Consulate General of Israel to New England, will be the guest speaker. The event is open to the public and will commence with a falafel dinner at 6:30p, in MIT Bldg E39, floor six conference room.

The MIT China Forum, a new series of talks on current developments of Chinese industry, government, and education will commence on May 14 with a talk by Yingyi Qian, dean of the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University and professor of economics at UC Berkeley. The China Forum is sponsored by the Office of the Associate Provost and is part of a broader MIT initiative to foster ties with China. To that end, a new China Working Group of MIT faculty and staff with interests in and knowledge of greater China was formed. Ed Steinfeld, associate professor of political science and director of the Center’s MIT-China Program, and Sean Gilbert, director of Intern Placement at the Center’s MIT-China Program, are both members. The talk will be on Wed, May 14, at 2:00p, at the MIT Stata Center, 32-G449.

Kristin Fabbe, a PhD student in the political science department, won the Best Doctoral Student Paper Award for Eurasia/Turkey at the Association for the Study of Nationalities 2008 World Convention for her paper "Defining Minorities and Identities: Religious Categorization and State-Making Strategies in Greece and Turkey." Fabbe attended the conference with support from a CIS/Starr Student Travel Fellowship.