Revisiting Russia: Victor Madeira discusses Russian intelligence



On November 19, 2014, the NYU School of Professional Studies hosted “A Cold War in the Shadows?,” a talk with Victor Madeira, a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Statecraft in London, moderated by Mark Galeotti, NYU Professor of Global Affairs. The event was the final chapter of Revisiting Russia, a series of three lectures jointly sponsored by the NYU Center for Global Affairs and the Jordan Center.

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Experts discuss Russian law and its trajectories



On October 16, 2014, the Jordan Center welcomed several scholars to participate in a panel, entitled Russia’s Legal Trajectories: Law in Action and Question, 1830 to 2014. In her introductory remarks, Professor of History at NYU Jane Burbank stated that there are many perplexing ideas about law and Russia. Some commentators think that the rule of law is incompatible with autocratic or Communist governments; for them Russian law is an oxymoron. Yet, Burbank remarked, law has been important to government in Russia for many centuries. In addition, for the last 10 year or so many scholars have been rigorously scrutinizing the subject. This panel was meant to give its audience “a taste of new legal history” in four different presentations about law from the early 19th century, through the legal reforms of 1864, to the current day.

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Oleg Kharkhordin speaks on rules of order in Russian society



On October 15, 2014, the Jordan Center welcomed Oleg Kharkhordin with a lecture entitled “A Point of Order! The Troubled Travels of Robert’s Rules of Order from America to Russia, or How Russians Tried to Invent Order Themselves.” Oleg Kharkhordin is a political sociologist and the the Rector of the European University of St. Petersburg, which, as Director Yanni Kotsonis stressed in his introduction, is an institution with a remarkably high concentration of brain power and quality.

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