CESS Conference held at Harvard University, October 2-5, 2003

4th Annual Central Eurasian Studies Society Conference held at Harvard University October 2-5, 2003   For more information on the CESS conference, click here To read an article about the conference published in the Davis Center's Novosti, click here

A Landmark Central Eurasian Studies Event at the Davis Center

By John Schoeberlein, Director, Program on Central Asia and the Caucasus at the Davis Center

The Central Eurasian Studies Society itself has grown exponentially since its founding in 2000 — the membership roughly doubling each year to its current level at ca. 1,600 members from more than 60 countries.  Throughout this period, CESS has been hosted by the Program on Central Asia and the Caucasus at the Davis Center, and the Center’s support has been vital to the Society’s success.  The Davis Center has served as an incubator while the activities of CESS have become institutionalized, including the publication of a journal now entering its third year, and the fourth annual conference hosted here last fall.

The growth of the conference this year was even more dramatic than that of the society, with attendance increasing by a factor of six from last year.  There were nearly 500 people included on the program of 80 panels, most of which were pre-organized.  Nearly 200 of the participants came from abroad to participate, and another large contingent were scholars in the US on various exchange programs.  At the same time, the Program Committee was very selective, eventually including in the program only slightly over half of the proposals which were submitted.  Also, for the first time, the CESS conference organized a chair and discussant for every panel and required presenters to submit their papers to the discussant three weeks before the conference, in order to ensure high quality presentations and discussion.

The Conference Committee’s success in assembling this large and high-quality gathering may be attributed to a number of factors.  Of course, Harvard has its own attraction as does Boston in the prime of the fall season.  Just as significant was the fact that the committee maintained a high level of organization and communication with prospective participants, and finalized the preliminary program more than four months in advance of the event.  This enabled participants to arrange visas and funding, and other attendees to see the program online and determine well in advance what the conference had to offer for their particular interests.  We also made a strong effort to help international participants line up funding through working directly with the funding organizations like the Soros Foundation, IREX and Fulbright.

So what happens when you get 800+ Central Eurasianists together?  Well, at times it proved a bit overwhelming for both organizers and participants.  We originally thought that we would have a maximum of 300 participants.  In the preceding months we scrambled to find more space to accommodate the demand, as we saw the large number of proposals and pre-registrations flooding in.  Especially on the first day of the conference, when we were confined to spaces in and around the Davis Center, the crowds were gathered around the doors of the more popular panels.  Hundreds of additional copies of the program had to be printed overnight.  It was both exciting and very challenging to make sure this number of people and panels were fed and accommodated.

More substantively, such a gathering did some amazing things.  For the first time ever, there was a tangible experience of the larger community of scholarship that has recently emerged studying this common domain.  In the past, many scholars of Central Eurasia voiced the complaint that their panels were given the least prominence and most inconvenient times at conferences of the area studies organizations focused on adjacent regions (i.e., the Middle East, East Asia or Slavic studies).  By contrast, at the Harvard event, there were as many as 12 panels running in parallel over three days.  And there was an audience to whom the presenters did not have to begin by explaining the basic background of geography or history.  Presentations and discussion could instead delve much more deeply into the substance of new research and ideas.

One plenary worth highlighting was that on the Central Eurasian Political Development and Stability: Effects of International and Regional Actors .This panel examined the experience of a decade of international and regional efforts to effect political development and stability. Major researchers in the field, such as David Pearce (World Bank), Martha Brill Olcott (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), Matthew Bryza (National Security Council), and Gerard J. Libardian (University of Michigan) addressed numerous issues facing Central Eurasian politics. Questions that the panelists posed included: in what ways have international organizations and outside governments' interventions hampered or promoted the development of strong and responsive institutions which are indigenous to the region?  To what extent have outside initiatives fostered effective democratization as a part of state-building, or discredited the democratizing agenda?  What role has regional violent conflict played in forming Central Eurasian states and how much has this driven the agenda of international actors in the region? What problems are intrinsic to the process of state-building in a world dominated, as it has become in the post-Cold War era, by international organizations, regional actors and a single superpower, and how should the strategies of international actors be changed accordingly?  

Scholarship of Central Eurasia still has a long way to go to become as solid as that of most other parts of the world.  There are still relatively few scholars who make this region their major focus, and few institutions that give priority to the region.  Among the growing numbers of specialists, there is a preponderance of younger scholars with comparatively less experience, academic clout, and ability to mentor and promote new generations of scholars.  And there are few venues for scholarly communication to provide feedback mechanisms which help strengthen our argumentation and push for adherence to higher standards.  These are the purposes for which the Central Eurasian Studies Society was established.

With this past fall’s conference, we made a great stride in realizing these goals.  In the sessions, presenters got a good airing of their ideas and observations, with thoughtful and sometimes challenging response by the discussant and the audience.  In the corridors and receptions, we had the opportunity to meet hundreds of people whom we had previously only known by reputation and written products.  Gossip was exchanged, friendships were established and collaborations were begun.  For many of us, we found that our interests and scholarly passions are not actually so obscure, and the Central Eurasian Studies Society acquired the feel of a true community.

- Reproduced by permission of the Davis Center's Novosti, Spring, 2004 .

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Program on Central Asia and the Caucasus
Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
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