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Expert on former Yugoslav states gives lecture

March 23, 2006

KALAMAZOO--An anthropologist who specializes in law and politics and who has done extensive work on the reconstruction of states and nations in the former Yugoslavia is coming to Western Michigan University next week to deliver the 2005-06 George Klein Lecture and present a research colloquium.

Dr. Robert Hayden is director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies and professor of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh. His presentation is titled "Antagonistic Tolerance, Divided Societies and Electoral Politics in India and the Balkans." The talk, which is free and open to the public, is 7:30 to 9 p.m. Tuesday, March 28, in the Putney Auditorium of the Fetzer Center.

Hayden has done extensive fieldwork in Yugoslavia and also has done fieldwork in India and among the Senecas of New York state. He also has written on issues concerning the American legal system and its role in society.

Hayden, who holds additional appointments on the faculty of Pittsburgh's law school and its Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, also will present a research colloquium titled "The Balkan Cockfight and Imagined Communities" from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, March 29, in Room 3301 of Friedmann Hall.

Both events are sponsored by the George Klein Endowment, the WMU Department of Anthropology and the Department of Political Science's Institute of Government and Politics.

The George Klein Lecture is an annual event named for a longtime WMU professor of political science, who died in 1982. The lectures are supported by an endowment established by Klein's wife, Dr. Patricia Klein, WMU professor emerita of general studies.

Media contact: Mark Schwerin, (269) 387-8400, mark.schwerin@wmich.edu

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