The University of New Mexico’s National Security Studies program host s a special talk and presentation titled, “Religion, Repression, Rights and Resistance in the Middle East,” featuring Rami George Khouri on Wednesday, Sept. 4 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Fiesta A&B at the Student Union Building.
Examining these “Rs” will help individuals understand what drives this century of conflicts across the Middle East. The talk will offer an analysis from inside the Middle East of the key drivers of the many tensions and conflicts across the region, including Iran, Turkey, Israel-Palestine, Egypt, the Gulf, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.
These drivers capture the powerful forces and sentiments that shape both the repression and the resistance that so often are found together in all the conflicts in the region. In recent years, the conflicts have melded together and have become more intense within a regional and global context, due to the continued free-for-all military involvement of regional and foreign powers, most notably in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and more recently Libya.
Khouri is an internationally syndicated political columnist, author and the founding director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. He is a nonresident senior fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School, and is editor at large, and former executive editor of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper. He was awarded the Pax Christi International Peace Prize for 2006.
Khouri teaches or lectures annually at the American University of Beirut and Northeastern University. He has been a fellow and visiting scholar at Harvard, Mount Holyoke, Princeton, Syracuse, The Fletcher School at Tufts, Northeastern, Denver, Oklahoma and Stanford universities, and is a member of the Brookings Institution Task Force on US Relations with the Islamic World.
He also serves on the Joint Advisory Board of the Northwestern University Journalism School in Doha, Qatar, Georgetown University’s Center for Regional and International Studies in Doha, Qatar. He just completed a four-year term on the International Advisory Council of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
To RSVP, email jdarrens@unm.edu or call, 505.277.3223.