Matthew Gray, Senior Lecturer at the Center for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australian National University in Canberra, lectured on “Explaining Conspiracy Theories in the Arab World” on January 11, 2011. Gray’s lecture was based on work conducted for his recent book on this topic, Conspiracy Theories in the Middle East: Sources and Politics (Routledge, 2010). He argued that…
Seymour Hersh is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and author on national security issues for the New Yorker magazine. On January 17, 2011, he gave a CIRS Distinguished Lecture titled “The Obama/Bush Foreign Policies: Why Can’t America Change?” before an audience of 800 members of the community in Doha. Hersh has covered everything from Vietnam to Iraq to Iran to the whole…
Carl Ford was Assistant Secretary of State and head of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research under President George W. Bush. He gave a lecture at Georgetown’s Qatar campus on the topic, “Wikileaks and Intelligence Reform” on January 25, 2011. Ford is a Professorial Lecturer with Georgetown University’s Master of Science in…
Mohamed Zayani, Professor of Critical Theory at Georgetown University in Qatar, delivered a CIRS Monthly Dialogue lecture entitled “Transnational Arab Media, Regional Politics and State Security: Saudi Arabia between Tradition and Modernity” on February 1, 2011. Offering “a social sciences perspective which places the development of media within a broad, historical, cultural and socio-political context,” Zayani delved…
Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar held an open discussion on Tuesday, February 8, 2011, to discuss the recent political upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt and their implications on the Arab world. The discussion, organized by Professor Karine Walther and the Center for International and Regional Studies, featured four experts from Georgetown’s Qatar campus. The roundtable…
Ibrahim Oweiss, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Georgetown University, delivered a lunch time lecture on February 10, 2011 on the subject of “The Euro’s Future in the Balance.” Oweiss was one of the founding members of Georgetown University Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, and also spent four years on the faculty of the School of…
In collaboration with Georgetown University in Qatar’s Student Affairs department, CIRS organized a lecture on February 23, 2011, by His Holiness Aram I, Head of the Armenian Church in Lebanon on the subject of “Interfaith Dialogue.” Introducing the themes of the discussion, His Holiness Aram I highlighted the increasing importance of religion in today’s world.…
Rabbi Harold White, Georgetown University’s Senior Jewish Chaplain and Lecturer in Theology, delivered a CIRS Monthly Dialogue lecture on “The Allure of Mysticism: Kabbalah as Pop-religious Culture or Serious Religious Practice?” on March 8, 2011. White relayed his experience during his seminary schooling and said that it was not common at the time to be taught anything…
In a joint CIRS and Georgetown faculty Distinguished Lecture, Karen Armstrong was invited to share her thoughts on “The Core of our Religious Traditions” on March 13, 2011. Armstrong is a former Roman Catholic nun who left a British convent to pursue a degree in modern literature at Oxford, a best-selling author, and UN Ambassador for the…
Khaled Almaeena, Editor-in-Chief of Arab News, was invited to give a CIRS Focused Discussion on the topic of “New Geo-Political Realities of the Gulf” on March 22, 2011. Almaeena explained the relationship between the Gulf states and America and how each conducts its foreign policies. “The main thrust of the Gulf’s American relations,” he said, “is based on…
Brendan Hill, Associate Dean of Student Affairs at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar, delivered a CIRS Monthly Dialogue lecture on “Sin and Civil Society: Modernity and Moral Regulation in 18th Century England” on April 6, 2011. Attending the lecture were students, faculty and staff, locally-based ambassadors, and other members of the Qatar community.…
Aly Verjee is author of the recently published Race Against Time: the Countdown to the Referenda in Southern Sudan and Abyei. From 2006-2008, Verjee helped manage the logistics of the repatriation of Sudanese refugees from Kenya, Uganda, DR Congo and the Central African Republic. From 2008–2010, he helped lead the first ever international election observation mission in Sudan for The Carter Center. In addition, Verjee also has worked on various assignments in Afghanistan, Botswana, China, Cote d'Ivoire, DR Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Senegal, Somaliland and South Africa.