As CCSU’s provost and vice president for academic affairs, Dr. Carl R. Lovitt, stated at the outset:  “A wide range of events in the Middle East appears daily in various news media, and this lecture series offers our students, faculty, and the interested public opportunities to hear from leading experts representing a variety of viewpoints.”  

Sponsored by CCSU’s Committee on Middle Eastern Studies, the George R. Muirhead Center for International Education, History Department, and Peace Studies Program, these lectures provide information far deeper than what is found in “traditional” news media.

The series began in September 2006 with a talk by Dr. Imad Moustapha, the

Continuing that momentum and balance, on September 20, 2007, the series theme will be: “Islam and the West: Is There a Clash of Civilizations?” with Professor Raymond Baker of Trinity College (Hartford) and Fuad Shaban of Petra University, Amman, Jordan. They are two of the world’s most distinguished scholars on this topic.

Other speakers set to appear over coming months and into 2008 are:  Professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi of Haifa University in Israel, a highly regarded expert on the psychology of religion; Professor Tareq Ismail of Calgary University in Canada, a leading authority on Iraq; Professor Trita Parsi of Johns Hopkins University, who is president of the National Iranian American Council; Javier Ruperez, former Spanish Ambassador to the U.S. and Executive Director of the Counter-Terrorism Unit of the United Nations; and Professor Yonah Alexander, former Director of the Terrorism Studies Program at George Washington University and Director of the International Center of Terrorism Studies at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. 

Lecture series attendees will also hear from Dr. Bruno Ficili of Italy, who is President of the International Association on Peace Education and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize; and Dr. Wolfgang Vorwerk, German Consul-General in Boston, whose academic specialty is the Middle East and who served for six years as Director for Near and Middle Eastern Affairs in the German Foreign Office and wrote the first draft of the Road Map for Peace proposal.

Other speakers in 2008 will include:  Dr. Imad Moustapha, Syrian Ambassador to the U.S.; Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein, Jordanian Ambassador to the U.S.; Asaf Shariv, Israeli Consul-General in New York; and Afif Sofieh, Permanent Palestinian Representative to the U.S.

During its first two years, the CCSU Middle East Lecture Series has attracted national attention as one of the best of its kind.  The 2007-2008 Series promises to continue that tradition.

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