Chastain Johnston lecture series
Defending Women's Human Rights - Mahnaz Afkhami
4 pm, Tuesday, April 19 | University Theatre, FAU Boca Raton
Mahnaz Afkhami is the Founder, President, and CEO of the international non-governmental organization Women’s Learning Partnership. She is also the former Iranian Minister of Women’s Affairs and has been a global defender of women’s human rights for the past several decades. At this talk-show style event that includes audience Q&A, Afkhami will discuss her forthcoming memoir and how to do international human rights work. Come learn about the life of this influential international figure and her important work.
Reception to follow at 5:30 pm
Lecture Tickets: $20 | Lecture and Reception: $50 | Student, Faculty/Staff lecture tickets free.
Osher Lifelong Learning Students lecture tickets: $15
Tickets at fauevents.com or 561-297-6124
OIL-GOTTEN GAINS: PETRODOLLARS, ABSCAM, AND ARAB AMERICAN ACTIVISM, 1973-81
Oil-Gotten Gains: Petrodollars, Abscam, and Arab American Activism, 1973–1981 by Salim Yaqub, Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara
4-5:30 pm, Mon, October 25 | Zoom
Salim Yaqub is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Director of UCSB’s Center for Cold War Studies and International History. He is the author of Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East and Imperfect Strangers: Americans, Arabs, and U.S.-Middle East Relations in the 1970s Yaqub is now writing a post-1945 history of the United States for Cambridge University Press.
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IRAN AND CURRENT EVENTS: AN EVENING WITH BARBARA SLAVIN
A talk show style-event to discuss Iran with Barbara Slavin, director of the Future of Iran Initiative and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
Thursday, September 16, 6 -7:30 pm EST | ZOOM
Slavin is also a lecturer in international affairs at George Washington University.The author of Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the US and the Twisted Path to Confrontation (2007), she is a regular commentator on US foreign policy and Iran on NPR, PBS, and C-SPAN. A career journalist, Slavin previously served as assistant managing editor for world and national security of the Washington Times, senior diplomatic reporter for USA TODAY, Cairo correspondent for the Economist, and as an editor at the New York Times Week in Review. She has covered such key foreign policy issues as the US-led war on terrorism, policy toward “rogue” states, the Iran-Iraq war, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Slavin has traveled to Iran nine times. Slavin also served as a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where she wrote Bitter Friends, and as a senior fellow at the US Institute of Peace, where she researched and wrote the report Mullahs, Money and Militias: How Iran Exerts Its Influence in the Middle East.
For more information, email shannonk@fau.edu
The March 25 lecture with Prof. Salim Yaqub has been cancelled. It will be rescheduled for the 2020-2021 academic year.
Oil-Gotten Gains: Petrodollars, Abscam, and Arab American Activism, 1973–1981, with Salim Yaqub, University of California, Santa Barbara
Wednesday, March 25, 7 p.m.
Performing Arts Building, room 101, FAU Boca Raton Campus
In the 1970s, soaring oil prices provided huge revenues to oil producing Arab countries, which, together with private Arab companies and individuals, invested billions of dollars in the U.S. economy. The influx of Arab petodollars drew mixed reactions from Americans. Some feared that wealthy Arabs were “buying up America” and gaining control over the nation’s political, economic, educational, and cultural institutions. Others welcomed Arab investment as a boon to the U.S. economy and to global stability. Petrodollars also played a key role in Arab American history. Demeaning portrayals of oil-rich Arabs in media and government discourse—reaching a crescendo in the FBI’s “Abscam” sting opererations of 1978–1980—goaded Arab Americans to adopt more organized methods of combating anti-Arab stereotypes. Salim Yaqub draws on his book, Imperfect Strangers: Americans, Arabs, and U.S.–Middle East Relations in the 1970s, to explore the complex legacy of Arab petrodollars in American life.
Salim Yaqub is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Director of UCSB’s Center for Cold War Studies and International History. He is the author of Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East (University of North Carolina, 2004) and of several articles and book chapters on the history of U.S. foreign relations, the international politics of the Middle East, and Arab American political activism. His second book, Imperfect Strangers: Americans, Arabs, and U.S.-Middle East Relations in the 1970s, was published by Cornell University Press in 2016. Yaqub is now writing a post-1945 history of the United States for Cambridge University Press.
Past Events
An Evening with Hoda Hawa of the Muslim Public Affairs Council
Tuesday, January 23, 2020- 5-6:30 p.m.
College of Business Building, Room 409, FAU Boca Raton Campus
Dr. Kelly J. Shannon, Associate Professor of History at FAU, and Hoda Hawa, Director of the Washington, D.C. Office of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), will sit down in a talk-show style format to discuss the work of the Muslim Public Affairs Council and current issues facing the Muslim-American community. This event is free and open to the FAU community.