Iraq and Yugoslavia the focus of February lectures

Distinguished Professor Juan Cole,
Department of History, University of Michigan, speaking on:

“The U.S. Occupation of Iraq: When Will the War End?”

Monday, Feb. 2, 2-3:30 p.m.
University Park, Graham Center 150

Juan R. I. Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He has written extensively about Egypt, Iran, Iraq and South Asia. He has given numerous media and press interviews on the War on Terrorism since September 11, 2001. He has also commented extensively on the Iraq War, the politics of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the increasing conflict with Iran. He has a regular column at Salon.com. He continues to study and write about contemporary Islamic movements, whether mainstream or radical, whether Sunni and Salafi or Shi`ite. Cole commands Arabic, Persian and Urdu and reads some Turkish, knows both Middle Eastern and South Asian Islam, and lived in a number of places in the Muslim world for extended periods of time. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context, and his most recent book is Engaging the Muslim World (Palgrave Macmillan, March, 2009) and he also recently authored Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

The lecture is being sponsored by the Department of Politics and International Relations with funding from the University Graduate School, The Ruth K. and Shepard Broad International Lecture Series and Pi Sigma Alpha.

Professor David Gibbs,
Department of History and Political Science, University of Arizona, speaking on:

“First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia”

Friday, Feb. 27, 1:30-3 p.m.
University Park, Graham Center 150

David N. Gibbs is an associate professor of history and political science at the University of Arizona in Tucson.  In his latest book, First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (Vanderbilt University Press, 2009), Gibbs raises basic questions about the humanitarian interventions that have played a key role in U.S. foreign policy for the past 20 years. Using a wide range of sources, including government documents, transcripts of international war crimes trials, and memoirs, Gibbs shows how these interventions often heightened violence and increased human suffering.  His recent research has focused on external intervention in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and several regions of subsaharan Africa. In addition to his latest book, he is the author of The Political Economy of Third World Intervention: Mines, Money, and US Policy in the Congo Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 1991).