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Pathmaster The math of graphs
Decoding the details Learning to read art
Unveiling the Middle East Lectures shed light on current turmoils
Thoroughbred legends cited Hall of Fame welcomes new stars
Sock it to me The secret life of T'bred laundry
Say what? Student polyglots
Books Faculty and alumni authors
Professoriat What the faculty are up to
Sportswrap Fall sports highlights


Unveiling the Middle East

“Narratives of Revolt” was the theme of this fall’s Greenberg Middle East Scholar-in-Residence program at Skidmore. A series of lectures, designed to shed light on current turmoils in the Middle East, featured visiting scholar Haggai Ram, who teaches in the department of Middle East studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Ram has also taught at New York University —where he received his PhD and was named a distinguished international visitor at the Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies in 2001—and at Israel’s Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University. His teaching specialties include the history of Islam, the history of the Middle East in the twentieth century, and the Iranian revolution of 1979.

Asian Spice
spice


Henna skin decoration is part of an event series organized by Hayat, a student club
that promotes awareness of South Asian
and Middle Eastern cultures. Painting brides, grooms, or other celebrants with intricate henna designs, often on hands and feet, is
a popular tradition from India, Pakistan,
and Bangladesh to Egypt and Sudan. Hayat’s henna artists, three club members, offered their services at Case Center. The group
also hosted a Hindu prayer service with
devotional songs; a workshop on the Sikh religion—including the rise in discriminatory profiling of those wearing its signature beards and turbans; and a dinner of Indian food to end the fasting of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. —SR

 
 
Ram gave a talk exploring the history of Israeli-Iranian relations and presented another program on“Re-reading the Islamic Revolution: From Feb. 11 (1979) to Sept. 11 (2001)” with Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

Guest lecturer Robert Malley, an expert on Arab-Israeli conflict, Palestinian politics, Iraq, and North Africa, spoke on “Hamas and Hezbollah: Risk, Conflict, and Democracy.” Malley was special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs under US President Bill Clinton and executive assistant to former national security advisor Sandy Berger.

Wrapping up the series was Lisa Anderson, dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia. Before delivering her lecture “Middle East Conflicts: Rebellion, Revolution, Resistance or Civil War?” Anderson met with students and faculty to discuss the topic of free speech in the classroom.

The Greenberg lecture series, coordinated by
the Office of Special Programs and made possible by a gift from Jane Greenberg ’81, enables the college to host an Israeli scholar to educate the community about political life in
the Middle East. —MTS





 

 

 
  © 2006 Skidmore College