Acclaimed Newspaper Editor, Author, and Commentator
Rami George Khouri to Be First Global Studies Fellow at
Mount Holyoke's New Center for Global Initiatives

Journalist writes frequently on issues regarding
Middle East and Arab world

On Tuesday, November 16, Khouri will present a public lecture, "Iraq and the Wider American Dilemma in the Middle East" at Gamble Auditorium in the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum

South Hadley, MA--Acclaimed journalist Rami George Khouri will be on the Mount Holyoke campus from Monday, November 15, to Friday, November 19, as the campus's first Global Studies Fellow-in-Residence through the new Center for Global Initiatives.

Khouri, 55, is executive editor of the Beirut, Lebanon-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune. A Palestinian-Jordanian whose family resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth, Khouri is an internationally syndicated political columnist and book author, who is often called on for comment by the U.S. and international media. In recent years he hosted "Encounter," a weekly current affairs talk show on Jordan Television, and "Jordan Ancient Cultures," a weekly archaeology program on Radio Jordan.

"We are very pleased that Rami Khouri will be the first Global Studies Fellow at the Center for Global Initiatives," said director Eva Paus. "At a time when war and volatility in the Middle East threaten both global and national stability, Khouri brings insightful, knowledgeable, and nondogmatic perspectives to these issues. His views, too little heard in the United States, present ways of understanding our current challenges that deserve a wide audience among national leaders and policymakers. We are delighted to have him in South Hadley."

"I am honored and delighted to have this opportunity to spend a week on the Mount Holyoke College campus and look forward to exchanging ideas and perspectives with students, faculty, and members of the wider Five College community," Khouri said. "These are pivotal and often violent days in relations between the United States and the Arab world, and the trend has worsened in the past few years. We must use every possible opportunity to reduce the military and diplomatic tensions between these two regions of the world, and replace them with a more productive trajectory of cooperation that builds on our many shared values and common goals of peace, prosperity, democracy and national dignity. Political leaderships in both regions have failed miserably to do this, which only raises the urgency of more honest, fruitful communication among members of civil society, especially in the mass media, education, and private business. I look forward very much to taking part in this process in mid-November at Mount Holyoke College."

Highly influential, Khouri frequently writes on issues tied to the Middle East and the Arab world. For example, in a September 15 column entitled "The Hysterical Road from the Sept. 11 Attacks to Fallujah," Khouri wrote:

" It was not inevitable, but this is how it turned out: Three years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when Arab terrorists used commercial planes to strike the United States, the U.S. Army is using its planes to attack individual houses in Fallujah. For the past five days, American planes have bombed targets in Fallujah, routinely killing 15, 20 or 30 people at a time. The U.S. Marines carrying out the attack say they are killing members of the Al-Qaeda-related terror group headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, while Iraqis on the ground say many of the dead are civilians, including women and children.

"President George W. Bush argues that Iraq is the front line in the 'war against terror.' If this is true - which most of the world doubts - then we have two large problems on our hands, and not only the terror problem that erupted on Sept. 11: the war against terror is not being won, and terrorist networks and incidents are expanding steadily around the world."

Khouri spent the 2001-2002 academic year as a Nieman Journalism Fellow at Harvard University and was appointed a member of the Brookings Institution Task Force on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World. For 18 years he was general manager of Al Kutba, Publishers, in Amman, Jordan, and in 1999-2002 was a consultant to the Jordanian tourism ministry on biblical archaeological sites. He is also a research associate at the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflict at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University and a Fellow of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (Jerusalem). He lectures frequently at conferences and universities throughout the world. Khouri has BA and MSc degrees respectively in political science and mass communications from Syracuse University.

Khouri will spend the week engaged in a number of activities, including meeting with students, scholars, and other interested individuals throughout the Five Colleges. At 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 16, he will present a public lecture, "Iraq and the Wider American Dilemma in the Middle East," at Gamble Auditorium in the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. The event is free, fully accessible, and open to the public.

The Center for Global Initiatives (CGI) was founded in 2004 to unite Mount Holyoke’s wealth of international programs and people, and implement a coherent vision for education for global citizenship. The Center initiates, promotes, and coordinates educational activities to advance our understanding of global problems and solutions from cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural, and cross-national perspectives. Through its programs, students and faculty engage critically with the promises and threats of an increasingly global world.

More information about the Center may be found on the Web at: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/programs/global/index.html