For and Against: America,
Islam and Prospects for Peace in the 21st Century
Video
Eboo Patel is the founder and Executive
Director of the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based
international nonprofit working to build mutual respect and
pluralism among religiously diverse young people by
empowering them to work together to serve others. He is the
author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim,
the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation, released by
Beacon Press in June 2007. Dr. Patel holds a doctorate in
the sociology of religion from Oxford University, where he
studied on a Rhodes Scholarship. Dr. Patel is an
Ashoka Fellow, part of a select group of social
entrepreneurs whose ideas are changing the world, and was
named by Islamica Magazine as one of ten young Muslim
visionaries shaping Islam in America
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02/07/2008
David Damrosch
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The Buried Book: The
Loss and Recovery of the Greek Epic of Gilgamesh
Video
Prof. Damrosch
received his B.A. and PhD at Yale University. A specialist in
modern literature, Prof. Damrosch is also interested in narrative
theory, hermeneutics, ancient literature, and the Bible. He is the
author of The Narrative Covenant: Transformations of Genre in the
Growth of Biblical Literature (Harper and Row, 1987; Cornell,
1991); We Scholars: Changing the Culture of the University
(Harvard UP, 1995); a study of academic culture, Meetings of the
Mind; What Is World Literature? (Princeton UP, 2003); and
articles on Freud, Kenneth Burke, Kleist, Wordsworth, Norse sagas,
Bernard of Clarivaux, and Aztec poetry. He is general editor of
The Longman Anthology of British Literature and of The
Longman Anthology of World Literature (2004). For 2001-2003 he
was President of the American Comparative Literature Association.
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02/04/2008
Juan Cole
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The
Three Wars of Iraq
Video
Juan R. I. Cole is
Richard P. Mitchell Distinguished University Professor of History at
the University of Michigan. Prof. Cole received his PhD in Islamic
Studies from UCLA, his MA in Arabic and History from the American
University in Cairo, and his BA in the History of Religions from
Northwestern University. He has written extensively about Egypt,
Iran, Iraq, and South Asia. Prof. Cole has given numerous media and
press interviews on the War on Terrorism since September 11, 2001,
as well as concerning the Iraq War and the building conflict with
Iran from 2003. 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. Prof.
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
Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan,
2007). He also writes on current events, and his articles on
contemporary Sunni radicalism include "Muslim Religious Extremism in
Egypt" in Middle East Historiographies (University of Washington
Press, 2006) and "The Taliban, Women, and the Hegelian Private
Sphere," Social Research (Fall 2003). He has authored several recent
journal articles on Shi`ite movements in present-day Iraq, as well
as an extended essay, "The Ayatollahs and Democracy in Iraq."
(Amsterdam University Press, 2006). These works were foreshadowed by
an earlier book, Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture
and History of Shi`ite Islam (IB Tauris 2002), as well as in his
monographs, edited books and articles of the 1980s and 1990s.
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04/08/2008
Greg Mortenson
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Three Cups of Tea:
Creating Peace Through Education and Literacy
(alternate flyer)
Video
Greg
Mortenson is the co-founder of
the nonprofit organizations Central Asia Institute
and Pennies For Peace
and is the co-author of New York Times bestseller
Three Cups of Tea.
As of 2007, Mortenson has established over 61 schools in
rural and often unstable regions of Pakistan and
Afghanistan. His schools provide daily education to over
25,000 children, including 14,000 girls from areas where few
education opportunities existed before.
Mortenson is a living hero to rural communities of
Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he has gained the trust of
Islamic leaders, military commanders, government officials
and tribal chiefs through his tireless efforts to champion
children’s education.
Lt. Col. Montanus, XO of USMC Special Operations
Advisory Groups says Mortenson's work is the ideal for what
the U.S. should be doing across the globe, and his book is
mandatory reading for all USMC Special Ops Advisory
Officers.
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03/06/2008
Mike Tucker
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Sea Change: On Victory
Against Al Qaeda
Video
Author of
RONIN: A Marine Scout/Sniper Platoon in Iraq. Mike Tucker is a
counterterrorism and guerrilla war specialist, poet, and Marine
infantry veteran. An American expatriate, he has led and witnessed
counterterrorist raids in Spain, Burma and Iraq; patrolled on deep
reconnaissance with Karen guerrillas behind Burmese Army lines; and
seen action with Special Operations Task Force 121, US Army Special
Forces, Kurdish peshmerga, 10th Mountain light infantry,
Marine scout/snipers and other elite units in 21 months in the Iraq
War.
A Visiting Scholar on Counterterrorism at
James Madison University in fall 2006, his oral history on the Kurds
in post-Saddam Iraq, Hell Is Over,
was a finalist for the 2005 Ben Franklin Award in History. He
received Honors in Poetry in 1982 and 1983 from J.M.U. (BA: History,
1982, MA: English, 1999). His fourth book on the Iraq War, THE
GHOST KILLERS: Behind Enemy Lines in Iraq, should be released in
November 2008.
