February 7, 2003 — The University of Utah’s Middle East Center announces the second lecture in the U’s lecture series on the Iraq Crisis. On Wednesday, Feb. 12, Rami G. Khouri, executive editor of The Daily Star in Beirut, Lebanon, will speak on “Anti-Americanism in the Arab World: Roots, Repercussions, and Remedies.” The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held from 2 until 3:30 p.m. in the Dumke Auditorium of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, located next to the David Eccles School of Business.

The lecture series is co-sponsored by the Office of the President, the Department of Political Science and the Colleges of Humanities and Social and Behavioral Science.

Similar in format to the 9-11 lecture series organized by the University in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, this nine-part series, scheduled to run through mid-April, will feature a variety of perspectives from leading experts on regional and international issues. Future dates and speakers for the series will be announced as they are confirmed. For updates on the programming, go to the U’s Middle East Center Web page at www.hum.utah.edu/mec or call the Middle East Center at the University of Utah at 801-585-9594.

“Rami Khouri is very much in demand by the top universities and think tanks in the world,” notes Ibrahim Karawan, director of the Middle East Center. “In every conference we have attended together he has been almost invariably the most articulate and the most engaging analyst of the pulse of Arab public opinion.”

Khouri is the author of A View from the Arab World, an internationally syndicated weekly political column. He is a member of the Brookings Institution Task Force on U.S. Policies Towards the Islamic World. He has served as the Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and as a senior research associate at Syracuse University. Khouri was editor-in-chief of the Jordan Times from 1975 to 1982 and again from 1987 to 1988. He has published widely about Jordan and the Middle East region. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angels Times, The Washington Post and The Times of London. He appears regularly on CNN, CBS, the BBC World Service and NPR.