The Emile Bustani Middle East Seminar at MIT will celebrate its 20th anniversary this fall with three lectures on contemporary Middle Eastern affairs. On Sept. 27, Professor Nil̹fer G̦le, visiting professor in the Foreign Languages and Literatures Section, from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris will speak on "Europe's Encounter with Islam: What Future?" On Oct. 18, Ambassador Barbara Bodine, executive director of the Middle East Governance Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government will deliver a lecture titled "Reflections on the Arab World: From Baghdad to Sanaa and Back." On Nov. 8, Professor Fatma M̹ge Go̤ek of the Department of Sociology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, will deliver a lecture titled "Turkey and the Armenian Question: Are Recognition and Reconciliation Possible?"
The seminar is funded by the Bustani family of Beirut, Lebanon, in memory of the late Emile M. Bustani, who received the S.B. in civil engineering in 1933. "Mr. Bustani was one of the Middle East's most prominent businessmen and philanthropists until his premature death in 1963. He was the founder and chairman of the Contracting and Trading Co., a leading construction and engineering firm with projects in the Middle East, Africa and the Far East," said Philip S. Khoury, Kenan Sahin Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and chair of the Bustani Seminar, which is sponsored by the Center for International Studies.
Sessions take place at 4:30 p.m. in Room E51-095 and are open to the public. For more information, contact Laurie Scheffler at 3-3121 or the SHASS dean's office at 3-3450.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on September 21, 2005 (download PDF).
