The Emile Bustani Middle East Seminar at MIT will celebrate its 22nd anniversary with two lectures this fall on contemporary Middle Eastern affairs. On Sept. 18, Adjunct Professor of International Business Ibrahim A. Warde of the Fletcher School, Tufts University, and contributor to Le Monde Diplomatique will speak about "Financing Islamic Terrorism." He is author of a new book, "The Price of Fear: The Truth behind the Financial War on Terror." On Oct. 30 Professor of Anthropology and International Relations Augustus Richard Norton of Boston University will give a lecture entitled "Lebanon's Political Gridlock."
The seminar is funded by the Bustani family of Beirut, Lebanon in memory of the late Emile M. Bustani, who received the SB 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 Ford International Professor of History and Associate Provost Philip S. Khoury, chair of the Bustani Seminar. The Bustani Middle East Seminar is sponsored by the Center for International Studies and The Technology and Culture Forum.
The Sept. 18 session will take place at 4:30 p.m. in Room E51-345 (Bowen Hall) and the Oct. 30 session will take place at 4:30 p.m. in Room E51-095. Both sessions are open to the public. For further information on the Bustani Middle East Seminar, contact Laurie Scheffler at x3-3121.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on September 12, 2007 (download PDF).
