The University Lectures hosts award-winning author Robert Satloff, expert on Arab-Israeli peace process, March 18 in Hendricks Chapel

The University Lectures hosts award-winning author Robert Satloff, expert on Arab-Israeli peace process, March 18 in Hendricks ChapelMarch 04, 2008Kelly Homan Rodoskikahoman@syr.edu

Robert Satloff, executive director of The Washington Institute and award-winning author of a book on a lost chapter of the Arab-Jewish experience during the Holocaust, will visit Syracuse University on Tuesday, March 18, as part of the University Lectures series.

Satloff will speak on “The Arab-Israeli Peace Process” at 7:30 p.m. in Hendricks Chapel. The lecture is free and open to the public. Parking will be available in the Irving Garage at a reduced rate.

An expert on Arab and Islamic politics and U.S. Middle East policy, Satloff has written and spoken widely on the Arab-Israeli peace process, the Islamist challenge to the growth of democracy in the region and the need for bold and innovative public diplomacy.

Satloff has been executive director of The Washington Institute since 1993. In 2001, just after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Satloff and his family moved to Rabat, Morocco. He telecommuted to Washington, D.C., in his role of overseeing the institute’s major programs and research projects. He also traveled extensively throughout the Middle East and Europe, and wrote extensively on how to inject urgency and ideas into the ideological campaign against radical Islamism. His collection of essays, “The Battle of Ideas in the War on Terror: Essays on U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Middle East,” was published in 2004.

During his two years abroad, Satloff’s personal research also focused on unearthing the stories of Arab “heroes” and “villains” of the Holocaust, drawing on archives, interviews and site visits in 11 countries. His discoveries, which helped convince the German government to award compensation to Jewish survivors of labor camps in North Africa, are the subject of Satloff’s book, “Among the Righteous: Lost Stories of the Holocaust’s Long Reach into Arab Lands” (PublicAffairs, 2006).

The book has won several prestigious awards, including the Daniel Pearl Award from the Anti-Defamation League; the American-Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s Herbert Katzki Award for outstanding historical writing; the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Sandra Brand Memorial Book Award, for a nonfiction work on the subject of tolerance; and the Touro Synagogue’s annual Judge Alexander Teitz Award, given to an individual who, by word or deed, exemplifies the ideas set forth by President George Washington.

Satloff is the author or editor of numerous books and monographs, and his views on Middle East issues appear frequently in major newspapers and on major television network news programs and National Public Radio. He is the creator and host of Dakhil Washington (Inside Washington), a weekly news and interview program on al-Hurra, the U.S. government-supported Arabic satellite television channel seen throughout the Middle East and Europe.

About the University Lectures

The University Lectures is a cross-disciplinary lecture series that brings to the University individuals of exceptional accomplishment in the areas of architecture and design; the humanities and the sciences; and public policy, management and communications. The series is supported by the generosity of the University’s trustees, alumni and friends.

The final scheduled speaker in the 2007-08 series is Eboo Patel, founder and director of the Interfaith Youth Core, on March 27.

The Office of University Lectures welcomes suggestions for future speakers. To recommend a speaker, or for additional information about The University Lectures, contact Esther Gray in the Office of Academic Affairs at (315) 443-2941 or eegray@syr.edu, or visit http://lectures.syr.edu.