Martin Forums | 2013-14
The Martin Forums for the 2013-14 academic year included a screening of Girl Rising and lectures by Abbas Milani and Frederick Fleitz. The press release for the events are below.
Thursday, Oct. 10, 2013
Administration Auditorium
Abbas Milani is the Hamid & Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University and a Professor (by courtesy) in the Division of International, Comparative, and Area Studies. He is also one of the founding co-directors of the Iran Democracy Project and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. His expertise includes U.S.-Iran relations as well as Iranian cultural, political, and security issues. Until 1986, he taught at Tehran University’s Faculty of Law and Political Science, where he was also a member of the Board of Directors of the university’s Center for International Relations. After moving to the United States, he was for fourteen years the Chair of the Political Science Department at the Notre Dame de Namur University. For eight years, he was a visiting Research Fellow in University of California, Berkeley’s Middle East Center.
Professor Milani came to Stanford ten years ago, when he became the founding director of the Iranian Studies Program. He also worked with two colleagues to launch the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution. He has published more than twenty books and two hundred articles and book reviews in scholarly magazines, journals, and newspapers. Amongst his books are: Modernity and Its Foes in Iran (in Persian, Gardon Press, 1998); The Persian Sphinx: Amir Abbas Hoveyda and the Riddle of the Iranian Revolution (in both Persian and English, Mage, 2000; Akhtaran, 2001); Lost Wisdom: Rethinking Modernity in Iran (Mage 2004); King of Shadows (in Persian, Ketob Corp. 2004); The Myth of the Great Satan (Hoover Institution Press, 2010); Eminent Persians, Two Volumes (Syracuse University Press). His latest book is The Shah (Palgrave MacMillan, 2011).
Milani has translated numerous books and articles into both Persian and English. His articles have been published in a variety of journals and papers, including The Washington Quarterly, the Encyclopedia Iranica, the Hoover Digest, Iranshenasi, the Journal of the Middle East, Middle East Journal, the New York Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement. His work has been translated into Persian, French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, Pashtun and Arabic. Milani has won numerous grants, teaching awards and fellowships and has on numerous occasions appeared on major news and opinion programs, here in the US and around the world. In preparation for his books, The Shah and Eminent Persians, he has accumulated or used more than fifty thousand pages of archival material that will soon be available at Stanford for use by other scholars and students.
September 2013
Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre
508 S. Main Street, downtown Moscow
"It was incredible. Inspiring. Gorgeous. Perfect.”
Audiences love “Girl Rising!” Meet 9 girls from 9 countries - striving beyond circumstance, pushing past limits. Their dreams, their voices, their remarkable lives - captured in an unforgettable feature film about the strength of the human spirit and the power of education to change the world.
With stories written by renowned writers from each girl’s country and narrated by esteemed actors Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Liam Neeson, Kerry Washington, Cate Blanchett, Priyanka Chopra, Salma Hayek, Chloë Grace Moretz, Selena Gomez, Freida Pinto and Alicia Keys. Academy Award Nominee Richard E. Robbins (Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience) directed Girl Rising. It is produced by the award-winning Documentary Group and Vulcan Productions, with strategic partner Intel Corporation and distribution partner CNN Films. Rated PG-13.
This event is part of the City of Moscow's Inclusive Communities Week 2013, and is co-sponsored by the University of Idaho Women's Center, Office of Human Rights, Access, & Inclusion, and the Martin Institute; the Latah County Human Rights Task Force; the City of Moscow's Human Rights Commission; and the Purple Paisley Quilters of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Palouse.
Featuring Frederick Fleitz
Global Security Expert and Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy
Wed., April. 16
University of Idaho Campus
Frederick Fleitz, a global security expert and senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, will present the University of Idaho's final Martin Forum of the academic year at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Apr. 16 in the Albertson building, room 102, located at 875 Campus Dr. in Moscow.
His talk, "Spying and Leaks at Home and Abroad: The NSA, CIA, and Edward Snowden," will discuss the aftermaths of Snowden leaks of thousands of classified American National Security Agency documents, the ensuing global conversation about citizens' rights to privacy on the Internet, and the questions about the balance between security and protecting privacy.
“Over the past several years, discussions about spying and/or leaks have generally focused on domestic or international spheres,” said Bill L. Smith, director of the Martin Institute and Program in International Studies. “Fleitz will demonstrate that the two spheres are in fact interrelated, and you must consider one in the context of the other.”
Fleitz served as a senior analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency for almost two decades, as chief of staff to John Bolton, then Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. From 2006-2011, Fleitz was a professional staff member with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). In 2011, Fleitz founded LIGNET, a Washington, DC-based global analysis and forecasting service. LIGNET analyses have focused on the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs, counterterrorism, and Middle East security issues, especially concerning Israel, Syria, and Egypt. With his experience, Fleitz will inform the community about the Snowden leaks and related privacy issues.
The forum is sponsored by the University’s Martin Institute and the Program in International Studies.
In addition to the forum, Fleitz will also meet with the International Affairs Club.
Martin Forums on international topics are part of the educational and outreach missions of the Martin Institute. The institute was founded to advance research and teach about the causes of conflict and peaceful resolution.
