Presented by the Middle East Institute and The Institute for Research on Women and Gender.

Cultural Heritage and Human Rights Under Fire by Nermin Al-Mufty and Amal Al-Khedairi

Nermin Al-Mufty received her B.A. in Journalism at University of Baghdad. She is currently a full time journalist with the CNN office in Baghdad. Amal Al-Khedairi has devoted her life entirely to the arts. In 1988, she opened an art and cultural center in Baghdad in her family home, where she features the works of contemporary Iraqi artists. 

Presented by the Middle East Institute of Columbia University and International Media and Communications at SIPA.

Mr. Jamai is the publisher of Le Journal Hebdomadaire, Morocco's first independent newsweekly. He is a recipient of the Committee to Protect Journalists 2003 International Press Freedom Award for his courage in reporting on "government corruption, corporate impropriety and taboo political topics." 

The Society of Fellows in the Humanities' Invitation
to the U.S Premiere.

6:00 pm Film showing Fragment 1: The South
8:00 pm Film showing Fragment 2: The Center
FREE ADMISSION
9:30 pm Discussion with Directors
Road 181 is the first film jointly directed by a Palestinian and an Israeli. It will be followed by a discussion with theDirectors, chaired by Joseph Massad, Columbia University

Sponsored by the Society of Fellows in the Humanities, the Center for Comparative Literature and Society, Middle East and Asian Literatures and Culture, the Middle East Institute and ArteEast. 

Mr. Cypel is editor-in-chief of Le Monde. He is the former general director of Courrier International, a French weekly. Mr. Cypel holds a Masters Degree in Contemporary History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 

Dan Rabinowitz, an anthropologist, is a senior lecturer in sociology and anthropology at Tel-Aviv University. A regular contributor to the op-ed page of Haaretz, he is a leading commentator on politics, environmental issues and society in Israel and the Middle East. 

Presented by the Human Rights Program and The Middle East Institute

Cultural Critique and Cultural Malaise.
Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures

Professor Kassab will present and discuss the feminist contributions to the issues of cultural malaise and cultural critique that have dominated Arab debates for the last century. How and where is the “Woman Question” located in the colonial and post- colonial discourse? What are the critical contributions of feminists concerning post-colonial and post-independence tensions? 

Dr. Burgat is currently chargé de recherches at the Centre National Francais pour la Recherche Scientifique. He was the director of the French Center for Yemeni Studies. He has written extensively on political and ideological change in Islamic movements in the contemporary Arab world, as well as on Muslims in Europe and the West. He is the author, most recently, of Face to Face with Political Islam. 

Ambassador Zarif was in Tehran throughout the negotiations with the IAEA and the European foreign ministers about Iran's nuclear program. He is the permanent representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations. He will share first-hand perspectives. 

Yoav Peled is a Professor of Political Science at Tel Aviv University. He received his PhD in Political Science from UCLA in 1982. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture at Rutgers. 

Writer, Journalist, and translator, Najem Wali was born in Al- Amarah (Iraq) in 1956. He currently lives in Hamburg, where he is a reporter for Al-Hayat, the largest Arab Newspaper. He published a number of novels and collection of short stories, among which "A Place named Koweit," which is the portrait of contemporary Iraq during the Gulf War.