Scholar to Offer Insights into Middle East Freedom during UA Liberty, Power Lecture

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Dr. Juan Cole, the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, will deliver the lecture “Liberty, Power, and Dictatorships: U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East” at 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 9, in Smith Hall, room 205, on The University of Alabama campus.

UA’s Diversity Committee and the Liberty and Power Lectures are co-sponsors of the event.

Cole is an American scholar of the modern Middle East and South Asia. As a commentator on Middle Eastern affairs, he has appeared in print and on television. He has testified before the U.S. Senate and has published several peer-reviewed books on the modern Middle East and is a translator of both Arabic and Persian.

Since 2002, he has written a blog, Informed Comment. For more on Cole, go to the Liberty and Power Lectuers website here.

The purpose of the Liberty and Power Lecture Series is to provide students, faculty and members of the community with exciting, thought-provoking, new perspectives on the historical relationship between liberty and power. The series is housed in UA’s history department.

The history department is part of UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.