Author of Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World, Robin Wright will appear at Elon as a guest of the Liberal Arts Forum.
Thursday, February 23
Foreign affairs correspondent and author Robin Wright, Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World
McCrary Theatre, 7:30 p.m.
View recent media appearances on Wright’s blog, http://robinwrightblog.blogspot.com.
Invited to Elon University as a guest of the Liberal Arts Forum, foreign affairs analyst Robin Wright is author of seven books including Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World, a chronicle of individual stories and the cultural forces from the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. Wright covers a “counter-jihad” occurring throughout the region that challenges the rigid autocratic ideologies of the past century and the extreme violence seen in recent decades. The Middle East’s emergent generation is imaginative and inspired, striving for opportunity and prospects for the future. Groups across the Islamic spectrum expect that new governments will become responsible for safety, stability and improved economies.
Since the new year began, she continues to report on the current rebellion in Syria, Iran’s nuclear advances and energy program, and the political transition in Egypt with appearances on national and international news programs including BBC World News, MSNBC, CNN, NBC’s Meet the Press, and ABC’s This Week.
Wright is currently a Senior Fellow and Distinguished Scholar with the United States Institute for Peace and the Woodrow Wilson International Center with a project focus on the future of Islam. Throughout her career, she has reported from more than 140 countries for the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Sunday Times (London), and CBS News. She has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, TIME, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy magazines and the International Herald Tribune. Her foreign tours include five years in the Middle East, two years in Europe, seven years in Africa, and several years as a foreign correspondent in Latin American and Asia. She has held fellowships at the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Yale University, Duke University, Stanford University, the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Southern California. Wright received her M.A. and B.A. from the University of Michigan.
About the Liberal Arts Forum
The Liberal Arts Forum is a student organization sponsored by the Elon University Student Government Association that hosts guests on the Elon campus to foster campus conversations about current interdisciplinary topics. The group meets weekly during the academic year and welcomes ideas for upcoming guests or topics from the campus community. For more information, please contact student co-chairs James Malmborg (jmalmborg@elon.edu) or Alexa Johnson (ajohnson51@elon.edu).