March 1995, pgs. 120-121

Bulletin Board

Compiled By Janet McMahon

Convenings

The University of Maryland's Center for International Development and Conflict Management is offering a special course on "Regional Cooperation in the Middle East," to be held at Jerusalem's Tantur Ecumenical Institute June 1-July 12. For complete information contact co-directors Dr. Edy Kaufman and Dr. Sana Abed-Kotob at CIDCM, Tydings Hall, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, phone (301) 314-7703, fax (301) 314-9256. Application deadline is March 15.

"Understanding Islam and Muslim Students," a workshop for international student advisers and community volunteers, is being sponsored by NAFSA: Association of International Educators, March 17-19 in Dearborn, MI. Workshop fee is $75, $150 with three nights' lodging. For complete information contact Bill Carroll or Elizabeth Bell at NAFSA, 1875 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 100, Washington, DC 20009, phone (202) 462-4811, fax (202) 667-3419, e-mail inbox@nafsa.org

This year's regional Model Arab Leagues for high school students will be held at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, March 8-11; Miami University, Oxford, OH, March 9-11; U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, CO, March 16-18; Indiana University Southeast, New Albany, IN, March 23-25; Savannah Tech, Savannah, GA, March 23-25; Portland State University, Portland, OR, March 30-April 1; UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, March 30-April 1; Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, TX, April 6-8; Northwestern College, Orange City, IA, April 6-8; and San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, April 20-22. For complete information contact the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, 1140 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, DC, phone (202) 293-0801, fax (202) 293-0903, e-mail model@ncusar.org

People and Places

Desert Warrior, a book by Prince Khaled Bin Sultan Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, will break a long-standing precedent as the first book ever written for an international audience by a member of the Saudi royal family. General Khaled, as co-commander with U.S. General Norman Schwarzkopf of the allied coalition that liberated Kuwait, was at the center of action both during the coalition buildup that followed Saddam Hussain's invasion of Kuwait, and Desert Storm, the air and ground war that culminated in the surrender of Iraqi forces. The book by the Saudi general, whose face became familiar to Americans through his televised military briefings in impeccable English during the Gulf war, will be published simultaneously in May in the United Kingdom and in the U.S. by HarperCollins. The Bosnian Children's Fund will receive all proceeds from the book, which also covers Prince Khaled's youth growing up in Saudi Arabia, his student days at Britain's Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, and, later, as a Saudi military officer at the U.S. Air War College, the U.S. Army General Staff College, and the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. General Khaled, who served for many years as chief of Saudi air defense forces, also earned a master's degree in political science at Auburn University in Montgomery, AL.

At the White House, Richard Schifter, the former assistant secretary of state for human rights under George Bush who was appointed by President Clinton as the National Security Council's senior director for Central and Eastern Europe, has been named a special assistant to the president for national security affairs. His position at the NSC will be filled by career foreign service officer Daniel Fried. Rahm Emanuel, assistant to the president and deputy director of communications, was named to a new position of director of special projects.

Deaths

Mehdi Bazargan, appointed in 1979 by the late Ayatollah Khomeini as Iran's first post-Revolution premier, died Jan. 20 in a Swiss hospital of a heart ailment at the age of 87. Bazargan, who later became a critic of Khomeini, was born to a merchant family in Tabriz. He earned a degree in thermodynamics from the University of Paris and returned to Iran in 1942 to teach at Tehran University, where he became known as one of the country's best mathematicians. In 1951, when then-Premier Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized Iran's oil industry, he appointed Bazargan to run the new company. Following Mossadegh's ouster from power in 1953, Bazargan became a vocal critic of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, accusing the shah of human rights violations, and was jailed several times. His opposition to the shah allied him with Ayatollah Khomeini, but he resigned from the revolutionary government after nine months, when the ayatollah endorsed the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. He opposed the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and wrote a book attacking the clerical monopoly of power. A lifelong campaigner for democracy and human rights, many attribute his survival to the respect in which he was held.

Former Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre died Jan. 2 in Lagos, Nigeria, of a heart attack and diabetes. His age was thought to be between 75 and 84. Orphaned at 10, he worked as a shepherd before joining the colonial police force, where he rose to be chief inspector. Largely self-taught as a youth, he studied at an army college in Italy, Somalia's former colonial ruler, and was appointed army vice commander upon his country's independence in 1960, becoming commander-in-chief five years later. In 1969, he led a bloodless coup, and ruled Somalia for more than two decades. He was overthrown in January 1991 and fled the country to Nigeria.

Hatem Izhak Husseini, president of Jerusalem's Al-Quds University and member of the Palestine National Council, died Dec. 27 in Jerusalem of cancer, at the age of 53. A Jerusalem native, he and his family were refugees in Syria and Lebanon after the 1948 war. He received a bachelor's degree in economics from the American University in Cairo, a master's in business administration from the University of Rhode Island, and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Massachusetts. He was appointed director of the Arab League's Washington Information Bureau in 1975 and served as head of the Palestine Information Bureau in Washington from 1978 to 1982, and as deputy director of the Palestine Observer Mission to the U.N. in 1982-83. He was a lecturer at several American universities, the author of several books and hundreds of articles, and a frequent guest on television news shows prior to his 1993 appointment as president of Al-Quds University.

Parveen Shakir, one of Pakistan's best known Urdu poets, died along with her driver in a Jan. 26 car accident in Islamabad at the age of 42. She received a master's degree in English literature from Karachi University but, after passing her civil service exam, chose to work in the federal income tax bureau, where she remained until her death. Her first collection of poetry, Kushboo, published in her early twenties, brought her fame and national acclaim as one of the few masters of Urdu poetry in the subcontinent.

Norman Burns, a retired foreign service office and, from 1961-65, president of the American University of Beirut, died Dec. 25 of renal failure at his home in Falls Church, VA. Born in Drake County, OH, he graduated from Wittenberg University, where he also earned a law degree, and received a master's degree in economics from Yale. From 1929-1932, he was an assistant professor of economics at AUB. His State Department assignments included deputy director of the International Cooperation Administration office for the Near East, South Asia and Africa, director of the U.S. Operations Mission to Jordan, and director of the Foreign Service Institute. He also served as chief economic adviser to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in Beirut from 1953-56. After his retirement, he lectured on Middle East economic problems at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and served on the Middle East Institute's board of governors. He is survived by his wife, Constance, and brother Harold.

Zai Singh, the first Sikh president of India, died Dec. 25 at the age of 78 of injuries suffered in a November car accident. Born in a mud hut in Sandhwan, Punjab, he trained to become a Sikh priest and, in the 1930s, campaigned against the princes who ruled the Farikdot district. He was imprisoned for his political activities and held in solitary confinement from 1938-43. He rose to become Punjab's chief minister from 1972-77, and served as home minister in Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's cabinet from 1980-82. During his 1982-87 tenure as president, he was critiziced for not resigning over the storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, but played a crucial role in negotiating the withdrawal of Indian troops from the Sikhs' holiest shrine. He had several disputes with Gandhi's son and successor, Rajiv, and refused to sign into law a controversial bill allowing censorship of private mail. Although he had only a grade-school education, he held the title of Giani, or scholar, because of his extensive knowledge of Sikh scriptures.

Hamdi Fouad, Washington bureau chief for Egypt's Al Ahram newspaper, died of cancer Dec. 19 in Washington at the age of 70. Prior to joining Al Ahram , he worked in the Cairo bureau of The New York Times. He was Al Ahram's chief diplomatic correspondent for 30 years and covered the 1979 Camp David accords and peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. He became his paper's Washington bureau chief in 1982, and in 1985 established an English-language North American edition. He is survived by his wife, Hoda Tewfik, Washington correspondent for al-Gomhuriya newspaper, and son, Ashraf Makkar, a journalist working for Reuters in Dubai.

Hikmat Al-Masri, one of the leading figures of the Palestinian national movement and chairman of the board of trustees of An-Najah University, died Dec. 15 in his hometown of Nablus at the age of 88. Born in 1906, he graduated from the American University of Beirut with a degree in business administration, joining Barclays Bank before going into business for himself. In 1936, he became treasurer of the Nablus national committee which sparked the six-month strike known as the Arab Revolt. He was elected twice as speaker of the Jordanian parliament and also served as Jordan's minister of agriculture. He was a founder of the PLO in 1965 and served on the Palestine National Council as deputy to the first chairman. In 1977, he helped found An-Najah University.

Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, renowned Palestinian writer, critic and translator of Shakespeare, died Dec. 12 in Baghdad of a heart attack at the age of 75. Born in Bethlehem in 1919, he attended Oxford University in England. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, he moved to Baghdad, where he married an Iraqi and became an Iraqi citizen. He was the author of more than 50 works of fiction, poetry and criticism, and was the recipient of many honors, including awards from Iraq and UNESCO and the Jerusalem Medal for Arts and Culture.