November/December 1994, Page 110

Bulletin Board

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Conferences and Lectures

The Association of Arab-American University Graduates will hold its 27th annual convention on "Regional Realities in the Arab World" Nov. 4-6 at the Sheraton Colony Square Hotel in Atlanta, GA. In addition to panels on a variety of topics, there will be a special roundtable discussion on strategies for achieving Palestinian statehood, as well as a special luncheon forum featuring Arab ambassadors to the U.S. For complete information contact AAUG, P.O. Box 408, Normal, IL 61761, phone (309) 452-6588, fax (309) 452-8335.

The University of South Florida's International Affairs Center is sponsoring a free lecture on U.S.-Iranian relations by Dr. Richard Cottam, professor emeritus of the University of Pittsburgh, Nov. 9, 2-4 p.m., in Room 270 of USF's Phyllis Marshall Center, 4203 Fowler Ave., Tampa, FL 33620, (813) 974-4090.

The Dumbarton Oaks fall lecture series includes an illustrated lecture by Ahmet S. Íakmak of Princeton University on "An Interdisciplinary Study of the Structure of Hagia Sophia," Nov. 9; and the University of Maryland's John Duffy speaking on "Byzantine Medicine as Culture and Craft," Nov. 17. The free lectures take place at 5:30 p.m. in the Music Room at Dumbarton Oaks, 1703 32nd St. NW, Washington, DC 20007, (202) 342-3232.

MIT's Emile Bustani Middle East Seminar is sponsoring two free lectures on contemporary Lebanon: author Hanan al-Shaykh will address "Women, War and Literature in Contemporary Lebanon," Nov. 9; and Dr. Riad Tabbarah, ambassador of Lebanon to the U.S., will deliver the Tenth Anniversary Lecture on "The Political Reconstruction of Lebanon," Nov. 15. Both lectures are at 4:30 p.m. in MIT's building E51, room #004 (dining room), 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02139, phone (617) 253-3450, fax (617) 253-3451.

Exhibitions

"Forces of Change," an exhibition of 160 works by 70 women artists of the Arab world, will be on view at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, Chicago, IL, Oct. 30-Dec. 16; and at the Wolfson Galleries, Miami-Dade Community College, 300 NE Second Ave., Miami, FL, Jan. 13-Feb. 25, 1995.

"Islamic Culture and the Medical Arts," an exhibition of Arabic and Persian manuscripts dating from the 11th to the 19th century from the collection of the National Library of Medicine, will remain on view through December in the main lobby of the NLM, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894, (301) 496-6308.

Appointments

President Clinton has named Charles Thomas, an expert on European affairs, to succeed Charles Redman as U.S. special envoy on Bosnia. Redman has been nominated as U.S. ambassador to Germany.

Marc I. Grossman, currently special assistant to Secretary of State Christopher and former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Ankara, has been named U.S. ambassador to Turkey.

Nominated as U.S. ambassador to Yemen is David Newton, a career foreign service officer and former ambassador to Iraq, who currently is senior inspector in the State Department inspector general's office.

Deaths

Educator Hind Husseini died in East Jerusalem Sept. 13, at the age of 78. In 1945, she began working as a volunteer in national social service organizations such as the Social Solidarity Society for Women, which, following the 1948 massacre of Palestinian villagers at Deir Yassin and resulting flight of Palestinian refugees, ceased to exist. Husseini then formed the Dar At-Tifl Society, named after the house in which she was born, to care for Palestinian children.

Hakim Mohammad Ahsan, former Sindh minister and the first Muslim mayor of Karachi following Pakistan's independence, died Sept. 3 of a heart attack at the age of 77. Fluent in Arabic, Persian, English and Urdu, he served as ambassador to many countries, including Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and five Gulf states. He remained active in various educational and social organizations until his death.

Yehoshafat Harkabi, a former head of Israeli military intelligence who supported a Palestinian state, died Aug. 26 of bone cancer in a Jerusalem hospital at the age of 73. A company commander in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, he helped negotiate cease-fire agreements with Jordan and Egypt in 1949. He became army intelligence chief in 1955, and in the 1960s was strategic policy adviser to the Israeli defense minister. After the 1973 war, he became one of the first Israelis to support negotiations with the PLO. A Hebrew University faculty member until 1988, he won the Israel Prize last year for his writings on the Middle East.

Cardinal Antonious Butros Khreish, Lebanon's most senior Maronite cleric, died Aug. 19 in Bkirki, the traditional mountain seat of the Maronite patriarchs, at the age of 87. He began his religious career in 1936, and was acting bishop of Haifa's Maronite community in Palestine. Elected Maronite patriarch in 1975, he resigned for health reasons in 1985, when he became the only Maronite to be made a cardinal by the Vatican.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a philospher and professor of biochemistry at Hebrew University, died Aug. 18 in his sleep in Jerusalem at the age of 91. Born in Riga, Latvia in 1903, he studied in Berlin and Switzerland before emigrating to Israel in 1932. He predicted in early 1968 that Israel's occupation of Arab lands seized in 1967's Six-Day War would be a curse on the country. Calling on Israeli soldiers to refuse service in the occupied territories, he compared IDF undercover agents to Hamas militants. He turned down the 1993 Israel Prize after his nomination brought angry protests from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, among others. Upon his death, he was described by Israeli President Ezer Weizman as "one of the greatest figures in Jewry in recent generations."

Wahbi Al-Hariri-Rifai, a distinguished artist known as "the last of the classicists," died of cancer Aug. 16 in his birthplace of Aleppo, Syria, at the age of 80. He was the first Middle Easterner to study art formally in Italy and the first Muslim Arab to be awarded France's Beaux Arts Medal of Distinction. In the early 1960s he moved to Saudi Arabia, whose cultural heritage he documented in books co-published with his son, Mokhless Al-Hariri. His final work, to be published in 1995, is The Spiritual Edifices of Islam.