Will Presidential Election Results Affect Mideast Policy?

EVANSTON, Ill. --- For three decades, historian, scholar and popular blogger Juan Cole has sought to put the relationship of the West and Middle East into historical context. On Monday, Oct. 22, he will discuss how the results of the presidential election will affect foreign policy when he delivers the 23rd annual Leopold Lecture.

“Obama, Romney and the Middle East,” will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the auditorium of Harris Hall, 1881 Sheridan Road, on the Evanston campus. Free and open to the public, it will be followed by a reception.

Cole, the Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, is a frequent media commentator on the Middle East. He has been a regular guest on “PBS Newshour” and has appeared on, among other outlets, “ABC Nightly News,” “Nightline, the “Today” show, “The Charlie Rose Show,” “Anderson Cooper 360” and “The Colbert Report.” He is a 1957 gradate of Northwestern.

The author of Informed Comment, a widely read blog on Middle East issues, history and religion, Cole has a command of multiple languages including Arabic, Persian, Urdu and some Turkish. He has lived and studied in various parts of the Muslim world and writes about contemporary Islamic movements. His most recent book is “Engaging the Muslim World.”

In 1990 former students of Richard W. Leopold, an eminent diplomatic historian and dedicated professor who nurtured Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences undergraduates for more than four decades, established the lecture. The Nicholas D. Chabraja Center for Historical Studies sponsors an undergraduate program that honors Leopold’s teaching and scholarship.

Past Leopold lecturers include George McGovern, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Fareed Zakaria, Tom Daschle, Jane Mayer and Seymour Hersh.

For further information about the lecture, visit http://www.weinberg.northwestern.edu/ or call (847) 467-3005.