The Northern Plains Ethics Institute at NDSU is set to host a public forum featuring Roby Barrett of the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C.
The forum, titled “Afghanistan and its implications,” is scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 12, at 2 p.m. in the Memorial Union’s Anishinaabe Theater. The event also is available via Zoom.
The presentation places Afghanistan in a broader, more strategic framework. The talk is an effort to think about the future by understanding the present and answer critical questions about the strategic interests of the United States.
“Dr. Barrett is one of the world’s premier experts on the Middle East,” said Dennis Cooley, NPEI director. “Countries and corporations pay considerable sums for his critical evaluations; so, attendees will be hearing information on a controversial and critical issue that is usually inaccessible to them.”
Barrett is a fellow at the Middle East and North Africa Forum at Cambridge University and a scholar and Gulf expert with the Middle East Institute, Washington, D.C. He has written numerous books and articles on the Middle East and Southwest Asia, including “The Cold War and the Greater Middle East” and “The Gulf and the Struggle for Hegemony.”
Barrett is a former Foreign Service officer with responsibilities in intelligence and special operations. He was the Arab Gulf team leader in the Office of National Intelligence simulations on Russia in the Middle East and a keynote speaker at Joint Canadian-U.S. Intelligence Conference on Gulf Security, Washington, D.C.
As a senior fellow with the Joint Special Operations University, U.S. Special Operations Command, he wrote eight monographs on the Gulf and Islam, as well as served as an instructor of applied intelligence. He also was a briefer and subject matter expert for Special Operations-U.S. Central Command and for the Middle East Orientation Course at the Air Force Special Operations School. He has provided support to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, National Defense University, Office of National Intelligence, State Department and other security and intelligence organizations.
He is a graduate of the Middle East Studies and Arabic Language program at the Foreign Service Institute, Washington, D.C. and Tunis, Tunisia, and earned his doctorate in Middle Eastern and South Asian history from the University of Texas at Austin.
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