The Lost Language of Arab American Relations

The Lost Language of Arab American Relations

A Talk by Anouar Majid, Founding director of the Center for Global Humanities and Vice President for Global Affairs and Communications at the University of New England in Maine. As such, he was instrumental in conceiving and setting up UNE’s branch campus in Morocco. He is now establishing a new global forum in Tangier.

In the last half-century or so, Arabs have developed a complicated image of the United States as a superpower where many accomplished Arabs want to settle but also one that is not always sensitive to Arab needs. Such sentiments developed over the decades following World War II and reflect the new ideologies and nationalisms that have gripped the Arab imagination since then. Before this time, the United States was widely admired in the Levant, Egypt, Morocco and other places that are now considered part of the Arab world. Arab immigrants, too, were grateful to America and many reciprocated by making major contributions to their adopted nation. Can this relationship be resurrected to build a better future for both peoples?

More about the Speaker:

Born in Tangier, Morocco, Anouar Majid is the author of five critically acclaimed books on Islam and the West, including Unveiling Traditions (2000), Freedom and Orthodoxy (2004), A Call for Heresy (2007), We Are All Moors (2009) and Islam and America: Building a Future Without Prejudice (2012; paperback with new preface in 2015). He has written for the Washington Post, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and other publications. His work and life were the subject of a Bill Moyers interview and an Al Jazeera television program, both aired in 2007. Anouar is a novelist, the author of Si Yussef (first published in 1992) and is the editor of Tingis, a free online magazine dedicated to a new reading of Islam and its traditions.

The event is free and open to the public. It satisfies the Multicultural and diversity training requirement.
Certificates of Attendance will be available at the event. Signing up at the event is required.