03/25/2009
Political scientist David Siddhartha Patel, who has studied extensively in the Middle East, will discuss what the Iraqi people are experiencing after the fall of Saddam Hussein on Wednesday, April 1, at SUNY Cortland.
Patel replaces Stephen Lubkemann, who was scheduled to speak on Monday, March 30.
Patel, an assistant professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University, will begin his talk on "Being Iraqi After Saddam: The Rise of Sectarianism and Civil War in Iraq" at 4:30 p.m. in the Sociology and Anthropology Department's new location, Moffett Center, Room 2125. A reception in the Rozanne M. Brooks Museum's new location, Moffett Center, Room 2126, will precede the talk at 4 p.m.
The discussion, which continues the yearlong Brooks Museum Lecture Series on "The Culture of Violence," is free and open to the public.
Patel will explore why religious identity has become increasingly important for Iraqi Arabs rather than class or other secular identities, why Sunni and Shi'ite Islamists have been dominating Iraqi national elections and whether Iraq's civil war was inevitable.
"My talk will consider whether the emergence of sectarianism and Islamism in a post-Saddam Iraq is a result of ancient identities, United States policies, Iraqi culture or something else," said Patel, a member of the graduate field faculty of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University.
Patel, who joined Cornell in 2007, has traveled to Morocco, Yemen and Lebanon to gain additional training in language and culture.
He wrote a chapter, "Insurgency and Counter-insurgency in Iraq's Sacred Spaces," for the 2008 book Treading on Hallowed Ground by C. Christine Fair and Sumit Ganguly.
Patel, who speaks Arabic, Uyghur and Hindi languages, is a member of the American Political Science Association, Middle East Studies Association, Association for the Study of Religion, Economics and Culture, the American Institute for Yemeni Studies and the Committee for the Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy.
He earned a bachelor's degree in political science and economics from Duke University and a doctorate in political science from Stanford University.
The lecture series is sponsored by the College's Auxiliary Services Corporation (ASC). For more information, contact Sharon Steadman, associate professor of anthropology, at (607) 753-2308.