Robin Wright, one of the nation’s most accomplished foreign correspondent and television commentator, will address the Whittier College community as the 2016 Feinberg Lecture speaker on Thursday, March 24. The lecture is scheduled for 7 p.m. in the Ruth B. Shannon Center for the Performing Arts located at 6760 Painter Ave, Whittier, CA 90601. The event is free and open to the public. RSVP to Terrie Valenzuela at 562.907.4219 or tvalenzuela@whittier.edu.
In her Feinberg Lecture titled “Rock the Casbah – The Future of the Middle East,” Wright will share her remarkable experiences as a journalist and will inform the audience on the future of the Middle East.
Wright’s most recent book Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World, tells the stunning personal stories behind the rejection of both autocrats and extremists in the Muslim world. Wright profiles young techies mobilizing political uprisings, clerics publicly repudiating Osama bin Laden, Muslim comedians ridiculing militancy, hip hop artists rapping against guns and bombs, playwrights and poets redefining jihad, feminists reinterpreting the Koran, and militants denouncing violence.
For decades, Wright has reported from more than 140 countries on six different continents for The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, TIME, The Atlantic, CBS News, and many others. She has received the U.N. Correspondents Gold Medal, the National Magazine Award from The New Yorker, the Overseas Press Club Award, as well as being named Journalist of the Year from The American Academy of Diplomacy. Her eight books include The Iran Primer: Power, Politics and U.S. Policy, The Islamists are Coming: Who They Really Are, among others.
The Feinberg Lecture Series is made possible through an endowment established by the late Sheldon Feinberg, a former trustee of Whittier College, and his wife, Betty, in order to invite major scholars to the College to discuss broad historic, religious, and political issues encompassed by Judaism and its role in a changing world.
Previous Feinberg Lecturers include former Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell, U.S. Ambassador to Israel and Egypt Daniel C. Kurtzer, Dr. Judea Pearl, Justice Richard Goldstone, Nazi criminal prosecutor John Loftus, Holocaust historian Dr. Deborah Lipstadt, performance artist Claudia Stevens, and Dr. Rodger Kamenetz, author of the national bestseller The Jew in the Lotus, among others.
