Tuesday, December 12, 2006
THE COMING OF THE IRAQ COLLOQUIUM
Starting this Friday, Dave Schuler of The Glittering Eye is hosting a distinguished panel of Mideast experts for an upcoming blogging series on aspects of Iraq and American policy toward the region. So far, the line-up includes:
"John Burgess is a former U. S. foreign service officer who has had two tours of duty in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the first in 1981-1983 and the second 2001-2003. He reads and speaks Arabic and has spent the bulk of his career in the Middle East with assignments in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and Bahrain in addition to his assignment in the KSA. His blog, Crossroads Arabia, is one of the blogosphere’s finest resources for information and commentary on the KSA.
Michael Cook is the Cleveland Dodge professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. In 2002 he was awarded the Andrew Mellon Foundation’s Distinguished Achievement Award.
James Hamilton is a professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego. His special area of study is oil economics. His blog, Econbrowser, is a premier econblog.
Rasheed Abou Al-Samh is a Saudi-American journalist based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He is a senior editor at Arab News and a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Times, Al-Ahram Weekly, and Forbes Arabia. His blog is Rasheed’s World.
Shivaji Sondhi is a professor of physics at Princeton University"
Having put together one online symposium myself (" Globalization and War"), I appreciate the hard work that Dave has put into organizing this event, to which I am looking forward to reading and commenting upon. Here Dave explains his vision for the colloquium:
"I don’t know if you’re as discouraged by the present political climate and the likely turn of events with respect to Iraq as I am (not to mention Iran) but I’ve been wracking what I like to think of as my brains for some time now trying to consider U. S. interests in the region, how they’re likely to be affected by a withdrawal of U. S. troops before the country can be stabilized, what other measures are available to secure those interests in the event of such a withdrawal, and so on.
I’m also discouraged by what I consider the poor level of analysis being done both in the blogosphere and in the larger world. The Iraq Study Group’s report has been somewhat disappointing, not offering much in the way of new perspectives, and I doubt that the Democrats’ forum on the subject announced a week or so ago will be a great deal better.
So rather than continue speculating myself I thought I might try to organize a blogospheric colloquium, basically a cross-blog discussion, on the subject. I’ve tried attract participants better informed than I (that leaves the field pretty open). Among the general topics I propsed were:
military issues
diplomatic alternatives
regional stakes
economics and development
communications and information
The general format of the colloquium will be that each participant will elaborate on a topic in a post of his own (the contributions of participants without blogs of their own will be hosted here).
Participants and, indeed, all readers would be encouraged to address questions to the participants either in the pages of the participants’ blogs or here: "
I will be linking and commenting daily and look forward to learning something new ! ¶ 6:56 PM
Starting this Friday, Dave Schuler of The Glittering Eye is hosting a distinguished panel of Mideast experts for an upcoming blogging series on aspects of Iraq and American policy toward the region. So far, the line-up includes:
"John Burgess is a former U. S. foreign service officer who has had two tours of duty in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the first in 1981-1983 and the second 2001-2003. He reads and speaks Arabic and has spent the bulk of his career in the Middle East with assignments in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and Bahrain in addition to his assignment in the KSA. His blog, Crossroads Arabia, is one of the blogosphere’s finest resources for information and commentary on the KSA.
Michael Cook is the Cleveland Dodge professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. In 2002 he was awarded the Andrew Mellon Foundation’s Distinguished Achievement Award.
James Hamilton is a professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego. His special area of study is oil economics. His blog, Econbrowser, is a premier econblog.
Rasheed Abou Al-Samh is a Saudi-American journalist based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He is a senior editor at Arab News and a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Times, Al-Ahram Weekly, and Forbes Arabia. His blog is Rasheed’s World.
Shivaji Sondhi is a professor of physics at Princeton University"
Having put together one online symposium myself (" Globalization and War"), I appreciate the hard work that Dave has put into organizing this event, to which I am looking forward to reading and commenting upon. Here Dave explains his vision for the colloquium:
"I don’t know if you’re as discouraged by the present political climate and the likely turn of events with respect to Iraq as I am (not to mention Iran) but I’ve been wracking what I like to think of as my brains for some time now trying to consider U. S. interests in the region, how they’re likely to be affected by a withdrawal of U. S. troops before the country can be stabilized, what other measures are available to secure those interests in the event of such a withdrawal, and so on.
I’m also discouraged by what I consider the poor level of analysis being done both in the blogosphere and in the larger world. The Iraq Study Group’s report has been somewhat disappointing, not offering much in the way of new perspectives, and I doubt that the Democrats’ forum on the subject announced a week or so ago will be a great deal better.
So rather than continue speculating myself I thought I might try to organize a blogospheric colloquium, basically a cross-blog discussion, on the subject. I’ve tried attract participants better informed than I (that leaves the field pretty open). Among the general topics I propsed were:
military issues
diplomatic alternatives
regional stakes
economics and development
communications and information
The general format of the colloquium will be that each participant will elaborate on a topic in a post of his own (the contributions of participants without blogs of their own will be hosted here).
Participants and, indeed, all readers would be encouraged to address questions to the participants either in the pages of the participants’ blogs or here: "
I will be linking and commenting daily and look forward to learning something new ! ¶ 6:56 PM
