For Immediate Release Contact: Barbara K. Laskin
October 3, 2003 Doug Stone
(651) 696-6203

Macalester's Tenth Annual International Roundtable Explores the Challenges Among African, American and Middle Eastern Perspectives October 9 - 11

St. Paul, Minn. - Macalester College presents its 10th annual International Roundtable titled, "Complex Contradictions: African, American, and Middle Eastern Perspectives," Thursday, October 9 - Saturday, October 11, in Weyerhaeuser Memorial Chapel and the Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center on the Macalester campus.

The tenth anniversary of the Roundtable presents an unusual combination of a concert performance from traditional Korea and a variety of intellectual perspectives including a historian of Palestinian/ Arab/Islamic heritage, an African writer and a one-time director for strategic planning at the U.S. National Security Council.

This year's participants include:

¨ Rashid Khalidi who is the Edward Said professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University after having been professor of History and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He received his B.A. in History from Yale and his D.Phil. in Modern History from Oxford. His publications include Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1997, co-winner of the Albert Hourani Book Award); The Origins of Arab Nationalism (1991); and Under Siege: P.L.O. Decision-Making during the 1982 War (1985). He has written for periodicals such as the Journal of Palestine Studies, of which he is now Editor, and has produced many book chapters on geopolitics, the social factors of nationalism, the role of the press and intra-state political power in the Middle East. He has also contributed to five encyclopedias and reference works. Currently, he serves as the President of the American Committee on Jerusalem and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
(Presentation: 4:45 - 6 pm, Thursday, October 9, Weyerhaeuser Memorial Chapel).

¨ Ngugi wa Thiong'o who is director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California-Irvine after teaching at New York University since 1992. He was born in Kenya and graduated from Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda. In 1995, he was awarded an honorary Ph.D. from Albright College. Exiled from Kenya in 1982 for his political writings, he has been a visiting professor in a number of nations. He is at home in many genres, including the novel, critical essay, play, children's book and memoir. He has received many awards including the UNESCO First Prize for his novel Weep Not Child. Other novels include Matigari; Devil on the Cross; A Grain of Wheat , Petals of Blood and his memoir Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary. Some of his plays are I Will Marry When I Want, The Trial of Dedan Kimathi and The Black Hermit. Decolonising the Mind and Moving the Centre are examples of his contribution to critical theory.
(Presentation: 9:40 - 10:20 am, Friday, October 10, Weyerhaeuser Memorial Chapel)

¨ Philip Chase Bobbitt who is the A. W. Walker Centennial Chair in Law at the University of Texas where he has been a member of the faculty since 1976. He earned an A.B. in Philosophy from Princeton, a J.D. from the Yale Law School and a Ph.D. in Modern History from Oxford. He has served in all three branches of the U.S. government. His books include Tragic Choices (with Calabresi), Constitutional Fate, Constitutional Interpretation, Democracy and Deterrence, U.S. Nuclear Strategy (with Freedman and Treverton) and his monumental volume The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History. He is a member of the American Law Institute, Council on Foreign Relations and International Institute for Strategic Studies. He has been a senior director in a number of capacities at the National Security Council. In 2001, he received a Presidential appointment to the National Infrastructure Assurance Council and was also appointed to a body ensuring the continuity of government institutions after a terrorist attack.
(Presentation: 1:40 - 2:20 pm, Friday, October 10, Weyerhaeuser Memorial Chapel)

¨ The Korean Ensemble is composed of four performers of traditional Korean music. Master Byung-Ki Hwang is a world-renowned performer, composer and scholar. He has been a professor of Korean music at Ewha Women's University since 1974. Incomparable on the twelve-string plucked zither, the kayagum, Master Hwang has also developed his own unique version of sanjo, the traditional extended solo music for kayagum. Il-Ryun Kim is a professor at Sookmyung Women's University in the Graduate School of Traditional Culture and Arts. She is a kayagum ensemble director and member of the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts. Jae-Won Lim is a taegum (large flute) performer and professor at Seoul National University. He also conducts at the Daejeon Municipal Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts. Chung Soo Kim is an accomplished performer of the chang gu, the hourglass drum. He is a professor in the Korean Music Department at Yong-In University and the leader of the Seoul Traditional Music Ensemble.
(Concert: 8 pm, Friday, October 10, Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center)

The roundtable begins at 4:30 pm Thursday, October 9, with opening statements from Ahmed I. Samatar, James Wallace professor and dean, International Studies and Programming, and Macalester College President Brian C. Rosenberg. Philip Geier, president of United World College, Montezuma, N.M., will be a respondent to a presentation along with Macalester College faculty and students.

The Macalester International Roundtable is held every October on campus. A community-wide intellectual forum, the roundtable explores crucial global issues with prominent international scholars who are also commissioned to write major papers that are presented at Macalester and published in the Macalester International journal. Previous roundtables have featured:

o 1994 "The International Community and the Emerging World (Dis)Order"
o 1995 "Literature, the Creative Imagination, and Globalization"
o 1996 "The Divided Self: Ethnicity, Identity, and Globalization"
o 1997 "Nature, People, and Globalization"
o 1998 "Globalization and Economic Space"
o 1999 "Contending Gods: Religion and the Global Moment"
o 2000 "International Feminisms: Divergent Perspectives"
o 2001 "The Body: Meditations on Global Health"
o 2002 "Prometheus's Bequest: Technology and Change"

Macalester is a private liberal arts college with a full-time enrollment of 1,810 students. Macalester is nationally recognized for its commitment to academic excellence, internationalism, diversity and service to society.

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