Columbia Professor Emerita Anderson speaks about U.S.-Middle East foreign policy

Lisa Anderson, professor emerita of international relations at Columbia University and former president of American University in Cairo, will speak on the campus of Furman University Thursday, Dec. 6, at 7 p.m. in Watkins Room of Trone Student Center.

Her CLP talk, “U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East: From Truman to Trump,” is free and open to the public and made possible through the Furman Department of Politics and International Affairs and the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program.

A specialist on politics in the Middle East and North Africa, Anderson served as dean of the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) from 1996 to 2008, and as the James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations at Columbia University. She previously served as chair of the university’s political science department and director of the Middle East Institute. Before joining Columbia, she was assistant professor of government and social studies at Harvard University.

Anderson served as the president of American University in Cairo from 2011 to 2016 and as provost from 2008 to 2010.

Past president of the Middle East Studies Association and past chair of the board of the Social Science Research Council, Anderson is a former member of the Council of the American Political Science Association and served on the board of the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Affairs.

She is member emerita of the board of Human Rights Watch, where she served as co-chair of Human Rights Watch/Middle East, co-chair of the International Advisory Board of the Von Humbolt Foundation, and member of the International Advisory Council of the World Congress for Middle East Studies. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Anderson is the author of “Pursuing Truth, Exercising Power: Social Science and Public Policy in the Twenty-first Century” (Columbia University Press, 2003), “The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1820-1980” (Princeton University Press, 1986), editor of “Transitions to Democracy” (Columbia University Press, 1999) and coeditor of “The Origins of Arab Nationalism” (Columbia, 1991).

Anderson holds a bachelor’s from Sarah Lawrence College, a master’s in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and a doctorate in political science from Columbia University. She was awarded an honorary doctor of laws from Monmouth University in 2002.

For more information, contact the Furman News and Media Relations office at 864-294-3107. Or contact Buket Oztas at 864-294-2712 and buket.oztas@furman.edu, or Akan Malici  at 864-294-3576 and akan.malici@furman.edu in the Politics and International Affairs department.