Former CIA officer to speak on geopolitics of Islam Jan. 27 at Baker Institute

CONTACT: Franz Brotzen
PHONE: 713-348-6775
EMAIL: franz.brotzen@rice.edu

Former CIA officer to speak on geopolitics of Islam Jan. 27 at Baker Institute

“A World Without Islam” author Graham Fuller will discuss his book Jan. 27 at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

In the book, Fuller argues that political and cultural instability has always characterized the Middle East and would have occurred with or without the arrival of Islam. “I’m not arguing that Islam has not had great impact on the Middle East region and its cultures and civilization,” Fuller told NPR in August. “But I’m arguing that the nature of conflict between the West and the East does not depend on that and precedes Islam.”

Fuller’s talk will begin at 6:30 p.m. in Baker Hall’s Kelly International Conference Facility on the Rice campus, 6100 Main St. For directions, go to http://www.bakerinstitute.org/media/media_directions.cfm.

An adjunct professor of history at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Fuller spent two decades as a CIA operations officer, including 17 years in Turkey, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan and China. He later served as vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, with overall responsibility for national-level strategic forecasting.

Following his government career, Fuller was a senior political scientist at the RAND Corp. for 12 years, where he wrote on topics including political Islam in various countries and on the geopolitics of the Muslim world.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts from Harvard University in Russian and Middle East studies.

The event will also be webcast at http://bakerinstitute.org/events/a-world-without-islam.

Members of the news media who want to attend should RSVP to Franz Brotzen at franz.brotzen@rice.edu or 713-348-6775.