Author, activist Salbi to speak at Baker Institute on women’s roles in Middle East

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News staff

Those unable to attend Rice’s May 9 graduation ceremony can still hear the commencement speaker, author and activist Zainab Salbi, when she lectures at the Baker Institute for Public Policy May 8.

	ZAINAB SALBI

The lecture, titled “Women as Agents of Change in the Middle East,” will begin at 6:30 p.m. in Baker Hall’s Kelly International Conference Facility.

The Iraqi-born Salbi co-founded Women for Women International in 1993 to provide women survivors of war, civil strife and other conflicts with the resources to move from crisis and poverty to stability and self-sufficiency.

Salbi describes her life in Iraq in the best-selling memoir “Between Two Worlds: Escape from Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam.” Her new book, “The Other Side of War: Women’s Stories of Survival and Hope,” chronicles the stories of women who have overcome the devastation of war.

In 2006, Salbi spoke to global business leaders at the Clinton Global Initiative and the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. That same year she received Auburn Theological Seminary’s highest honor, the Lives of Commitment Award, and she was named “Washingtonian of the Year” by Washingtonian magazine. Salbi serves on the advisory boards of the T