Daniel Pipes to Speak at RIT, April 14

Daniel Pipes will speak about militant Islam at Rochester Institute of Technology, Thursday, April 14, as part of the Caroline Werner Gannett Lecture Series.

Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, will give his talk, “Militant Islam and the War on Terror,” at 7:30 p.m. in Webb Auditorium in the James E. Booth Building.

Pipes earned his doctorate at Harvard University in early Islamic history and is the author of 12 books, including Militant Islam Reaches America. In 1983, he was a member of the policy-planning staff at the U.S. State Department and, later, director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. In 1994, he founded Middle East Forum (MEF), where he is publisher of Middle East Quarterly. He is also director of the federally funded U.S. Institute of Peace.

“Daniel Pipes is a scholar with extensive training and experience in Islamic history and culture and direct personal experience of the Islamic world,” says Paul Grebinger, Gannett lecturer and coordinator of Senior Seminar at RIT. “He fears the impacts of politicized fundamental Islam and has sounded an alarm. It is only since the events of September 11, 2001, that a wider audience has taken note of his writings. Pipes is careful to distinguish ‘Islamists’ from moderate Muslims, the overwhelming majority in the U.S. and elsewhere. A political conservative himself, he counsels confrontation as the only means for effecting change. However, he has succeeded in antagonizing many Muslims, including moderates who are aware of and engaged in efforts from within their own communities to adjust competing ideologies.”

Pipes’ lecture follows a talk by Ali Mazrui, who discussed relations between Islam and the West on March 24. For more information call 475-2057 or visit www.rit.edu/gannettseries, where the lecture will be available online.