WHOEVER scheduled this week’s Bonner & Bonner lecture at Emporia State University is extremely sharp or extremely lucky. Probably both.
Finding somebody to give a lecture is not difficult. Wave some cash out the window and experts — real or self-proclaimed — will have formed a rowdy line outside the door before you can put your wallet away.
That’s fine if what is needed is yet another lecture on the future of the buggy whip industry or an insightful, if boring, look at the effects of 19th-century free-market fiscal reforms on Fiji.
But finding someone to speak of matters that are of interest at the time of the speech is not easy. That is especially true when the lecturer must be booked six to nine months beforehand.
That is where the Bonner & Bonner people hit the jackpot.
Vali Nasr, who will speak at 7 o’clock Tuesday night at Albert Taylor Hall, is a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School and the author of “The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future.” His book will provide the topic for his talk.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, could not be more timely. The fighting in Iraq has become, more than anything, a Sunni-Shia conflict that grows bloodier day by day. Nasr’s lecture should give the audience a useful perspective on the daily challenges that confront the people of Iraq and the U.S. troops stationed there.
If Nasr takes questions after the lecture, it would be a good opportunity to get his opinion of U.S. policy on Iran. He and Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, published an opinion piece in Thursday’s Washington Post. The article makes a persuasive case for the possibility that the current U.S. policy of coercion and sanctions only strengthens the regime the United States opposes.
“Paradoxically,” Nasr and Takeyh write, “to liberalize the theocratic state, the United States would do better to shelve its containment strategy and embark on a policy of unconditional dialogue and sanctions relief. A reduced American threat would deprive the hard-liners of the conflict they need to justify their concentration of power. In the meantime, as Iran became assimilated into the global economy, the regime’s influence would inevitably yield to the private sector, with its demands for accountability and reform.”
If Nasr’s other ideas are half as thought-provoking, Tuesday’s lecture should be well worth attending.