Authority on Contemporary Islam to Speak on Campus - CANCELLED

Release date: March 1, 2013

Akbar Ahmed, ambassador of Pakistan, will present "Ten Years After The Need for a Dialogue Not a Clash of Civilizations" on Thursday, March 7 at 7:00 p.m. in the Branigin Room of the Napolitan Student Center as part of Franklin College's 2012-13 Convocation Lecture Series.

Ambassador Akbar Ahmed is currently the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington, D.C. and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings institution. He is a Visiting Professor and was first distinguished chair of Middle East and Islamic Studies at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. He has taught at Princeton, Harvard and Cambridge Universities and has been called "the world's leading authority on contemporary Islam" by the BBC. Regularly interviewed by CNN, NPR, BBC and Al-Jazeera, he has appeared several times on "Oprah," and has also been a guest of "The Daily Show" and Nickelodeon.

Ahmed was the Pakistan High Commissioner (Ambassador) to the UK and Ireland. He is the author of over a dozen award-winning books, including Discovering Islam, which was the basis of a six-part BBC TV series called "Living Islam"; the critically acclaimed Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization; Suspended Somewhere Between, a book of verse; and Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam, which culminated in the full length documentary "Journey into America" and won the American Book Award for 2011.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Each year, the college hosts the lecture series based on one of its five core values - respect, honesty, responsibility, faith and lifelong pursuit of learning. This year's focus is on responsibility, defined as the capacity to accept the outcomes of one's actions and the strength to choose those actions which will positively affect one's life and the lives of others in the community.

Contact the Franklin College Office of Marketing and Communications for more information at (317) 738-8185.

Founded in 1834, Franklin College is a residential four-year undergraduate liberal arts institution with a scenic, wooded campus located 20 minutes south of downtown Indianapolis. The college prepares men and women for challenging careers and fulfilling lives through the liberal arts, offering its approximately 1,000 students 28 majors, 36 minors and eight pre-professional programs. In 1842, the college began admitting women, becoming the first coeducational institution in Indiana and the seventh in the nation. Franklin College maintains a voluntary association with the American Baptist Churches USA. For more information, visit www.franklincollege.edu.