Ambassador Feisal Amin Rasoul al-Istrabadi, who worked to help Iraq transition from dictatorship to democracy, will be the keynote speaker for International Education Week at Illinois State University. His talk, “From Dictatorship to Democracy?” will be at 7 p.m. Tuesday, October 11, in the Prairie Room of the Bone Student Center. The event is free and open to the public.
Ambassador Feisal Amin Rasoul al-Istrabadi
Ambassador al-Istrabadi was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary and Deputy Permanent Representative of Iraq to the United Nations from 2004-2007. Prior to his appointment, al-Istrabadi served as legal advisor to the Iraqi Minister for Foreign Affairs during the negotiations for the U.N. Security Council resolution that recognized the reassertion of Iraq of its sovereignty. He was also the principal legal drafter of the Iraqi interim constitution of 2004.
Ambassador al-Istrabadi is the founding director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East, a National Resource Center, at Indiana University-Bloomington, where he is also professor of the practice of international law and diplomacy at the Maurer School of Law and the School of Global and International Studies. He focuses his research on the processes of building legal and political institutions in countries in transition from dictatorship to democracy, especially the emergence of the rule of law in such societies, including questions of constitutionalism, legitimacy, transitional justice, and the political and cultural factors which influence the process of democratization.
Before contributing to the reconstruction of Iraq, Ambassador al-Istrabadi was a practicing trial lawyer in the United States for 15 years, with approximately 70 civil trials in federal and state courts, focusing on civil rights, employment discrimination, and constitutional torts. Ambassador al-Istrabadi is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He lectures often at universities and policy institutes, and appears frequently in national and international media.
International Education Week runs from October 9-14 at Illinois State. The keynote talk is sponsored by Illinois State’s Office of International Studies, an Alice and Fannie Fell Trust grant, and the Office of the President. For additional information, contact the Office of International Studies at (309) 438-5276.
The talk is part of the Illinois State University Speaker Series. The series seeks to bring innovative and enlightening speakers to the campus with the aim of providing the community with a platform to foster dialogue, cultivate enriching ideas, and continue an appreciation of learning as an active and lifelong process. All talks are free and open to the public.
