His Excellency Clovis Maksoud, former ambassador and permanent observer of the League of Arab States at the United Nations and its chief representative in the United States for more than 10 years, will be the featured speaker in New Jersey City University’s 2009-2010 University Lecture Series on Tuesday, November 17 at 4:00 p.m. in Room 202 of Hepburn Hall, on the University campus at 2039 Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City.

Sponsored annually by the NJCU Division of University Advancement, the University Lecture Series is free and open to the community. The theme of the 2009-2010 Series is social responsibility in the global community. A reception with Ambassador Maksoud will immediately follow his lecture.

A lawyer, journalist, and diplomat, Ambassador Maksoud is director of American University's Center for the Global South. Founded in 1991, the Center examines issues affecting developing countries, characterized as the Global South, and has hosted forums at United Nations conferences in Beijing, Copenhagen, Cairo, and Istanbul.

Ambassador Maksoud's areas of expertise include relations between countries in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the Middle East, and the United Nations as well as issues related to the developing world, the environment, human rights, population, and preventive diplomacy.

He teaches classes on the Middle East, Global South issues, international organizations, and preventive diplomacy at both the School of International Service and American University's Washington College of Law. He has also been a visiting professor at Georgetown University.

Ambassador Maksoud served as the Arab League Ambassador to India and Southeast Asia, 1961-1966, and was also the Arab League Special Envoy to the United States in 1974. Currently, he serves as vice chair of the United Nations Development Program Advisory Board on Arab human development reports.

As a journalist, Ambassador Maksoud was senior editor of the daily Al-Ahram in Cairo, and editor-in-chief of Al-Nahar, an Arabic-language weekly published in Beirut. He is the author of several books on the Middle East and developing countries, including The Meaning of Nonalignment, The Crisis of the Arab Left, Reflections on Afro-Asianism, and The Arab Image.

Ambassador Maksoud is the 2006 recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the American University of Beirut's Alumni Association. In the same year, Georgetown University established the Clovis and Hala Salam Maksoud Chair in honor of the Ambassador and his late wife. For his contributions to diplomacy, literature, and education and his defense of Arab issues, he has been honored by the Palestinian Heritage Foundation.

A graduate of the American University of Beirut, Ambassador Maksoud holds a J.D. from George Washington University and completed post-graduate studies at Oxford University.

NJCU’s 2009-2010 University Lecture series is among a series of campus events commemorating the University’s 80th Anniversary and celebrating its achievements in higher education and its contributions to the students and communities it has served.

Michele Wucker, executive director of the World Policy Institute, a nonpartisan center for progressive global policy research and thought leadership that publishes World Policy Journal, and author of LOCKOUT: Why America Keeps Getting Immigration Wrong When Our Prosperity Depends on Getting It Right and Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians and the Struggle for Hispaniola, will deliver the next University Lecture on Monday, February 22.

For further information call (201)200-3426.