Columbia professor visits IU to discuss Iraqi culture, history

The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures honored its founder Thursday evening by hosting the second annual Wadie Jwaideh Memorial Lecture.\nThe lecture's guest speaker was Muhsin Al-Musawi, professor of Arabic literature at Columbia University.\nAl-Musawi is currently teaching at the American University of Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, and came to Bloomington at the invitation of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.\nAl-Musawi's lecture focused on Iraqi culture and the search for legitimacy by those who have governed Iraq. Illustrating the country's troubled political past, Al-Musawi noted that since 1918, Iraq has had five different flags and has been governed by various Asian, European and American rulers, as well as by several indigenous regimes.\nHe discussed how he believes those who have governed Iraq consistently tried to rewrite history and invent tradition to rationalize their claims of legitimacy.\nAl-Musawi stressed that the undoing of Iraqi's previous rulers, both foreign and local, had been other countries' misunderstanding of Iraqi society.\nThe late Professor Emeritus Wadie Jwaideh, founder of the NELC department, joined the IU faculty in 1960 and was the NELC's first chairman. He graduated with a law degree from Baghdad University in 1942 and received his Ph.D. from Syracuse University.\nJwaideh taught and worked with several distinguished professors who attended the lecture. Among them was Thomas Ricks, professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, who studied under Jwaideh while he was an IU student.\n"For me, the eluvial lands of Mesopotamia will never be just another trouble zone on a CNN night broadcast or a Pentagon war room wall," Ricks said. "It always is to me the home land of Dr. Jwaideh. My mentor, beloved teacher and lifelong friend."\nThe Jwaideh Memorial Fund was created last year by members of the department and Alice Jwaideh, Wadie Jwaideh's widow, to invite prominent scholars to lecture at IU.\nProfessor Nazif Shahrani, chairman of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, helped plan the event.\n"It is part of our mission as a unit within Indiana University to promote international education, mutual understanding, and better knowledge of the region, and their particular culture," Shahrani said.\nHe said although the lecture did not dwell on the current situation in Iraq, he explained the underlying norms and values that have influenced events in Iraq over the past century.\n-- Contact staff writer Rami Chami at rchami@indiana.edu.