Left to Right: Prof. Thomassen, Prof. Salgo', visiting Prof. Gary Sick and Prof. Walston.
The International Relations and Global Politics Department‘s recent public lecture was a great success as Prof. Gary Sick was received with great enthusiasm by a standing room only audience. Prof. Sick of Columbia University, a former US National Security Advisor under three different US administrations, is considered the world’s leading authority on US-Iranian relations. Prof. Sick challenged widely held beliefs about the current status of Iranian internal political/social affairs (which he described as the most complicated since the Islamic Revolution thirty years ago) and addressed Persian gulf international relationships with several regional powers currently jockeying position for regional and global influence. Prof. Sick discussed in depth the various perceptions and reality of the “Iranian threat” and suggested the US invasion of both Taliban Afghanistan and Iraq have removed two long standing obstacles to Iranian regional projection. Prof. Sick suggested that it was subject to interpretation as to whether this recent rise to prominence was a welcomed, understood consequence of USA’s military action, or unanticipated side effect.
Gary G. Sick, an American academic and analyst of Middle East affairs, served on the U.S. National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan. He has authored two books on the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. Sick teaches in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, where he was voted one of the top five teachers in 2009. He is a member (emeritus) of the board of Human Rights Watch in New York and founding chair of its advisory committee on the Middle East and North Africa. He is also the executive director of Gulf/2000, an international online research project on political, economic and security developments in the Persian Gulf.
