The Emile Bustani Middle East Seminar begins its 15th year of lectures on contemporary Middle Eastern affairs this fall with Dr. Bernard Avishai of KPMG Peat Marwick, a former faculty member in the Department of Humanities. He will deliver the first talk on Tuesday, Sept. 28 entitled "Elections in 1999: Israel's First Post-Zionist government?" Dr. Avishai is a well-known writer on Israeli politics and society and author of The Tragedy of Zionism .
The seminar is funded by the Bustani family of Beirut, Lebanon in memory of the late Emile M. Bustani, who received the SB in civil engineering in 1933. Mr. Bustani, one of the Middle East's most prominent businessmen and philanthropists until his premature death in 1963, was the founder and chairman of the Contracting and Trading Co., a construction and engineering firm with projects in the Middle East, Africa and the Far East.
Philip S. Khoury, dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science (SHSS), chairs the Bustani Seminar, which is sponsored by the Center for International Studies.
The seminar will start at 4:30pm in Rm E51-095 (dining room) and is open to the public. For further information on the Bustani Middle East Seminar, contact Laurie Scheffler at x3-3121 or the SHSS dean's office at x3-3450.
A version of this article appeared in the September 15, 1999 issue of MIT Tech Talk (Volume 44, Number 5).
