photo: Mustapha El Qadery (left, white turban) discusses development work with village leaders in Zawiya Ahansal, Morocco.
Mustapha El Qadery, a renowned North African scholar, historian and anthropologist, will speak in Bozeman about the current political turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa in Bozeman. On March 3, El Qadery presents “The Berlin Wall Falls in the Middle East and North Africa,” at MSU. On March 4, he will present “How Arabism Hijacked Islam,” at the Bozeman Public Library, from 12:10 p.m. to 1 p.m.
Currently, El Qadery is a Fulbright Scholar in Residence at Virginia State University in Virginia. In Morocco, he works at the National Library of the Moroccan Kingdom and in the Faculty of Law at Rabat University. El Qadery has published over 30 papers on his fieldwork, which focuses on Colonial and Postcolonial Political Systems in Africa and the Middle East. El Qadery’s latest paper, published in France in December 2010, is titled “Did Africa Lose the North?” He is now finishing a book, written in Arabic and French, titled Nationalism of the Self-hate, including a specific text about the end of Franco Salazar’s rule in Tunisia. Also a documentary film producer, he was recently awarded two Moroccan film awards regarding his work on the history of the Colonial Conquest in the Eastern Moroccan Sahara.
For the past five years, El Qadery has worked closely with Cloe Erickson, MSU alumni and founder of the Atlas Cultural Foundation, on community development work and an MSU study abroad program in a remote region of Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains. In addition, El Qadery has been a guest scholar for the Livingston-based travel company Bella Treks.
El Qadery’s visit is sponsored by the Atlas Cultural Foundation, Montana State University’s Office of International Programs and Bella Treks. Both presentations are free and open to the public.
atlasculturalfoundation.org.